Standard Wolfean riddle

António Marques · 12 Aug 2010, 19:54 · from 2010-August.txt.gz

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From: entonio at gmail.com (=?UTF-8?B?QW50w7NuaW8gTWFycXVlcw==?=)
Date: Thu, 12 Aug 2010 20:54:58 +0100
Subject: (urth) Standard Wolfean  riddle
In-Reply-To: <818884.65328.qm at web84108.mail.mud.yahoo.com>
References: <818884.65328.qm at web84108.mail.mud.yahoo.com>
Message-ID: <4C645192.1010409 at gmail.com>

DAVID STOCKHOFF wrote:>
> Jeff mentioned (IIRC) that for narrative reasons Yesod's being
> before Severian was born in Briah doesn't mean that Yesod is before
> Briah. That's obviously true but it's not mechanically helpful in
> terms of how the multiverses are constructed.

The concepts of before and after are meaningless across universes. Time
is a property of each universe, like space. Any other universe isn't in 
Briah's future any more than it is behind or west or south of it. This 
much is axiomatic physics, not something someone like Wolfe would not 
understand or leave aside.

> Possibly. Or, depending on exactly how the universes relate, maybe
> the Conciliator is in one possible future, along with Master Ash and
> so on with other sub-possibilities, and the Hieromakers are in
> another.

 From the Yesod perspective, there is no future nor past Briah. Briah, a
4-dimensional universe, is somehow a blob open to the Hiero* for 
observation and travel to and fro. But not necessarily all of Briah, and 
that means time and space.

 From such a perspective there aren't possible futures in Briah, there's
only Briah from east to west, north to south, back to forth, start to end.

If you're in an unfamiliar building, you don't know what rooms and
corridors lie ahead. You can say there are 'possible' rooms and
corridors ahead. It doesn't mean the possible rooms are all really
possible. It just means you don't know them. Ditto for time. You really 
need multiple universes to have alternate futures, not a 
multiple-possibility one.

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