Re: FTL transmission?

From: Ross A. Finlayson (raf@tiki-lounge.com)
Date: Thu Jun 01 2000 - 23:55:49 MDT


John Clark wrote:

> Brian Atkins <brian@posthuman.com> Wrote:
>
> > So what if someone sees me react to something that for them hasn't
> > even been transmitted yet?
>
> If you had a FTL modem you could also receive a message from yourself
> before you sent it, that's exactly why physicists get queasy when they talk
> about faster than light signaling. Example: You just knocked over your coffee
> cup by accident. Rather than clean it up you sent yourself an E Mail to the you
> of 60 seconds ago, you tell yourself that the cup is dangerously near your elbow
> and to be careful or you'll break it. You take the advice and put the cup in a
> safe place, it does not get knocked over. So who sent the message, and why did
> he sent it when there is nothing to warn about?
>
> John K Clark jonkc@att.net

One possibility to imagine is that for any present that there are a nearly infinite
number of immediately following events depending on actions taken, here visualized
as an infinite set of probability chains or threads from a point in time to the next
for any number of "parallel" spacetimes. So, if the message warns not to break the
cup, and it isn't, then in one spacetime the cup was broken, and the other it was
not. This action might actually generate the alternate spacetimes.

The possibility of alternate realities is not inherently disprovable under
contemporary scientific explanations, at least in the reality from which this
message is posted.

Ross



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