Hi
I’m not really sure how to go about this, so I will just jump right in!
Firstly I would just like to say that I obviously am not going to be able/willing to prove any of what I am about to say, because if I had the ability and will to prove it, a forum on the internet would be the last place I would chose. Well, what are you doing in the claims section of a time travel forum, you may ask. Well I have a question I would like some help answering and in exchange feel free to ask me any questions that you’d like and I will do my best to try and answer them, which hopefully you will find entertaining (one way or the other).
Right I guess it is time to get going, here is the premise (for both my question and yours).
Next 500 years or so: Continuation of current trends. E.g. population continues to grow without adequate controls; technological development continues to be of the refinement, rather than innovation type; global warming (or localised cooling as the case may be); poverty and famine.
Second Technological Revolution: A workable (predictive) model of a cell is created and combined with computers that are just reaching the point where these models can be used to predict the results of genetic manipulation on multi-cellular organisms. This is accompanied by a sufficient understanding of biological mechanisms for the creation of the first artificial organic/hybrid machines.
Transition Phase: At the time it is supposed that with the collapse of all but the most niche ecosystems, a large correction in global human population will be required. Not expecting the poor to want to go quietly into the night (so to speak), the decision is taken to induce (through the creation of a totally artificial disease) a dramatic reduction in population, the lucky few being vaccinated, probably for a price, though details are sketchy. Unfortunately, one of the people working on the artificial contagion had other ideas and built in a time-delayed mutation, that would allow the disease to overcome those that have been vaccinated as well as those that haven’t. In addition to this a group of genetic constructs, mainly built selectively from the normal human gene pool were created to essentially be the controllable workers / soldiers of the disease's survivors. These constructs had a number of genetic differences to normal humans, but in layman’s terms, the code contained in the virus was unable to run on their cells, due to slight changes made to various proteins and other genetic structures within them. Though the exact motivations are unknown, it is supposed that the scientist responsible didn’t really believe mankind had learnt its lesson and so thought maybe someone else should have a go. Either way, the effect was to create the next step in human evolution and to clear the incumbent species from its path. This new kind of human contained a qualitatively different kind of mind to the people that it replaced. This allowed for far more efficient and advanced economic models to be developed and utilised, without the near inevitable slide into chaos and dictatorship that normally accompanies similar attempts made by “old†humans.
Third Technological Revolution: It takes about another 500 – 600 years for this new incarnation of humanity to reach the point where it can come into its own, now with a sizeable population (millions not billions) and the technology of the previous human species both understood and further refined as far as it can go, another innovative leap in technology ensues. Details of this technological revolution are hard to describe, in any way that you will understand (imagine trying to explain the concept of relativity to someone from ancient Rome and you’ll be close to the problem), so I am not really going to try at this point. As a rough analogy, the mathematical principles behind the universe were worked out to the point where we can have a good guess at what questions we should be asking.
Where I come into this: Roughly 400 years after the Third Technological Revolution, a solution that allows for time travel (of a sort) is found. Simplified the solution goes like this:
A universe can’t have a future that isn’t based on its own past, in other words the classical concept of a machine that transports you back in time can’t work, because the occupant (and machine) will have no past in the reality in which they find themselves. Turn this logic round and what was found was that no matter how the attempt was formulated it simply was not possible to join in meaning the two universes, as this would essentially violate the basis of both universes.
Just to avoid confusion you can’t travel back into the past of your own universe, because you can’t observe without changing and your past can’t change (it is relative to you or if you like it is your definition). If you could go back into your own past, then the universe would exhibit quantum properties, where the only solution would be the failure of the original time travel experiment, preventing the break in causality.
In order to get round both of these problems, a solution was found that doesn’t rely on anything except a universe’s own past to create an observer in the past and a rather elaborate mechanism for retrieving the observations from this “time travellerâ€.
Unfortunately there is an unwanted side effect. When the time traveller goes “homeâ€, a copy of them is left behind in past. Attempts to build a “self-destruct†mechanism into this leftover time traveller have failed, and this simply leaves me with a choice. What should I do?
The choices as I see them are:
1. Devote myself to some branch of technology, where I think I have a fairly good chance of making a difference.
2. Try to lay the philosophical groundwork, for the mathematics created during the Third Technological Revolution.
3. Try to promote the kind culture/belief system/society that I came from (in other words try to teach the new quality of mind possessed by the “next stage of human developmentâ€). I can honestly say I have no idea how I would go about this, or even if it is possible, but this choice holds the most appeal for me, because in some ways, it could be like going home.
4. Just carry on as normal, making the most of my life and not worrying about “helpingâ€.
Thanks for reading, I hope you find the ideas interesting and I am willing to try to answer any question you would like to ask. I will try to stay away from answers of the "I am just the pilot" vein, though obviously there is a lot that I have only a shaky theoretical grasp of.
/ttiforum/images/graemlins/confused.gif
I’m not really sure how to go about this, so I will just jump right in!
Firstly I would just like to say that I obviously am not going to be able/willing to prove any of what I am about to say, because if I had the ability and will to prove it, a forum on the internet would be the last place I would chose. Well, what are you doing in the claims section of a time travel forum, you may ask. Well I have a question I would like some help answering and in exchange feel free to ask me any questions that you’d like and I will do my best to try and answer them, which hopefully you will find entertaining (one way or the other).
Right I guess it is time to get going, here is the premise (for both my question and yours).
Next 500 years or so: Continuation of current trends. E.g. population continues to grow without adequate controls; technological development continues to be of the refinement, rather than innovation type; global warming (or localised cooling as the case may be); poverty and famine.
Second Technological Revolution: A workable (predictive) model of a cell is created and combined with computers that are just reaching the point where these models can be used to predict the results of genetic manipulation on multi-cellular organisms. This is accompanied by a sufficient understanding of biological mechanisms for the creation of the first artificial organic/hybrid machines.
Transition Phase: At the time it is supposed that with the collapse of all but the most niche ecosystems, a large correction in global human population will be required. Not expecting the poor to want to go quietly into the night (so to speak), the decision is taken to induce (through the creation of a totally artificial disease) a dramatic reduction in population, the lucky few being vaccinated, probably for a price, though details are sketchy. Unfortunately, one of the people working on the artificial contagion had other ideas and built in a time-delayed mutation, that would allow the disease to overcome those that have been vaccinated as well as those that haven’t. In addition to this a group of genetic constructs, mainly built selectively from the normal human gene pool were created to essentially be the controllable workers / soldiers of the disease's survivors. These constructs had a number of genetic differences to normal humans, but in layman’s terms, the code contained in the virus was unable to run on their cells, due to slight changes made to various proteins and other genetic structures within them. Though the exact motivations are unknown, it is supposed that the scientist responsible didn’t really believe mankind had learnt its lesson and so thought maybe someone else should have a go. Either way, the effect was to create the next step in human evolution and to clear the incumbent species from its path. This new kind of human contained a qualitatively different kind of mind to the people that it replaced. This allowed for far more efficient and advanced economic models to be developed and utilised, without the near inevitable slide into chaos and dictatorship that normally accompanies similar attempts made by “old†humans.
Third Technological Revolution: It takes about another 500 – 600 years for this new incarnation of humanity to reach the point where it can come into its own, now with a sizeable population (millions not billions) and the technology of the previous human species both understood and further refined as far as it can go, another innovative leap in technology ensues. Details of this technological revolution are hard to describe, in any way that you will understand (imagine trying to explain the concept of relativity to someone from ancient Rome and you’ll be close to the problem), so I am not really going to try at this point. As a rough analogy, the mathematical principles behind the universe were worked out to the point where we can have a good guess at what questions we should be asking.
Where I come into this: Roughly 400 years after the Third Technological Revolution, a solution that allows for time travel (of a sort) is found. Simplified the solution goes like this:
A universe can’t have a future that isn’t based on its own past, in other words the classical concept of a machine that transports you back in time can’t work, because the occupant (and machine) will have no past in the reality in which they find themselves. Turn this logic round and what was found was that no matter how the attempt was formulated it simply was not possible to join in meaning the two universes, as this would essentially violate the basis of both universes.
Just to avoid confusion you can’t travel back into the past of your own universe, because you can’t observe without changing and your past can’t change (it is relative to you or if you like it is your definition). If you could go back into your own past, then the universe would exhibit quantum properties, where the only solution would be the failure of the original time travel experiment, preventing the break in causality.
In order to get round both of these problems, a solution was found that doesn’t rely on anything except a universe’s own past to create an observer in the past and a rather elaborate mechanism for retrieving the observations from this “time travellerâ€.
Unfortunately there is an unwanted side effect. When the time traveller goes “homeâ€, a copy of them is left behind in past. Attempts to build a “self-destruct†mechanism into this leftover time traveller have failed, and this simply leaves me with a choice. What should I do?
The choices as I see them are:
1. Devote myself to some branch of technology, where I think I have a fairly good chance of making a difference.
2. Try to lay the philosophical groundwork, for the mathematics created during the Third Technological Revolution.
3. Try to promote the kind culture/belief system/society that I came from (in other words try to teach the new quality of mind possessed by the “next stage of human developmentâ€). I can honestly say I have no idea how I would go about this, or even if it is possible, but this choice holds the most appeal for me, because in some ways, it could be like going home.
4. Just carry on as normal, making the most of my life and not worrying about “helpingâ€.
Thanks for reading, I hope you find the ideas interesting and I am willing to try to answer any question you would like to ask. I will try to stay away from answers of the "I am just the pilot" vein, though obviously there is a lot that I have only a shaky theoretical grasp of.
/ttiforum/images/graemlins/confused.gif
