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This reminds me a lot of the sci-fi novel Anathem by Neal Stephenson. Trying to be spoiler-free as possible, in the book, the many-worlds interpretation of quan
by rthomas6 9y ago
This reminds me a lot of the sci-fi novel Anathem by Neal Stephenson. Trying to be spoiler-free as possible, in the book, the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics is the correct one, and the worlds lie on a directed acyclic graph, meaning that the flow of information can only move in one direction along the universes. So in the same way information can only travel in one direction in time (into the future), information can only travel laterally into other dimensions in one direction. So, in the book, nobody can directly influence the past, but the question of existing in multiple worlds and sending information between them, and thereby potentially exploring many possible outcomes of a situation simulatenously, is much more open.
In other words, retrocausality WITH information transfer is possible when the information is flowing from one universe to another, in a certain direction.
- Tossrock 9y agospoilers I think he implies pretty heavily that the Rhetors actually CAN influence the past, through a mechanism very similar to that described in the article - "choosing" which way an event happened in the past. Their powers work at Narrative scale though, not just experimental observation.