Monday, 24 November 2025

Variable Time

The Temporal language has a grammar that can handle "variable time." (See the previous post.) What is variable time?

We experience variable reality. Reality changes from one state to another. Time is the relationship between a state changed from and a state changed to. Thus, I changed from age seventy-five to age seventy-six, experiencing first one, then the other. When I change from alive to dead, I will experience one but not the other.

Can reality change from a timeline in which I exist to one in which I do not exist? If so, then I will experience the first timeline but not the second. Can reality change from a timeline in which I am married to one in which I am not married? If so, then a version of me will experience the first and an alternative version of me will experience the second but no version of me will experience first one, then the other.

It should be easy for time travellers to devise a grammar to handle variable reality. Only those who travel between timelines will experience first one timeline, then another. Anyone - the vast majority - who lives in only one timeline will experience only that timeline.

However, the example of quantum mechanics shows that we might experience some phenomena that seem to us to be contradictory.

5 comments:

S.M. Stirling said...

Human memory is very fallible and changeable. So we get hints of what variable time would be like.

paulshackley2017@gmail.com said...

Maybe we could get memories from within the current timeline as usual but also some from earlier timelines? That would be confusing.

Anonymous said...

Kaor, to Both!

Some of our dreams might be glimpses of other timelines?

Ad astra! Sean

paulshackley2017@gmail.com said...

Maybe.

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Paul!

More prosaically, dreams are just the confused ramblings of the sleeping mind.

Ad astra! Sean