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I'm thinking of the old Pacman arcade game but with two joystcks, one for spatial movements and the other for temporal movements. I have no idea what the second

I'm thinking of the old Pacman arcade game but with two joystcks, one for spatial movements and the other for temporal movements. I have no idea what the second joystick would do. That is, I can imagine time as a single axis so that you could go back and forth. (Ooops, about to be eaten by a ghost, let's rewind.) But I can't imagine what it means to go northwest in time.

cmehdy 6y ago
I could imagine that if for example the x axis is our normal time, the y axis would be timelines. That is, you would move to an entirely different configuration of the world for the given space coordinates and the same value of time on the x axis. Now if you ask me about a third dimension of time.. Disclaimer: my ideas come before having done my homework on the link above, so I need to read Greg Egan's stuff really. He's such a wonderful person and I need to dedicate more brainpower to his work.
- klenwell 6y ago
  Interesting. When I mediated about it a little further that's where I sorta arrived too. The x-axis would be future/past. The y-axis would be different timelines. So if I go from present (0,0) to (2,2), I'd be going 2 clicks into the future and 2 timelines up (whatever that means!). In Pacman terms, I guess you could program it so that going up or down with the second joystick changes the terms of the game slightly. Maybe the maze configuration changes or in one timeline the ghosts bounce off you when you run into them but the walls themselves zap you. In a more nuanced conception of the timeline axis, I suppose y-points would have to be branched or braided off x-points. Maybe that's where the third dimension comes in. I'm sure Egan has worked it out with more rigor. I checked out the link for one of his books above but I admit I blanched when I got to the synopsis: Seth is a surveyor, along with his friend Theo, a leech-like creature running through his skull who tells Seth what lies to his left and right. I've got enough on my plate at the moment with the dissolution of civil society. I'm not sure I'm ready to entertain leech-like symbionts confronting the disintegration of time itself.
kridsdale1 6y ago
SUPER-HOT mixed with Braid

cmehdy 6y ago

I could imagine that if for example the x axis is our normal time, the y axis would be timelines. That is, you would move to an entirely different configuration of the world for the given space coordinates and the same value of time on the x axis. Now if you ask me about a third dimension of time.. Disclaimer: my ideas come before having done my homework on the link above, so I need to read Greg Egan's stuff really. He's such a wonderful person and I need to dedicate more brainpower to his work.

klenwell 6y ago
Interesting. When I mediated about it a little further that's where I sorta arrived too. The x-axis would be future/past. The y-axis would be different timelines. So if I go from present (0,0) to (2,2), I'd be going 2 clicks into the future and 2 timelines up (whatever that means!). In Pacman terms, I guess you could program it so that going up or down with the second joystick changes the terms of the game slightly. Maybe the maze configuration changes or in one timeline the ghosts bounce off you when you run into them but the walls themselves zap you. In a more nuanced conception of the timeline axis, I suppose y-points would have to be branched or braided off x-points. Maybe that's where the third dimension comes in. I'm sure Egan has worked it out with more rigor. I checked out the link for one of his books above but I admit I blanched when I got to the synopsis: Seth is a surveyor, along with his friend Theo, a leech-like creature running through his skull who tells Seth what lies to his left and right. I've got enough on my plate at the moment with the dissolution of civil society. I'm not sure I'm ready to entertain leech-like symbionts confronting the disintegration of time itself.

kridsdale1 6y ago

SUPER-HOT mixed with Braid