The shortest interval between two points is the awareness that they are not two.
What we are proposing,' Alicia said, 'is that the laws of physics are such that causality violation is subject to a form of version control, one that prevents a forking of history. That instead of causality violation creating an alternate universe, one version of history is outright overwritten by another. One past is replaced with another future. Which means that the memories of the past of the people in that future are replaced with memories of a different past.'Carson interrupted. 'Including the memories of any_''Purely hypothetical_''__ime travelers.''So take our time traveler from the traditional story,' Carson continued. 'He leaves his utopian future for the past. He kills the butterfly. The Magna Carta is never written. He returns to the dystopian future that his misstep created. But he doesn't see it as a dystopia: he sees it as home, the world he grew up in, the world he left to go back in time. Because he doesn't remember that first future, and has no other world to which he can compare this one. Maybe he even sees it as a utopia. Maybe everyone does. Maybe everyone in this dark place believes that they live in the best of all possible worlds.
Version Control
Quote Detail
What we are proposing,' Alicia said, 'is that the laws of physics are such that causality violation is subject to a form of version control, one that prevents a forking of history. That instead of causality violation creating an alternate universe, one version of history is outright overwritten by another. One past is replaced with another future. Which means that the memories of the past of the people in that future are replaced with memories of a different past.'Carson interrupted. 'Including the memories of any_''Purely hypothetical_''__ime travelers.''So take our time traveler from the traditional story,' Carson continued. 'He leaves his utopian future for the past. He kills the butterfly. The Magna Carta is never written. He returns to the dystopian future that his misstep created. But he doesn't see it as a dystopia: he sees it as home, the world he grew up in, the world he left to go back in time. Because he doesn't remember that first future, and has no other world to which he can compare this one. Maybe he even sees it as a utopia. Maybe everyone does. Maybe everyone in this dark place believes that they live in the best of all possible worlds.
Quick Answer
What this quote page tells you
This canonical quote page keeps the full saying, the attributed author, any linked work, and the topic tags together so the quote can be cited from one stable URL.
Related Quotes
More quote cards from the same area
Was it possible to feel nostalgic about something that had never happened to him, possible for nostalgia to be taken in by the body as a free pathogen to infect the consciousness with stray sentiments? Perhaps, in his dreams, he had traveled back in time, or even drifted into another dimension of space-time and inhabited the body, experiences, and nostalgia of another. To even envisage so allowed the trauma of those lost moments, though not his own, to draw from him a certain envy for the entity in whose memories he had basked vicariously. . .Perhaps, nostalgia was a microorganism. . .the bacterium that infected. . . Yes. . .maybe he was sick.
What folly takes light through ether to each eye from every horizon.
The myth of quantum consciousness sits well with many whose egos have made it impossible for them to accept the insignificant place science perceives for humanity, as modern instruments probe the farthest reaches of space and time. ... quantum consciousness has about as much substance as the aether from which it is composed. Early in this century, quantum mechanics and Einstein__ relativity destroyed the notion of a holistic universe that had seemed within the realm of possibility in the century just past. First, Einstein did away with the aether, shattering the doctrine that we all move about inside a universal, cosmic fluid whose excitations connect us simultaneously to one another and to the rest of the universe. Second, Einstein and other physicists proved that matter and light were composed of particles, wiping away the notion of universal continuity. Atomic theory and quantum mechanics demonstrated that everything, even space and time, exists in discrete bits _ quanta. To turn this around and say that twentieth century physics initiated some new holistic view of the universe is a complete misrepresentation of what actually took place. ... The myth of quantum consciousness should take its place along with gods, unicorns, and dragons as yet another product of the fantasies of people unwilling to accept what science, reason, and their own eyes tell them about the world.
Sometimes I wonder if my heart is like a black hole--it's so dense that there's no room for light, but that doesn't mean it can't still suck me in.
Spring time is a time for new adventure.