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using Manic Miner and Jet Set Willy game engines
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Message: 2037
Author: andrewbroad
Date: 03/03/2001
Subject: Time travel/'who cares'/girls
>> there's no way to get back to theoriginal
>> timeline if the primitive operations
of your
>> time machine are backwards and
forwards
>> time-travel. "
>
>
presumably to do that you would need sideways
>
controls as well as standard forward/backward
:)
Yes, and they would have to be primitive operations,
as they cannot be defined in terms of the forwards
and backwards operations.
The problem is how
to specify the timeline to switch to. It's easy to
imagine telling a time machine to go forwards to 22nd
October 2004, or backwards to 30th April 1993, but it's
not clear how you would tell it to go to a specified
timeline. Presumably the time machine would have to record
some sort of reference to each timeline as it is
encountered, and you could select them from a list as an extra
parameter to the destination date. But even if it were
possible to implement forwards and backwards time travel
(it isn't possible to implement backwards time
travel, but we're going forwards all the time), I doubt
it would be possible to implement sideways time
travel!
I love thinking about what would be the semantics
if time travel were possible. For example, could you
go to the future to see yourself? Not if you
disappear from the time when you leave (cut-and-paste), but
you /could/ if you didn't disappear (copy-and-paste).
Most time-travel authors aren't consistent about this
- they seem to assume Cut for small jumps into the
future, but Copy for large jumps into the distant
future!
I'm more inclined to believe in cut-and-paste
semantics, but what about the matter you displace when you
appear and reappear? And if you stay at the same point
in space when you time-travel, how does the motion
of the planet affect things?
> actually is
this topic the same as the 'many
> worlds'
theory, which states that in every
> instance
where there is a choice of results
> (from atoms
moving to "what shall i have for
> lunch?"), the
timeline splits and both (or all)
> results are
carried out? ....
It sounds related, but
bifurcations occur for all - and only for - backwards jumps.
It's also related to the question of whether our
universe is deterministic (i.e. for each state of the
universe, there's only one possible next state), or whether
we *truly* have free will. It's just like guardians
in a MM/JSW room on a larger scale! :-)
In
fact, if the universe is deterministic and there is a
finite number of atoms in the universe, it follows that
history will repeat itself, as there is only a finite
number of configurations of those atoms!
>
i have *almost* settled on the name 'who
cares'
That sounds terribly uninspiring to me
;-(
> in my experience, girls /generally/
prefer
> platform-type games to other
genres
According to this journal article I read last year, girls
prefer free exploration to set challenges, which
suggests that they prefer JSW to MM, but are unlikely to
want to play JSW to completion.
--
Andrew
Broad
http://www.cs.man.ac.uk/~broada/ target=new>http://www.cs.man.ac.uk/~broada/>
http://www.cs.man.ac.uk/~broada/spectrum/ target=new>http://www.cs.man.ac.uk/~broada/spectrum/>
http://www.cs.man.ac.uk/~broada/spectrum/willy/ target=new>http://www.cs.man.ac.uk/~broada/spectrum/willy/>
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