This is a good post; I’m happy it exists. One thing I notice, which I find a little surprising, is that the post doesn’t seem to include what I’d consider the classic example of controlling the past: evidentially cooperating with beings/civilizations that existed in past cycles of the universe.[1]
This example does rely on a cyclic (e.g., Big Bounce) model of cosmology,^ which has a couple of issues. Firstly, that such a cosmological model is much less likely to be true, in my all-things-considered view, than eternal inflation. Secondly, that within a cyclic model, there isn’t a clearly meaningful notion of time across cycles. However, I don’t think these issues undercut the example. Controlling faraway events through evidential cooperation is no less possible in an eternally inflating multiverse, it’s just that space is doing more of the work now than time (which makes it a less classic example for controlling the past). Also, while to an observer within a cycle, the notion of time outside their cycle may not hold much meaning, I think that from a God’s eye view, there is a material sense in which the cycles occur sequentially, with some in the past of others.
In addition, the example can be adapted, I believe, to fit the simulation hypothesis. Sequential universe cycles become sequential simulation runs,* and the God’s eye view is now the point of view of the beings in the level of reality one above ours, whether that be base reality or another simulation. *(It seems likely to me that simulation runs would be massively, but not entirely, parallelized. Moreover, even if runs are entirely parallelized, it would be physically impossible—so long as the level-above reality has physical laws that remotely resemble ours—for two or more simulations to happen in the exact same spatial location. Therefore, there would be frames of reference in the base reality from which some simulation runs take place in the past of others.)
^ (One type of cyclic model, conformal cyclic cosmology, allows causal as well as evidential influence between universes, though in this model one universe can only causally influence the next one(s) in the sequence (i.e., causally controlling the past is not possible). For more on this, see “What happens after the universe ends?”.)
This is a good post; I’m happy it exists. One thing I notice, which I find a little surprising, is that the post doesn’t seem to include what I’d consider the classic example of controlling the past: evidentially cooperating with beings/civilizations that existed in past cycles of the universe.[1]
This example does rely on a cyclic (e.g., Big Bounce) model of cosmology,^ which has a couple of issues. Firstly, that such a cosmological model is much less likely to be true, in my all-things-considered view, than eternal inflation. Secondly, that within a cyclic model, there isn’t a clearly meaningful notion of time across cycles. However, I don’t think these issues undercut the example. Controlling faraway events through evidential cooperation is no less possible in an eternally inflating multiverse, it’s just that space is doing more of the work now than time (which makes it a less classic example for controlling the past). Also, while to an observer within a cycle, the notion of time outside their cycle may not hold much meaning, I think that from a God’s eye view, there is a material sense in which the cycles occur sequentially, with some in the past of others.
In addition, the example can be adapted, I believe, to fit the simulation hypothesis. Sequential universe cycles become sequential simulation runs,* and the God’s eye view is now the point of view of the beings in the level of reality one above ours, whether that be base reality or another simulation. *(It seems likely to me that simulation runs would be massively, but not entirely, parallelized. Moreover, even if runs are entirely parallelized, it would be physically impossible—so long as the level-above reality has physical laws that remotely resemble ours—for two or more simulations to happen in the exact same spatial location. Therefore, there would be frames of reference in the base reality from which some simulation runs take place in the past of others.)
^ (One type of cyclic model, conformal cyclic cosmology, allows causal as well as evidential influence between universes, though in this model one universe can only causally influence the next one(s) in the sequence (i.e., causally controlling the past is not possible). For more on this, see “What happens after the universe ends?”.)