Comment on Scifi question about time travel:
davidgro@lemmy.world 3 days agoEven knowing that everything happens every way in some other branch of the wave function (other universes) doesn’t really affect our own little section of it. There’s no communications or travel, so other universes if they exist have the same meaning to us as if they don’t. Except in time travel stories like this.
Besides, the same “irrelevance” of decisions and events comes free with even one single universe given that it’s deterministic - as physics seems to be. (Yeah there’s quantum randomness, but random doesn’t help either)
That said I still believe in free will and the importance of decisions. I just think it has to be defined so weakly that it still works in a deterministic universe. (So I have free will, but so do dice and pocket calculators.)
ada@piefed.blahaj.zone 3 days ago
I'm not talking about about the possibility of real infinite dimensions. I'm talking about sci fi, and stories, which is the context of the OPs question.
In a "real" scenario, the experience that matters is the one I'm having, not the one other versions of me might be having.
But in a story, there is no "true" timeline, or a more "real" timeline. They're all being retold to us indirectly, and the choice of the version of the person retelling those experiences is arbitrary by the author. It doesn't matter what perspective the author chooses, because every other outcome also happened, the author just didn't tell us those stories.
Zwuzelmaus@feddit.org 2 days ago
That would be the most boring story ever.
It becomes interesting at that point where one (or some) of the possibilities get a special meaning “above” all the others.
ada@piefed.blahaj.zone 2 days ago
That's exactly my point! In an infinite timelines story, there is nothing that has special meaning over the others, making it boring, because it's all irrelevant!
FooBarrington@lemmy.world 2 days ago
I get what you mean, but I have to disagree a bit. The slice of the multiverse we’re looking at is special because we’re looking at it. It only makes it irrelevant if the slices are treated as fully replaceable.
Take for example Invincible. The comics & series focus on a young superhero who could have become incredibly evil, but didn’t. The multiverse is used to highlight this: it shows alternative versions of him that did become evil, and it even says that most alternative versions did so. This makes the version of him we focus on that much more special, and allows for interesting character progression through being confronted with his fears.
But it only works because of the restraint of the writers, never showing us another good version of Invincible, only focusing on evil alternatives.
davidgro@lemmy.world 2 days ago
I’d say that the one that’s written is the ‘true’ timeline in the story the same way that the reality we experience is the only one that matters.
ada@piefed.blahaj.zone 2 days ago
The reality I experience is the only one that matters to me. To an outside observer, all of them are as equally real and there is no true timeline.
In a story, there is no real, there is only outside observers...
Grail@aussie.zone 2 days ago
Well, “no objective reality” is a lot more accurate to the truth of the world than any alternative. It might not be as narratively satisfying as a story where objective truths exist, but I suspect the human desire for objective truth is a cultural value that would be in our best interest to shed.