Michael Ash wrote:
x> So I shall do that here. Is it actually reasonable to expect the
presence
> of a time traveler not to alter the outcome of a lottery drawing?
Lottery
> drawings are, or at leash should be, highly chaotic systems, in the
sense
> of being highly sensitive to initial conditions. The balls bounce all
over
> the place, and even the tiniest alteration to a single ball's trajectory
> will quickly balloon into a totally different result in the drawing.
Here's how I'd come at it:
Assume zero disturbance. The quantum dice are still being rerolled. That
means effectively there are random changes introduced at the atomic level.
Suppose the timelines diverge at the instant the lottery draw starts.
Bouncing balls are a chaotic system. What's the doubling time? Suppose
one bounce doubles the mass/kinetic energy affected. We start with say
one atom's worth of randomness/difference, we need say 1e24 atoms to put
a ball in a different place. That's what, something like 75 doublings?
Do they bounce the balls 75 times in a lottery draw? Is my guess of one
doubling per bounce an over or underestimate?
If the timelines diverge earlier, then you'll have differences
introduced by tiny air currents and by human movements due to timing
jitter in neurons, so there'll be more head start.
> It seems to me that a time traveler is going to have a better time in
> s****ts betting or the stock market. Both of these are chaotic to some
> extent but at least in the short term are based on more macroscopic
> effects. Small changes in the players' brains won't change the fact that
> team A's defense is helpless against team B's offense, or that company X
> is going to announce earnings 50% higher than predicted the next day.
Agreed.
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