Retarded Theory
Mar. 27th, 2006 02:56 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
terryclothJust read a paper linked from www.angryflower.com about Radical Timelessness. Basically, it says that you have to rely too much on coincidence if you want inertia to be the delayed ('retarded') result of things happening in the past -- it works out better if you assume it's the result of 'advanced' forces emanating from the future. Most of the paper mocked causality, and basically came to the conclusion that anyone who believed in the 'retarded' theory was retarded. I think there was also an 'immediate' theory that posited effects propagating faster than light...
Anyway, it was a fairly persuasive argument in favor of Radical Timelessness -- basically, if inertia is generated by things in the future, those things must actually, physically exist, and the universe is therefore something that 'is' and not something that 'happens'.
To prove this by making a prediction that wasn't predicted by other theories, they built a 'flux capacitor' that should have generated (tiny amounts of ) inertialess thrust by altering the instantaneous mass of a capacitor and vibraring a counterweight. The originator of the theory posted results that were an unqualified success!
Of course, everyone trying to replicate his results detected no effect whatsoever, as if he had, perhaps, made them up.
Ah, well. I guess causality survives another day.
Anyway, it was a fairly persuasive argument in favor of Radical Timelessness -- basically, if inertia is generated by things in the future, those things must actually, physically exist, and the universe is therefore something that 'is' and not something that 'happens'.
To prove this by making a prediction that wasn't predicted by other theories, they built a 'flux capacitor' that should have generated (tiny amounts of ) inertialess thrust by altering the instantaneous mass of a capacitor and vibraring a counterweight. The originator of the theory posted results that were an unqualified success!
Of course, everyone trying to replicate his results detected no effect whatsoever, as if he had, perhaps, made them up.
Ah, well. I guess causality survives another day.
