a reply to:
Direne
What we are talking here is to move matter back and forth inside the same Universe, hence no violation in the total matter balance occurs.
If you send a 1kg gold-brick 10 years into the future, then for 10 years, 1kg of mass will have disappeared from the reference frame. Tough it's more
likely people with a matter-transporting time-machine would "borrow" gold and resources form the past and future. Actually, we already do that with
our financial system. Borrowing value that does not exist, from the future. The physicists sure as hell didn't make it work, but hey, we've got
bankers and economists. Sarcasm aside, I hope you understand my aversion even to the suggestion of physics looking anything like our financial system.
As what you're saying
is just a suggestion and not a workable model. That'd be one hell of a monkey wrench thrown into the Einstein field
equations.
Yes, you can. But mind: you have just changed your past, not everybody's past. What this means, and this is the crux of the matter in
simulated universe theory, is that you soon realize changes you make to the past or the future are really changes to your own past and your own
future. This is the role of consciousness: to keep you causally disconnected from others. The others, the people you love, the sunsets you watch, all
of it, are just there for you. Remember, we are simulating reality... just for you. This is called [cognitive bubble] by virtue of which we keep
realities disconnected from each other.
This is probably and likely the more unnerving and dark side of the simulated universe theory: everything exists, but just for you.
Think of a dream. It is your dream. It belongs to just you. You cannot share it. You live inside your dreamland, and everything there is for you as
real as what you call reality.
I'm having a really hard time trying to distinguish these statements from solipsism. Tough let's expand on the "cognitive bubble" idea. Not all
simulations are "single player". The idea of "simulated reality" was popularized by The Matrix. In the Matrix, the people are real, it's just the
reality around them (along with a couple of programs masquerading as people) that are simulated. The Matrix is a MMORPG, not a single player game. If
the Architect of the Matrix would like to send a plugged-in person back in time, he'd have two options:
1)Disconnect him from the shared MMORPG (maybe replace him with a program?), and create a new single-player reality around him that looks like the
past. Only he's the only player. Everybody else interacting with him are programs. This could work for a small group of players too.
2)Change the shared reality. Take everybody into the past. This requires, at best, no additional simulated actors.
The former is consistent with regular descriptions of time travel. But it's far more computationally expensive that the later: you get two simulated
realities. The ordinary Matrix that continues to exist, and the past-simulation made for the one player, filled with simulated actors. That past
simulation would be more computationally expensive to run than the Matrix itself. That, of course, assuming that the original simulation is
not
single-player.
In single player games we "mess with time" all the time. Easily and naturally. It's called saving and loading. A save-game can take a single player at
any point along any "timeline" . But there are no save-games for MMORPGS. Even if you restore the world-state, and simulated actor states, you'll not
restore your team-mate's states to what they were. Like you, they're in the game, but not "of" the game. Control of the game-time is something you're
forced to share in multiplayer games.
I don't see how you can have time-travel to the past without believing in some form of solipsism. I know that you (presently) don't recall me posting
in this thread earlier than 2021. Because I haven't. Let's say a time machine can send me on a one-way trip to the past, 8 years ago. If I go in the
time machine, what happens from your perspective? Does it simply not work? Am I replaced with a simulated me?
From my perspective, I may post in the thread earlier, and thus arrive (via normal passage of time) to a 2021 where you have a memory of me posting
earlier than the "you" in my original timeline, aka. earlier than you do now. From here I'm forced to conclude that at least one of the "yous" isn't
real. Tough as a preference I'd give more credence to the you in my original timeline ; ) . Alternatively, I could go full Everett and say there's an
infinity of equally (un)real possible yous for every possible time-travel shenanigans I might pull. But that still sounds like solipsism to me. If
every
possible world-line and decision that could ever be made, splitting every plank-second into uncountable other world-lines is equally as
real, then none of them are real.
Solipsism. This is the true problem of time-travel to the past, at least as far as I understand it.
edit on 8-1-2021 by zero_one because: (no
reason given)
edit on 8-1-2021 by zero_one because: (no reason given)