{"id":4769,"date":"2018-11-14T05:00:56","date_gmt":"2018-11-14T13:00:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/?p=4769"},"modified":"2018-11-11T20:53:47","modified_gmt":"2018-11-12T04:53:47","slug":"mark-reads-the-science-of-discworld-ii-chapter-28","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/2018\/11\/mark-reads-the-science-of-discworld-ii-chapter-28\/","title":{"rendered":"Mark Reads ‘The Science of Discworld II’: Chapter 28"},"content":{"rendered":"

In the twenty-eighth chapter of The Science of Discworld II<\/i>, we learn about emergent dynamics and time travel paradoxes. Intrigued? Then it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s time for Mark to read Discworld<\/i>.\u00c2\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

As I said in the last review, I figured that Pratchett was poking fun at tropes we frequently see in time travel stories, and I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t think I was wrong<\/i>, per se. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s just that chapter twenty-eight provides more context to what\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s going on in this book and what it means that history is not a singular line from one thing to another. Well, in hindsight, you probably could<\/i> draw some sort of line (maybe a zig zag), but what I understood of the notion of emergent dynamics suggested that even in hindsight, this is all way more complicated than most of us can ever understand.<\/p>\n

Which is sort of the point, isn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t it? That\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s why we craft stories, why we name historical periods, and why these things always<\/i> happen after the fact. They have<\/i> to. We begin to craft narratives for these complex systems to understand them, but I love that the authors pointed out that this doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t always work as easily as that. The whole bit with the idea of \u00e2\u20ac\u0153predicting\u00e2\u20ac\u009d a cat actually helped me a lot in understanding some of the more complicated science here. Like, on the surface, that seemed to be an absurd idea because HAVE YOU MET CATS. But that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not really what it means, and thus, I actually understood what was meant by a cat\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s behavior being an \u00e2\u20ac\u0153emergent property\u00e2\u20ac\u009d of the complex system that is a cat! And you could apply that to humans, too, couldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t you? We are certainly complex systems.\u00c2\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

And we certainly try to simplify anything complex, too, and that was the initial flaw in the wizards\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 plan. They thought that there was a simple narrative at work, and they just had to change a single thing to guarantee that Shakespeare would reappear in Roundworld in exactly the way he had before. But Roundworld is an immensely complex system as a whole, and then England is a complex system, then the city, then the community that surrounded Shakespeare, then Shakespeare himself\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 I suspect that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s the main reason why it took so many efforts to get the Roundworld Shakespeare back on track.\u00c2\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s also deeply related to the practice of alternate histories, too, and I was pleased to see it brought up within the text. Writers often do thought exercises and experiments with history to determine whether the past or future can change or it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s inevitable. And in the case of this book, it wasn’t<\/i> inevitable that Shakespeare would always exist. Indeed, many alternate worlds were explored in which humanity was derailed through various means, so that would put this text more in line with Stephen Jay Gould\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s feelings on alternate histories.\u00c2\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

But what about paradoxes? The last part of the chapter addresses the various ways in which paradoxes might<\/i> exist, but also that current scientific thought doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t actually rule out the possibility of time travel. Which is so fascinating to me!!! We\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve certainly not devised a means for it, and I am not sure I would trust humanity with it unless it was for purposes of observation only. Seriously, we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re awful, and it would probably only be a matter of time before someone unraveled time out of greed. Well, would<\/i> that happen? Or would that person only change an alternate timeline, and that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s why we have never experienced the ill effects of time travel? That\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s an intriguing idea, and it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s definitely fun to think about.<\/p>\n

https:\/\/youtu.be\/1-_ugoK7Cdk<\/p>\n

Mark Links Stuff<\/b><\/p>\n

– My YA contemporary debut, ANGER IS A GIFT<\/a>, is now out in the world!\u00c2\u00a0<\/strong>If you’d like to stay up-to-date on all announcements regarding my books, sign up for my newsletter<\/a>! DO IT.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"