The argument for Intractability

Son of Witz · 22 Dec 2008, 18:50 · from 2008-December.txt.gz

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From: sonofwitz at butcherbaker.org (Son of Witz)
Date: Mon, 22 Dec 2008 10:50:15 -0800
Subject: (urth) The argument for Intractability
In-Reply-To: <1bf4dd40812221043q34a5e87bk826153576b234c07 at mail.gmail.com>
References: <1bf4dd40812221043q34a5e87bk826153576b234c07 at mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <F6699630-12F5-492E-AD96-F6D32183E00A at butcherbaker.org>

I don't think it completely eradicates free will.
It's just that it's not linear. It's all happened already.
inhabitants of the timeline just experience it moment by moment.
I don't think "the exact genetic combination" is important. Severian's  
consciousness is what matters, not his body's cells. The book makes  
that point again and again.

This is the territory where it becomes useful to realize that at a  
point it stops being a SCIENCE fiction book and is truly a  
Metaphysical Fictional Metaphor.
This is why that Paradox is intractable. it's almost a metaphysical  
prequalifier to be a paradox.

~witz



On Dec 22, 2008, at 10:43 AM, Dave Tallman wrote:

> I don't believe Wolfe does intractable time loops, whether in "Free  
> Live Free" or in "The Book of the New Sun." (I don't think "Pirate  
> Freedom" is intractable either, though I haven't worked that one out  
> as well).
>
> Intractable time loops imply no free will -- everything happens as  
> it does because that's the way it has always happened. Chains of  
> events that are built up from multiple iterations, carrying back  
> knowledge from future to past, can be done with free will intact. In  
> "The Book of the New Sun" we have an agency that can keep things on  
> track -- the Hierogrammates and Hierodules are time-traveling  
> through history and fixing things. They can create place-holders  
> like a Conciliator-like religion, the autarchy, and the Guild, if  
> they deem them necessary as preconditions for the emergence of the  
> New Sun. Once a good candidate appears, they can fix up his life as  
> much as desired and splice him back into history to replace their  
> earlier bootstraps.
>
> The trickiest thing is his birth. Even if the Hierodules ensured the  
> meeting of Ouen and Catherine under similar conditions, the odds are  
> millions to one that the exact genetic combination will be re- 
> created. Thus it seems likely that Catherine was sent back in time  
> already pregnant with a cloned embryo of Sev1. (I believe Catherine  
> is the woman we see under guard in UotNS on the day of the deluge).
>
>
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