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Time Travel

I don't like the risk involved with such a system. No, its not the whole 'kill you and bring you back to life'; it doesn't matter if they achieve 100% success on the reviving; I'm OK with that.
My objection is that I'm sitting around, essentially helpless, for however long I want to travel forward. The risk of the death & resurrection is constant. The risk of Something Bad happening to me while I'm lying there dead increases with however long I stay dead.
 
Hm. Just found a new typo there, "Superliminal". At least I assume it's a typo (for " superluminal"). But if subliminal is below the threshold of awareness, what would super liminal be?
 
I would *guess* that supraliminal refered to stimuli that were so intense that you could not differentiate between their intensity, and the intensity of something a bit [or a lot] more intense.
Like, between the pain of getting one arm ripped off, and the pain of getting both arms ripped off. At the end of the day, it just hurts, a lot, and there's not much more to it.
 
(S) said:
I would *guess* that supraliminal refered to stimuli that were so intense that you could not differentiate between their intensity, and the intensity of something a bit [or a lot] more intense.
Like, between the pain of getting one arm ripped off, and the pain of getting both arms ripped off. At the end of the day, it just hurts, a lot, and there's not much more to it.
Click to expand...
Hmm, not sure about that, but thanks for the idea. Pain and "double pain" are still consciously perceived, but like subliminal I think supraliminal must be consciously imperceptible. I think the answer is actually related to time, which is serendipitous. Subliminal refers to events not consciously perceptible, because they occupy too little time to register thus, so supraliminal might be similar, but at the other end of the axis. Like perceiving our hair growing or stone weathering, that sort of thing. The change occurs too slowly...maybe, perhaps.
 
The author has some interesting ideas, but I think he oversimplifies a few things.

For example, claiming that travel and communication is instantaneous, albeit in the eyes of the travellers, is not quite right. Since, as he states, space and time are interwoven, losing awareness of a particular point in space-time is the same as losing potentially important information. If I wanted to send a message to a buddy ship several thousand lightyears away, I don't know if I would be content simply shutting myself down to wait for the reply. This seems like I would actually be missing 99% of what occurs in the universe because I deliberately ignore it all. What is the purpose of living forever if you miss most of it?

Personally, I would go for a slow-moving human habitat that took generations to travel through space. Virtual reality would be key, of course. At least discoveries could be made and implemented in the spare time. And home, to me, would be the space ship. Visiting other solar systems would be like vacations. You could stay for a hundred years on a planet you liked and then catch another moving world when you tired of it.

This, I think, would suit humans and their thirst for exploration.
 
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