Chapter 1 - The Nature of Time
Time is very important. It is also completely impossible to measure. We (hypothetical physicists) know through clever experiments that it is quantized, but to what degree we are unsure. The first experiment to demonstrate this was done by Dr. Moeseph Lassas (Dr. Moe for short), starting in 1944.
Chapter 1.1 - Discrete Time
Dr. Lassas was a German-Jewish scientist working in biology at the time. After reading a paper by Albert Bose Einstein, he became enthralled with the possibility that time was continuous, and sought out to measure the phenomenon.
He formulated the experiment as follows.
- Construct an iron pendulum in a vacuum chamber.
- Set the vacuum chamber inside a Faraday cage.
- Set it off via a strong magnet from outside the chamber, but inside the cage.
- Move all magnetic and electrical influences outside of the cage.
This pendulum was observed over the course of 9 years, and a measurable drift from contemporary kinematic equations was observed.
This 'measurable drift' was aproximately $0.5 \frac{m}{s}$, from ~$5 \frac{m}{s}$ to ~$4.5 \frac{m}{s}$.
The inevitable rational explaination for this drift must be discretized time that drifts from mathematical models of continuous time.
So what are the consequences of discrete time? Well for one, it proves we don't have free will. The only constraint on the 'many worlds hypothesis' is that there would be infinitely many splits, and so the simulation couldn't keep up. With discrete time, there is no reason why the 'many worlds hypothesis' would be wrong. It is highly probable that any sentient species would eventually get around to simulating every possible state of the universe, and so it is almost a guarantee that we live somewhere in one of these simulated chains. Because these simulations are necessarily deterministic (all paths are being simulated), we can never have free will.
This, of course, does not stop us from making bad desicions1.
So how may we live our life? One $\Delta t$ at a time.
- The knowledge that some other version of me is suffering from already having made the decision sometimes stops me.