Cause And Effect

cause and effect
Category: Blogging

'Cause & Effect' - All It's Cracked Up to Be?:

  I'm gonna get into some deep weirdness about reality here.  Nothing definite, no fancy equations to prove my point - just kicking around an idea.  For the record, I don't do drugs, my hat is not lined with aluminium foil, and my religious convictions are downright boring.  If quantum stuff and philosophical implications bother you, just skip over this bit and go elsewhere.  I won't mind.  Really.

  Still here?  OK, here goes...

  Consider the famous 'Double-Slit' Experiment.  For those who don't know, here is a rough summary of how it works (from Scott Adams's 'The Dilbert Future').

  Two parallel slits are cut into a piece of cardboard.  When a light is shone through, a venetian blind pattern is projected on the other side.  When scientists tried to record data about this, they didn't get a venetian blind pattern, they got a blotch.  One would probably think that the way the light was measured may have caused this, so the experiment was repeated - with a differance.  It was done two ways, each measuring the light the same way, but in one the data was automatically erased.

  When the data was automatically erased, the pattern was a venetian blind.  When the data was NOT erased, the pattern was a blotch.

  Conclusion:  Information in the present can change the past.

  Think about that.

  I'll repeat it.  Information in the present can change the past.

  Implication: Cause and effect could be over-rated.

 This led me to some extra thinking (dangerous, I know).  The deeper we delve into and analyze anything (and I do mean anything), the more complex and self-contradictory the situation seems to become.  This holds as true for science as it does for historical matters, Fortean subjects, social issues and so forth.  Quantum Physics just LOVES this sort of thing - Schroedinger's Cat and all that.

  Could "we" (Humans) somehow be causing these escalating levels of complexity ourselves?  Certain famous mysteries provide good examples of this - the problem being not with a lack of data, but the exact opposite.  So much that I sometimes despair that anything will ever be truly solved.  For instance, solid evidence places Atlantis as being based on legends about Thera - as well as Crete, Troy, and even in South America.  To say nothing of the bizarre locales that some people believe in.  So where was it?  They can't ALL be the right place - or, if you start thinking in quantum terms, could they?  Could all of these places be "right" simply because people looked (or simply believed...?).

  If one thinks in terms of alternate time lines and multiple levels of reality, it makes sense.  Sort of.  Perhaps.  Some SF stories have suggested that false / incorrect memories may sometimes be a result of a timeline glitch rather than mere human fallibility (one of my favourite Star Trek: TNG episodes  - "Parallels" - provides excellent examples of this).  If you had a very clear memory of proving that X equalled Y, and this memory was later proven to be totally wrong, then maybe it is because you shifted realities without realizing it.  On the other hand, it could prove that you need professional help, so don't get carried away.

  I'm not suggesting that the Earth really was flat once, or that the stars began as lights on the interior of some vast dome - and that they changed only when people started believing otherwise.  But beliefs and perceptions could subtly alter reality all the time, causing some timelines and possibilities to strengthen and others to wither.  If one gets rid of the "one way street" view about time, these changes could also be retrospective.  That is, these anomalies don't (necessarily) come out of nowhere - they can come complete with their own "history".

  A snippet from Terry Pratchett's Discworld novel "The Fifth Continent" seems fitting:

  "How long did you say you had that horse?"

  "Ages.  Won it off a bloke."

  "Right?"

  "Right."

  "Right..."

  "What?"

  "Only ... did yew always have it ages half an hour ago?"

  Daggy's wide brow furrowed a little...

 

 

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[Jonah Hawthorne]

Perception is linear, and history moves with us.