Watching all those episodes of Fringe<\/i> has gotten me thinking about alternate realities — the many possible versions of the future that end up not happening.<\/p>\n
What if I had done this instead of that, had made a different choice at a crucial moment? This is basically the same question asked by such films as “Sliding Doors”, and it’s one that seems to endlessly fascinate the human mind.<\/p>\n
In particular, I was pondering that most peculiar of fictional super powers, the ability to choose, at will, a different branch in the expanding tree of alternate universes.<\/p>\n
On the face of it, this would clearly be a good power to have. So many unfortunate accidents, lost chances, avoidable tragedies, all averted with the ease of flipping a switch.<\/p>\n
On the other hand, surely there would be hidden costs. Suppose you knew that it was all a zero-sum game — that a life saved by choosing one alternate universe would result in some other life lost? Would you be willing to pay that price?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Watching all those episodes of Fringe has gotten me thinking about alternate realities — the many possible versions of the future that end up not happening. What if I had done this instead of that, had made a different choice at a crucial moment? This is basically the same question asked by such films as … Continue reading “If only”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12876"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=12876"}],"version-history":[{"count":15,"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12876\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12891,"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12876\/revisions\/12891"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=12876"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=12876"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=12876"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}