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Memories of the 28th Century

Philosophy and Science of Time Travel

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Those of us in the Time Travel business frequently encounter people who are dubious about the possibility of Time Travel at other than the traditional rate, even though we having been using time travel for centuries, and the theoretical possibility was discovered long before that. Apparently, they have the idea that time has a sort of solid existence the way that matter appears to be solid (but that’s for another time). Time, like space, is separation. Space separates pieces of matter, while time separates events.

Determinism and Time Travel

Another part of the discussion of Equal Rights and freedom is whether people are capable of making free choices. Do we have free will?

If our actions, thoughts, feelings, etc. are determined does it make any difference whether we have equal legal rights; our rights would be restricted to what had been determined.

One of the paradoxes of time travel is the possibility of reversing the sequence of cause and effect, and the cause and effect relationship is fundamental to logical reasoning and to everything that happens; thus it also breaks determinism.

When I was young and untrained, I believed that people had free will, but I learned that determinism reflects the results of cause and effect. For some time I had the belief that determinism was absolute, but during my training in time travel I realized that the bifurcation that Everett and Devlin described made it possible for there to be free will, because any free will action that damaged the determined universe would cause the universe to split into two versions, one for either side of the free will action, as indicated by Everett’s Theory of the Universal Wave Function, and each version of the universe would have an unbroken chain of cause and effect going back to the first cause. Within this concept of the multiverse free will could exist but only within a given space-time. The multiverse as a whole would be determined.

Some people have trouble with determinism. I think that they just prefer to think that they make their own decisions. That may just be a pleasant delusion that keeps them form being depressed.

But it is also possible that the totality of the multiverse is open, so that any possibility can and will happen and can fit into at least one of the individual space-times. That would mean that there is free will, but, as with our present situation, we can't tell.

The disagreements over determinism versus free will has been going on for thousands of years, and it doesn't appear that a clear victory will happen in the foreseeable future. Based on logic, determinism is the clear winner, and even without any logic or evidence most people believe in free will.

Experimenters have found that most decisions are made subconsciously even before people are consciously aware that a decision has been made.

I suspect that the subconscious mind finds it desirable to have the conscious mind be happy. That raises the question of why the subconscious wants to keep the conscious happy.

I imagine that the Cosmos might be a huge computer designed to determine whether the cosmos is determined. For such an experiment to work, it would have to be run multiple times. I recently saw an article that asserted that astronomers had seen signs of remnants of black holes from an earlier universe. If these traces were correctly interpreted, then we are led to some strange possibilities.

I have also come to believe that there is a wide range of probabilities that end up coming into existence. That range of possibilities is also what makes it possible for the kind of time machine that I use to operate. Rather than travelling in the traditional sense they alter the probability for the machine being in a given location, and when the probability rises to near 100%, the machine is there. Similarly, when the probability drops to approximately 50% the machine is in half phase, and it becomes invisible. Also when probability drops it becomes less likely that a given event was determined. The matter of probability was central to Hugh Everett's Theory of the Universal Wave Function.

The Theory of the Universal Wave Function," long thesis as published, 1973 (be aware that this has additional material added to Hugh Everett's original 1957 thesis)
http://ucispace.lib.uci.edu/handle/10575/1302

Mnemosyne Devlin's revision of Hugh Everett's theory simplified (some say over-simplified) the Universal Wave Theory so that events or matter of a probability less than twenty-five percent were so improbable that they probably never occur, and events of between twenty-five and sixty-five percent probably do occur, but according to Mnemosyne Devlin they may be unrecognizable if they are encountered. Devlin also pointed out that matter with electrical negative mass or with no electrical charges are improbable. The standard way to alter probability is to suppress the electrical charge of electrons and/or protons.

Updated 09-12-2018 at 10:26 AM by PeterL

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Comments

  1. PeterL's Avatar
    This post is a horrible thing, because it is snippet of my upcoming novel without the ckear indicators that it is fiction, but most of the content of this is factual, because I am too lazy to make up everything. Mnemosyne Devlin is fictional, and the references to using time machine are fictional; I do not have a time machine.
  2. kiz_paws's Avatar
    Fascinating stuff, Peter.
    I believe (and no, I am not a 'loony') that one day we could find the way to time travel.
    But oh, that technology, put in the hands of selfish powerful people, could be very bad... Just think about it....
  3. PeterL's Avatar
    There is nothing "loony" about time travel. Ot is a possibility that wa predicted by General Relativity, and some of the methodology is from Quantum Theory. Below are a few links about how it is done. The bottom section are about building a time machine.

    As usual, I didn't have to make up the good parts, only the human details and specific applications. When would you like to visit?

    https://www.space.com/40716-time-tra...n-reality.html
    https://spaceplace.nasa.gov/review/d...me-travel.html
    http://cse.ssl.berkeley.edu/bmendez/html/time.html
    https://www.scientificamerican.com/a...-current-phys/
    http://www.theweek.co.uk/health-scie...ld-be-possible
    https://www.geek.com/science/quantum...ravel-1603503/
    https://www.newsweek.com/time-travel...-tardis-592908

    Building a time machine
    https://www.newsweek.com/time-travel...-tardis-592908
    https://www.newsweek.com/time-travel...-tardis-592908