(where the lattice thickens)
On Causal Structures, Temporal Agency, and the Geometry of Choosing
I was sitting on my newly built deck at w.oodland, thinking about permanence. If I build this deck well enough, will it still be here in ten, twenty, thirty years? Or will the rains erode it, the sun warp it, or time simply unmake it board by board, like some quiet unraveling by barefoot entropy? This rectangle of treated pine and galvanized screws is my cathedral for now. But I can't help wondering—what choices gathered here, and what effect will this one have in return?
The boards I used were once trees in a forest I’ll never see, their branches alive with birdsong. The fasteners, once ore in a seam someone blasted open. They were not destined for my deck. They could’ve been part of someone else’s dream—a treehouse, a footbridge over a shallow stream, or a woodshed filled with walnut boards for future furniture builds. But no, they’re here. They’re mine. The sum of a million invisible yeses and no-thank-yous that landed me in this moment.
So I sit here, on a surface made permanent only by intention, thinking about decision theory, causal sets, and the arrow of time. The deck creaks beneath me—a sound likely more thermal expansion than philosophical agreement, but I take it as both.
In causal set theory (CST), time isn’t a line. It’s a growing structure—a branching network of events, each linked to what came before by the rule of cause and effect. Each action fixes some portion of the universe’s future. Time grows as a tree, not a tape measure.
But what if decisions—true ones, made by agents with options—don’t just follow the causal structure, but accelerate it? Adding branches at a rate that physics alone couldn’t manage.
This is the shift—from pure cause-and-effect governed by physical law, to something new: a threshold of agency. Before this threshold, systems like atoms, molecules, and enzymes obeyed only force and fit. But after, when a system could assess alternatives and act despite equal constraints, the branching of the causal set changed. It began to respond to information. This deserves a name: a decision singularity, a cognitive ignition.
We might call it the Divergence Threshold.
At this threshold, the causal set doesn't fracture—it flowers. Decisions begin to shape time’s flow, bending it toward outcomes that weren’t preordained. Every choice becomes an accelerant. The lattice thickens. The structure becomes expressive.
Of course, not everything decides. An atom bonding doesn’t weigh alternatives—it follows gradients. Molecules react because their energies align; catalysts lower barriers, but don’t negotiate.
Enzymes go further. Their shape defines function. They grip molecules with uncanny precision. But still—no choice, only collision.
Then there’s Tetrahymena, a single-celled swimmer. When it reverses in response to gradients or charge, it isn’t merely reacting—it’s adjusting. The response is conditional. It smells of choice.
And then there’s me. A human with memory and motive. Who decided to build a deck. I chose its place, sourced the materials, judged the grain, placed the fasteners. That wasn’t inevitable. It was authored.
Somewhere in the churn of matter becoming life, scattered across the universe and then, at last, here on this planet, the first true decision emerged. To turn toward warmth. To delay division. To engulf. In that instant, the universe stopped unfolding predictably and began telling a story.
And here I am, in that story, sitting on a deck that wouldn’t exist if I hadn’t once clicked to order joist hangers. That click nudged a different piece of hardware away from someone else’s timeline. Their deck didn’t use this hanger—maybe theirs was bent, needed tapping straight. That hiccup changed their rhythm. A breath delayed, a question asked a moment later. A pattern shifted. A conversation happened slightly differently. Maybe that changed everything—not by breaking anything, but by reweaving the future.
If time is a vector, it’s because choices give it direction. Each decision adds volume. The structure becomes denser with meaning, like a poem written one line at a time, no edits allowed.
Maybe that’s why 3D space even makes sense to us. We understand space through movement—through sequences of change. We remember it. We stitch it into meaning.
Which brings me back: how long will this deck last? Will tonight’s gust tip it a hair off true, will a summer storm flex its frame, will winter’s frost worry each fastener, will UV bake it pale, will carpenter bees settle in and hollow it year by year until—thirty summers from now—it slouches into mulch beneath goldenrod and prairie grass while I still insist I built it solidly? Probably. But even as it weathers, it keeps the moment when thought became action nailed in place. It doesn’t just say I was here; it shows that I chose.
We build not because things last forever, but because they echo. A choice made physical. A vector cast into unfolding.
So I stay a little longer, fingers on the grain. Breathing. Letting the moment ripple—not a pause, but a quiet ignition. Not waiting—but shaping time, gently, with the weight of choosing.
Because this is the human gift: not just to follow the timeline, but to sketch its shape with intention. Our decisions don’t merely ride the flow—they chisel the form. We don't just move forward; we sculpt forward.
And if that’s true, then maybe we should be dancing more. Dancing through the causal set—celebrating each branch we grow, each ripple we send. We should move like we mean it.
So I built the deck sturdy enough for that.