I'm sure some people are thinking about prepositions too.
Quite a few are probably thinking about German group sex according to the words 'an', 'auf', 'hinter', 'in', 'neben', 'über', 'unter', 'vor' and 'zwichen'. Also ver- and ent- and um-. Let's also not forget real verbs, like verdicken!
Ok, do you agree that in the way you use "traverse", it is definitely a subset of "movement"? Depends how you define traversal with respect to movement. For instance: gestures and postures are
some kinds of movements (atomistically speaking for example they are definitely movements in the
mathematical-physical sense, but of a very large numbers of atoms, etc). When I nod my head or wave my arm or
wink or even walk, not to mention speak or write, am I really moving?
Movement happens from a start position, to an end position. I can agree that something happens between two positions, or two postures, but which
one is the start and which one is the end one, isn't that the whole question?
It's not movement if you are at both start and end positions simultaneously for the entire "trip". When moving between normal space points A and B, you start at A and not at B, time passes, you are now at B and not at A. With time travel, substitute time and meta-time for space and time reflectively. But if you exist at both times A and times B "simultaneously", how can you claim to jump from A to B? Ok, this traversal business is like a bridge: it, in order to be a bridge must connect both A and
B. One cannot have one half of a bridge (unless one cuts it in half along the bridge--one cannot cut the bridge transversally and still have a bridge).
When you "lie across" you're not moving. Movement from "A and B" to "A and B" is not movement. Even if you want to call it "going nowhere", it becomes absolutely useless because the whole point was that you are supposed to be experiencing the events at A and then choosing to instead experience the events at B. That means you are not experiencing both at the same (meta)time. This "lying across" I think more in terms of a linear superposition than just being completely still. If you take a quantum particle in the box, it sort of moves from one end to the other, but actually and mathematically only forms a certain standing wave. This standing wave cannot be just formed in an instant, but once it's formed it is difficult to say that the particle moves along trajectory, or that it is at A but not at B etc.
If I am omnipresent in the universe, it doesn't make sense for me to move in the same place just to experience being in Chicago. I'm already there. I'm already experiencing it. There is nothing left to do. Of course, it is not about being omnipresent--if we see clearly all the moments of life at once alined along the line, that is pretty much metaphysics of some meta-presence or whatever. But so
is the claim that I am sitting here, resting my elbows on the table looking at the computer screen,
etc, etc. To experience the moment, that is also close to some sort of mysticism, no?
It also does not make exactly sense to say that you are in Chicago right now, I mean it might make sense for you but not for me: I have no guarantee that you are in Chicago right now, I of course would expect it to be true but based on some very non-trivial assumptions: that Chicago is a big city (the bigger the point (is this paradox? can we call Chicago point?) where you are the more accurately we can agree about someone's position, and same goes for the time: it is a week day, so it is less likely that one would go out of town, etc).
I'll try to put these few things together: so moving would be like traversing points, if this motion is along a trajectory at all that trajectory is like a bridge: which means already there in advance, before the motion. Like a law of the motion, but if one would have had the knowledge of this law (epistemological problem) that would be the knowledge of all the bridges one passes: Chicago--New York--Boston, but also knowing of Boston when in Chicago. What is left in any case from such a trip is sort of a trajectory (meta-time, meta-history etc), that is true, but this trajectory is like a trace of a particle in a bubble chamber: there are small bubbles inscribed by the particle, or, there is a travelog in the case of person--this travelog can be always written in advance.
I thought it would be more like it was mentioned before: one's history is like lined up along a line. But there is no time: one is not traversing one's life along the line, but rather somewhat erratically, based on the memory of one's life. Such line would have to overlap with other lines, that's clear enough, but the traversal would have had no trajectory: you're always here and there, you could only fix your position in life relative to other people's lives, that's about it. Wait, if the traversal has no trajectory, then how can you call it a traversal? If you are omnipresent along a timeline, then you can't traverse it - as you said, you're just there. You're stuck experiencing all moments "simultaneously". If you only want to experience one moment at a time, that's where meta-time comes in - at any given meta-moment you'd be experiencing an ordinary moment, and jumps between non-sequential moments would take place within sequential meta-moments. ok-doki, let's check out the dictionary (webster), I keep only some pieces that I consider as more more pertinent than others:
traversal: the act or an instance of traversing traversing:
transitive verb
1 a : to go against or act in opposition to : OPPOSE, THWART [...]
2 a : to go or travel across or over; b : to move or pass along or through
3 : to make a study of : EXAMINE
4 : to lie or extend across : CROSS
5 a : to move to and fro over or along b : to ascend, descend, or cross (a slope or gap) at an angle [...]
intransitive verb
1 : to move back and forth or from side to side
[...][my emphasize] I didn't know that even a light ray can traverse the crystal:-)
Now let's check out trajectory:
trajectory
Etymology: New Latin trajectoria, from feminine of trajectorius of passing, from Latin traicere to cause to cross, cross, from trans-, tra- trans- + jacere to throw -- more at JET
1 : the curve that a body (as a planet or comet in its orbit or a rocket) describes in space
2 : a path, progression, or line of development resembling a physical trajectory [my emphasize] Wow, this is realy interesting. Where these two words kind of approach each other is exactly at crossing:
trajectory as to cause to cross, while traversal as to cross, and not only to cross without cause, but also to cross a slope or gap.
Anyhow, it seems to me that one can traverse without making trajectory:-)
Imagine a standard space vs. time graph with space as the y-axis and time as the x-axis. Without teleportation, there'd be a line pointing to where in space you are at any given time. With teleportation, the line is disjointed. Same thing with time vs. meta-time. Time on the y-axis, meta-time on the x-axis. At any given point in meta-time, you are at a certain point in time. Maybe the slope would increase with your speed through space (relativity). When you actually time jump to a disconnected period, the line becomes disjointed. Then we would have to traverse instead to move or to teleport [which is another way of moving: "to transfer by the act or process of moving an object or person by psychokinesis"]. That way:
But if everything is simultaneous, there is no traversal and no meta-time, no "fixing of position" since the position would be fixed remain fixed to the entire timeline. we would still be (lying) across, moving to and from (just like going nowhere!), at (at least) two points "simultaneously", [just like a light ray traverses the crystal:-)], or acting in opposition (probably to time).
That would be changing metahistory just as chosing to perform an action in a timeperiod that's different from the action they remember would be changing history. Maybe not cross the road so they wouldn't get run over by a car? If time is unchangeable, then it would make sense for metatime to be just as immutable. Or you'll have metametatime to deal with. ("Well, before I chose to jump to this future, but now instead I jumped to this future so the previous jump never happened in the metapast. But guess what, it did happen in the metametapast".):) You insisted on using the word meta-time, not me, so now we are back where we were at the beginning, or, I could say we have been here now, in the metapast, where we were once before, in the metafuture.
To be a bit more precise: I don't see any difference between your use of time and metatime, past and metapast, history and metahistory--prefixing with meta in all the examples is yet another synonym for time, thus of course one ends up, instead with some (imutable or not) time with metatime (which plays the same role of time in addition to (immutable or not) time).
I thought it would be more like it was mentioned before: one's history is like lined up along a line. But there is no time: one is not traversing one's life along the line, but rather somewhat erratically, based on the memory of one's life. Such line would have to overlap with other lines, that's clear enough, but the traversal would have had no trajectory: you're always here and there, you could only fix your position in life relative to other people's lives, that's about it.
Or relative to cars, or animals, or whatever else you wish--if one remembers being hit by a car, well then, that's quite an event, it might have been traumatic, or pleasurable, or painful, or forgotten... If one could remember one's death (or birth for that matter) well, those are the edges, no?
If there was no metatime, then they couldn't jump around time at all. The whole "I was just at that moment, but now I'm at this moment" business is strictly metatime. And if there was no ordinary time, there'd be no other moments to jump to. If our time was just another space-like dimension to them, then our metatime would be their time. We can call it metatime if you wish. One difference between such metatime and time comes next:
If they could see the "metafuture" they'd know where they would end up jumping "next" and would have no more control over it than they would over what they might do at any given ordinary time-moment. Ok, that would have been one possibility. But also, having memory of this metafuture, they could have chosen not to go there but somewhere else instead.
of people you've never heard of who claim to be Writers who write about writing. Like musicians who write songs about being on the road doing gigs or business people who spend all their time attending effectiveness training seminars, it demonstrates a certain loss of perspective in the craft. Isn't it interesting how most people who write these "how to publish a novel" books are either obscure or unpublished themselves? That snippy comment aside, I think the hubris-ridden article raises some good points. Writing well is a craft, but like any craft it takes place within constraints. Those constraints are dynamic and writers should be judged within their appropriate local conditions. However, if the constraints on your craft are rapidly expanding (e.g. in the case of writing and the internet) and you don't acknowledge the adjustment, your rigidity sounds about as silly as a Sumerian high priest bitching about how no one seems to do cuneiform right anymore. You forgot this one: Beware of dog!
The "problem", philosophically, with a purely Newtonian universe, derives from the niggling little detail that free will cannot exist. Every possible action you could ever take will have already happened, just not yet. Wow, next thing you'll tell me is that purely Newtonian universe has something to do with the universe as we know it...
They could perceive their entire lives as a wide landscape, stretching from past to present to future... and they could move freely within it, to relive the better moments and fast-forward over the unpleasant ones. Movement is change, and change requires time. To move from one time to another, you need some kind of "metatime". [...] You'd either exist everytime through your life "simultaneously" or just in the same moment. That's kind of what they are talking about, no? That there are neither concepts of time, nor of meta-time. You just "exist" simultaneously (notice that this is not anymore just a good old existence in some other time). The original post is explicit about this:
The creatures could see their future with absolute certainty, and so they knew that choice is an illusion (or, in my understanding, a mis-connotated word that belongs in the realm of epistemology rather than of metaphysics). So then, when you write:
With metatime your existence would still be linear, no matter how many jumps and zigzags you make through ordinary time. Indeed, but there would be no necessity to choose any particular sequence of jumps. For example:
Say you time travel 1985 -> 1955 -> 1985 -> 2015 -> 1985 -> 1955 -> 1885. That would be your linear metatime progression, and that's the one your memories will follow. [my emphasize] So it is to some extent an arbitrary choice, the choice that one would make based on the memory of the whole.
"Question" implies an answer. The relationship between question and answer is temporal, in that one follows the other. Therefore, your statement is moot, insofar as "is" can be without "will be" or "was." You mean like in: Will it rain tomorrow? When? Tomorrow. Ah, tomorrow! Of course it will rain. And it did indeed. I often remember those days.
I'm guessing some time in the future. You missed the whole point. Some place in the future. It's not the future anymore. It's just "that way". *Points* But until it happens it is still in the future. That would make something like:
Some that way in the future after the future.
Errr... if you cared to actually follow that link you were mocking the parent for posting, you'd have read this in the very first line:
"Occam's razor (sometimes spelled Ockham's razor) is a principle attributed to the 14th-century English logician and Franciscan friar William of Ockham." Which spelling would be the better one according to the Occam (Ockham)'s razor?
t would seem to me that the event horizon of a black hole would be a very anisotropic place to be, e.g, tidal forces. Actualy, there are some proofs that event horizon is smooth ("no-hair" theorems or something), even
small bumpiness would be unstable against the "evaporation" through gravitational waves.
Ups, I've read your post as "All I know is, my boss has now declared that our fifteen-minute breaks are to be replaced by 15-centimeter breaks Asshole." but then realized it is "All I know is, my boss has now declared that our fifteen-minute breaks are to be replaced by 15-centimeter breaks. Asshole."
But I think the suggestion that particle physicists get to play with huge budgets simply because of better PR is unfounded. In general, condensed matter research simply doesn't require huge budgets. You are joking, right? You must be joking, I require it!
Just compare the achievements of those two geniuses with the recent discussion about the crackpots speculating about the metrics of the universe. Here we have a real, old-fashioned Nobel Prize : a simple and brilliant idea, an experimental demonstration, and practical applications,[...] Well, Einstein never got the Nobel prize for the general theory of relativity. Just think about it for a second: He did not get the Nobel prize for the general theory of relativity!
I suggested the teachers in charge invited Fert but they answered that they do not understand a single thing about spin and ironically enough they wanted conferences about string theory and particle physics instead Irony is definitely thick: particle physicist would say that spin simply has to do with the irreducible representations of the Lorentz group of the special theory of relativity. Then they
would keep on going about iso-spin, susy, confomal invariance, etc... It is not unheard of Dirac
equation being also used in the area of high-Tc.
You complain about PR of people in the string theory and such, then add some more to the same PR:
I bet that in CERN maybe a physicist in a thousand, with an IQ over 200, sees the big picture and understands what the wotk is really about. Is it not true that exactly this kind of attitude is what fuels this PR in the first place? Or, for that matter, the theory of high-Tc?
Atomic, molecular or condensed state physics, fluid mechanics, soft matter physics, are much more tractable and practical with real challenges (high-TC supraconductivity...) yes, or the colossal magneto resistance, etc. Now, since you follow this field you surely know how much mystification and pointless battles are going on in the high-Tc arena. Of course, not exactly small part of this problem is that one day someone will have to decide which theorist(s) should get the Nobel Prize for high-Tc (I think the experimental part of the medal is already known).
Let me share with you my experience with high-Tc. You know how everybody accuses string theorists that they have no experimental inclinations to test their theory. Well, I once attended very attentively talk by a major high-Tc theorist where he was explaining his theory of high-Tc.
He gave some sketches of the microscopic mechanisms and then proceeded to experimental results, and showed how his theory could explain this or that experimental result. In the process, he used no formulas, let alone Hamiltonians or Lagrangians or empirical fits or whatever might closely resemble what is usually called theoretical physics. That's a problem to me.
The effect described sounds like the euphoric feeling you sometimes get while on acid. Minus the hallucinations. Now get this: acid is an illegal drug, while this whole gigantic magnet thingie is something payed by the government.
I think I'd rather go for the acid.
Hey, Christianity is the belief that a cosmic Jewish zombie, who was his own father, can make you live forever if you eat his flesh.
What's not to like? Was that a question?
You might have notice that I was replying to your "magic chain letter" analogy
in my post. Did you notice that? Did you actually read my post? Let's see.
You wrote:
Someone has a magic chain letter that anyone who recieves it _has_ to follow. (This is just the part demonstrating the assumption that we will eventually simulate ourselves.) Upon the chain letter he writes "This is the first copy. Copy this 100 times and send each one to a person who has never recieved a copy." (This is the logical assumption that the simulations will present far more humans than currently exist.)
As long as you have no problem with things up till now, pick a chain letter at random even after a single generation. Remember only the original chain letter equates to a real human. What are the chances you hit the original? 1 in 101. All 100 other letters are fakes (Though not even the person holding it knows that fact, after all it said "This is the first copy.") to which I replied:
Yes, but, if every letter has an address of the sender and the receiver and you give me any two such letters, I will immediately know the following:
(1) If both letters have the same sender, the sender is the one who received the letter at the beginning.
(2) If the letters have different senders, exactly one of those two senders is the one who sent the very first letter. In this case, if you give me yet another letter, I will now for sure who started the whole chain. Is this clear enough to you? Should I explain this further? What is "completely wrong" (your words!) about this?
Now, let's see where we are now: You wrote:
'if every letter has an address of the sender and the receiver'
but they don't You wrote "But they don't". Now let's think for a brief moment about brief.
Have you ever seen a letter, e-mail, fax, whatever, without any address of the sender or the receiver? Just think about it for a moment.
But you say that none of the 101 letters has neither the address of the sender nor the receiver. (So, there is only 101 letters in your analogy, do we communicate this fact? That there might be more iterations of the same process is not important for what I am demonstrating here.)
So, what we have is this: in the magic chain analogy, all the letters that anybody received are exactly the same. No difference whatsoever, right? But you insist that one of these letters is the original letter, whose content is the correct one, and, at the same time, all the letters are exactly the same. Since they are exactly the same, that means that nobody, not even the original sender, could possibly tell which letter was the first one sent.
Perhaps my chain letter analogy was a little poor it seems to just be adding more confusion. Though its difficult to come up with a succinct explanation, the idea is more complicated than it first appears. I am not even fond of the paper itself im sure there is a less long winded, theasaurus word riddled, way of expressing the ideas. I like the chain letter "analogy", but if it is indeed so complicated, maybe we should figure it out completely? We have already considered two cases:
(1) when there is address of the sender and the receiver in each letter.
(2) when there is neither address of the sender nor of the receiver in the letter.
Now there are two other cases... If you would care to give them some thought, you would end up with Bible.. Bible, my man! Is that why you wrote "completely wrong"? Ok, that's enough for today, I won't read you any more, I promise...
Yeah, the SAT problem just keeps getting worse. I don't think it will ever be solved. Yeah, just imagine: a high student makes a quantum computer to solve SAT and then she can get to any college she wants!
Someone has a magic chain letter that anyone who recieves it _has_ to follow. (This is just the part demonstrating the assumption that we will eventually simulate ourselves.)
Upon the chain letter he writes "This is the first copy. Copy this 100 times and send each one to a person who has never recieved a copy." (This is the logical assumption that the simulations will present far more humans than currently exist.)
As long as you have no problem with things up till now, pick a chain letter at random even after a single generation. Remember only the original chain letter equates to a real human. What are the chances you hit the original? 1 in 101. All 100 other letters are fakes (Though not even the person holding it knows that fact, after all it said "This is the first copy.") Yes, but, if every letter has an address of the sender and the receiver and you give me any two such letters, I will immediately know the following:
(1) If both letters have the same sender, the sender is the one who received the letter at the beginning.
(2) If the letters have different senders, exactly one of those two senders is the one who sent the very first letter. In this case, if you give me yet another letter, I will now for sure who started the whole chain.
Slashdot Mirror
Spoken like a true prophecy!
Quite a few are probably thinking about German group sex according to the words 'an', 'auf', 'hinter', 'in', 'neben', 'über', 'unter', 'vor' and 'zwichen'. Also ver- and ent- and um-. Let's also not forget real verbs, like verdicken!
Maybe hybrid?
It also does not make exactly sense to say that you are in Chicago right now, I mean it might make sense for you but not for me: I have no guarantee that you are in Chicago right now, I of course would expect it to be true but based on some very non-trivial assumptions: that Chicago is a big city (the bigger the point (is this paradox? can we call Chicago point?) where you are the more accurately we can agree about someone's position, and same goes for the time: it is a week day, so it is less likely that one would go out of town, etc).
I'll try to put these few things together: so moving would be like traversing points, if this motion is along a trajectory at all that trajectory is like a bridge: which means already there in advance, before the motion. Like a law of the motion, but if one would have had the knowledge of this law (epistemological problem) that would be the knowledge of all the bridges one passes: Chicago--New York--Boston, but also knowing of Boston when in Chicago. What is left in any case from such a trip is sort of a trajectory (meta-time, meta-history etc), that is true, but this trajectory is like a trace of a particle in a bubble chamber: there are small bubbles inscribed by the particle, or, there is a travelog in the case of person--this travelog can be always written in advance.
Oops, I must go, I won't be able to use internet for about 12 hours, so I'll reply later...
traversing: transitive verb
1 a : to go against or act in opposition to : OPPOSE, THWART [...]
2 a : to go or travel across or over; b : to move or pass along or through
3 : to make a study of : EXAMINE
4 : to lie or extend across : CROSS
5 a : to move to and fro over or along b : to ascend, descend, or cross (a slope or gap) at an angle [...]
intransitive verb
1 : to move back and forth or from side to side
[...][my emphasize] I didn't know that even a light ray can traverse the crystal
Now let's check out trajectory: trajectory
Etymology: New Latin trajectoria, from feminine of trajectorius of passing, from Latin traicere to cause to cross, cross, from trans-, tra- trans- + jacere to throw -- more at JET
1 : the curve that a body (as a planet or comet in its orbit or a rocket) describes in space
2 : a path, progression, or line of development resembling a physical trajectory [my emphasize] Wow, this is realy interesting. Where these two words kind of approach each other is exactly at crossing: trajectory as to cause to cross, while traversal as to cross, and not only to cross without cause, but also to cross a slope or gap.
Anyhow, it seems to me that one can traverse without making trajectory
To be a bit more precise: I don't see any difference between your use of time and metatime, past and metapast, history and metahistory--prefixing with meta in all the examples is yet another synonym for time, thus of course one ends up, instead with some (imutable or not) time with metatime (which plays the same role of time in addition to (immutable or not) time).
I thought it would be more like it was mentioned before: one's history is like lined up along a line. But there is no time: one is not traversing one's life along the line, but rather somewhat erratically, based on the memory of one's life. Such line would have to overlap with other lines, that's clear enough, but the traversal would have had no trajectory: you're always here and there, you could only fix your position in life relative to other people's lives, that's about it.
Or relative to cars, or animals, or whatever else you wish--if one remembers being hit by a car, well then, that's quite an event, it might have been traumatic, or pleasurable, or painful, or forgotten... If one could remember one's death (or birth for that matter) well, those are the edges, no?
Thanks for the post, the first one I've read so far that has something to say about the paper!
"Occam's razor (sometimes spelled Ockham's razor) is a principle attributed to the 14th-century English logician and Franciscan friar William of Ockham." Which spelling would be the better one according to the Occam (Ockham)'s razor?
Ups, I've read your post as
"All I know is, my boss has now declared that our fifteen-minute breaks are to be replaced by 15-centimeter breaks Asshole."
but then realized it is
"All I know is, my boss has now declared that our fifteen-minute breaks are to be replaced by 15-centimeter breaks. Asshole."
I suggested the teachers in charge invited Fert but they answered that they do not understand a single thing about spin and ironically enough they wanted conferences about string theory and particle physics instead Irony is definitely thick: particle physicist would say that spin simply has to do with the irreducible representations of the Lorentz group of the special theory of relativity. Then they would keep on going about iso-spin, susy, confomal invariance, etc... It is not unheard of Dirac equation being also used in the area of high-Tc.
You complain about PR of people in the string theory and such, then add some more to the same PR: I bet that in CERN maybe a physicist in a thousand, with an IQ over 200, sees the big picture and understands what the wotk is really about. Is it not true that exactly this kind of attitude is what fuels this PR in the first place? Or, for that matter, the theory of high-Tc? Atomic, molecular or condensed state physics, fluid mechanics, soft matter physics, are much more tractable and practical with real challenges (high-TC supraconductivity...) yes, or the colossal magneto resistance, etc. Now, since you follow this field you surely know how much mystification and pointless battles are going on in the high-Tc arena. Of course, not exactly small part of this problem is that one day someone will have to decide which theorist(s) should get the Nobel Prize for high-Tc (I think the experimental part of the medal is already known).
Let me share with you my experience with high-Tc. You know how everybody accuses string theorists that they have no experimental inclinations to test their theory. Well, I once attended very attentively talk by a major high-Tc theorist where he was explaining his theory of high-Tc. He gave some sketches of the microscopic mechanisms and then proceeded to experimental results, and showed how his theory could explain this or that experimental result. In the process, he used no formulas, let alone Hamiltonians or Lagrangians or empirical fits or whatever might closely resemble what is usually called theoretical physics. That's a problem to me.
Hey, Christianity is the belief that a cosmic Jewish zombie, who was his own father, can make you live forever if you eat his flesh.
What's not to like? Was that a question?
As long as you have no problem with things up till now, pick a chain letter at random even after a single generation. Remember only the original chain letter equates to a real human. What are the chances you hit the original? 1 in 101. All 100 other letters are fakes (Though not even the person holding it knows that fact, after all it said "This is the first copy.") to which I replied: Yes, but, if every letter has an address of the sender and the receiver and you give me any two such letters, I will immediately know the following:
(1) If both letters have the same sender, the sender is the one who received the letter at the beginning.
(2) If the letters have different senders, exactly one of those two senders is the one who sent the very first letter. In this case, if you give me yet another letter, I will now for sure who started the whole chain. Is this clear enough to you? Should I explain this further? What is "completely wrong" (your words!) about this?
Now, let's see where we are now: You wrote: 'if every letter has an address of the sender and the receiver'
but they don't You wrote "But they don't". Now let's think for a brief moment about brief. Have you ever seen a letter, e-mail, fax, whatever, without any address of the sender or the receiver? Just think about it for a moment.
But you say that none of the 101 letters has neither the address of the sender nor the receiver. (So, there is only 101 letters in your analogy, do we communicate this fact? That there might be more iterations of the same process is not important for what I am demonstrating here.)
So, what we have is this: in the magic chain analogy, all the letters that anybody received are exactly the same. No difference whatsoever, right? But you insist that one of these letters is the original letter, whose content is the correct one, and, at the same time, all the letters are exactly the same. Since they are exactly the same, that means that nobody, not even the original sender, could possibly tell which letter was the first one sent.
Perhaps my chain letter analogy was a little poor it seems to just be adding more confusion. Though its difficult to come up with a succinct explanation, the idea is more complicated than it first appears. I am not even fond of the paper itself im sure there is a less long winded, theasaurus word riddled, way of expressing the ideas. I like the chain letter "analogy", but if it is indeed so complicated, maybe we should figure it out completely? We have already considered two cases:
(1) when there is address of the sender and the receiver in each letter.
(2) when there is neither address of the sender nor of the receiver in the letter.
Now there are two other cases... If you would care to give them some thought, you would end up with Bible.. Bible, my man! Is that why you wrote "completely wrong"? Ok, that's enough for today, I won't read you any more, I promise...
As long as you have no problem with things up till now, pick a chain letter at random even after a single generation. Remember only the original chain letter equates to a real human. What are the chances you hit the original? 1 in 101. All 100 other letters are fakes (Though not even the person holding it knows that fact, after all it said "This is the first copy.") Yes, but, if every letter has an address of the sender and the receiver and you give me any two such letters, I will immediately know the following:
(1) If both letters have the same sender, the sender is the one who received the letter at the beginning.
(2) If the letters have different senders, exactly one of those two senders is the one who sent the very first letter. In this case, if you give me yet another letter, I will now for sure who started the whole chain.