how do you rule out stuff like "future Eve repeats the interaction she she witnessed when she was past Eve wherein Bob was convinced that the time traveler was Alice", where the information is created ex nihilo? like time loops make causation really weird right? - ThreadSky

sham.bsky.social • 8 days ago

how do you rule out stuff like "future Eve repeats the interaction she she witnessed when she was past Eve wherein Bob was convinced that the time traveler was Alice", where the information is created ex nihilo? like time loops make causation really weird right?

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uberwensch.bsky.social•7 days ago

make the creation of the information 'ex nihilo' extremely unlikely or something? this couldn't be anything other than heuristic (why does the set of histories consistent with my present have a probability measure, and what is it?) but idk maybe it could license the inference that Alice is Alice,

uberwensch.bsky.social•7 days ago

based on the alternative being literally a coincidence

uberwensch.bsky.social•7 days ago

Imagine I received nuclear codes from a future self, used them to fire nukes (verifying them), and passed them to my past self. I never interacted with any independent system to causally extract the codes, they just appeared. Consistent, right? But if faced with the dichotomy that *either* something

uberwensch.bsky.social•7 days ago

like this occurred, or Alice is Alice, it seems plausible to prefer the latter.

uberwensch.bsky.social•7 days ago

[Note that I pre-commit to not transmitting codes if they were erroneous, leaving only the possibilities that a) correct codes make their way into my hands, or b) I never received codes at all. I cannot force that either one happens, except to exclude c) that I ever risk receving erroneous codes.]

uberwensch.bsky.social•7 days ago

Anyway, this is probably completely insoluble. Consider the example of a standoff between two time-travelers: both in an empty room, unarmed. One of them declares that, should they make it out alive, they'll return to stash a gun in the waste bin for themself. The other one will stash a gun in the

homotoptheory.bsky.social•8 days ago

i think there needs to be some kind of hashing going on with current timestamps to prevent this exact sort of replication

sham.bsky.social•7 days ago

I don't see how timestamps could make this more secure though? It's harder than a standard man in the middle attack because Eve isn't witnessing some instance of the protocol, she's witnessing the exact same instance that she wants to disrupt.

sham.bsky.social•7 days ago

Like if it worked the "previous" iteration of the loop it works in the "current" iteration, because they're the same moment in time

homotoptheory.bsky.social•7 days ago

Oh I see what you’re saying. We’re using different frameworks for time travel—I was assuming one which didn’t allow for different versions of any particular moment.

sham.bsky.social•7 days ago

I am too! But then it's consistent for information to appear with no apparent source, isn't it?

sham.bsky.social•7 days ago

It's consistent for me to travel back in time and give past myself stock tips that I only have because I was given them by my relative future self in my relative past

homotoptheory.bsky.social•8 days ago

i.e. you have to ensure that a viewer of the protocol can’t replicate the protocol, even if they’re allowed to witness a verification

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