November 23, 2006
Topic: Random Thoughts
I was driving in the rain and I suddenly became aware that most of what I was doing was instinctual. Waiting for the light to turn green. My eyes glancing left and right to see what other vehicles were doing. And for some reason it seemed that maybe to understand life better, or at least my role in life, I should pay better attention to my own reactions to life more carefully.
Time Travel: My coworkers and I were having a conversation about time travel recently. During that conversation I came to the conclusion that time travel isn't logical. I feel like if time travel were really possible then there would inevitably be evidence of time travel by way of otherwise unexplainable changes in the logical outcomes of events; because if time travel is possible then you have to assume that eventually someone would make a mistake that creates evidence of time travel; therefor if time travel was infinitly possible then there would be infinite potential for someone to make a mistake that disrupts the logical order of events; so there would constantly be alterations in the logical sequence of events. Or, I was just thinking, that if the way I understood the Critique of Pure Reason is correct and Kant is saying that our minds create the experience of time to make since of experience, then perhaps our minds have evolved to rationalize the most logical course of events and disregards the inexplicable; and if that's the case, then maybe the experience of Deja-vu is our mind trying to reconcile a variant of the events we are experiencing that is illogical because of events that have changed because of time traveling interference.
Space Travel: So science has shown us that there is a relationship between the speed of light and the passage of time; so that when an object approaches the speed of light, it is experiencing relatively less passage of time than would an equivalent object traveling much slower than the speed of light. But I wonder if that object were traveling faster than the speed of time wouldn't it be traveling towards the observable future/relative present of the destination? And therefor the appearance of the origination location would be the observable past because the relative events of the origin location would still be being transmitted across light waves to the destination location. And likewise, when traveling back to the original location from the destination location, wouldn't the traveling vessel be traveling towards the observable future/relative present of the origination from which the vessel originally began the journey, and upon arriving there would be in the relative current plus the passage of time of the journey to and from the destination plus of minus any distortions of time as the vessel approached and exceeded the speed of light? If this is the case, that's good news for faster than light-speed travel, but might pose a communications problem. It's not like you can send out a message communicated in a light wave if you are traveling faster than the speed of light, right? Or maybe you could: You can speak when you are traveling faster than the speed of sound because your sound waves are projected relative to the supersonic traveler, so perhaps the same applies to traveling faster than light, but it would not be likely that an object moving less than the speed of light could receive a light wave transmitted from an object moving faster than the speed of light, but who knows?
Happiness: It seems people in our society try to put a price on happiness like It's a commodity that can be sold, but It's not. Happiness has no regard for financial stability or an individuals possesions. Other emotions can often be confused for happiness. And so people keep consuming and searching for fulfillment with material things. I'm starting to wonder if the average person lives as if life is just about spending most of your young adulthood preparing to one day enjoy the last few years of your life. What a waste that would be.
Urban sprawl: Mega stores and strip malls are ruining the landscape of the America. I beg my fellow United States of Americans to rebel and tear down your Mega stores and put up anything else, so long as it isn't the same crap all over the country.
Daydreaming: I imagine if I lived in the future perhaps I'd be piloting a sophisticated starship, on a solo research mission; and somehow the ship I'm in might be pulled threw a rift in space, such as a wormhole or some similar kind of space anomaly, and I'm taken to a far off part of the universe, so distant that the ship's onboard navigation system can't recognize where I am. The onboad navigation system functions by examining the stars and determining their approximate distance by the strength of their light and then compares them with known constellations that have been extrapolated to compensate for the changed perspective as seen on Earth. I imagine it would be called the Earth-Based-Constellation-Extrapolation-Navigation-System, or EBCENS (pronounced “eb-sens” for short. But since I'm in a part of the universe never before measured by human instruments the navigation system is unable to determine my location. So I travel until I find a planet that is like Earth, and to my surprise perhaps I will find that it's populated with a species so close to human beings it can only be explained as that they are human beings who were brought to this world at a time when humans were still developing on Earth, perhaps by a race of aliens whose primary motivation is to populate the universe with clusters of human-like beings. And I presume I'd have to give them the medications I've brought with me that will immunize them to any ailments that I might have brought with me; however there is no guarantee that their would be any immunizations to the germs of their world awaiting me. Disease between worlds is a topic rarely considered in science fiction, but it would be an obvious problem to overcome, just as it was for the Native Americans when Europeans explored the New World.
