The Last Thursday Problem

Last Thursday problem goes like this. What if the universe and everything in it including me and you came into existence at 8:30am Central Daylight time last Thursday. This meme got spread by atheist bloggers snarking christianists but it has been around the block. Either Mark Twain or Aristotle told it first. This presents what Dan Dennett calls a 'sky-hook' or a 'just so story' where the real work of building up from lower levels of substructure (built on it's own levels of sub-substructure) with 'cranes'. Sky-hooks were 'invented' by Navy Top Guns to indicate they were running out of fuel and had to take the next landing slot or they would fall into the ocean.

My impulse as well behaved thinker who bothers to ponder such problems was brought up short. I had an emotional attachment to 'no fucking way' as my original answer. The root of this was attachment to my impermanent self, I think this is called samsara but I do not remember. Why would this particular moment in my life be any less rich and distinguished and amusing as this present moment that I write this post. Would knowing that pan spermia made me and not blue green algae change my dinner reservation or put gas in my car?

I cannot prove or disprove the Last Thursday problem and I am not sure this conforms to Popper's 'demarcation problem' - what is the exact point at which a problem ceases to be a scientific question. In Popper's version, no one really cares about the problems not available to science for a solution. Name a problem that a reasonable person would spend money on. The tithe does not count. The only guarentee of the tithe is the you will surely NOT get the tithe back. Cast off from that delusion. This is a loaf upon the waters.

But if something BIG happened to me last Thursday I could go back to that time with my present knowledge. I could literally travel in time. Something did happen on Thursday - Jim got out of his bed and walked out of the hospital. The same thing happened many many Thursdays ago. When Jim was 14 months old (Aug. 1992) he got an infection on the other eye that had the same exact treatment. Three days in the hospital with a strong anti-biotic IV. That is the MRSA loop. It will always be there because it is a strong path well trodden.

Imma write you a blog entry but here is the bare bones. When I remember an incident in the past I am traveling in time back to that time. Literally the neuron assigned to remembering this scene is a trigger for a huge surge in brain activity. You really, really, really exist - exist as the present you - in a period of a skin loop with many harmonics and sub-loops. It's turtles all the way down. I just restarted the Niece loop. Good times.

To travel back in time I send a transmission to my prior self to download the current me. That's not bursting that is merely slipping and we do it all the time. The past is operated on by the present and transformed into something new every time the earth rotates on its axis and the moon orbits the earth and the earth orbits the sun and the sun around the galaxy, etc. These cycles are WHAT build the dissipative structures in space-time.

In the same way the 'full download' in a burst of enough relevant information to 'start the clock in future time' beginning at the place I remember on the loop. The loops exist all over but the ones I create I call lines of demarcation or  LoD's. I placed many of these during my life and I have gone back and collected most of them.

I blasted back and looked at the whole situation. I did a detailed simulation on the Bayesian Machine I had at the time. I gave repeated inputs over time as I remembered more.

But there is never more than a single 'me' or that collection of fermions and bosons that supports the layers of 'me'. I return the favor be my existence as a self aware quantum observer.

To recap plainly - the energy is conserved (almost) when I write my code back into my brain at the past time. Nothing but information is required. Information is free - it's what the universe is made of. I gave myself my current information and placed myself back in the 1962 version of me. The slightest perturbation in background energy took place. I achieved maximum homeostasis with a very large move in time. I stabbed my foot with a glass shard so that my mother would not commit suicide. That's what is back there. All the answers.

kirk 'please do not adjust your set' holden