I'm You From the Future

A direct link to the above video is at http://www.ucbcomedy.com/videos/play/2235

Last week, in Noein, we looked at a Japanese anime series that took its plot ideas from Everett's Many Worlds Interpretation of quantum mechanics and the many branching parallel universes that result from that. Of course, this easily relates to my project and we have talked about traveling through this "probability space" as I sometimes call it from a number of perspectives.

I've been noticing a lot of TV commercials lately that show a version of this idea: a person sees themselves right there beside themselves, but in slightly different circumstances as a result of some good or bad decision they've made - just last night, for instance, I saw a Nicorettes commercial where a guy in the bar sees himself right there in the room but he's smoking: so the guy pulls out his Nicorettes and the "other" version of himself disappears. I thought I'd go out on the net and post a few of these new commercials as part of this entry, but didn't have any success finding them. I was then thinking about a much older ad that might be the grandaddy of all these, the "who are you?" "I'm you from the future, retired and living the good life because you invested your money wisely" series of commercials, which have gone on to be widely satirized. I tried to find one of those commercials and ended up with the above amusing piece from the Upright Citizen's Brigade, which I thought was fun to watch even though by now we're completely off the rails of any serious discussion!

For a more scientific exploration of these ideas, check out How to Time Travel. I also recently came across a couple of great blogs from physicist Sean Carroll: 11 Rules for Time Travelers, and in honor of the beginning of its final season this week, a discussion of the different kinds of time travel used in LOST.

Enjoy the journey!

Rob

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