The Ant and the Green Eyed Bug

Well, I just don’t get why the hell it should be possible to bend time. OK, yeah voluntary reduction of the perceived information content of reality and therefore reaching new extremes in freestyle mathematics…so you can create anything as long as you’ve got enough Computerpower or enough stamina to roast your brain on 7mg of Oom. But heck, time bending?

Yeah, I mean, why should reality be so stupid as to only provide the way forward timewise?

Are you on Oom?

No, man, listen. Reality’s gotta be flexible. I mean, look at all those people living with you on this earth. How should a reality be able to handle so much crap? Besides, these days scientists are starting to bend space. Little black holes and crap like that. One day there’ll be a glitch and the hole gets a bit too big. And Goodbye Earth, into some really shit reality, sort of ‘lost outta space’. Uh-huh, Sherlock Holmes would really have a tough job ruling out the impossible…

Agreed. Reality’s gotta be flexible. But hey, wouldn’t we notice if some other folks in this Universe fuck it up big time, I don’t know, like changing the gravitational constant or the speed of light, the time-stream, stuff like that.

Think about this man, like, does the ant over there give a shit if you drive at full speed into that oak with your car?

Well, yes I guess, if I drive over it first.

You gotta change your attitude. Think deep. I mean, if you don’t drive over that ant, would that stupid little ant thingy even notice that your clever road handling has produced a tonne of scrap and about 90 kilos of useless organic matter? Not a bit, I tell you. I think if someone changed the gravitational constant, that would be so absolutely over the top, I wouldn’t notice it.

You’ve lost it, man. Not noticing when you hurl together with our colonies on the moon into the sun, while cities are being crushed to dust? An eye popping spectacle, that’s what it would be.

Listen. Just imagine some bug eyed green thing with the brain the size of Oklahoma hangs out with his pals over a few drinks and thinks: Well, I can think of 2000 different reasons why increasing the gravitational constant would be a good thing. And its pals say: Yeah, It’ll be fun! And here it comes again. Reality’s gotta be flexible. Since we are pretty sure these days that the gravitational constant is time invariant, a change would most likely affect the whole time line. So we either wouldn’t exist at all, or in some other form, maybe some flat amoebas that hang out on tiny meteorites with a few bits of air to breathe. Either way, we wouldn’t have noticed it.

Hmmm, but I always feel the same. What if I am suddenly that amoeba thing? Gee, no more hands to play with my girlfriend, no more brain to be wasted on Oom…

And yet, you wouldn’t notice. ‘cos the moment that you become that amoeba, you always were one!

Yeah, I always thought that there is something fundamentally amorph about me.

Are you talking about your genitals?

Cut the crap. I still find the whole idea of changing timelines absurd and ultimately pointless.

Well, that’s your problem. But hey, reality still needs to deal with bug eyed green things with brains the size of Oklahoma. Reality’s gotta be flexible.

Yeah…however, there’s still a considerable chance that you would drive over the ant when hitting that oak…

Well, things go wrong, you’ve gotta be flexible about that!