Note: I’ll own that my understanding of the various QP models isn’t super strong, but even the Wikipedia article on the delayed choice quantum eraser experiment notes that it is predicated on a non-standard view of QP.
In any case, erasure of events over time subtly different from what I meant to describe, and is inconsistent with conservation of information. The tiny ripples we make in causality with most of our actions will, indeed, leave lasting impressions at infinitesimal scales. But the further out you go from the origin, the more other ripples any one event will come into dialog with. The end result is that, given enough time, any one ripple becomes such a small factor in future outcomes as to be (for all practical purposes) indistinguishable from the rest of the background noise.
Allow me a metaphor. Suppose you throw a rock at an ocean wave. The rock creates a ripple on the surface of the wave, but you would have to be a keen observer indeed to detect it in the rush of water. The wave may be slightly differently configured as it crushes houses near the shore, but the contractor still charges the same amount for repairs. The rock tumbles across the bottom of the ocean, pushed by the wave along with thousands of other rocks and shells and particles of sand and biomatter. It changes the movement of those bits, but the lot of it is bulldozed off the beach to make way for fresh sand a few weeks later just the same. Nearly all possible future events are, after a few seconds at most, indistinguishable from those that follow if you throw the rock elsewhere. Throwing the rock ends up having no practical effect on future events. Even absent the wave, the ripple from the rock will be essentially undetectable a mile off.
On the longest timescales, everything goes to a uniform boring gray with no variation (heat death). This cannot be simultaneously true with the proposition that tiny changes will all—or even likely—come to individually have meaningful effects if considered over enough time. Heat death implies something like a viscosity in causality that gives older events less weight than newer ones.
Note: I’ll own that my understanding of the various QP models isn’t super strong, but even the Wikipedia article on the delayed choice quantum eraser experiment notes that it is predicated on a non-standard view of QP.
In any case, erasure of events over time subtly different from what I meant to describe, and is inconsistent with conservation of information. The tiny ripples we make in causality with most of our actions will, indeed, leave lasting impressions at infinitesimal scales. But the further out you go from the origin, the more other ripples any one event will come into dialog with. The end result is that, given enough time, any one ripple becomes such a small factor in future outcomes as to be (for all practical purposes) indistinguishable from the rest of the background noise.
Allow me a metaphor. Suppose you throw a rock at an ocean wave. The rock creates a ripple on the surface of the wave, but you would have to be a keen observer indeed to detect it in the rush of water. The wave may be slightly differently configured as it crushes houses near the shore, but the contractor still charges the same amount for repairs. The rock tumbles across the bottom of the ocean, pushed by the wave along with thousands of other rocks and shells and particles of sand and biomatter. It changes the movement of those bits, but the lot of it is bulldozed off the beach to make way for fresh sand a few weeks later just the same. Nearly all possible future events are, after a few seconds at most, indistinguishable from those that follow if you throw the rock elsewhere. Throwing the rock ends up having no practical effect on future events. Even absent the wave, the ripple from the rock will be essentially undetectable a mile off.
On the longest timescales, everything goes to a uniform boring gray with no variation (heat death). This cannot be simultaneously true with the proposition that tiny changes will all—or even likely—come to individually have meaningful effects if considered over enough time. Heat death implies something like a viscosity in causality that gives older events less weight than newer ones.