This universe definitely violates the second law of thermodynamics, and even our concept of probability seems like it would be something that isn’t useful there. Everything is in a steady state of some acausal equilibrium that is strongly entangled with the entire universe’s population of sentient minds.
Apparently if any sentient being wants the timeline changed, then that’s not a stable equilibrium because essentially any of them can act on it. So it seems that the only equilibria are those in which essentially nobody ever wants it changed, at least not enough to take two flips to change it.
Initially this seems great, in that everyone gets what they want forever. However, that’s not really the only type of equilibrium. One in which no sentient beings exist at all is another. A third is one in which plenty of people want things to be different but they can’t flip, whether because they were born defective or through external constraints. A fourth is one in which they hate their life (or some events in it) but don’t believe that they can do anything to change it. A fifth is one in which they are merely observers to things their bodies do and experience, outside of their control.
There are probably even more bizarre possibilities. We don’t have any rule that tells us how the actual situation is determined from all the possible equilibria, and the rules that we have developed for investigating likelihood in our apparently one-way causal universe may have no applicability to one governed by acausal equilibrium.
Interesting premise.
This universe definitely violates the second law of thermodynamics, and even our concept of probability seems like it would be something that isn’t useful there. Everything is in a steady state of some acausal equilibrium that is strongly entangled with the entire universe’s population of sentient minds.
Apparently if any sentient being wants the timeline changed, then that’s not a stable equilibrium because essentially any of them can act on it. So it seems that the only equilibria are those in which essentially nobody ever wants it changed, at least not enough to take two flips to change it.
Initially this seems great, in that everyone gets what they want forever. However, that’s not really the only type of equilibrium. One in which no sentient beings exist at all is another. A third is one in which plenty of people want things to be different but they can’t flip, whether because they were born defective or through external constraints. A fourth is one in which they hate their life (or some events in it) but don’t believe that they can do anything to change it. A fifth is one in which they are merely observers to things their bodies do and experience, outside of their control.
There are probably even more bizarre possibilities. We don’t have any rule that tells us how the actual situation is determined from all the possible equilibria, and the rules that we have developed for investigating likelihood in our apparently one-way causal universe may have no applicability to one governed by acausal equilibrium.
That’s definitely all true, but I found it more fun to go for the optimistic equilibrium!