Originally posted by
Dumpster Diver
Here’s another crazy theory for you: if enough people believe in something, it will show up in a timeline. Several SF authors has used this as a plot device starting by Robert A. Heinlein in “The Number of the Beast.” It’s very possible in our co-creative consciousness according to even main stream authors:
https://www.amazon.com/Holographic-U.../dp/0062014102 and supported by the latest research in science especially quantum mechanics.
Under this “theory” Serpo can be real simply by getting enough folks to believe in it. Indeed, that may have been the objective in the first place.
That one is tricky. Insofar as anyone knows, we can indeed cause things to manifest at the quantum level, but when we're talking of macroscopic events in which living beings — both human and non-human — are involved, things become far more complicated.
Erwin Schrödinger's (in)famous thought experiment with the cat was specifically intended as an objection to the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum uncertainty, which itself allows for quantum effects to percolate into the macrocosm. The macrocosm works in fewer physical dimensions than are present at the quantum scale, and the distillation process from this higher-dimensional environment into the lower-dimensional one solidifies things at the macrocosm level against quantum-scale modifications of reality.
Furthermore, with my understanding of physics — and mind you that in this case, I am
not adopting the mainstream scientific vantage on how time works — one cannot retroactively change the past. The only way to "change the past" is to create a dedicated new timeline that branches off from one point in the past, but this would require first of all that one would
travel back in time to the branch point, and secondly, that one would
remain on the newly created timeline.
One cannot create an alternate timeline merely by thought or intent, because the universe does not index time the way we do. A timeline is merely a transitional process from one series of events to another series of events, and these events all have to manifest physically.
The creator of the alternate timeline must also be a subjective participant in the creation and/or manipulation of these events. And then for the creator of the branch-off, the new timeline will become theirs, and at that point there's no turning back anymore. Not unless it is a closed time-like loop. But that wouldn't be the case in the event of what you're suggesting, because a closed time-like loop does not create a progressing reality — it merely substitutes a short passage of time by a different sequence of events that will not change the events as they occur after the loop has reconnected with the original timeline.
The original timeline from whence the subject came will also simply continue on as it always has, without any changes to its past, although the subject who traveled back to the past in order to change it will be known to have disappeared without a trace from the moment they stepped into the time capsule, and will thus no longer be part of the present or the future of the original timeline.
As a short recap for the attention-span-impaired:
- It is possible to branch off a new timeline, but one has to be an active and subjective participant of the new timeline. It cannot be done remotely by thought, intent or some other kind of non-presence.
- Once one has branched off the timeline into a new one, one will remain stuck on the new timeline and one cannot go back to the original timeline unless the new timeline is a closed time-like loop. But if it is a closed time-like loop, then nothing that happens within the loop will have any effect on the events outside of the loop, i.e. the events that took place on the original timeline before the branch-off was created, and the events as they take place on the original timeline after the loop reconnects with it.