Re: Time Machines, FTL, and P=NP

On Fri, 22 Feb 2008 18:11:09 -0500, James Burns <burns.87@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>
wrote:

:George W Harris wrote:
:> On Fri, 22 Feb 2008 13:44:40 -0500, James Burns <burns.87@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>
:> wrote:
:> 
:> :But then, without the wackiness to force consistency in highly
:> :unlikely ways, it looks to me not too hard to set up a situation
:> :where /no/ possible outcome is consistent. For my simple example,
:> :just put the received signal through a NOT gate before sending
:> :it back in time. What happens in that case? Hard reboot on the
:> :universe?
:> 
:> 	Mechanical failure of the time machine, or some 
:> other break in the chain.
:
:But, under the assumption that a zero or a one completely characterizes
:the message from the future, there are only two links in the chain.

	So one of them breaks.

:-- What happens when I receive a zero? I send a one.
:-- What happens when I receive a one? I send a zero.

	Whoops!  Your finger slipped.

:There is no "What happens the 8,471,843,189,287,125th time
:I send a one?" If it didn't crash on the first loop, it didn't crash.
:
:And, by assumption, the machine was built to be extremely reliable.

	But not 100%.

:I don't see how the machine could be expected to crash,
:except by the sort of wackiness that the assumption I started with
:was supposed to banish.

	I don't see how it could be expected to do anything 
else, since its perfect functioning necessarily leads to 
inconsistency.

:Jim Burns
-- 
Firefly Fan Since September 20th, 2002 - Browncoat Since Birth

George W. Harris  For actual email address, replace each 'u' with an 'i'