Author Topic: Is looking back in time a violation of the 6th Law?  (Read 12478 times)

Offline Mrmdubois

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Re: Is looking back in time a violation of the 6th Law?
« Reply #30 on: June 02, 2013, 12:38:17 AM »
Eh, good point.

The argument was bad.

Offline Mr. Death

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Re: Is looking back in time a violation of the 6th Law?
« Reply #31 on: June 02, 2013, 01:45:32 AM »
Technically, everyone is 'getting knowledge' from the present, and inferring things about the past, even to the extent that their memories themselves are embedded within the substrate of the present. I suspect that to actually look at the past directly via thaumaturgy rather than infer it from the present inherently involves chronomancy and thus, knowledge (and temptation?) of how to go about violating the 6th law.
Getting knowledge in the present isn't getting knowledge from the present.

A journal, for instance, written 70 years ago by a young girl hiding from the Gestapo, isn't knowledge from the present--it was written at the time, in the words of the time, about something that was happening at the time. It's knowledge of the past, from the past.
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Offline madvogon

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Re: Is looking back in time a violation of the 6th Law?
« Reply #32 on: June 02, 2013, 02:28:35 AM »
Actually viewing the past vs. acquiring knowledge in the present is probably a loophole in the 6th law, just as Sue was a loophole in the necromancy rule.  The laws seem to be absolute, until the Council gets involved and they go all loosy-goosy.  Besides the Black Staff (I know, the exception defines the rule), they teach young magicians anti-mental incursion defenses.  The problem is, by teaching someone to defend against something, you are teaching them how to do it as well. 

Real world example here: one of my organic chemistry labs in college was how to add a nitrile group to methyl bromate.  This had to be done in very controlled, very cold conditions.  One group is safe.  Two groups is safe.  Three groups makes this little compound called trinitrotoluene, thank you Mr. Nobel.  My teacher told us the story of this being done commercially by an inattentive lab tech who trusted the process and blew out a large portion of the building he was in.

Offline GryMor

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Re: Is looking back in time a violation of the 6th Law?
« Reply #33 on: June 02, 2013, 04:39:06 PM »
Getting knowledge in the present isn't getting knowledge from the present.

A journal, for instance, written 70 years ago by a young girl hiding from the Gestapo, isn't knowledge from the present--it was written at the time, in the words of the time, about something that was happening at the time. It's knowledge of the past, from the past.

Unless I'm pulling the journal 70 years into it's own future so I can read it, then the journal and it's encoded information has already taken the long road, when I read it in some present, at that moment, the contents of the journal is being transcoded into a pattern of reflected photons and then transcoded into neural impulses by my visual and neural wetwear. The knowledge can be thought of as being about the past, but it is inherently being acquired in and from the present. Divination via "The image of death" stuff works the same way. Same thing for actual security cameras, they recorded events as they happened and brought those recordings forward the long way. There are plenty of ways to divine already existing recordings of past events. In fact, you can accses already existing recordings of future events via oracles, if the oracle is willing. But sometimes the only recordings of some events are some combination of peoples minds and taking the photonic road out of the solar system. The first has third law issues, the second has arcane link and scale issues. In these cases, direct viewing of events is all thats left. Now, what happens if someone at the event had their own detection spells going for scrying or was sensitive to chronomancy? With the various ways of looking at a pre-existing recording, there is no risk of ex post facto detection; the transcription was detectable and detected, or not, at the time of the events. With direct viewing via chronomantic divination, while not in the normal sense going against the flow of time, you are entangling (or finding to be entangled) a past point in the stream with your current point, and while this will almost always go unnoticed, there seems to be danger in this interaction.

In other words, my position is that chronomantic divination of the past, while not directly violating the 6th law, is inherently stepping very very close to it, with the knowledge of how to step over being implicit but not necessarily the knowledge of where the line is.

Edit: I say this while playing a character whose mind-state spent two years living in an oracular array (implemented as a recursively precognitive bio-ectoplasmic processing matrix computing self inclusive sums across it's future states) of his own construction; whose doppelganger constructed a surveillance network from augmented and mind-linked seagulls. There are other ways.

Edit2: The corollary to butterfly effect with (divinitory) chronomancy is the predestination loop, which may be seen as a preexisting eddy in the flow of time. Breaking the eddy may in effect be a 6th law violation even if the eddy itself is seen as the 6th law violation by observing wardens.
« Last Edit: June 02, 2013, 06:57:10 PM by GryMor »

Offline LordBorsti

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Re: Is looking back in time a violation of the 6th Law?
« Reply #34 on: June 02, 2013, 05:01:24 PM »
... With direct viewing via chronomantic divination, while not in the normal sense going against the flow of time, you are entangling (or finding to be entangled) a past point in the stream with your current point, and while this will almost always go unnoticed, there seems to be danger in this interaction.

In other words, my position is that chronomantic divination of the past, while not directly violating the 6th law, is inherently stepping very very close to it, with the knowledge of how to step over being implicit but not necessarily the knowledge of where the line is.

I think this pure story gold.

So in my group it will be this way:

Looking into the past itself is not a violation of the 6th law. But if you are not careful with your action it is quite possible that the act of divination can affect the past, change the past and therefore would be a violation of the 6th law in terms of lawbreaker stunts. If this is a violation in white council terms is another story (the doom of damocles comes to mind). The temptation component of breaking the laws again is quite obvious to me. You change something and in order to repair the "damage" you start changing other things and cross this border again and again like in the movie Butterfly Effect.

Offline vultur

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Re: Is looking back in time a violation of the 6th Law?
« Reply #35 on: June 02, 2013, 05:38:42 PM »
Chronomantic divination in the sense of actually sending a magical "viewer" back in time in a way that could theoretically be detected in the past, yes, I would consider to be a gray-area Sixth Law (EDIT: if you're actually introducing "new" magical energies into a past situation).

But Lea in Ghost Story implies there is some kind of "universal memory" in the Dresdenverse and tapping into that's how ghost-Harry can remember things he had forgotten as mortal-Harry, so I think you could get the exact same effects without actually dipping into the timestream... if you knew how.

Offline madvogon

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Re: Is looking back in time a violation of the 6th Law?
« Reply #36 on: June 02, 2013, 05:56:27 PM »
Unless I'm pulling the journal 70 years into it's own future so I can read it, then the journal and it's encoded information has already taken the long road, when I read it in some present, at that moment, the contents of the journal is being transcoded into a pattern of reflected photons and then transcoded into neural impulses by my visual and neural wetwear. <snip>

I think you're missing an opportunity.  A first person account, particularly an autobiographical one, is probably the best available scrying focus short of the bones of an actual participant.  Although this is only the written word, it represents a window into the mental state of the author and, in my opinion, would serve very well.

As far as the OP's decision on how to handle this, it seems my Time Wars comment was on point.  Thank you for giving me a seed that could turn into the basis of my own Dresden campaign.

Offline ReaderAt2046

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Re: Is looking back in time a violation of the 6th Law?
« Reply #37 on: June 03, 2013, 05:18:25 PM »

In Elizabeth C. Mock's Children Of Man series, there are mages called "steppers" who can physically travel back in time. However, due to the immutability of the past, a stepper essentially becomes a ghost when he travels back. He can't physically affect anything and no one can see him or otherwise interact with him. You could use a system like this to handle spells to divine the past.

Offline madvogon

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Re: Is looking back in time a violation of the 6th Law?
« Reply #38 on: June 04, 2013, 04:13:15 PM »
Sounds like an interesting series, but if Jim were using that system, there would be no need for the 6th Law.  I think applying the Time Wars physics would be more useful.

Offline Mr. Death

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Re: Is looking back in time a violation of the 6th Law?
« Reply #39 on: June 04, 2013, 04:21:28 PM »
Unless I'm pulling the journal 70 years into it's own future so I can read it, then the journal and it's encoded information has already taken the long road, when I read it in some present, at that moment, the contents of the journal is being transcoded into a pattern of reflected photons and then transcoded into neural impulses by my visual and neural wetwear. The knowledge can be thought of as being about the past, but it is inherently being acquired in and from the present. Divination via "The image of death" stuff works the same way. Same thing for actual security cameras, they recorded events as they happened and brought those recordings forward the long way. There are plenty of ways to divine already existing recordings of past events. In fact, you can accses already existing recordings of future events via oracles, if the oracle is willing. But sometimes the only recordings of some events are some combination of peoples minds and taking the photonic road out of the solar system. The first has third law issues, the second has arcane link and scale issues. In these cases, direct viewing of events is all thats left. Now, what happens if someone at the event had their own detection spells going for scrying or was sensitive to chronomancy? With the various ways of looking at a pre-existing recording, there is no risk of ex post facto detection; the transcription was detectable and detected, or not, at the time of the events. With direct viewing via chronomantic divination, while not in the normal sense going against the flow of time, you are entangling (or finding to be entangled) a past point in the stream with your current point, and while this will almost always go unnoticed, there seems to be danger in this interaction.
The point is, the information hasn't changed--it's coming as directly as it can from the original source, having been written down in that time, as it was happening. It's not a source of someone looking in hindsight.

Quote
In other words, my position is that chronomantic divination of the past, while not directly violating the 6th law, is inherently stepping very very close to it, with the knowledge of how to step over being implicit but not necessarily the knowledge of where the line is.
Yeah, I agree that it's probably close to it, at least in some respects--but I maintain that the purpose of the law, the way it's written, is to prevent someone from changing the past.

And I'd venture to say that trying to change the past isn't going to be the same sort of spell as just looking at the past, any more than watching a TV broadcast of a parade in progress is going to let you derail that parade.
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Offline Tedronai

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Re: Is looking back in time a violation of the 6th Law?
« Reply #40 on: June 04, 2013, 04:58:57 PM »
And I'd venture to say that trying to change the past isn't going to be the same sort of spell as just looking at the past, any more than watching a TV broadcast of a parade in progress is going to let you derail that parade.

It might derail the parade if a TV camera materialized out of thin air in plain view, but there's no real need for that, and most practitioners probably aren't that sloppy.
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Offline Taran

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Re: Is looking back in time a violation of the 6th Law?
« Reply #41 on: June 04, 2013, 05:40:27 PM »
Divination is a viable form of magic that does not involve time travel.  It uses information and probability and omens.   It shouldn't break any laws.  Read the definition of divination.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Divination
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/divination


Offline ReaderAt2046

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Re: Is looking back in time a violation of the 6th Law?
« Reply #42 on: June 04, 2013, 10:54:37 PM »
Sounds like an interesting series, but if Jim were using that system, there would be no need for the 6th Law.  I think applying the Time Wars physics would be more useful.

That's why I said "to divine the past". Obviously, a spell could be constructed that would let you alter the past, but this was more intended to be a spell that specifically couldn't break the 6th Law.

Offline GryMor

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Re: Is looking back in time a violation of the 6th Law?
« Reply #43 on: June 05, 2013, 12:15:09 AM »
That's why I said "to divine the past". Obviously, a spell could be constructed that would let you alter the past, but this was more intended to be a spell that specifically couldn't break the 6th Law.

Divination can hit wards; Divination is detectable by the target.

If you want to stay completely away from 6th law territory, then you don't divine the past directly (as then, that past scene/event/person/etc would be the target of your divination, wards/blocks/protections would apply, detection would apply, etc), you take an oblique approach, you want to look for some sort of imprint the past has made that, on it's own, has propagated/survived into the present. Harry has used the final vision of dead bodies, others have used ghosts, other suggestions in this thread include reconstructing an event from a diary of it and the emotional imprint made by the author.

Offline cold_breaker

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Re: Is looking back in time a violation of the 6th Law?
« Reply #44 on: June 26, 2013, 08:35:18 PM »
Couple of points:

Firstly, you can kill with a gun. This doesn't mean spells that kill are Kosher. For that same reason, using time magic to look back in time isn't kosher just because psychics can do it, or there are other ways to do it. Psychic powers are not the same as magic, no matter how much it may seem like it.
Secondly, like all magic, IT DEPENDS ON THE METHOD.

Basicly, it all boils down to the method. Look at the casters preferred methods for doing things. Are they being indirect about it? Are they physically going back in time? Are they temporarily giving themselves psychic powers? It all depends on the proposed method.