Next USG symposium: How to defend Case in the event of a zombie attack.
Seriously, it is a common topic on campus (and hub-chat, apparently). Nominated defensible buildings include the Interfaith Center (ironically, but it does have enough concrete to block out wifi signals), Olin (has Project Club and the Formula SAE labs, among others), Clarke Tower (brick/concrete building with great "arrow-slits"), and, for some reason, Clark Hall.
In other news, the second quote of the year: "The issue 'X's computer finally bit the dust' has been resolved."
Monday, April 20, 2009
Thursday, April 16, 2009
Time Travel
Do you listen to Stargate or Quantum Leap?
Not really the question here, but let's play with it for a minute. According to both, if you change the past, it changes the future. According to Stargate, the changes pop into/out of existance, maybe in a puff of blue smoke. According to Quantum Leap, history changes and no one really notices.
I've got a new theory.
According to the scifi laymen's terms of Multiverse Theory, every decision every person makes splits the universe into parallel universes: one for each choice (or rather, one for each plausible choice, given the psychology of the people involved, weather, etc., that influence decision-making). If you base your history-changing in such a multiverse, then changing something in the past should never affect the present. All you're doing is retroactively branching a particular set of universes. It's like adding a canal upriver. Some of the water goes into the canal, sure, but that doesn't necessarily mean the river dries up. It just means there's less water coming toward the natural downstream.
If you're assuming that there's only enough water for one track and the canal is deeper than that part of the river, well, sure you've got a problem. But if you assume an infinite mass flow rate, problem solved. All channels are full: the deepest along with the shallowest. Maybe time doesn't work like that, but maybe it does. As for the "mass flow rate" of time... Well, we have precious little data on how time works. Not enough information.
Do you listen to Stargate or Quantum Leap?
Not really the question here, but let's play with it for a minute. According to both, if you change the past, it changes the future. According to Stargate, the changes pop into/out of existance, maybe in a puff of blue smoke. According to Quantum Leap, history changes and no one really notices.
I've got a new theory.
According to the scifi laymen's terms of Multiverse Theory, every decision every person makes splits the universe into parallel universes: one for each choice (or rather, one for each plausible choice, given the psychology of the people involved, weather, etc., that influence decision-making). If you base your history-changing in such a multiverse, then changing something in the past should never affect the present. All you're doing is retroactively branching a particular set of universes. It's like adding a canal upriver. Some of the water goes into the canal, sure, but that doesn't necessarily mean the river dries up. It just means there's less water coming toward the natural downstream.
If you're assuming that there's only enough water for one track and the canal is deeper than that part of the river, well, sure you've got a problem. But if you assume an infinite mass flow rate, problem solved. All channels are full: the deepest along with the shallowest. Maybe time doesn't work like that, but maybe it does. As for the "mass flow rate" of time... Well, we have precious little data on how time works. Not enough information.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)