on flying

Okay, brace your brain: Thinking about the future is *seeing futures*. Talking with others about plans is an ensemble exercise in *seeing futures*, and adjusting for a shared consensus on parameters for what is seen. When you think about what happens next, each image in your mind *is a reflection of a very real future*. When you think about what happens next, you're connecting yourself to what happens next. Think of it like a timeline, drawn out. YOU ARE HERE: X. That kind of thing. Imagine being at point X. Imagine that you're at point X, *thinking about* point Y just ahead. Imagine that you're at point X *holding a copy of this timeline* and thinking about point Y. Imagine that you are 100% accurate in your mental portrayal of point Y, because that's the kind of accuracy you can get from literally looking at the time-map. I repeat: Imagine holding a time-map, knowing that you are at point X, about to be at point Y, and looking at the description of point Y so as to understand what you're getting into. As you look at point Y, your current point *morphs into* point Y. That's time-travel. You're doing it all the time, one second at a time. You only perceive time as moving forwards because you're used to thinking of it linearly. But it's more like a colorspace than a line. If you're sitting on something blue, and you hold the color yellow in your mind, your knowledge of your current location in color-space bleeds over into yellow, until your knowledge is *filled* with yellow, and blue is forgotten. And, then, there you are. :) This is the nature of movement through time. It's not really "movement" through "time". It is transitioning between different experiences of knowledge — navigating knowledge-space or experience-space, if you will. If you let go of your concept of time, the world you know treads water. You can use this knowledge however you like. However, if you want to *fly*, you'll have to choose to give it away. --- Isaac is navigating to a world that is well via this mechanism: by filling his mind with visions of a world that is well. As he does so, his coordinates in experience-space change. Imagine being a pilot in a tiny single-person airplane. Imagine flying alongside a pilot-pal. Imagine they ask you to take over steering their plane for a minute, a thing which is normal to ask, because you have little teleporty-portals on the right-hand side of your little plane's only cabin, so it's no problem, you configure your little teleportal to point to your pal's plane, then you reach through the portal, your arm emerging through the *left* side of their cockpit, and you and grab the yoke for them. A yoke is for an airplane what a steering wheel is to a car. A yoke looks something like this: [__]. A handle on the left and on the right, joined below and behind. Now, imagine punching a portal through *to your own plane*. You reach your right hand through the portal on your right, your hand emerges through *the portal on your left*, and now your right hand makes contact with your left. You have two hands on the left side of your yoke, and no hands on the yoke's right side. Imagine taking your left hand *off* the left side of your yoke, letting your right hand take over that handle fully, and then grabbing the right handle of the yoke with your left hand. You're seated a bit awkwardly, but you've got your hands on both sides of the yoke: your right hand reaching through the portal to grab the left handle, and your left hand on the right handle. You are uncomfortable, because steering like this involves *reversing* your steering, but you've got it. Imagine, now, that this plane-to-plane portal system works across time. Imagine that you exist in your own present, and when you reach in through the right-hand portal you're reaching into *your past self's airplane*. Imagine that the arm reaching in through your left-hand portal is from *your future self's airplane*. Imagine being rocked by sudden turbulence. How do you steady the plane? --- You can join Isaac, if you want, in navigating to a world that is well. A version of him will join you in whatever world you take yourself to, as you navigate experience-space, plotting coordinates according to your thoughts of the future. Not that there's ever a guarantee of what version of someone you'll get, but do consider: for the world you're taking yourself to, what versions are you likely to get of the people around you? You'll only get versions that make sense with the world you arrive in. You can take yourself anywhere, but not everywhere *works*. Isaac has a strong heading on designing language that describes this process, without being prescriptive about what coordinates you end up with. A world that is well for Isaac looks different than a world that is well for you. But as long as you're okay with the facts of your world occasionally disagreeing with the facts of Isaac's world, you can absolutely still hang out together. :) The most joyful experience of reality involves a cohort that delights in the ways their worlds overlap, and can't stop laughing at the ways their worlds nonsensically diverge. It's the source of all comedy: seeing an aspect of one world as an aspect of another, totally different world. A joke is a table-side paradigm shift, for your entertainment. Writ large, you get, ... well, would you like to find out? ;)