One way to relate the human experience of time to the physical process is to consider that as mobile, intentional organisms, we experience our reality as a sequence of perceptions, which we are constantly sorting and ordering, as a function of navigating our environment.

So we naturally think of time as the point of the present, moving past to future. The reality though, is that change turns future to past. Tomorrow becomes yesterday, because the earth turns.

So there is just this physical state we refer to as the present, but it’s not so much a dimensionless point between past and future, as it is the physical energy/matter bouncing around.

There is no physical dimension of time, because the past is consumed by the present, in order to inform and drive it. Aka, causality and conservation of energy.

Energy is “conserved,” because there is no past for it recede into, nor future from which it arrives, as it is the dynamic of this energy which is changing and creating time.

Time is asymmetric because what is actually measured as time, a stable, predictable pattern, is necessarily inertial. As in the earth only turns one direction and does so on a regular basis. Entropy is a second order effect of change and isn’t what is measured as time.

That we can observe different events in different order from different locations is no more consequential than seeing the moon as it was a moment ago, simultaneous with seeing stars as they were years ago. It is the energy that is “conserved,” not the information it manifests. It is this changing information that is time.

So the process goes past to future, while the patterns generated go future to past.

As consciousness goes past to future, as thoughts and feelings go future to past.

Or lives go birth to death, while life goes onto the next generation, shedding the old.

Even products go start to finish, while the production line goes the other way, consuming material and expelling product.

Different clocks can run at different rates simply because they are separate actions. That much of human history has been about getting everyone following the same narrative, playing by the same rules, playing the same games, chasing after the same goals, using the same measures, it might seem there is a universal time, but the fact is that every cell in our bodies is its own clock and life is easier when they are in harmony, just as society is peaceful, when everyone is dancing to the same tunes.

So time is an effect, like temperature, pressure, color, etc. Think frequencies and amplitudes. Or metabolism.

Ideal gas laws effectively correlate volume with temperature and pressure, as General Relativity uses light to correlate duration with distance, but since temperature and pressure are only foundational to our emotions, bodily functions and environment, not the sequence of thought, we can be more objective about them.

Remember the math of epicycles was a brilliant rendering of our view of the cosmos and more accurate than early heliocentric models, since we can’t observe from the point of view of the sun, but it was lousy physics, because we didn’t recognize our biased point of view.

As for determinism and free will, what actually determines events is the process of interaction computing the result, yet that only occurs as the present. We might assume the future will follow a set course of events, but that process which determines the outcome has to occur. If it hasn’t, then the results cannot be said to be determined, simply because they haven’t.

While free will is an oxymoron, as a will free of cause would be equally free of effect and the entire premise of will is to affect. We are part of nature’s process of selection.

What truly explains reality are the infinite feedback loops flowing through everything, rather than the progression of time. Often the future is as much reaction to the past, as continuation of it.

As Alan Watts put it, the wake doesn’t steer the boat, the boat creates the wake.