Hi MacGyver, thanks for your kind words. Let's look at the issue you've raised.
What do I mean by the "great child inventor timeline"? From the fourth dimension, that line would appear to be one single path. You invent something as a child, the invention makes you wealthy and famous as an adult. Choose a point on the fourth dimensional line, just a few minutes after you as a child came up with the invention. Is there only one possible outcome from that moment forward? A hard determinist would say "yes". There are, of course, a great many scenarios that could happen from that moment in time - you could say "I'm just a kid, no one will listen to me" and immediately throw the invention away. Your uncle could steal the idea and become rich instead. Your invention could make you rich, but you squander your wealth and when the invention is no longer popular you could be destitute. No matter which of those outcomes came to pass, from the fourth dimension later on you would look back and say "yep, that's what happened after I came up with that invention". Thinking about the multiple scenarios that could have occurred after the invention, according to this way of visualizing dimensions, would require us to be within the fifth rather than the fourth, because the fourth only has room for one timeline at a time.
Since I didn't come up with a great invention as a child, there's no way for me to get to that version of the universe from my current position within spacetime, or the fifth dimensional spacetime tree of probabilistically/causally related timelines that extend out from my current "now". Looking at the first sentence you quoted, "current moment in the fifth dimension" is the important phrase - my current "now" does not include branches where I came up with a great invention as a child.
We can imagine our fourth-dimensional selves branching out from our current moment in the fifth dimension, but no matter where you go from here the "great child inventor" timeline is not one of the available options in your current version of time -- "you can't get there from here" -- no matter how much choice, chance, and the actions of others become involved.
Keeping in mind that the spacetime tree of possible pasts and futures has just as many branches before as it does after my current "now", I could now move through those branches to get back to myself as a child. In fact, Everett's Many Worlds Interpretation tells us there are a great many subtly different versions of "me as a child" that connect to my current "now", so the idea that there is only one path back in time or one previous version of me that could connect to "now" is also an illusion.
So in 6c, when I say:
There are only two ways you could get to that world -- one would be to travel back in time, somehow trigger the key events that caused you to come up with your invention, then travel forward in the fifth dimension to see one of the possible new worlds that might have resulted.
this is where I'm trying to convey that our fifth dimensional options are not limitless from any particular position - they still have to be probabilistically connected for us to get to them within the fifth dimension. By moving back to myself as a child, I can do something that creates a new set of probabilistic outcomes. When I get to the new version of myself as an adult reaping the benefits of my childhood invention, the current "now" that I'm actually in at this moment is no longer a fifth dimensional branch I can get to, without moving back again and stopping myself from creating the invention.
As I say in the animation, thinking about using the sixth dimension to "jump" from the version of me who is a prosperous adult because of a childhood invention allows us to see how we can jump outside of the logically connected branches that we are traveling along in the fifth dimension. But it's important to note that in that scenario you don't "become" the new version of you, you just get to go there and witness the more prosperous you - this is what is shown in the graphics. I suppose if you were to add on a Philip K Dick-style device that allowed you to implant your consciousness into other people, then you could actually "become" the other you, but that adds a whole layer of complication to the thought experiment, doesn't it!
In blog entries like the following I invite people to think of the fifth dimensional spacetime tree as a labyrinth, see what you think of that approach.
http://imaginingthetenthdimension.blogs ... -line.html
http://imaginingthetenthdimension.blogs ... cusps.html
and in entries like these I talk about the idea that there are just as many branches before our current now as afterwards:
http://imaginingthetenthdimension.blogs ... magic.html
http://imaginingthetenthdimension.blogs ... usion.html
http://imaginingthetenthdimension.blogs ... -eggs.html
Thanks for writing!
Rob
