What is Time?

I didn’t mean to post again today but I can’t help it. The chapter I have just read during lunch is too mind-boggling to stay silent.

First of all, some of you must be familiar with Schrodinger’s cat. (If not)

Here’s where René Péo’ch comes into play again. He made an experiment, still using random generators, that I will try to summarize in very very broad lines. The result of the experiment seems to demonstrate that an observer can influence today, the result of trajectories made by the generator months ago. In other words, if the trajectories are recorded but unobserved, they can be influenced by a mental action before they become known.

I’ll give another example that wasn’t an experiment but makes it easy to understand. Let’s say the generator gives 100 random answers of either black or white. The 100 answers are stored. Months later, a person concentrates on wanting more black answers than the normal average would be. Then they open the result: there are more black answers. You see the principle? It’s wildly simplified but it’s the notion we’re talking about.

Now apply that to that unfortunate Schrodinger’s cat (which needed at least nine lives with all these shananigans). It is both dead and alive until an observer opens the box. But what if the observer can influence what he will find even with a time delay?

So Péo’ch concludes that an unobseved random event can still be influenced.* And if that doesn’t give you food for thoughts for a good while, well, you can just ponder on Boy George doing community service.


*Same reference as in “The way we think”.