Chapter 21 - Now and Then

Portent

You can’t have FTL. You can’t even have superluminal signaling. If you could, you could travel into the past, or at the very least, send information to your past self.

FTL will violate conservation of energy and conservation of mass. Even superluminal signaling denies isolation, preventing cutting off an experiment from all outside influence. Isolation is a critical requirement for even doing science. I don’t care what the science fiction writers have come up with - this cannot stand.

And yet, recieving information from the future is compatible with the simplex, packet-based, indistinguishability FTL protocol.

Primary Docs

Paradigm Discourse:
Open the There and Back discourse in the next tab

Technical Chapter:
Open the Now and Then chapter in the next tab

Significance

So, two options: either FTL is impossible, or our conceptual tools, langage, and maths are simply not up to the task. The research centric position is to ask a simple question, “How far can we grow our tools?” Whether FTL stands or falls, growing our tools is a gain, a scientic gain. Let’s cut ourselves some slack, and allow the lure of FTL to pull the research along. With humility, with suspicion, with tenatitiveness, but with a truly open mind. What might we discover?

Besides, what if the quantum measurement problem cannot be solved without it?