Backwards Causation Makes Fools Of Us All.

[wolven7]

Via Sloppy Unruh: Evidence Suggests Your Past Isn't Set in Stone

'Recent discoveries require us to rethink our understanding of history. "The histories of the universe," said renowned physicist Stephen Hawking "depend on what is being measured, contrary to the usual idea that the universe has an objective observer-independent history."'

Now, as you may or may not know, I work with backwards causation and metaphysical atemporality, as magical tools. In fact, many of the people I know do this. Conceptually, the idea of doing the work, tomorrow, to cause who you were, yesterday, to become who you are, today, is very appealing, to many. So. There's that.

Broadly, backwards causation is the idea that what we do in the present can have its effects in the past, rather than the future. Personally, I don't think that we should think that we have to choose, but whatever.

Check the article out. Very interesting stuff, here.

Comments

[karishi.livejournal.com]

It's interesting; just as I was getting into college I had the revelation that when I "worked" on something the solution had a tendency to be something that started happening before I started working.
But I didn't make a connection with the fact that this conflicted with causality. At the time, I assumed an all-knowing God would recognize upcoming prayers and act in a way that transcended time (as all-knowing Gods are wont to do).
Still seems a rational explanation, now that I write it out.
Equally rational, however, is the possibility that timey-wimey is wibbledy-wobbledy by nature. Uh, wature. More, that reality on the whole is quite flexible. This is great news, and a big responsibility for everyone who knows it.

[raidingparty.livejournal.com]

What was the study about praying for EKGs in the past? That seems directly related.

[karishi.livejournal.com]

It appears in the chapter Praying for the Past in The Intention Experiment. Not sure about the name of the study itself or where it was published.
The one about praying for past sepsis patients was the work of Leonard Leibovici.

[raidingparty.livejournal.com]

Also, the end of my next post just put me in mind of a game concept: While blue often dominates in Magic, and Dominion's fairly well addressed it, many older games with "counter" abilities have the deficit of being useless and random other than the instant needed. What if there were a mechanic to allow one to reuse previously-discarded cards that had no point then but do now? Even Chrononauts, the time travel card game, has the issue of needing matching patches which aren't necessarily in your hand when the space is open or open when in your hand. Not necessarily bad design, it still plays very well, but you see where I'm going with the idea - anything that's useless until conditions are met, finding a way to save it until the conditions are right.

And more funky possibilities (and headaches) with playing previous turns differently after finding out how this turn looks.

Feel free to yoink, I don't have a place for it yet.

[karishi.livejournal.com]

I think that Dominion and Chrononauts both address this concept fairly elegantly, for card games: The Rewind (go get the card you'd wished you had turns ago and use it now) and the Haven (save this turn's useless card for later).

I have been working up a game that is more literally about time travel than Chrononauts. The story is that one man, the inventor of the time machine, is known for having done so because he had one of the world's worst days.
The players are time travelers, and they're trying to claim credit for his bad day. The day starts off pretty normal, but the players are trying to make it worse and worse without killing him. Because of course, if he dies the whole game ends.
I want the lines of cards to be various streams of causality, with players able to set him on entirely new paths to avoid other players' rubegoldbergian mischief.

[raidingparty.livejournal.com]

Both good for retaining access to a specific action, not quite the same as "changing my previous turn".
I like the lines of cards idea, and it should take more X to change deeper cards. Something about all the infinite possibilities branching out from people's actions, and a way to resolve them to a single reality as well. Maybe the endgame is when only one reality is observed?

An example that's simultaneously better and worse than those two: The faction rules in Cityscape. It's a better example of playing out something that happened before you make the attempt, but (if I understand it, which I might not) not as well-constructed and probably poorly playtested.

I also have a difficulty with running characters more intelligent and/or strategic than myself, which I sometimes resolve with an intelligence check to see if they would have thought of that contingency and say the trap is in square 2B rather than 1A.
Even more head-trippy is the Deities & Demigods description of sensing events before they happen; if something a player does would throw ripples through reality, and deities can see the ball rolling towards the edge of the table, why didn't they try intervening before (maybe they did in very subtle ways)? If Orcus knows the Lich-King is going to die when he meets the party and Jozan rolls all 6's on that Searing Light, why didn't he make sure the meeting never happened?

[raidingparty.livejournal.com]

Braindump here, nothing unified yet:
-A lot of Mum's work has to do with "healing the past".
-She also recently recommended a book about living absolutely in the now, and creating joy within it, since all we have is now. Didn't catch the name of said book, will be writing her about it shortly.
-Some of the time theories have to do with its relation to three-dimensional space, and that if all the others are reversible, time should be as well.
-Extension of matter being one possible wave-form of energy.
-Same thing I said about free will in your previous post, wherein one could see everything as connected and as such your choice is the same as my choice. Similar observations about observation. Potential danger in that idea, not sure how to pick it apart.
--However, in a vein similar to a person who decides they have absolute dominion over their car and can thus magically affect it however they choose, one could try at deciding one's past so long as it doesn't infringe on others; the self-realized person is allowed to have absolute control of oneself. Playing with "healing the past" mentioned above, I could be shot, later decide I'm bulletproof, and have no war injuries. (Well, maybe I'll keep that one really cool-looking scar...) Not sure how this will affect my attacker. I'm put in mind of The Butterfly Effect, but hopefully better.