This idea is present in several Star Trek episodes. The meta question is when did we create those episodes?
A growing number of scientists are convinced the future influences the past
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Re: A growing number of scientists are convinced the future influences the past
#22Earlier quoted context omitted.
What is the factual past? It's the extrapolation of models that we've created in the present, but those models are only our best guess at the truth. They may be revised in the future or simply not hold for the past.
Let’s say that you are convicted as a criminal, and allegedly you were in a certain location and committed the crime. If you were not there and didn’t not commit the crime, is that past to which used to determine your conviction factual? Whether later you are proven not guilty, the past didn’t change, but rather our perception of it.
You're begging the question. You started with: assume there is a factual past of where you were. And then argued: there is a factual past.
I'm not enough of a skeptic to say "don't trust the models of the past"; memory turns out to be a pretty good model. So does carbon dating.
But the reason you say "you were not there and did not commit the crime" is because you don't remember being there. Maybe you even remember being elsewhere. But that doesn't mean it's true, memory is fallible.
You might say that you even have photos of yourself somewhere else at the time. But if there were photos of you at the crime scene, would that change what the past was? Maybe your memory is shoddy, or maybe the photos are fake.
Re: A growing number of scientists are convinced the future influences the past
#23> In addition to potentially rescuing concepts like locality and realism, retrocausal models also open avenues of exploring a “time-symmetric” view of our universe, in which the laws of physics are the same regardless of whether time runs forward or backward. Usually the fundamental laws are regarded as time symmetric already. What does this mean: > Instead, retrocausal models suggest that there is a mechanism that a…
We don’t have a time symmetric model of wave function collapse, to my knowledge. If I’m wrong I’d be super curious to read about it
Re: A growing number of scientists are convinced the future influences the past
#24I just need retrocausal information on the stock market, world events, and any threats to myself or my monopoly on retrocausal information access. That's all.
If the information is truly retrocausal you won't be able to leverage it to alter the future :'(.
Re: A growing number of scientists are convinced the future influences the past
#25Another point for my favorite minority quantum mechanics interpretation, two-state vector formalism (TSVF).
Re: A growing number of scientists are convinced the future influences the past
#26> In addition to potentially rescuing concepts like locality and realism, retrocausal models also open avenues of exploring a “time-symmetric” view of our universe, in which the laws of physics are the same regardless of whether time runs forward or backward. Usually the fundamental laws are regarded as time symmetric already. What does this mean: > Instead, retrocausal models suggest that there is a mechanism that a…
We don’t have a time symmetric model of wave function collapse, to my knowledge. If I’m wrong I’d be super curious to read about it
Wouldn't many worlds be time symmetric?
Re: A growing number of scientists are convinced the future influences the past
#27> In addition to potentially rescuing concepts like locality and realism, retrocausal models also open avenues of exploring a “time-symmetric” view of our universe, in which the laws of physics are the same regardless of whether time runs forward or backward. Usually the fundamental laws are regarded as time symmetric already. What does this mean: > Instead, retrocausal models suggest that there is a mechanism that a…
We don’t have a time symmetric model of wave function collapse, to my knowledge. If I’m wrong I’d be super curious to read about it
Measurements are adjoint to state preparation. Depending on what you measured you can prepare a special state at that time to make the system time reversal symmetric.
Re: A growing number of scientists are convinced the future influences the past
#28I just need retrocausal information on the stock market, world events, and any threats to myself or my monopoly on retrocausal information access. That's all.
Perfect response for the subject being discussed -and- your user name -and- a summary of your namesake from of a couple of amazing books by Charles Stross.
I applaud You.
Re: A growing number of scientists are convinced the future influences the past
#29> In addition to potentially rescuing concepts like locality and realism, retrocausal models also open avenues of exploring a “time-symmetric” view of our universe, in which the laws of physics are the same regardless of whether time runs forward or backward. Usually the fundamental laws are regarded as time symmetric already. What does this mean: > Instead, retrocausal models suggest that there is a mechanism that a…
We don’t have a time symmetric model of wave function collapse, to my knowledge. If I’m wrong I’d be super curious to read about it
Just reverse time in the evolution operator.
Re: A growing number of scientists are convinced the future influences the past
#30Mandela effect moment