If you do travel back to the past though, you may find yourself travelling along a different timeline after that
No, that’s not how it works. That’s not how any of this works. If you are embedded in a CTC, there is no changing that. There is no escaping the groundhog day, or even realizing that you are stuck in one. You are not Bill Murray, you are an NPC.
And yes, our universe is definitely not a Godel universe in any way. The Godel universe is isotropic and stationary, while our universe is of the FRW-de Sitter type, the best we can tell.
More generally, knowledge about the system, or memory, as well as the ability to act upon it to rearrange information. In fact, if an agent has perfect knowledge of a system, it can rearrange it in any way it desires.
Indeed, but it would not be an embedded agent, but something from outside the Universe, at which point you might as well say “God/Simulator/AGI did it” and give up.
if we assume our universe is a causal loop, but it is not a CTC
That is incompatible with classical GR, the best I can glean. The philosophy paper is behind a paywall (boo!), and it’s by a philosopher, not a physicist, apparently, so can be safely discounted (this attitude goes both ways, of course).
From that point on in your post, it looks like you are basically throwing **** against the wall and seeing what sticks, so I stopped trying to understand your logic.
Life doesn’t just veer off the rails into oblivion; it’s locked on a path, or lots of equivalent paths that are all destined to tell the same story — the same universal archetype. The loop cannot be broken, else it would have never existed. Life is bound to persist, bound to overcome, bound to exist again
To quote the classic movie, “Life, uh, finds a way”. Which is a nice and warm sentiment, but nothing more.
But, if your goal is a search for God, then 10⁄10 for rationalization.
If you are embedded in a CTC, there is no changing that.
I’m not saying you’re changing a timeline, simply that it’s not the only looped timeline that decoheres from a single point in a many-worlds formulation. If you arrived back at a previous point in your timeline via reverse causation, then several timelines/worlds still decohere from that point—including the timeline you were “previously” in. They all exist. In any case, this isn’t the core of the essay’s argument. I noted that the MWI is used to illustrate possibilities; we simply require a deterministic interpretation at a minimum. Even if only one causal loop timeline exists, the rest of the argument follows in terms of which causal loops are possible.
it would not be an embedded agent, but something from outside the Universe
I defined a universe simply as a causal system, so initiating a simulation within your own simulation entails causation, thus one causal system, or universe. But even within one simulation, what’s to stop an agent from manipulating it? In Maxwell’s demon, we can think of the chambers, demon, and the demon’s environment as a single simulation—but the demon can still rearrange its information.
That is incompatible with classical GR, the best I can glean.
GR is an emergent description of quantum information/entanglement, so it does not inherently prohibit reverse causation by those means.
From that point on in your post, it looks like you are basically throwing **** against the wall and seeing what sticks, so I stopped trying to understand your logic.
Sweet.
To quote the classic movie, “Life, uh, finds a way”. Which is a nice and warm sentiment, but nothing more.
Subjective sensation may play more of a role in a causal loop than you think. I expand on that topic in this essay.
No, that’s not how it works. That’s not how any of this works. If you are embedded in a CTC, there is no changing that. There is no escaping the groundhog day, or even realizing that you are stuck in one. You are not Bill Murray, you are an NPC.
And yes, our universe is definitely not a Godel universe in any way. The Godel universe is isotropic and stationary, while our universe is of the FRW-de Sitter type, the best we can tell.
Indeed, but it would not be an embedded agent, but something from outside the Universe, at which point you might as well say “God/Simulator/AGI did it” and give up.
That is incompatible with classical GR, the best I can glean. The philosophy paper is behind a paywall (boo!), and it’s by a philosopher, not a physicist, apparently, so can be safely discounted (this attitude goes both ways, of course).
From that point on in your post, it looks like you are basically throwing **** against the wall and seeing what sticks, so I stopped trying to understand your logic.
To quote the classic movie, “Life, uh, finds a way”. Which is a nice and warm sentiment, but nothing more.
But, if your goal is a search for God, then 10⁄10 for rationalization.
I’m not saying you’re changing a timeline, simply that it’s not the only looped timeline that decoheres from a single point in a many-worlds formulation. If you arrived back at a previous point in your timeline via reverse causation, then several timelines/worlds still decohere from that point—including the timeline you were “previously” in. They all exist. In any case, this isn’t the core of the essay’s argument. I noted that the MWI is used to illustrate possibilities; we simply require a deterministic interpretation at a minimum. Even if only one causal loop timeline exists, the rest of the argument follows in terms of which causal loops are possible.
I defined a universe simply as a causal system, so initiating a simulation within your own simulation entails causation, thus one causal system, or universe. But even within one simulation, what’s to stop an agent from manipulating it? In Maxwell’s demon, we can think of the chambers, demon, and the demon’s environment as a single simulation—but the demon can still rearrange its information.
GR is an emergent description of quantum information/entanglement, so it does not inherently prohibit reverse causation by those means.
Sweet.
Subjective sensation may play more of a role in a causal loop than you think. I expand on that topic in this essay.