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Qubits and Pandora Gates

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Mon, 2011-04-04 09:48
Axel the Chimeric Axel the Chimeric's picture
Re: Qubits and Pandora Gates
I still like the idea that the Exsurgent Virus is an incredibly complex message/invitation, documenting the history of the Universe and all the species it's encountered. Few entities are simply capable of understanding it, though, and it drives them mad. Those lesser minds are filled with the simple programming to deliver as many minds to the ETI as possible. That aside, I still have something to say. This might seem silly to all those with a physics background, I don't have one, it's just my intuitive assessment, so stop me if I'm wrong. Here it is, though: Time is non-existent; it's a measure of reactions occurring relative to one another, but not a thing itself. Time dialation is caused by reactions occurring slightly slower at one point instead of another. This doesn't mean that the events are not occurring simultaneously, however; time, being non-existent, is a non-factor. The events do occur at the same time, but one happens much faster, or slower, relative to the other. A simple analogy would be the internet; modern high-speed connections allow (effectively) instant transmission of data from me to someone else and this is comparable to normal perception, where we receive information as fast as light can carry it. Meanwhile, with time dialation, one frame of reference is move faster compared to the other, and this is comparable (in experience) to low-speed connections of the past; where the information you receive from the other person chugs slowly as it reaches you. Arenamontanus, your stock market example just strikes me as silly, no offense meant. You have a message sent in a loop, and the time of its transmission means nothing. Fork 1 transmits the message to Fork 2, who transmits it to 3, who transmits it to 4, who transmits it back to 1. This message is transferred instantly from 1 to 2 and from 3 to 4. This isn't time travel. From 1's point of view, looking out the world's most specific telescope or a live radio feed from Extropia, he might not see his message arrive for several minutes, but that's just because light and other waves take that long to travel. His message arrived after he sent it and was transmitted back to him after he sent it; he just wouldn't see the effects elsewhere until they travelled to him. If he had a Qubit transmitter showing him images from all three other forks, though, he'd see them receiving the message in the daisy chain one after another. No paradox, no time travel, but FTL works just fine.
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Mon, 2011-04-04 11:37
Arenamontanus Arenamontanus's picture
Re: Qubits and Pandora Gates
Axel the Chimeric wrote:
I still like the idea that the Exsurgent Virus is an incredibly complex message/invitation, documenting the history of the Universe and all the species it's encountered. Few entities are simply capable of understanding it, though, and it drives them mad. Those lesser minds are filled with the simple programming to deliver as many minds to the ETI as possible.
Sounds reasonable. If they are simple enough to not get it, they are pretty worthless anyway. After all, how much can anything smaller than a Jupiter Brain actually think? Those moonlet brains doesn't even notice when you frasc their urbcreors!
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Arenamontanus, your stock market example just strikes me as silly, no offense meant. You have a message sent in a loop, and the time of its transmission means nothing. Fork 1 transmits the message to Fork 2, who transmits it to 3, who transmits it to 4, who transmits it back to 1. This message is transferred instantly from 1 to 2 and from 3 to 4. This isn't time travel. From 1's point of view, looking out the world's most specific telescope or a live radio feed from Extropia, he might not see his message arrive for several minutes, but that's just because light and other waves take that long to travel. His message arrived after he sent it and was transmitted back to him after he sent it; he just wouldn't see the effects elsewhere until they travelled to him. If he had a Qubit transmitter showing him images from all three other forks, though, he'd see them receiving the message in the daisy chain one after another. No paradox, no time travel, but FTL works just fine.
Sorry, but this is how it works in special relativity. I took my example from a textbook (actually, it is a standard example found in most relativity textbooks showing the problem with FTL). Note that 2 and 3 are moving at high speed, having time dilation (an actually observed effect) - that is why the trick works. 1 will get a piece of information from the loop at an earlier point in time than he got it externally; this means he can make money from it for example by placing a bet on it. I really recommend sitting down and learning enough of the basic relativity to do the math, because human intuition just plain fails here. The weird thing is that the fundamental math here is of the "of course! it is obvious!" kind, yet the consequences when you calculate them are utterly weird.
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Extropian
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Mon, 2011-04-04 11:52
Axel the Chimeric Axel the Chimeric's picture
Re: Qubits and Pandora Gates
Arenamontanus wrote:
Sounds reasonable. If they are simple enough to not get it, they are pretty worthless anyway. After all, how much can anything smaller than a Jupiter Brain actually think? Those moonlet brains doesn't even notice when you frasc their urbcreors!
This is made all the more uncomfortable because of human experience. It's not hard to see how these super-intelligent entities might think of humans in the same way we think of parrots; curious and interesting, but not really intelligent.
Arenamontanus wrote:
Sorry, but this is how it works in special relativity. I took my example from a textbook (actually, it is a standard example found in most relativity textbooks showing the problem with FTL). Note that 2 and 3 are moving at high speed, having time dilation (an actually observed effect) - that is why the trick works. 1 will get a piece of information from the loop at an earlier point in time than he got it externally; this means he can make money from it for example by placing a bet on it. I really recommend sitting down and learning enough of the basic relativity to do the math, because human intuition just plain fails here. The weird thing is that the fundamental math here is of the "of course! it is obvious!" kind, yet the consequences when you calculate them are utterly weird.
Now, see, that's the thing that bugs me. Time dialation causes something to "age" faster or slower compared to other things, depending on who's moving relative to whom. If I am in a rocket moving at 0.99c and zipping around Earth, I can come back after this trip (assuming that I survive) from a year of my own time and things will have advanced far further in time than I experienced. My thought is, my reactions are merely occurring more slowly than those of people on Earth. There is no time travel here.
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Mon, 2011-04-04 12:02
Lilith Lilith's picture
Re: Qubits and Pandora Gates
Not to interject rudely in this discussion, but as an outside party, it just seems to me that you both have a slightly differing view of "time", as either a purely mathematical expression or a state of human perception. I think that's where the conflict is arising, though of course I could be mistaken. In which case, just pay me no mind.
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Mon, 2011-04-04 15:21
Arenamontanus Arenamontanus's picture
Re: Qubits and Pandora Gates
Lilith wrote:
Not to interject rudely in this discussion, but as an outside party, it just seems to me that you both have a slightly differing view of "time", as either a purely mathematical expression or a state of human perception.
Subjective time is very stretchable even now - it flies when you have fun, and any cognitive psychologist worth her salt can demonstrate odd cases where we react to things before we know them (since not all parts of us become aware of them at the same time; see the Libet experiment). What I am talking about is physical time: the stuff measured by processes like clocks or photons bouncing between mirrors. It is not quite as arbitrary, but what Einstein demonstrated was that it does have a few stretchable aspects. What the whole debate is about is whether you can actually get information to physically appear before what caused it. Special relativity says that FTL and time travel is the same thing: something gets to the outside of the lightcone of the event where it started. Doesn't matter if it was teleportation, a Pandora Gate, QE communications or H.G. Well's time machine. If it is possible to make the message move fast and then make another jump back in, then you can get it to appear earlier than it was sent at the same place. Trouble (not necessarily uninteresting) ensues. The reason we are so bad at thinking about this is that we are not used to moving at relativistic speeds. At our normal speeds the universe looks like it has a reliable concept of simultaneity. It doesn't.
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Extropian
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Mon, 2011-04-04 16:47
red_eric red_eric's picture
Re: Qubits and Pandora Gates
You know, that gives me an idea about why someone might have gone to the trouble of building the gates in the first place - they exist not mainly for communication or trade, but to stitch the galaxy together in an artificial frame of reference, to keep causality from falling apart. It is hard even for a super-intelligence to stay in charge when some young upstart races can go discovering FTL and then undo all of its achievements.
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Mon, 2011-04-04 16:52
Lilith Lilith's picture
Re: Qubits and Pandora Gates
Arenamontanus wrote:
The reason we are so bad at thinking about this is that we are not used to moving at relativistic speeds. At our normal speeds the universe looks like it has a reliable concept of simultaneity. It doesn't.
You don't have to tell me, good sir. I wasn't a major in Physics for nothing. Well... sorta. Nevermind.
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