bell notificationshomepageloginNewPostedit profile

Topic : Re: Creating a logical framework for the concept of "decisional causality" I'm working on a science fiction universe in which time travel exists, in a very limited form, but it's useless, at least - selfpublishingguru.com

10% popularity

To shift causality from the action to the decision to take action, you need to eliminate the possibility of disobedience.

At the execution level, the operator decides to press the button but has a heart attack and dies before his hand moves. His body has disobeyed the decision by dying.

At the command level, a captain announces an order, but the crew mutinies and chooses to do something else with the ship. The crew has disobeyed the decision of the captain.

All the way up through the levels, the opportunity for subordinates to disobey orders potentially breaks the link between decision and effect. Therefore in all of these cases, causality remains with the action, not with the mind which decided to act.

To change this, we need to change the nature of the actors. If an operator's body can fail to obey a mind's order, get rid of the body. Have the ship's operator be an artificial or digitized consciousness in the ship's main computer. If a crew can disobey a captain, get rid of the crew. Have the consciousness which runs the ship be that of the captain. Crew, when present have no ability to disrupt or subvert the ship's function. Since human captains can disobey their admiralty, lobotomize the captain's consciousness to the point that it is an absolutely obedient slave and as long as you are at it, fire the admiralty. Let the Emperor himself directly command his slave star ships by direct brain-to-ship download. The moment the Emperor decides to take action, his ships receive their orders and start obeying them. Now finally, we have a situation where the Emperor's decisions are causal to the effects of his fleet.

Now your time traveler can jump ahead of the approaching armada and even board the flag ship before its departure from the Emperor's space dock; but she still can't change the destination or actions of the ship, because in this specific case...

The Emperor's commands are physical law.


Load Full (0)

Login to follow topic

More posts by @Bryan361

0 Comments

Sorted by latest first Latest Oldest Best

Back to top