Untethered Thursdays

Dear Readers,

For most of the rest of your week, I have figured out some kind of feature or another that I can give you. Except Thursdays. I can't seem to get the hang of Thursdays, for some reason.

Anyhow, today the muses have given me some inspiration to write a quick note for you on the idea of "time streams" that I've so casually slipped into my conversation. It's a notion that seems easy enough from the two words that make it up, but is actually a bit more tricky than face value.

You might assume, and it might be good enough for a cursory examination, that time streams are just different instances of a specific time period with different quantum variations. If this were strictly true, though, my job would be a lot harder. The scale of decisions made every day, on a subatomic level, is absolutely staggering! There would be no way I could group anything together, and infinite possibilities would arise.

Well, all right. I could rule out the possibilities where the Universe destroyed itself, or some similar calamity took place. Still, though, it would be more than one person, even one immortal person acting from a vantage point outside of time, could handle.

The concept is, therefore, a bit more subtle. As I said, there are a lot more decisions made than I can possibly comprehend. Some of them are on scales where computerized analysis is difficult if it is even possible. Therefore, I need to "bin" some individual decision paths together to be able to make any sense of the tangled mess that the Fates have woven for me to interpret. To do this, I borrow an idea from economists. Economists frequently submit forecasts that show a statistical odds spread for where they expect a certain number to be in a few months; the future of that number describes some area on their graph, and they're happy with their model if it falls inside that area. A simple enough concept.

Likewise, I call something part of a "time stream" if it falls inside a set of historical events, cultural elements, common technologies, etc., that describe a statistical space in the overall flow of time. So, for example, if Brian went to the orthodontist on August 17th in one decision path but on August 20th in another, statistically I can say those two paths, for the time in question, are part of the same time stream.

This is especially useful if two decision paths have the same end result. An example would be a decision path where Alexander Fleming does not discover penicillin, as compared to a decision path where Alexander Fleming does discover it but is killed in a freak accident before he can tell anyone about his discovery. In the former, something did not happen. In the latter, something happened, but another event canceled it out, so if you look forward far enough, both decision paths are part of the same time stream. And so forth.

I may dedicate an extensive Friday Seminar to this in the future, but it's really more of an Augury topic, so this is already more detail than an anachronist really needs. Still, I thought I'd give you more of an explanation, in case you are the sort that likes that.

Always,

Dr. John Skylar
Chairman
Department of Anachronism
University of Constantinople