Time Machines

Last Book Read: Time Machines, Paul J. Nahin

Despite being received with heavy criticism, the 2002 remake of the film The Time Machine seemed to make poignant points that the simpler, earlier versions missed. The time traveler finally comes to learn the answer to his quest: he cannot go back in time and change the past to save his girlfriend, because if she had lived he never would have built the time machine to go back. But, the film holds out hope - we can make choices and change the future.

Nahin's Time Machine is the most comprehensive book I have found on the subject. It covers the topic from the fields of physics, philosophy (metaphysics) and literature. Despite being a mammoth undertaking to cover the scope of time travel, the book does suffer from a singular viewpoint. Nahin's theory is straight forward: time travel is possible and there are no paradoxes involved because the past cannot be changed - whatever will happen in the course of time travel has already happened in our past -if it didn't then it won't. Causality does not require temporal order, backward causality is built in to the nature of time travel. All that is required is logical consistency. I accept his arguments as the most coherent and likely explanation of time travel (in a single one-dimensional timeline), but he finds major faults with any ideas that don't conform to this one. He is overly critical of philosophers and their "thought experiments" of time travel because they don't always agree with the known laws of physics. He doesn't seem to notice that physicists sometimes contemplate what would happen to the universe if natural laws were different, in their own "though experiments." Secondly, he heavily criticizes most fictional accounts of time travel for using "illogical" scenarios where the past can be changed. What he fails to realize though, its that even if its true that past can't be changed, these works present us with the idea "what if" it could. I think its far more likely that in fact time travel is not possible and then it really doesn't matter what form the paradoxes would take, it would all be a futile thought experiment.

The basis of his cosmology is the four-dimensional Minkowski spacetime. The universe consists of the three dimensions of space and extends off into the fourth dimension of time. Just as any place in the universe exists "somewhere," any time in the universe exists "sometime," it is already present within spacetime. If we can travel in time, say into the future by steping though a time portal, that means the future must exist "now." And, if we can step in and go to the past right now, that means the past exists "now." So the universe is one solid, frozen "block" Everything that has ever happened or ever will happen already has. Apparently from the very first instant of existence. This certainly presents a fatalistic viewpoint, nothing can ever be different from what it is. Nahin argues that this is fatalistic, not deterministic. I'm not sure his distinctions really matter. I tend to think this view is overstated. Just as the universe is expanding in space and there are places which will eventually exists which do not at the present state, I think time is expanding into the future and there are "times" which do not yet exist. Perhaps the past is already frozen into spacetime, but it doesn't seem clear to me that the future is. A trip to the future while seeming instant to the traveler may in fact take the full length in universal time while the traveler is suspended in some kind of fifth-dimensional no-where.

Along the way Nahin touches on many alternative theories while dismissing them. One such theory is that time is not one dimension of spacetime, but two or more. In this case we can go back to a familiar starting point, but take a different direction while proceeding in a parallel direction. A similar idea is the "many worlds hypothesis". A trip through time would result in the universe splitting into two worlds, and the one we left would still continue on but the one we enter can be changed. This seems like the most compelling explanation for many of the time travel science-fiction stories. I agree that what has already happened cannot be undone, in fact God cannot even make that the case. So, in a show like Seven Days, when the chrononaut goes back to prevent a nuclear war that destroyed the planet, it would seem that he is in a parallel world and is able to change the outcome for them, but the people he left behind are still in their predicament, unable to change it. Star Trek (notably absent from Nahin's thorough readings) seems to vacillate between the two ideas. Certainly there are many parallel universes such as the ones seen in "Mirror, Mirror" and "All Good Things", as well as a time where they encountered a nearly infinite number of Enterprises. But, at other points such, as Star Trek IV, they seemed to imply that the past was changeable, unless they advocated the same view that what they were going to do had in fact been what had already happened. I won't even try to decipher what happened in the last few series, where time travel became a more common theme, yet utterly inexplicable and not nearly as interesting as The Next Generation.

This is the best overall, comprehensive explanation of time travel, although its really about the nature of time more than machines. The main problem with the book is simply one of organization. The 400+ pages are divided into 4 chapters, making it very difficult to focus on one aspect at a time. Secondly, Nahin attempts to explain things while it seems he may not have a complete understading of them, or at least he is unable to articulate and communicate a complete understanding of them. While sometimes obtuse, it does present a good framework for studying the history of time travel concepts.

The Minneapolis Star & Tribune has endorsed Coleman for senator. Where is the leftist Star Trib that all the right-wingers talk about? I must be reading the wrong edition.

This article discusses that evil word "socialism" , particularly interesting is Sarah Palin's Alaska, where the resources are collectively owned, so that the citizens receive payment from the profits of those resources. But, of course, Obama is the socialist candidate.

Hey Joe

So now the Republicans have a new poster-boy - "Joe the Plumber". But, Joe's not that smart: he doesn't seem to understand the difference between business income and personal income, nor does he seem to have the creativity to see that a business owner can find other ways of paying himself than a salary, in order to avoid a $250,000 income. But, more importantly, he wants to keep America a democracy and not a socialist country. This shows a fundamental misunderstanding of government and economics. They are not mutually exclusive.

Of course, the right- notably Ingraham, has already anticipated my criticism and accused the "elite" left of considering Joe too dumb, when he is in fact just average - and that's preferable to smart. But, this just reinforces my suspicion that the right really is anti-intellectual. Rather than educate people on this issues, they would rather everybody vote as mindless sheep. Just look at the recent uproar over the "Obama Flag," which was amazingly not a symbol of his planned authoritarian takeover of the US, but was in fact the state flag of Ohio. This is not a group of people who would earn my faith to lead humanity into the future.

Tonight I see that my representative - Michelle Bachmann is accusing Obama of being anti-American and won't ackowledge that liberals are not anti-American. How the hell did she get elected? At least someone called her out and suggested that her thoughts are dangerous and might lead to neo-facism and neo-McCarthyism.

The right seems to be realizing their defeat. O'Reilly is now saying that its over and seems to have some somber resignation, while Ingraham has just gone of the deep end and is making even less sense than before.

Adverse Feedback Loop

In an effort to remedy the "adverse feedback loop" (I love that term), "White House economist Glenn Hubbard offered a $400 billion to $600 billion plan through which the government would refinance all U.S. mortgages into 30-year fixed mortgages at 5.25 percent through Fannie and Freddie." When James Pethokoukis asked if these plans might be socialism: "The economist's answer: 'I think that bridge has already been crossed.'"

Speaking of socialism, I heard a BBC analysis of American economics today, which included discussion of Obama being called a socialist. There response was, of course, that Obama isn't anywhere near a socialist, he is a centrist and Americans don't really have any understanding of Socialism.

In fact, the "New Deal" wasn't even socialism, it was "third way" economics, as was President Clinton's economic policies. Perhaps Sartre will ultimately be proven right.

Rome is Burning 2

Douglas Rushkoff explains how our economic situation came to be:

"..Bush’s tax cuts and other measures favoring the rich led to the biggest redistribution of wealth from poor to rich in American history. The result was that the wealthy—the investment class—had more money to invest, or lend, than there were people and businesses looking to borrow. "

"Conservatives are still so angry about New Deal reforms of the 1930s that that they have infused politics and banking with an economic ideology that sees any regulation of worker exploitation or predatory investment as anti-capitalist, anti-American, and even anti-God."

"He’s currently working on a project called “Corporatized,” which will explore how chartered corporations disconnected us from reality." Interesting. Perhaps there is nothing more significant than economics in our "real" life, but it is becoming another method of disconnect in the post-modern or hyper-real world.

The conservatives are so worried that a Democrat might win this election because they do not want a New "New Deal", but the New Deal was a response to a severe economic crisis, and as the conservatives are creating another one, they themselves are perpetuating the need for The New Deal 2: The Sequel.

After seeing SH on Fox News getting angry that Obama might have won the debate and essentially calling him too smart to be president, I'm finally convinced that the Republicans are anti-intellectual, and loathe education, intelligence, as well as public awareness and interaction.


John Gray discusses America's fall:

"The fate of empires is very often sealed by the interaction of war and debt. That was true of the British Empire, whose finances deteriorated from the First World War onwards, and of the Soviet Union. Defeat in Afghanistan and the economic burden of trying to respond to Reagan's technically flawed but politically extremely effective Star Wars programme were vital factors in triggering the Soviet collapse. Despite its insistent exceptionalism, America is no different. The Iraq War and the credit bubble have fatally undermined America's economic primacy. The US will continue to be the world's largest economy for a while longer, but it will be the new rising powers that, once the crisis is over, buy up what remains intact in the wreckage of America's financial system."

This is exactly the point I've been promoting. Since the end of the Cold War, we have absolutely wasted our position as sole World Power. We could have been a leader - set an example, created (benevolently) a "New World Order", promoted democracy through peacful means, and raised the standards of living for everyone. But, instead we apparently just wanted to get rich (more rich). So to benefit the American upper class we have pissed off the rest of the world, wasted our military resources on securing unrenewable natural resources and destroyed our own culture (the actual people who have to work for a living). Not only will the forces of war and global economics pressure our relations, but internal corruption will tear apart the future of this country, just like former Empires. As others rise into position of new super-powers, we will not have the resources of strategic "force projection" to reach parity in international disputes. Without economic, military or diplomatic powers, we will no longer be able to project our will onto the world.