The Light Box

The Light Box

2020/07/09

So this is some support for something that has been, let's say, troubling me, for the past few months. Be forewarned, I've always thought it was kind of a crackpot theory, but I keep coming back to it.

Suppose that there exists a box with a light. If the light is on, you wear pants this morning. If the light is off, you wear shorts.

Your pants take you about ten seconds longer to put on than the shorts. Because of that ten second gap, you miss a light on your way to work. Ten seconds becomes thirty seconds. Or maybe ten seconds becomes a car crash - life is unpredictable that way.

Now suppose the light in the box is controlled by a quantum-entangled photon described in the article. "Controlled" may not be quite the right word, but, say the box is designed to read the location of this photon, or something. If it's at position A, light turns on. If it's not, light is off. Etc. If you base decisions off of whether this light is on or off, and this light is controlled by a quantum-entangled photon, then you are in effect basing decisions off of a photon which may be at some point in the future, manipulable. Which means, in theory, that if even one person does so, that decision could ripple through the world. Ten seconds becomes a car crash, becomes millions dying of a disease or the end of a serial killer before he begins.

Which is a fun theory of course, but I don't buy it.

I think the decisions that will be made will have always been made. If the future manipulates the photon, the future has always manipulated the photon. Ten seconds was always ten seconds. It's awful for storytelling, so you don't really see it in science fiction very often, but the implications for the rest of humanity are much less dire.

The photon-light-box always reminds me of two other tangents, when I get started on it: one, that everything you see on the internet is communicated via a light flashing on and off at very high, very controlled speeds - a binary code flashed through the light box could let us watch a video of our future, or let us look into our past. Like flipping on a television set, or, more on point, like an embedded video in a web page. I think the technology that lets us manipulate the timeline is a fairy tale; I think the technology that lets us see the timeline is an inevitability.

And two, for some reason, it always brings me to the concept of free will, and how your deity-of-choice might operate within the confines of truly free will. Keeping with the automobile analogy: a cylinder fires 5% weaker, adjusting your speed by the tiniest margin. A stoplight changes a few milliseconds sooner than it should have. A sudden memory floods your mind as your eyes pass over those pants. These imperceptible things are, in my mind, the only real power that a deity in support of truly free will might wield. I don't think this undermines sovereignty; in contrast, it speaks highly to manipulate the world through such subtle means.

I do think some form of "time travel" is coming soon; it will be interesting to see how well the litany of thought on the subject approaches whatever technology is eventually developed.