tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post3992908650102984373..comments2024-03-18T21:36:06.832-07:00Comments on CONTRARY BRIN: Multiple timelines & viewpoints. Science fiction is internationalDavid Brinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14465315130418506525noreply@blogger.comBlogger89125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-65481366912739589392017-01-03T11:00:45.053-08:002017-01-03T11:00:45.053-08:00Did no one bring up Niven's First Law of Time ...Did no one bring up Niven's First Law of Time Travel, or did I just miss it?<br /><br />The law states that in any universe that permits both travel backward in time and changing the past, time travel will never be invented. Eventually, the timeline will become so fouled up by people trying to change one thing only to find it affects untold other things, that someone will decide the only solution is to kill the inventor of the device before he can invent it, thus eliminating time travel altogether.Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11903687674146271189noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-66773249999156748622017-01-02T17:59:53.308-08:002017-01-02T17:59:53.308-08:00Terrific stuff. I start the year with the smartes...Terrific stuff. I start the year with the smartest community on the web.<br /><br />onward<br />onwardDavid Brinhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14465315130418506525noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-62386269478499995132017-01-02T17:16:36.678-08:002017-01-02T17:16:36.678-08:00If future guy's timeline continues, he's j...If future guy's timeline continues, he's just been ripped off. The banksters hire an enforcer who beats your future self up. Thanks, bro!Jumperhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11794110173836133321noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-64446883340461626822017-01-02T16:49:01.130-08:002017-01-02T16:49:01.130-08:00Paul SB:
Larry, on New Year's resolutions, ag...Paul SB:<br /><i><br />Larry, on New Year's resolutions, ages ago my resolution was to never make a New Year's resolution again, and that is the one resolution I have been able to stick to. <br /></i><br /><br />Heh. Sounds like the year I gave up broccoli for Lent.<br /><br />But lest you think I always make it so easy, in the past I've given up things that really make a challenge. One year, I gave up elevators, and my grandmother was on the 25th floor of a high rise. The hardest one was the year I gave up comic books. I'm never doing that again.<br />LarryHartnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-70453908454758520332017-01-02T16:41:28.681-08:002017-01-02T16:41:28.681-08:00I said:
To be analogous to my economic scenario, ...I said:<br /><i><br />To be analogous to my economic scenario, he would drop his fishing line into a pile of cash that he had made years later in his successful business, and pull out what he needed to invest in order to start that business. Since even without the seed money, there is plenty left in that future pile, there's no violation. The succeeding panels would have him starting the business and eventually raking in the cash.<br /></i><br /><br />And my point back in 2005 was that this really is how borrowing money for investment actually works. Sort of.<br /><br />Let's first examine the "happy path" in which everything goes right. You borrow $100,000 from a venture capitalist to use in setting up your business. Your business kicks ass, and in five years or so you're sitting on several million dollars worth of business and paying yourself a half-mil every year. As part of the business expense, you've paid back the initial loan, so your business is not in debt.<br /><br />How is that functionally different from having dropped a fishing line into your cash drawer five years later, picking $100,000 out of the drawer, and using <b>that</b> cash to start your business? I mean, sure, your drawer is $100,000 short, but that's just the $100,000 you'd have otherwise used to pay back the loan that you now don't need. In fact, it appears you're actually saving money on the interest. The venture capitalist is short the interest you <b>would</b> have paid him, but he's had the capital to use elsewhere, so I haven't quite figured out the ramifications of that part. Let it stand for now.<br /><br />Once you've paid back the loan, you <b>might as well</b> have borrowed from the future, and then paid it back out of your subsequent profits. There is no discernible difference between that and what actually does happen when you borrow money and then pay it back.<br /><br />When we talk about time travel paradoxes, we're asking the equivalent of "What happens if your business isn't profitable enough to pay off the loan?" Well, what does happen in that real-life situation? There are many different possible scenarios around who ends up losing money they didn't expect to lose, but none of them involve universe-altering paradoxes or metaphysical solutions or multiple timelines in which you're successful in one but a failure in another. Depending on how the borrowing is structured, it's pretty clear which money gets spent where and who is left holding the bag if profits fail to materialize.<br /><br />I'm asserting that the same sort of sorting out would occur if you "borrowed money from the future" which alters history in such a way that that money isn't there. Or more in our line of inquiry--if money from the future travels to the past and alters it in a way which prevents its coming into being. Given the initial conditions and constraints of the experiment, the laws of physics will determine how the future plays out in a particular scenario. Follow the money. :)<br />LarryHartnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-67421586072047641112017-01-02T16:38:03.566-08:002017-01-02T16:38:03.566-08:00Anon is in a group of pizza-gate obsessed people. ...Anon is in a group of pizza-gate obsessed people. Many psychologists would probably say that obsessing about child sexual abuse 24-7 suggests projection: something in their own minds gets projected into scenarios where it doesn't actually exist. They may be fascinated a little too much.<br />I find this deeply creepy.<br /><br />The YouTube links are useful to students of madness only.Jumperhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11794110173836133321noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-86541400560593036822017-01-02T16:34:30.457-08:002017-01-02T16:34:30.457-08:00Reminds me a little of the Robert Heinlein story &...Reminds me a little of the Robert Heinlein story "By His Bootstraps" in which a character goes into the future and gets a notebook explaining the language of the people "then." Later the notebook starts to get worn out and he copies it over in a new notebook. At some point in the story he realizes that the person he got the notebook from was a future incarnation of himself, and the notebook he was copying was being created as he copied it. This is the kind of stuff that gives people headaches. Maybe it's partly to blame for some people's distaste for science. When physicists come up with things that are so far beyond our normal experience, and most people can't understand without a whole lot of effort, they are left with taking it on faith or rejecting it as nonsensical. Since religion is the thing we are trained to take on faith, believing scientists who seem to be talking nonsense just doesn't mesh with our schema.<br /><br />I said I wasn't going to talk about time travel, but the nostalgia urge...<br /><br />Larry, on New Year's resolutions, ages ago my resolution was to never make a New Year's resolution again, and that is the one resolution I have been able to stick to. Paul SBnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-80341967038035025062017-01-02T16:19:13.249-08:002017-01-02T16:19:13.249-08:00@Dr Brin,
I have no interest in risking infection...@Dr Brin,<br /><br />I have no interest in risking infection by clicking on those links, nor am I curious enough to feel like I'm missing anything. Your blog and all, of course, but in my humble opinion, the <b>last</b> thing we want to do here is talk about them as if we care in any way.<br /><br />BTW, you have the distinct honor of having elicited from me as responses the <b>only</b> posts I've made so far in 2017 which do not involve time travel. I was almost going to make it a New Years resolution to only talk about time travel this year. But then, I don't usually make New Years resolutions at all, let alone keep them.<br /><br />I do give things up for Lent, though, even though I'm not required to.<br />LarryHartnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-80788947360707078942017-01-02T15:40:44.565-08:002017-01-02T15:40:44.565-08:00Does the anonymous sniper actually think we're...Does the anonymous sniper actually think we're visiting any of his rants? Maybe one of you might report say each weekend on what the crap was?David Brinhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14465315130418506525noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-55846497911603663652017-01-02T15:21:09.960-08:002017-01-02T15:21:09.960-08:00Not exactly time travel, but looking forward in ti...Not exactly time travel, but looking forward in time a bit...<br /><br />Only 1,480 days until inauguration day in 2020.<br /><br />Just sayin'LarryHartnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-18320856609891897832017-01-02T15:11:12.010-08:002017-01-02T15:11:12.010-08:00Except the multiple world lines idea has theorists...Except the multiple world lines idea has theorists a lot smarter than me taking it seriously. I don't think instant creation of universe-sized masses on-demand is quite what they are positing. They have all been here since the beginning. True that's a big infinity.Jumperhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11794110173836133321noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-74991078208640236712017-01-02T14:31:08.519-08:002017-01-02T14:31:08.519-08:00https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tqo8CxSPvCUhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tqo8CxSPvCUAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-51163779196056048202017-01-02T14:00:38.421-08:002017-01-02T14:00:38.421-08:00Paul451:
If I'm understanding your descriptio...Paul451:<br /><i><br />If I'm understanding your description correctly, the author was cleverly illustrating a "closed time-like curve", a closed loop. The banknote had no creation, it exists only inside the temporal loop, with no beginning and no end, and it somehow lasts forever and never ages or wears out.<br /><br />(Think about it from the banknote's POV, how does the act of hooking the note (damaging it), folding it and stuffing it in his pocket (stressing the paper), not accumulate enough damage for the note to turn to dust in just a few million loops? Let alone an infinite number. Where in the loop is it "reset"?)<br /></i><br /><br />There's a minor plot device like that in the movie "Somewhere In Time" with Christopher Reeve and Jane Seymour. At the start of the movie, in 1980, elderly Elise McKenna (Seymour) hands Richard Collier (Reeve) a watch, and tells him to "Come back to me!". Later in the film, when he has traveled back to 1912 to woo the younger Elise, he gives her the watch.<br /><br />That's hardly the main plot of the movie, but it does present a paradox of the type you describe, in which the watch has no beginning and no end. Except I once posited a way around that. In 1912, Richard gives Elise the watch which (unbeknownst to her) he received from her older self in 1980. Five years later, Elise accidentally loses the watch down an open sewer. Much later, say in 1975, older Elise is shopping at a bazaar in Marrakesh when she spots a watch that looks like the one from her lover which she lost as a young lady. Upon closer inspection, she realizes that this is not only a similar watch, but the same one. Out of curiosity and amazement, she buys the watch for a mere $1.50 American. That's how she has it on her when she stumbles across young Richard in 1980, and gives him the watch.<br /><br />The watch's timeline then starts with wherever watches come from to its sale at the bazzar to Elise in 1975, to Richard in 1980, back with Richard and then to Elise in 1912, and then wherever it ends up after dropping into a sewer in 1917. If the watch is old enough, then it exists as two versions between 1912 and 1980, but after one of those versions goes back in time, the other one (down the sewer) becomes the only one. It's not a closed loop. It's more of a loop-the-loop.<br /><i><br />The comic actually demonstrates the flaw in your time-travel-as-finance idea by stripping it back to a dollar-for-dollar swap (thus leaving out the "growing business", it's literally the same banknote.)<br /></i><br /><br />The comic is funny because of what it says about comics, not because of how time-travel actually works. To be analogous to my economic scenario, he would drop his fishing line into a pile of cash that he had made years later in his successful business, and pull out what he needed to invest in order to <b>start</b> that business. Since even without the seed money, there is plenty left in that future pile, there's no violation. The succeeding panels would have him starting the business and eventually raking in the cash.<br /><br />What if the business failed instead? Well then there's have been no pile of cash to fish from in the first place, would there? That wasn't exactly my original point, but I wasn't trying to relate it to this comic strip either.<br />LarryHartnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-5857439977028089322017-01-02T12:16:20.560-08:002017-01-02T12:16:20.560-08:00On time travelling: I liked the take of A. Niffene...On time travelling: I liked the take of A. Niffenegger in 'The Time Traveler's Wife' where travelling in time is more or less involuntary, caused by a genetic disorder. Because of this, the time traveller can't take anything with him, not even his clothes. Nor can he aim with precision where he ends up. This causes interesting difficulties, both for him and his wife.<br />Twomindsnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-63296717662820383452017-01-02T11:44:15.576-08:002017-01-02T11:44:15.576-08:00Jumper,
I'm also engaging in thought experime...Jumper,<br /><br />I'm also engaging in thought experiments, some of which I'm considering for the first time. For example, I never before considered what it would look like to an observer when a backwards-traveling time machine suddenly appears at the endpoint of its travel. The discontinuity there is evidence (to me) that we're describing fantasy rather than real possibilities. Likewise, in your multiple-timeline scenario, it's not just a matter of duplicating your time-traveling self. The theory seems to be that entire universes are created at every choice. I just don't see where all of that matter and energy comes from.<br />LarryHartnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-90934709765344105432017-01-02T11:43:51.380-08:002017-01-02T11:43:51.380-08:00LarryHart,
"My admittedly-amateur understandi...LarryHart,<br /><i>"My admittedly-amateur understanding is that relativity does not prohibit FTL travel, it just prohibits crossing the light barrier."</i><br /><br />No, but it requires that all possible FTL methods can also be used as time machines. So if we assume violation of causation rules out the possibility of time machines, then it must also rule out FTL.<br /><br />That's what I meant by "save". If the universe inherently self-sensors FTL when it creates a temporal loop, stopping it from working at precisely the moment when it can be used to violate causation, then FTL itself may turn out to be possible.<br /><br /><i>"in a cute little strip involving a man at a restaurant who, lacking cash, borrows money from his future self by dropping a fishing line down to the comics panel below and lifting money out of his future-self's pocket. Only, by the end of the strip, when he has to pay the waiter with that money, he's reached the panel where the money is being stolen out of his pocket!"</i><br /><br />If I'm understanding your description correctly, the author was cleverly illustrating a "closed time-like curve", a closed loop. The banknote had no creation, it exists <i>only</i> inside the temporal loop, with no beginning and no end, and it somehow lasts forever and never ages or wears out.<br /><br />(Think about it from the banknote's POV, how does the act of hooking the note (damaging it), folding it and stuffing it in his pocket (stressing the paper), not accumulate enough damage for the note to turn to dust in just a few million loops? Let alone an infinite number. Where in the loop is it "reset"?)<br /><br />The comic actually demonstrates the flaw in your time-travel-as-finance idea by stripping it back to a dollar-for-dollar swap (thus leaving out the "growing business", it's literally the same banknote.)Paul451https://www.blogger.com/profile/12119086761190994938noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-83137153162246978882017-01-02T11:40:31.419-08:002017-01-02T11:40:31.419-08:00Jumper,
"If you go to the past, find yourself...Jumper,<br /><i>"If you go to the past, find yourself, change things enough so your past self no longer has a reason to time travel himself, when original you returns to a future, it's not the one you left. It's a new world-line."</i><br /><br />That was the point of the desktop wormhole example.<br /><br />Because of how the maths of wormholes works in general relativity (I mean, that's where the whole concept came from), the two ends of a wormhole are actually the same space.<br /><br />A wormhole can't link two separate time-lines.<br /><br />Yet the same relativistic maths says that you can create a "time machine" with a stable wormhole.<br /><br />So it describes a set-up that requires a single universe, a single time-line, but also permits a temporal paradox.Paul451https://www.blogger.com/profile/12119086761190994938noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-20307195706581061772017-01-02T11:39:35.261-08:002017-01-02T11:39:35.261-08:00LarryHart,
"Schrodinger's Cat [...] And i...LarryHart,<br /><i>"Schrodinger's Cat [...] And is the live cat itself an "observer" in the sense of collapsing the waveform, whereas the dead cat is not?"</i><br /><br />The live cat is an observer. The dead cat's body is an observer. The box is an observer. The air inside the box is an observer. The vial of poison is an observer. The lever that breaks the vial is an observer. The radiation detector is the first and primary observer.<br /><br />Schrodinger was trying to describe something that he believed couldn't happen, but which was implied by the Copenhagen Interpretation (the "observer effect"). He was asking people to think about the logical conclusion, "where does the observer end?"<br /><br />Finding the limit between classical and quantum is part of the fun of modern quantum research. (Google "schrodinger's kittens", the nickname for research into how precisely the line between quantum and classical breaks down by devising devious real world nano-versions of Schroginger's thought experiment.)<br /><br />[Aside: I originally wrote "the vile of poison".]Paul451https://www.blogger.com/profile/12119086761190994938noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-90425720963042125002017-01-02T10:09:00.760-08:002017-01-02T10:09:00.760-08:00I'm going to stay out of the time travel thing...I'm going to stay out of the time travel thing, as I'm sure I know so little about the physics of space-time my thoughts wouldn't be worth much. However, my daughter just told me that someone contacted her through that Wix site she made to let her know that they were able to see it with whatever operating system they were using. I figure I should say "Thanks!" but the person did not leave their name. If a person does a good deed, great or small, and prefers to remain anonymous, there's honor in that. So my hat's off to this anonymous anti-troll, whoever you are!Paul SBnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-84673754347759106682017-01-02T09:33:54.002-08:002017-01-02T09:33:54.002-08:00I suspect time travel to the past is impossible to...I suspect time travel to the past is impossible too. It was a "but if, then.." thing. Not to mention materializing a human body plus whatever posited hardware into a world-line is a change of a hell of a lot of small particles, more than my proposed single-quanta change as rock-bottom minimum. Not even to mention that one quark's difference half the universe away from us is more likely. But if it's outside the light cone, irrelevant...<br />But anyway. If you go to the past, find yourself, change things enough so your past self no longer has a reason to time travel himself, when original you returns to a future, it's not the one you left. It's a new world-line. And now there are two of you. The original world-line "now" has a missing you who never returns. There are now two lucky pennies you've carried since childhood in your pocket as well. Not that you'll be richer: there are two of you and each of you has one.Jumperhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11794110173836133321noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-17416808672875465982017-01-02T08:08:12.467-08:002017-01-02T08:08:12.467-08:00raito:
I'm a bit concerned with how dead acto...raito:<br /><i><br />I'm a bit concerned with how dead actors with their faces plastered on other actors' bodies are credited. For example, The actress playing Leia got a credit, Carrie Fisher did not. I missed Tarkin's credit, but I assume it was the same. I think dual crediting is the correct choice here.<br /></i><br /><br />I think you are correct about Tarkin as well. And remember, Carrie Fisher wasn't dead when this movie was made, and she still doesn't get a credit. I also wonder about the implications of this technology in filmmaking going forward. Marlon Brando wanted too much money to appear in "Godfather II", so Robert DeNiro ended up as young Vito Corleone instead. What if the studio had just plastered Brando's face on top of the actor instead? The audience might have a more consistent experience. But not only does Brando get stiffed, DeNiro's career might never have taken off.<br /><br />Although it doesn't seem like it, we're talking about all kinds of time travel here. :)<br />LarryHartnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-52439582026422083702017-01-02T07:54:25.290-08:002017-01-02T07:54:25.290-08:00Jumper:
But anyway, my point was that backwards a...Jumper:<br /><i><br />But anyway, my point was that backwards and forwards time travel implies matter duplication, not just of people but of the sandwich or gold coin they carry in their pocket. <br /></i><br /><br />Hmmmm, not so much duplication as a sort of borrowing.<br /><br />On the time traveler's subjective timeline, there is no duplication. The fact that he's in two (or three or more) places at the "same time" means that that additional matter is borrowed (or maybe stolen) from the future. This is best illustrated, again, in Scott McCloud's "Understanding Comics" in a cute little strip involving a man at a restaurant who, lacking cash, borrows money from his future self by dropping a fishing line down to the comics panel below and lifting money out of his future-self's pocket. Only, by the end of the strip, when he has to pay the waiter with that money, he's reached the panel where the money is being stolen out of his pocket!<br /><br />A long time ago, on another forum, I posted an argument that the seeming-paradoxes in time travel can be better understood by analogy to borrowing and spending money. If I can find that post on the "Cerebus" forum, I'll cross-post it here.<br /><br />And BTW, the duplication you describe only results from backwards time-travel, right? My own personal conviction (which I'll change with evidence, but not without) is that one-way time-travel to the future (or at least something indistinguishable from it) is possible, but backwards time travel (in the sense of being able to alter the past) is not.<br /><br />LarryHartnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-41727670835085792602017-01-02T07:46:23.640-08:002017-01-02T07:46:23.640-08:00Re: Time travel
Looks like some might want to wat...Re: Time travel<br /><br />Looks like some might want to watch Primer. Most time travel media I see contains the usual paradox: the person who is their own grandfather or the item that was never made. I don't like those. Whichever Harry Potter movie with the time travel didn't do too badly, though.<br /><br />Re: Chinese Science Fiction<br /><br />I'm not finding reference to it now, but I recall prior to the first Chinese convention, someone asked a Party official why now, after all the years of labeling SF as escapist Western thought? The reply was that China was trying to figure out how to innovate (already knowing how to copy), so they sent delegations to the US. And they found that all the top innovators they interviewed had read SF since at least their teens.<br /><br />And wasn't Ken Liu the one who translated the other Liu's works?<br /><br />Re; Rogue One<br /><br />I didn't care for it. But I'm a bit concerned with how dead actors with their faces plastered on other actors' bodies are credited. For example, The actress playing Leia got a credit, Carrie Fisher did not. I missed Tarkin's credit, but I assume it was the same. I think dual crediting is the correct choice here.<br /><br />Re: Čapek<br /><br />Yes, his stuff is good. Hist most famous works seem to deal with class systems quite a bit, though apparently he wasn't particularly socialist. And I find it amusing that the word robot now applies nearly exclusively to mechanical/electronic 'beings', while in R.U.R. they were created humans.raitonoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-54723542033828328042017-01-02T07:35:53.410-08:002017-01-02T07:35:53.410-08:00I thought you might enjoy this fascinating article...I thought <a href="http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/01/26/berlin-story" rel="nofollow">you might enjoy this fascinating article about Berlin and Gay Rights in Germany leading up to the Nazi control of the Germany government</a>. It is an interesting cautionary tale and also a bit of history that has mostly vanished from the view of contemporary peoples. I know I'd never even heard a hint of this when learning about history while growing up... or in college.<br /><br />Rob H. Acacia H.https://www.blogger.com/profile/07678539067303911329noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-86605438057780912142017-01-02T07:12:42.126-08:002017-01-02T07:12:42.126-08:00Dr Brin in the main post:
Who needs privacy? Shar...Dr Brin in the main post:<br /><i><br />Who needs privacy? Sharing is Caring. Secrets are Lies. See the preview for The Circle, starring Emma Watson and Tom Hanks, based on the book by Dave Eggers. The novel was an exquisite exercise in the art of propaganda, in which the author gives nearly all of the speeches and lecturing advocacy to those he deems evil - those promoting transparency and openness. By hammering the reader with patronizing rants and making his protagonist deliciously stupid, he invites readers to get their hackles up against the idea that she believes... and that the author hates. I've never seen it done so well. We'll find out if the flick also uses this effective Orwellian technique.<br /></i><br /><br />I somehow missed (or didn't focus on) your review of "The Circle" when you first posted it in 2014. Now that I see you describe it, the technique seems to be straight out of Ayn Rand. Well, except for the fact that her <b>heroes</b> are the ones who make the speeches (which now that I mention it, is a pretty darned big difference).<br />LarryHartnoreply@blogger.com