Showing posts with label world lines. Show all posts
Showing posts with label world lines. Show all posts

The Garden of Forking Paths




There is this theory in quantum mechanics called the "many-worlds" interpretation. To my (limited) understanding--not to attempt to claim that I know practically anything about quantum mechanics--it theorizes that there is no "waveform collapse" when two potential futures are reconciled. Instead of one reality, and only one reality, progressing continuously through each and every decision in your life (and everyone’s lives), one world line path becomes two (or more) at every possibility point, separating into alternate, parallel universes, and this branching happens every time a choice is made. While this description may not be the one a trained quantum physicist would try and explain to you, I’ve gotten the impression that this is the general idea when applied to the everyday world around us. So I’ll just run with that; whether or not this understanding is technically accurate and true, it’s incredibly interesting nonetheless.

The most striking disturbance I have with this idea is…what exactly determines when a timeline branches? Does this occur at any conscious decision? Or just those that exceed some somehow-determined boundary of significance? If it's the former there would of course be a truly unfathomable number of such universes, infinite in all practical meaning. And even with the latter, unless the boundary was extremely high, there would be an enormous number of realities still, perhaps virtually infinite as well. There must either be a line or not, and if so, then where is it and how is it determined? And then I wonder, is there a branch for every possible decision one could have made? For instance, if I am asked to pick a number between one and ten, and I pick five, is there a branch for each other answer I could have given, or only one for considering a true-false scenario (I either picked five or didn't play the game)? Technically I could have said anything--one, zero, ten, fifty, rhinoceros… I might not even have spoken a response; maybe I nodded or decided to dance. The Universe shouldn’t know whether or not some potential answer was actually valid within the scope of the question, so I'm intrigued to wonder whether the branching is only done when a choice is made or not made, or if there truly is a branch for every possibility.

My other most striking concern with the theory is that none of this is tangible in any way. Even if one exists in five hundred billion parallel universes, all branched from various moments in one's own and in others' universes, it will go completely and utterly unrealized by each. So does it even matter? Does something you can't possibly hope to demonstrably verify have any meaning whatsoever? While the thoughts of all this bring me some comfort, thinking that there might possibly be versions of myself who made so many of the “right” decisions in life which I only later came to realize in this reality, the impossibility of confirmation prevents most of the comfort I wish I could feel. The excitement mostly fizzles out when I grasp that no possible branching can actually provide any true objective meaning.

Still, I can't help but imagine what this all can imply in the mind, if nothing else, at least at the most significant turning points of my life. I suppose inspiration for self-reflection is worth something, if this theory provides us nothing else to glean. Because there is a garden in your mind, a rich, fertile ground from which any combination of possible thoughts can be planted and grown to whatever lengths and however many branchings you might take them to. All it takes is a thought, a seed, and then some consideration, some nourishment, and your mind is free to wander to your flooded heart’s content, if you just let it bloom. Enjoy the fruits of imagination.

Perhaps the most significant factor of all for the ways in which a person’s world lines might have branched furthest is in the environment one grows up with. Every time my family moved (my mother was active duty Air Force) was certainly a very significant "choice-point." I was born in Maryland and then lived in Washington D.C., Massachusetts, Missouri, Nebraska, Wyoming, and then Missouri again. Any one of these could have ended up being my family's permanent residence under other circumstances. If there is an alternate universe for each of these possibilities, in which I've grown up in a completely different environment, surrounded by utterly unfamiliar landscapes and cityscapes and circles of friends and acquaintances, they would of course have progressed in radically different ways from this one and from each other. I would have grown up with strange people and likely done things I never even dreamed of in this reality. In an alternate universe there could be a version of myself, doing whatever it is he might do, who has lived in Maryland his whole life, who never moved away in the first place. He’s been there all his life. How bizarre that idea is! I mean, I’m trying to imagine and I just don't know…I am utterly biased towards the life I have actually led. It's very difficult to imagine a life that progressed completely differently since a point before I was even two years old. But it could exist, and how interesting would it be to meet him? I wonder what he’s made of his life up to now, what friends he’s chosen, what pursuits he’s held on to, what successes he’s enjoyed, what failures he’s endured and learned from. I wonder what he’s like, how good of a person he is. I wonder if we would be best friends.

This also means that there could be a version of me who never moved from Cheyenne, Wyoming so many years ago. Cheyenne, where I grew up during my most formative years and have retained, even to this day, some of the most powerful friendly bonds I’ve ever made. This is the thought that hits home most of all--that in some unreachable parallel universe may be a version of me who didn't miss out on the Cheyenne life during all these long years since my family moved away. He was there all along, oblivious to the suffering of the “me” who wasn't. Of course, this version wouldn’t have it all good. He would never have met so many of the incredible friends I’ve made since my family moved to Kansas City. For all the memories that I could possibly imagine might have had the chance to have been made if I had been there in Cheyenne all along, there are a comparable number of experiences that I actually did make here where I’ve been. Of course there are pros and cons at every point, which I guess is why I am so struck by this whole idea, but it’s so completely fascinating regardless. This is not regret or despair, but awe and wonder at simple possibilities my mind can fathom.
I just wish I could communicate with him, if he somehow truly exists in some parallel realm. I wish I could ask this incarnation of me how those… wow, eight years, now, as of summer 2012, have been. Were they as wonderful and blissful and full of nonstop joy and appreciation as they've played out in my head countless times? Did the friendships last and stand the test of time even better than they have through my occasional visits? Are we having the time of our lives together anywhere near like we’ve had in so many of my dreams manifested in the deepest sleep? Am I on a bright career path? Did I fall in love? Has it lasted? Am I better off?

I would ask him about all my friends over there. How did things go when I was around all along, as opposed to only briefly during some select summer or winter vacations? Are things as great as I have always imagined they would have been, or have I perhaps been over-projecting my guilt of leaving? Is everyone still good friends with each other? Did I help to provide some sort of social adhesive to people who otherwise would have drifted apart? Do we all still have as much fun in this world as we have when I come to visit from my own? Or are things largely the same, on the grand scale of things, minimally affected by whether I’m actually there or not? It wouldn’t even truly matter what the realities may be, because they are all ruthlessly interesting regardless, no matter how much positive influence I might be projecting into such a reality where I might have actually had a role to play in its overall “success.” Of course I want to have had, and may see myself as having, such an impact. But actually knowing the full truth is its own joy altogether.

I would then ask him about Dave, unquestionably the deepest, most profound, intertwined and enjoyable friendship I have ever had. How is Dave? What is he like, having had me there all this time? As things are, Dave and I have taken, in some ways, very different paths since we parted ways in 2004. There are some things that we don't quite see eye to eye on now, but many, many that we still do… but these differences are trivial, and the floodgates inevitably open so wide when we reunite. And all the long years and all the daunting miles that have haunted our separation are swept away as all the memories and all the connections we have ever formed come flooding back in like a raging river, unstoppable and undeniable. Then it's almost as if those years and miles were never even in the way to begin with, and we can enjoy the shared glory of our friendship for whatever time we have. At best, usually, I get this for two weeks of each year. But how different might it have been if we had remained neighbors perpetually? How much positive influence might I have had for him and him for me? It's difficult to say, to say the obvious. I get chilled just putting serious thought to it. My mind gets a bit cloudy; there are far too many variables. But I imagine, with all the honesty I can muster, that it would be an incredibly beautiful thing, for each of us and in each other. I feel like it would outshine any downside to having remained there all along by enormous degree. Such is this single connection.

So it ends up being a little awkward, this longing to be in both places at once. If it were somehow possible to combine the best of both worlds it would solve so much. If only I could just cut Cheyenne out of the earth (people, power, plumbing, everything) and fly it over to Missouri and lay it down in some nearby open area, some already-prepared jigsaw puzzle piece of an empty space to drop it in. If I could incorporate the friends from both sides into my current everyday life, if I could have all of my deepest friendships right here, each and every one of them within the reasonable means of each and every other one of them to connect with, I would be hard-pressed to desire anything else in this world.

And then I wonder what if each romantic relationship had not ended? This is another huge significance, assuming that each relationship was aimed at the long run, if it had gotten far enough to be established as such, as they should be. Inside alternate branching realities, based on different sums of decisions and factors, each case could have progressed onto some wildly different path. So perhaps these are still going strong in some alternate universes, where whatever it is that messed them up was somehow avoided by some pivotal decision unrealized in this one. The ability to observe the results would be most interesting in these cases, as well. How far would they have gone by now? Would there be a marriage on the way? Might I have a family yet? Could things have been worked out effectively, or was it doomed no matter what? Was the outcome I’m familiar with inevitable? These curiosities are impossible to determine, ultimately, sitting here surrounded by the perpetual flow of a single course of history… and that frustrates me. Unknowns are so frustrating, and I now realize this is one of the reasons why this whole theory is so captivating to my mind. It provides for me a means to ponder on what could possibly have gone differently, and produce an outcome entirely separate from the one which I’m so fundamentally familiar with. It doesn’t need to imply that you wish this imagined outcome to have been the case, it only means that the alternative is interesting in that it never came to be but you know it had even the slightest chance to. Because the willful mind is such an incredibly wondrous thing, providing for us the limitless possibilities to imagine countless realities as suits our whim, and consider what certain outcomes might have come about given alternate circumstances. And perhaps we might even learn something useful for this objective reality which we actually have control over.

What if my father had not left ten years ago? That would be another extremely different reality, another one I can hardly comprehend--the impact would be huge and profound. It’s amazing how some things become so normalized, so ingrained into our minds simply because it’s all we know, because we can only experience one single timespan, because that’s how the world around us works, apparently. It becomes hard to imagine things any other way. And when you try, you get this vague idea that it would have been so nice, but…getting more than that out of it seems difficult. It's hazy, like there is some general sense of how things would be, but... the data is just simply insufficient. There are far too many variables, again. You can only wonder, and imagine what that version of you is experiencing in the world that you project for them in your mind.

And what if I had picked a different college, or a different degree program, or not moved out with my brother several years ago, or even not written this? There are so many possibilities for things to have gone differently. And of course there would be unfavorable parallel universes, as well. There would be one in which I dropped out of high school (since the thought crossed my mind), or never went to college, or never bought my current vehicle, or never had that very first conversation with Dave, or for that matter any other person who’s ever been in my life.

The fascinating thing is that any, or, really, all, of these twists and turns throughout the garden of forking paths might be true realities of other representations of me. And of you, and of everyone, with some details changed. I suppose this is why they say the past is so dangerous. Not completely, of course--everything can be seen favorably, at least constructively, in some way. The good memories are, of course, positive reinforcements, and the more the better. The bad ones, however, are useful in their own ways—they can be warnings, lessons, and points of comparison. They can be things to avoid, experience to pass on. Optimism is a very, very powerful thing.

So it's all a profoundly interesting thought experiment, really, this little introspective here. It’s a daydream session, a trip down nostalgia lane with a fun twist. I'm sure everybody is aware of various moments where their lives took a decisive turn in some direction. Does it interest others that those choices might have spawned their own realities? Even if you can only ever attempt to imagine their implications, this can still provide some valuable insight for you if you can relate to it effectively. And hopefully you can shape those insights into positive applications for what you actually do have knowledge and control over.

I'll say this: if I could somehow verify that these alternate realities do indeed exist, and if I could somehow determine their locations in space-time, I would do everything in my power to tear a wormhole in the fabric of space-time right here in front of me with my bare hands. I would figure out how to navigate myself through them in any direction that I choose and give myself free reign to visit some of these other possibilities. Just to see for myself. I wonder how some of those other realities have turned out. And even if I come across a particularly beautiful one, I'll come back, for sure…

at least to say goodbye.



Posted by Unknown | at 10:15 PM | 4 comments

The Tangled World Lines of History








Needless to say, we have come a long way in the history of our species. We have evolved far beyond the mundane meanderings of our ape ancestors. We have formed fellowships among each other and the foundations of knowledge-bases so fundamental in the development of an ever-progressive species and so complex in their intertwining influences that there is perhaps no other course which could have brought us even close to the pinnacle of human achievement that we inhabit and enjoy today. The tangled mesh of world lines we have carved into space-time is truly incredible: we've travelled across and around the planet; over unforgiving landmasses by our own rugged feet; over unpredictably disastrous oceans by  the confidence of unproven ships and navigation skills; also over it, by the wings of mechanical creations countless swore would never prove to be fruitful endeavors; and even far above it, by the rocket thrusts of engines so powerful they consume the fuel equivalent of thousands of automobiles per second.

Sometimes I wonder, as I go about my daily routine, how many coincidences must have taken place to allow for such an incredibly diverse and productive world to exist all around us? And then I wonder was anything ever really a coincidence after all, or merely the inevitable consequence of an emerging superior intelligence given our specific circumstances, or even simply divine planning? No matter which way, coincidence or circumstance or prophecy, a lot has taken place during our (relatively) long history, and the interweaving threads of influence, no matter which way you look at them, paint a powerfully profound, thought-provoking picture about where we've been thus far, where we're all located at this very moment, and where we've any possibility to end up in the foreseeable and distant futures.

There is a wonderfully beautiful passage from one of my most cherished books of all time, Red Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson, in which after describing how much escape velocity an object needs to be freed from (and to safely enter into) each of the gravity wells of Earth and Mars, he stresses the “tremendous force” required to shift such an “enormous inertia” and then goes on to say:

            “History too has an inertia. In the four dimensions of space-time, particles (or events) have directionality; mathematicians, trying to show this, draw what they call "world lines" on graphs. In human affairs, individual world lines form a thick tangle, curling out of the darkness of prehistory and stretching through time: a cable the size of Earth itself, spiraling round the sun on a long curved course. The cable of tangled world lines is history. Seeing where it has been it is clear where it is going--it is a matter of simple extrapolation. For what kind of D n [change (Delta) in velocity] would it take to escape history, to escape an inertia that powerful, and carve a new course?

            The hardest part is leaving Earth behind.”

I am so moved by this analogy—that the relentless flow of time, and the history that comes of it, are like an enormous, thick tangle of vines hurling around the Sun (which itself hurls around the galaxy, which is paving its own massive course through the Universe), of which every single individual human affair and the intertwining of every single life as it interacts with every other in every possible way is but an individual line among billions, and the entire mess is carving a deeper and deeper, ever-more complex course as it plows along. And to alter this course which is so ancient, so engraved in our long history and into our daily lives, requires a force not so much unlike that required to propel a spacecraft into the depths of space. This "force" may be exceedingly difficult to quantify, being an analogy, but the fundamental idea is there: how much cooperation, unification, overlapping of ideals and goals between nations, is needed before we as a species are ready and willing to carve this course away from everything we've ever known and strike out on a purpose unlike anything we've ever had the capacity to achieve before?

It is often said that history is doomed to repeat itself. The more pessimistic among us will point out catastrophic disasters, both natural and man-made, that they believe are inevitable consequences on a long enough time scale. Oppression, war, asteroid impacts, segregation, global warming and other environmental damages, and general abuse and cruelty are some of the more deeply troubling examples. But also inherent in such a repetition of history are the social and intellectual triumphs, no less significant in their influence on the course of history. Even if we have waged countless wars on our fellow humans over time, in no way admirable, then it follows that we have also stumbled upon countless discoveries and quality-of-life enhancing advancements over the same time span. It might be that it really comes down to which extreme holds the most impactful influence on our species as a whole. Which course has managed to carve out the deeper path?

Picturing the actual world lines that would be present on some sort of visual all-encompassing map, there would be a handful of lines among the billions upon billions that have ever had the chance to spread their influence which branch out from the rest…a very, very rare few. These are those individuals lucky enough to have ever risen above the blanketing atmosphere which encases all but the tiniest, most unimaginably miniscule fraction of the entire vast history of our species. These wildly fortunate people, however few they may be, have all experienced the luxury of gazing upon the Earth in all of its magnificent, distant glory: they have gazed upon the entirety of our planet as no other group of human beings in all of history has ever had the opportunity, and most of whom all along the way have perhaps never imagined was a feat even possible.

The overwhelming majority of these world lines would, of course, begin at their origin, and then rise up and circle in and among the rest, never actually leaving the planet’s orbit, and would hardly even appear to have risen at all. Pull back even a fraction of one light year from the planet and all of the intercontinental flights, and even the sum of all suborbital flights such as those to the International Space Station, would seem like the playful curiosities of a child first identifying with the tools with which he can shape the sand at his feet on the beach. On any scale grander than the surface and atmosphere of the Earth, we've hardly moved at all.

But in that tiny, microscopic minority of history resides so much of our crowning achievements as a technological civilization: Twenty-four of these lines, lines so faint they would barely even be discernable out of the glare of the countless rest of them, would veer off from the rest to encircle the Moon. And twelve of these would actually touch it and create a physical bond between the two worlds.

Twelve people, out of all the billions and billions and billions who have ever lived, have ever stepped onto another world. And as epic and as glorious as this is, even they did not free themselves from our deep gravity well. They did not leave Earth behind. In the grand scheme of it all, the Moon is really as entrenched in the deep well of Earth’s course as the rest of us humans. It really was “one small step for man,” despite its incredible “giant leap for mankind.”

I can’t help but take this idea further in my mind. I imagine that this course that we are carving, year after year, revolution after revolution, gets just a little bit deeper each time. Not a literal gravity well of course, this time, but a metaphorical one—a gravity well of habit, of motivation and, perhaps most importantly, of willpower. We might just grow so accustomed to waging wars and battling politics that the crowning achievements will gradually falter. It will get more and more difficult to gather the excitement and the incentive to explore like we had in so much abundance during the Apollo era. If things hadn’t changed so drastically, there is no doubt that we (humans, not machines) could have been on Mars by now. We could have escaped the gravity well, and truly left Earth behind.

And even yet we still can.

You would only have to travel a portion of the way to Mars to be able to look out the window of your spacecraft and see both the Earth and the Moon in their eternal majestic dance around each other, raw and unfiltered and perfect. At such a distance, and with but a single outstretched palm, you could eclipse the entirety of human history, every single life that has ever flourished, every single thought that has ever inspired, every single emotion that has ever connected, every single action that has ever influenced, every single river that was ever crossed. All of it would fit within your grasp, as if you could crush it with a single motion or sweep it away onto a greater path.

I hope one of the astronauts of Apollo 8 had the thought to do this when they became the first humans to orbit the Moon. At that time, of course, they had became the most distant humans to have ever looked back upon our cradle of civilization. Since that day we have not further branched our world lines in any substantial way, although we went back several times afterward. We strengthened them, these oh-so-fragile lines, but have not furthered them since. There are still only twelve world lines on the map which enter another gravity well., and even so it's a gravity well within a gravity well. We have not yet left Earth behind.

But some day we will. Some day we will be on Mars, or on Europa, or on Titan, or even at Alpha Centauri, and our influence will be spread so much farther. Each time we travel a significant distance out into the cosmos the explorers will be able to, in essence, cradle human history in their palm with a mere outstretched hand. They will have travelled so far away from this tangled mess of human history that has never before branched away to such distant places that with just a glance they will be able to gaze upon the sight which holds everything that we have ever experienced. And the next more-distant travelers will be able to do the same thing, and the next…

The off-world permanent human settlements that Robinson was really hinting at would finally be freed of this immense well that our tangle of world lines has been carving through space-time all these years from our lone position here on Earth. Humanity would no longer be utterly at the mercy of any number of global catastrophes that might befall us: be it global warming, nuclear war, a massive solar flare, man-made disaster, or an Armageddon-scale meteor strike (or any other number of extinction-bringers). Humanity is utterly exposed in this one lonely location in space. The odds may be minute, but it’s not unfeasible. These brave explorers, however—they could start fresh and establish new territories, new pursuits, and build off the vast examples of successes and failures that are evidenced in our long, troubled history. They could finally do it right this time, and provide our fragile species the means to further advance beyond the limited confines of a single, vulnerable world. History has so much to teach us. At the very least we could have the shot to form a more stable, independent and efficient foundation for those pursuits which are much better suited to be sought after in the absence of so much confusion and conflict on the ground.

And once there, basking in the glory of an utterly new and uninhabited world, the men and women who made the journey can look up and, to quote now Carl Sagan from his excellent book Pale Blue Dot:

            “They will gaze up and strain to find the blue dot in their skies. They will love it no less for its obscurity and fragility. They will marvel at how vulnerable the repository of all our potential once was, how perilous our infancy, how humble our beginnings, how many rivers we had to cross before we found our way.”

We will, at long last, truly be branching out from this thick cable of tangled world lines of history to begin to encompass all that is out there for us to grasp, and to explore, and to understand, and to inhabit. We will be that much further along in our efforts to fully realize our unique potential. There will always be problems here on Earth, and those problems will always be best dealt with here at home. Maybe even helped along by some discoveries made out there where the persistence of turmoil does not hinder so much. And there will always be curiosities beyond our limited grasp here, out in the vast frontiers of space, and those curiosities will always be best sought after in the starlit blackness. The best is yet to come, with all things considered, and all things pursued. And it will be marvelous beyond our current comprehension, and far beyond the hope of meaningful words.

Posted by Unknown | at 5:42 PM | 0 comments

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