During the end of a drive there would either be/not be a configuration of particles in the shape of a paper ticket memorializing your transgression of the law. And if not that, there is a configuration of particles in the heads of the law enforcement officials recalling your transgression and planning on writing you a ticket or whatever. Any universe-wide configuration of particles contains the history of all of the events preceding it, even if they are opaque to us, because the possibility space of particle configurations is (probably?) larger than utility relevant histories.
I’m talking about particles at the quantum level here. Subatomic particles are ridiculously small. The amount of empty space in the universe is incomprehensibly vaster than the amount of particles that inhabit it, so it wouldn’t be surprising to me if it were impossible to arrive at the same universe-wide state from different starting points, but I don’t know that that’s true as a matter of fact. But if there were a perfectly symmetrical perturbation, by definition it would be unobservable to us, since we would end up in the exact same state along either pathway.
During the end of a drive there would either be/not be a configuration of particles in the shape of a paper ticket memorializing your transgression of the law. And if not that, there is a configuration of particles in the heads of the law enforcement officials recalling your transgression and planning on writing you a ticket or whatever. Any universe-wide configuration of particles contains the history of all of the events preceding it, even if they are opaque to us, because the possibility space of particle configurations is (probably?) larger than utility relevant histories.
So there is no way that we can arrive at the same state from different starting points? That seems ridiculous to me.
I’m talking about particles at the quantum level here. Subatomic particles are ridiculously small. The amount of empty space in the universe is incomprehensibly vaster than the amount of particles that inhabit it, so it wouldn’t be surprising to me if it were impossible to arrive at the same universe-wide state from different starting points, but I don’t know that that’s true as a matter of fact. But if there were a perfectly symmetrical perturbation, by definition it would be unobservable to us, since we would end up in the exact same state along either pathway.