For analytical types it is often a misfortune that he is thinking about
probabilities and causality while cruising the interstate. Such was the
case for William Beatty
http://www.amasci.com/amateur/traffic/traffic1.html
when he had an epiphany about what he called "Traffic Waves", noting
that a driver can get caught up in a traffic slow-down that was
generated perhaps hours earlier by some thoughtless driver fumbling with
the radio, etc. What is most captivating about the article is that we
readers, after the fact, realize that we knew this all along, but
simply never paid that much attention to it.

Along the same vein of thought, today I raced up alongside an 18 wheeler
so that I could cut in front of him before he ran up alongside another
18 wheeler. The window of opportunity was probably less than a second or
so. As I watched in my rearview, the trucks were side by side until
they finally lagged out of my visual field.

I began wondering, how might this last minute decision have affected my
entire future? Suppose that I had incurred a five minute delay in my
trip by remaining patient? I would then not have seen the woman in the
sedan with the three children, and how at ease they all seemed with
their present life. It had a direct effect on my frame of mind,
affecting my conversation upon arriving back at home. And I would've
missed that song on the radio, on that final leg of the journey, a song
about earning spare "time", which gets me back to the subject at hand.

It occurred to me (yes it was an "epiphany"), that there is a "people"
cone, a causal wave of human interactions that determines your future
directly. But rather than corresponding to light speed, this "wave"
moves at the rate of man. The real epiphany was that I suddenly
realized that all of those people ahead of me on the highway would have
probably been in exactly the same lanes, moving at the same speeds,
thinking the same thoughts, had I not made the aforementioned decision
to dodge the trucks. They were oblivious to my actions, I was outside
their people-cone. The causal wave in this case was propagating at
approximately 75 mph.

Causality at the speed of man. Now granted there will be subtle
differences in those peoples' actions due to my last minute decision,
i.e. those people outside of my people cone, due to physical
propagations at greater than the speed of man, but all in all, the
question remains, to what extent will these inanimate waves alter the
people-cone induced causality. Would it affect general behaviors to an
observable extent? All of those people's behaviors, or just some of
those people's behaviors? Can a people-wave be reflected back to you
without affecting the general behaviors of other people in between?

Just a little something to tickle the intellect

Richard Perry

Richard wrote in message ...

people cones

Just a little something to tickle the intellect

Nice thought. :-)