414 Responses to “pictaps dancing fsm”

1. Alchemist says:

   February 11, 2007 at 10:20 AM

   Bill. Just read your link. The branching universe is a hell of a mindtrip. For every decision you make/have made the universe splits. Positive decision/negative decision. Each time! How would the world turn out if I hadn’t had a beer (quieter I expect :))
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   Really is mind blowing stuff. Don’t tread on the ant, it might be your great^x grandfather in a few million years!

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2. Teddy says:

   February 11, 2007 at 10:35 AM

   @Bill,
   Two points (I would make three, but I can’t count that far).
   Your first theory of time splitting had BCD cease to exist. This would cause a huge issue with time keeping. We would be forced to go back to the analogue clock. It seems a lot of people need digital clocks just to know when to eat (should never have invented them. Natural selection et al). So in an existence without BCD would we be greatly advanced or greatly ‘devolved’?
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   From the time spilt, you point out that it may not really be time travel. I agree. To say that there was time travel, someone must have observed it other than yourself (you can’t be trusted ;). To you time would be continuing normally – you just shift existence. You would still be growing older even when you jump back. How does someone else observe time travel? Not sure if you said the directly. I were speed reading.
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   I thought this ‘universe’ was trying to reach equilibrium. At which point no matter what we do in the past, we are still trying to reach the same point. So as time progresses things would go towards what they would have been anyway.
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   Run for you lives, the Entropy of the Earth is nigh!

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3. Alchemist says:

   February 11, 2007 at 10:51 AM

   @Teddy. Alright mate?
   “someone must have observed it other than yourself”
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   Does Schroedinger’s cat need feeding? hahaha
   Time to hide behind the settee again :)

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4. bill says:

   February 11, 2007 at 11:02 AM

   @Alchemist
   Hi
   No, I wasn’t trying to make time split at every decision, although some have held that. I just want to have a time split at the instant that you arrive at an earlier time. But there is an infinity problem here, if you regard infinity as a problem. For instance. If you go back so far that you won’t meet yourself and you don’t affect much (might be hard to imagine) then another “you” will develop on your new time line, invent another machine and go back causing a split again, etc, etc, etc Thus one time travel event might bring about an infinite number of splits.
   I don’t think it’s infinite, just possibly very large, mostly because of the butterfly effect, but still a large number of splits sure causes a lot of universe to pop in.
   Besides, it’s just a conceptual split. You can understand almost any coherent time travel story, by saying yes there is a split but the first line then disappears, or the universe ceases to be at the point of departure. But as Teddy points out, it might not be ‘time travel’ in the classic sense if there is a real time-split, it’s just alternate universe travel.
   In terminator, I believe they use a time split therory. I think it was in the first one, where the good guy mentions that maybe the terminator just came from a POSSIBLE future. In any case, it’s hard to be concerned from the hero’s point of view, or even the terminator’s point of view, if that’s true because he is not erasing the bad world he’s coming from, he’s just creating a possible alternate future history and jumping track. His old bad world is still going along.

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5. Alchemist says:

   February 11, 2007 at 11:16 AM

   Hi Bill. I’ll reread your critique, I might have got the wrong idea (it happens a lot:))
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   Have you read any Peter Hamilton, “Reality Dysfunction”, “Neutronium Alchemist” and “The Naked God”. Sci-Fi but well written Sci-Fi IMO.

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6. bill says:

   February 11, 2007 at 11:36 AM

   @Alchemist
   No I haven’t I haven’t read much sci fi for a long time. Are they good?

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7. Teddy says:

   February 11, 2007 at 11:49 AM

   @Alchemist:
   You forget one vital point.
   A cat is for life, not just for philosophy.
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   Found any spiders?

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8. Alchemist says:

   February 11, 2007 at 12:06 PM

   @Teddy. Spiders are full of crunchy goodness and make wonderful photo models :) We got into uncertainty a bit back. I think it ended with “how the hell would you get the cat in the box without it ripping your tits off”
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   @Bill. Yes they are
   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_F._Hamilton
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   I didn’t rip my name from there though. I mercilessly plagiarised it from Peter James’ book Alchemist (also nicked Eumenides from there too :))

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