I’m just about forty pages in or so. If this question can’t be answered without spoiling something, please warn me (and other thread readers) before answering it.
I’m troubled by the following apparent inconsistency:
People are not allowed (per article 19) to do things that violate causality
But people are allowed to communicate instantaneously across interstellar distances using quantum entanglement.
Put aside the fact that entanglement doesn’t actually allow for this kind of instantaneous communication.
My question is, does the book end up explaining how it’s possible to communicate instantaneously without violating causality? Because as far as I can tell, this isn’t possible. And that mars my enjoyment of the book at the moment, since the proscription against violating causality seems to be one of the major background-points of the book…
I’m not sure if it’s a spoiler or not, but I’ll put it in spoiler tags anyway:
[spoiler]The prohibition against breaking causality is not an absolute law of the universe. It’s because one very powerful dude doesn’t want it to happen and takes steps to stop it from happening.
He’s willing to be somewhat flexible about it, which I guess is why stuff like instantaneous communications gets a pass. It’s not technically a violation, because while it does play around with time, nobody’s using it for shenanigans or creating paradoxes in their personal time-lines.[/spoiler]
[spoiler]I understood that it’s a law in the legal sense rather than the physical sense.
I guess, though, what you’re saying is that the communication exception can be thought of as of a piece with the exception that is apparently made for causality-breaking weapons used in a limited fashion so long as their effects remain limited to the immediate tactical situation?