MISC: The Girl Who Saved the World, Part 22

[Scott Eiler]

On 2016-01-14 10:16, George Phillies wrote:
> The Girl Who Saved The World, continued
>
> Liouville was a French mathematician. The fellow after him was an
> American, Gibbs. What they showed, the part I had to struggle to
> understand even slightly, is that the past is as big as the future.

I like to express that thought as, there can be alternate pasts just 
like there can be alternate futures.  I actually wrote something along 
those lines once:  The Siege of Raleigh. 
http://www.eilertech.com/stories/2007/raleigh.htm


> No, let’s be honest.  I really did not undertand almost any of the
> math parts.

If you ever reprint this, I *didn't* find the typo for "understand" - 
but my news poster did!


> For what they needed to prove, they used calculus.  I’m not
> terrified of a single derivative, at least if someone else is taking it.
> I even know sort of what they are. Kind of. I think. Maybe. Well, I
> asked Mum what they are, and she told me.

Our Heroine is way more interested in understanding the deep reasons 
beneath things than (say) my own character Wyatt Ferguson is.


> No, I’m not one of these people who have infinite math genius, but Mum
> always said I was way ahead in math. That’s way ahead, even though I
> actually had to learn the stuff, not have Mum pass it to me
> mind-to-mind.

When I first read this, this is the point where I said, "I guess this 
isn't Author's Notes then.


> If the pawn next to us took off and ended up
> way across the board, there must be another pawn that started off
> someplace way across the board and ended up at our shoulders. I thought
> the mirror imaging looked pretty obvious. We’re not someplace special.
> If some of our nearby-at-start pawns end up someplace else, pawns from
> someplace else must end up nearby, because if they didn’t we would be at
> someplace unusual.

I think of alternate universes with alternate pasts as being a net.  In 
a net, every junction of ropes has (at least) two branches in one 
direction of each rope, and as many in the other direction.


> Lots of people get extremely upset with the idea
> that world history could’ve started off completely different than ours,
> but when we get to the present our two worlds are almost the same.

Heh.  We can't always even agree on what Our History is.  Why should we 
deserve to keep it?



-- 
(signed) Scott Eiler  8{D> -------- http://www.eilertech.com/ ---------

When you *are* the leader... whatever goes wrong... whether you did it
or not... *you* are held responsible. - Barack Obama

I know. - Archie Andrews

- from Archie #617, March 2011, scripted by Alex Simmons.