Some really amazing possibilities might open up for us--quantum computers with retrocausal circuits, for instance, or instantaneous communication between planets or the stars. One implication, however, might be that some form of superdeterminism rules the universe.

Superdeterminism says that not only is every event in the universe predetermined, but that it could not be any other way. Paradoxically, an ability to influence the past may imply that both future and past are actually immutable. Because if influences propagate both forward and backward in time, then you can imagine this moment, with you sitting at your computer reading these words, as sending waves of implication out in all directions, causing the future to happen but also causing the past to happen; and that therefore the fact of you sitting where you are now requires everything else that has gone before and everything that will come after. Everything is tied together in a single inextricable knot of mutual implication, and nothing could be other than what it is.

Depressing? Well, not if you've had a good day. And the fact is that a little fact like this says absolutely nothing about whether you will have a good day, or anything about whether you, as a person, can change your circumstances or succeed or anything existential like that. In the end, superdeterminism is little more than a fancy way of saying that the universe is.

So step back from the brink, my friend, and take a deep breath. Wait a few months, and we'll see if we get our instantaneous star-spanning radio sets. Who knows? Maybe this is the channel that the aliens all use, and that's why SETI hasn't heard anything from them--because it's doing the equivalent of listening for tribal drums while radio waves flicker everywhere.

Is that possible? Well, we'll find out in a few months.

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