Time Travel - a fun sci-fi thought exercise

Dimension mind experiments

Most of my substack posts cover heavy serious topics, related mostly to matters of life or death. When I write about mostly dystopian topics it is hard to see how I might have fun. This article is me sharing the joys of thought.

Today’s substack is another along the same vein.

A few years ago before covid, my family and I used to watch time travel animes. What was fun about the Japanese takes on time travel were how different they are from the North American movie concepts of time travel. Many nights I’d fall asleep trying to wrap my mind around the twists and paradoxes of incomprehensible backwards and forwards storylines that only wind together coherently in the “next episode”. The exercises in thinking unconventionally in fiction eventually made habit of exploring different viewpoints and thought processes in reality. One of the most influential readings I’ve explored over the years that expanded my thought process was on a topic called operation looking glass. Supposedly this was a special device that could look forward in time, the same way a telescope looks forward in space. Though no website ever quite explained it as such, I inferred that this device was conceptually analagous to a regular looking glass or telescope. A normal looking glass can look through 3 dimensions of space, but is stuck on 1 forward vector of time as we conceptually make time out to be. I speculated that an “operation looking glass” must therefore be the inverse, and able to see 3 dimensions of time, but stuck on 1 dimension of space.

What would that look like, I wondered. Sci fi complexities being somewhat difficult to rationalize, I took a step back to look at the most basic element. What is a dimension? Herein I found a clue in Chinese Characters or Kanji. As far as languages go, it can be thought of as a symbolic language where meanings are written as symbols not words.

Dimension in Kanji is 次元

The first character 次 means “next”.

The second character 元 means “origin”.

So “next origin” is the meaning of “dimension”?

How can that be?

Time which is thought of a single unidirectional line in physics, has only 1 dimension, and it only goes forward. This is the familiar concept of time most of us know and accept as the standard in physics.

If 1 dimension is a line, what is the “0” dimension?

0 must then be a point.

The 0th dimension has only 2 states, existance, the point is there, or non-existance — there is no point.

If a number of points of existance are lined up and connected, then a 1 dimensional line can exist.

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Simplicity is a great idea right?

So in a similar manner to 0 dimensional points connecting into a 1 dimensional line, a bunch of 1 dimensional lines can be connected into a 2 dimensional plane. That would make the 3rd dimension a series of 2 dimensional planes connected together in the same way 0 dimensional dots made a 1 dimensional line, and 1 dimensional lines came together into a 2 dimensional plane.

This is starting to remind me of integrals and derivatives in calculus.

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What conclusions can we draw from this pattern?

Every dimension seems to be a “series” of the dimension below. 次元 now makes logical sense. The 2 symbols of 次元 means that a dimension is the “next point” (from the origin, i.e. 1 point of origin, when another comes into existence another can fuse into a “dimension”.

Can we make any other conclusions?

Dimension 0 — has existance or non-existance

Dimension 1 — has distance

Dimension 2 — has area

Dimension 3 — has volume.

So every dimension has a “property” that does not exist in the dimension below.

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Anything else?

How about “Every dimension is only visible from 1 dimension above”?

Imagine a 2 dimensional existance. Is it possible to “view” a 2 dimensional area without being above or below it in a 3rd dimension?

Is it possible for a 1 dimensional line to view itself?

Let’s take a hypothetical 2 dimensional existance. What could we see?

• 0 dimensional dots.

• 1 dimensional lines.

How about a 1 dimensional existance? What could we see?

The only thing visible from the first dimension would be a dot if there was a dot in front of you, or no dot if you are at the “end of the line”.

So the only thing visible from a 1 dimensional line is the 0th dimension.

The only things visible from a 2 dimensional plane are 1 dimensional lines, and 0 dimensional dots.

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How about the 3rd dimension?

What can we see?

• 0 dimensional dots.

• 1 dimensional lines.

• 2 dimensional areas.

Great!

So far we have 3 “directives”:

1. Every dimension is a series of the dimension below

2. Every dimension has a new “property” that doesn’t exist in dimensions below (e.g. distance, area and volume)

3. Every dimension is only “viewable” from the dimension above.

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What’s the “Logical Surprise”?

If every dimension is made up of a series of the dimension below, then the 4th dimension must be a “series” of the 3rd dimension!

Does this make sense?

Isn’t “time” supposed to be the 4th dimension in physics?

Does this mean that “time” is a series of 3 dimensional volumes?

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The only way to figure it out is to test this idea.

Is it possible to see 3 dimensional objects without time?

That is, from the inside of a 3 dimensional volume, is it possible to see yourself?

Or do you need to be on another 3 dimensional object in a series of 3 dimensional objects stretching into the future and back into the past in order to see 3d in the present?

If a series of 3 dimensional volumes is the 4th dimension, what is the new “property” created in the 4th dimension that doesn’t exist in the 3rd?

That new “property” must be what we mortals experience as time.

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Can we push the limits and go beyond Dimension 4?

How about the 5th dimension as a series of the 4th dimension?

So if a series of 3 dimensional objects stretching into the future and back to the past is a 4th dimension “time line”, then a series of 4th dimension “time lines” would be the 5th dimension.

So the 5th dimension is a “time area”?

A series of timelines could be nothing other than a time area according to the 3 rules above.

What would a time area look like?

First we’d have to know what a time line looks like.

A timeline is a series of 3 dimensional objects extending into the past and future. Timelines exist allowing us to see 3 dimensional objects the same way 2 dimensions are only viewable from the 3rd dimension or higher, and one dimensional lines are only visible from 2 + dimensions etc. So in a way we could say that nothing 3 dimensional can be seen without time.

Let’s take one timeline as one series of 3 dimensional objects extending into the future: for example a baloon. If there is only 1 timeline for the baloon, then there exists only 1 future for that object. Whether the baloon is expanding, contracting, or not changing in size is purely by fate alone. The baloon ‘s future is fixed.

However, if there’s multiple timelines, say one future where the baloon is expanding, another where it is contracting, and a third where it is staying the same, then that baloon’s fate is no longer sealed. If there is some way to move the baloon from one timeline to another it can have different “futures”.

To recap the “properties” so far:

• 3rd Dimension has Volume

• 4th Dimension has Time

• 5th Dimension ?

If there is only 1 timeline then everything exists by fate alone. That is, if the baloon expands, it is fated to expand. When there is no possibility of another timeline the baloon’s future is whatever it will be, and there’s no changing it.

However, with multiple timelines, there are possibilities. One timeline could be the baloon contracting, and the other where the baloon expands. So when there are multiple timelines, with multiple different futures then there is freedom. The question then arises, what changes the baloon’s future from one timeline to another?

Is it a man with an air pump putting air in or letting air out of the baloon?

If so we have a new “property” in the 5th dimension that doesn’t exist in the 4th dimension. That property is Causality. With only 1 timeline it would be impossible to prove that air going into the baloon is causing it to expand, because there is only 1 timeline! Everything happens by fate alone.

But with multiple timelines, and the ability to choose different ones, then experimentation by moving between different timelines can show a cause and effect relationship between air pumped into the baloon making it expand, or air being let out leading to contraction.

What about the rule that every dimension is only viewable from 1 or more dimensions above? That means that if the observer can only see fate, then that observer is looking at a 4th dimensional timeline from the 5th or higher dimension.

But if the observer can see multiple timelines on a 5 dimensional time area, the observer must at the very least be on the 6th dimension looking down apon the 5th.

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Plato’s Cave?

Is this what Plato was getting at in his story about the cave?

If people get beyond the “what” of Plato’s story about 2 dimensional shadows being cast by 3 dimensional beings, and reify the thought process behind the story, that the lower dimension is simply a projection of something in a higher dimension, then we are scratching the surface of the true meaning of Plato’s cave.

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Astronauts.

So what does a 5 dimensional “Time Area” mean?

It has the property of Causality, only possible through the existence of multiple “times” on a series of timelines.

Let us say I want to become an astronaut.

• (If one believes there is no such thing as an astronaut, please read about the flat earth psyop before trying to think in higher dimensions. )

While I can imagine a timeline where I become an astronaut on the 5 dimensional time area of my life, the timeline for that future is not possible unless someone from a space agency makes a choice to let me into astronaut training on their time area that has all the timelines they are able to choose from. Every conscious being has a time area over which all the choices they can make are available on different timelines. The choices one makes one’s own time area changes what choices are availble on the time areas of others. To move between timelines, requires a conscious choice. Is this what ancient Greeks referred to when they spoke of “psuchê”? (that which moves matter by “animating” it) Psuchê is a concept somewhat in betweeen what we call force of life and soul in English)

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Dimension 6

Again to recap:

• 3rd Dimension has Volume

• 4th Dimension has Time (Timeline)

• 5th Dimension has Causality (possible because of multiple timelines)

• 6th Dimension … A series of 5 dimensional time areas making a time volume?

What is a time volume?

(I’ll just give you my answer, and leave it to the reader to think about how I got there.)

Consciousness

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Dimension 7 ?

A series of “Time Volumes” or “Consciousnesses”?

If the Greek concept of “anima” or soul is that which animates matter, then a series of animated matters would conceivably be a “Universe”.

What’s the new property of dimension 7 if dimension 6 was consciousness?

I cannot answer this. There’s a thought beyond words that probably encompasses this, but it is not attainable with my mind.

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Dimension 8 ?

A series of “universes”?

What could possibly be a property of a “series” of universes?

If we take a series of all universes, everything that is both imaginable and unimaginable then we have 1 unit of Dimension 8.

If 1 state of Dimension 8 is absolutely everything imagined and everything unimaginable, then the only other state of existance in Dimension 8 is absolutely nothing, including nothing itself.

Doesn’t this seem suspiciously similar to Dimension 0 who’s only 2 states of existance are Existance and Non-Existance (Point or No Point)?

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Do you think it is an accident that Binary Code consisting of 1 and 0 (Existance and non-existance) was originally grouped into 8 bit “words”?

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Thank you for your thoughts, please leave the ones explainable with words in the comments.

次元