SUO: Memento 3D / 4D
I received an off list note asking what relevance my note about the film
"Memento" had to the SUO discussions. I am not really sure, but I
thought I would post my response. If anyone wants further information
you should rent the movie.
> Sometimes art can offer insight to science.
>
> In this film one can think of the annotated Polaroid pictures as signs
> and symbols that represent a slice of the spatio-temporal life of the
> protagonist. The pictures are iconic, the annotations are symbolic -
> and he does reorder them. Because they are all he has to represent
> a major part of his life, in some sense reordering the pictures
> reorders his life - at least the life of his mind and it does have
> consequences for him and others. He is searching for his wife's
> killers and late in the movie he is shown a picture of himself that
> reveals his elation at having found and killed them several years
> before (the lack of tattoos indicating time's arrow). A few minutes
> later he resumes his search. He sometimes willfully annotates the
> pictures (or his tattoos) with false information to create a result he
> thinks he desires in the future.
>
> I don't know how much, if any, this aids the discussion of 3D / 4D,
> but it is one of the few examples of 4D that can be related to
> (somewhat) ordinary experience. Are you a different person if you
> resequence slices of your own spatio-temporal extents. If so, what
> effect if any does this have on identity.
>
> If ontology is a metaphysical identification of what exists (or at
> least what is possible to exist) and if 4D allows changes to identity,
> perhaps rather easily in some contexts, it may be useful to have an
> example that is related to ordinary experience. Or not, if it only
> confuses the issues.
>
> When one defines identity as having the same spatio-temporal extent
> and one can - by intention - change both the extent and the sequence,
> it seems to me that this has some significance.
>
> Interestingly, one of the film's unresolved mysteries is whether or
> not he killed his wife immediately before the intruders attacked and
> what if any relationship he had to them.
Bob