Re: [Para-Discuss] faster than light?

From: Eliezer S. Yudkowsky (sentience@pobox.com)
Date: Mon Jun 09 2003 - 23:09:34 MDT

  • Next message: Eliezer S. Yudkowsky: "Re: [Para-Discuss] faster than light?"

    Randall Randall wrote:
    >
    > On Monday, June 9, 2003, at 04:13 PM, Eliezer S. Yudkowsky wrote:
    >
    >>
    >> IANAP. With that in mind, my understanding goes something like this:
    >> The instrument is attracted to where the star's projected position is,
    >> according to the star's velocity in the past. This is because of the
    >> way the star's velocity bends the potential well generated by the
    >> star. If you're one light-minute away, you are not attracted to where
    >> the star is now. You're attracted to where, one minute ago, the star
    >> would have been in one minute, had it continued on at the same
    >> velocity it had one minute ago, from the position it had one minute
    >> ago. (I'm not quite sure if acceleration is supposed to be taken into
    >> account as well, or maybe it was some other property of the star's
    >> behavior aside from or in addition to the velocity, but I think this
    >> is roughly how it goes...)
    >
    > I don't see how future acceleration could be taken into account in this
    > scenario, so I'll assume that it isn't.

    Not future acceleration. Acceleration at time (t - x/c). Whatever force
    you experience at time t is always determined solely by the events that
    took place in your past light cone, at time t minus the propagation delay
    through space. If there were a property that depended on the
    acceleration, it would depend on the past acceleration, not the
    "simultaneous" acceleration (relativity, of course, says that there is no
    such thing).

    -- 
    Eliezer S. Yudkowsky                          http://singinst.org/
    Research Fellow, Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence
    


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