Thursday, 3 September 2015

Ultimate Quantum Indeterminacy

"'[The Danellians] were simply concerned with protecting their own existence.'" (Time Patrol, p. 11)

"For [the Danellians] this may be a matter of simple survival. They have never told us, we hardly ever see them, we do not know." (The Shield Of Time, pp. 163-164)

Contradiction?

Dard Kelm at the Academy is stating as a fact an inferred Danellian motivation whereas Wanda Tamberly is acknowledging that the Danellians have never stated this motive for their founding of the Time Patrol. This kind of contradiction occurs between informed people in real world discussions all the time.

Wanda reflects that:

"Beneath reality lies ultimate quantum indeterminacy." (The Shield..., p. 163)

She identifies two levels of indeterminacy:

among observable events, "chaos" as this term is used in physics, i.e., immeasurably small forces can have unlimitedly large consequences;

in time travel, travelers to the past can change it, thus preventing their own origins.

Thus, chaos and causality violation are two manifestations of indeterminacy. I had not seen it that way before. There is a third manifestation that Wanda will learn later in this novel: random fluctuations in space-time-energy. The Patrol exists to prevent these, not just to protect the Danellians.

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