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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Yair" data-source="post: 2348635" data-attributes="member: 10913">Sorry for the hijack...[/hijack]*shrug* it is a standard trope in various mystic and theological circles, and a common theme of new-age and oriental faiths. I guess we'll have to disagree here.Ehmm... no. [science speak]In non-relativisitic quantum mechanics, consider a system at state Psi=Psi0*(Psi1*Rho1+Psi2*Rho2) (zero temperature for simplicity), where Psi1 and Psi2 (and Rho1 and Rho2) are orthogonal states that spread a 2-dimensional Hilbert space within the overall Hilbert space. Now consider a diagonal measurement operator O acting within the first Hilbert space, so that O*Psi1*=o1*Psi1 and O*Psi2=o2*Psi2, and another measurment M so that M*Rho1=m1*Rho1 and M*Rho2=m2*Rho2.By the measurement axiom of NRQM, if person A measures Psi by O the the state becomes Psi0*Psi1*Rho1 at probability o1, and Psi0*Psi2*Rho2 at probability o2. If person B now measures with O, he will always get a concurrent result, indicating that A's measurment affected the things he measured. To see that this is not limited in space, consider B measuring M instead. He will always get Psi0*Psi2*Rho2, despite Rho being a totally different system that can be at any distance. A didn't measure it, and yet he affected it.Measurement is NRQM is not local, and affects all the universe immediately. Notice that this does not violate causality, as a measurment at point A cannot be used to transfer information to point B despite affecting it immediately.As a word of caution, while this phenomenon can be generalized for a generic state density, in practice systems near thermal equilibrium past a (low) temperature threshold will not be entangled, leading to the localization of the measurement's effects. As relativistic QM is an extension of NRQM, it does not significantly change these results, except to make everything so complex nothing is calculable.[/science-speak]Of course. But we are talking here about PSEUDO-scientific explanations of magic. There is no scientific explanation of magic - according to hard science, magic is impossible (duh!).The only sole scientific explanation of magic that I am aware of is the assumption that the PCs live in a highly and exponentially increasingly improbable world. According to QM there is a chance (a miniscule, rediculous chance) that when I say Abra-Kadabra and point with my finger, a fireball will emerge at a designated spot. It's a very small chance, but if you take the Many Worlds [many minds] interpertation very seriously you could claim that your tale is of one of these worlds at the very tail of reality, where the bizzare often does happen. Or that it simply describes an alternate, improbable, reality. That's basically what I was suggesting too, in QM terms, just with a different interpertation.[/hijack]Dakkareth: Your tale reminded me of another idea someone may found of interest. It is suggested by Tipler, a physicist turned metaphysicist.The idea is that someone indeed managed to transform itself and its machines into true spirit, and nigh reached omnipotence, but this was not in the past but rather at the future. They reach out to the past to shape it so that this feat will be accomplished, navigating history and physics to make this possibility a reality.In technical terms, the boundary conditions on the universe's future are such that they culminate in an omniscience and omnipotence of intelligent life in the limit of infinite time (so, technically, the omniscient/potent entity is transcendant to existence; google the Omega Point). The boundary conditions set limits on the evolution of the universe, not restricting choice but directing it to its ultimate goal. Omniscience is measured by the amount of information contained by intelligent beings in the universe (true omniscience means they know all that can be known about the universe), omnipotence measures their ability to change it (true omnipotence means that can wield transformations on an energy scale of the whole universe).If all this smells of Christian ideas, this is not an accident, but I don't think I can say more on that within the forum's rules.So anyways, your Firstborn can actually not be born yet. What's time for such powerful beings?  <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /></blockquote>

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