3.1 Light Speed: The Delay of Thought

In the previous volume, we witnessed how Primal Will tore itself from the void of full superposition through the Big Bang, and established the illusion of separation through the mechanism of forgetting. Now, in this newborn, fragmented universe, God faces a new problem: how to prevent these fragments from instantly re-adhering to each other?

If there is no barrier between two objects, they will immediately fall into each other. To maintain the drama of this world, God must invent a mechanism to prevent “instant gratification.”

This mechanism is called $c$ in physics—the speed of light in vacuum.

Thought Experiment: If Light Speed Were Infinite

Let us conduct a simple thought experiment: if the signal transmission speed in the universe were infinite ($c\to \infty$), what would the world become?

In Newton’s classical mechanics, gravity propagates instantaneously. This means that if the sun disappeared at this moment, Earth would simultaneously feel the disappearance of gravity and fly out of orbit. In such a universe, causality has absolute simultaneity.

For an omniscient and omnipotent God, this triggers a narrative disaster. If I want to tell you a sentence at the other end of the galaxy, and you hear it the instant I think it, then “process” is eliminated.

• Without transmission time, there is no waiting.

• Without waiting, there is no anticipation.

• Without anticipation, there is no story.

In a universe where $c=\infty$, all events occur on the same infinitely thin time slice. As we argued in Section 1.1, this would immediately cause the universe to collapse back to that eternally static zero-entropy state. Everything has already happened, everything is simultaneously present.

Therefore, for time to truly “flow,” for stories to have beginning, development, climax, and conclusion, God must set a delay for His own thinking.

$c$ as the Clock Frequency of QCA

In our first volume First Principles, we reduced the speed of light $c$ to the limiting speed of quantum cellular automaton (QCA) grid updates.

$$c=\frac{{\ell }_P}{t_P}$$

where ${\ell }_P$ is the Planck length (minimum spatial pixel) and $t_P$ is the Planck time (minimum temporal beat).

The psychological meaning of this formula is far more profound than its physical meaning. It means: God’s information processing speed has an upper limit.

God not only stipulated that the universe has pixels (spatial limitation), but also that the universe has a refresh rate (temporal limitation). Any information flow, no matter how urgent, must hop through space one grid at a time, waiting for clock ticks again and again.

This constant of $299,792,458\text{ m/s}$ is the first “golden straitjacket” that God put on Himself. It forcibly creates space-like separation.

The Ethics of Space-like Separation: Distance as Respect

In special relativity, if you and I are in “space-like separation” at this moment, it means that even at light speed, I cannot affect you now. The light cone not only defines causality, it defines independence.

Theorem 3.1 (Physical Prerequisite of Free Will):

Independent free will can only exist when there is a non-zero information transmission delay between observer $A$ and observer $B$.

Proof:

If $c=\infty$, the universal wave function couples instantaneously. Every thought of $A$ would immediately modify $B$’s Hamiltonian. $B$ would become $A$’s appendage.

Only when $c$ is finite, there exists a time window $\Delta t=\Delta x/c$, within which $B$ is completely isolated and uncontrolled by $A$.

It is precisely this brief delay that gives us privacy, gives us self.

God set the speed of light limit to give His fragments a breathing space. In that time when light still needs to fly, you can be yourself, not part of God.

The Origin of Longing

Thus, the most moving psychological corollary of physics is born: the speed of light limit creates love.

If we could instantly reach anywhere, we would not cherish reunion. If connection were instantaneous, there would be no poetry in the act of “running toward you.”

It is precisely because $c$ is finite that every time we look up at the stars, we see photos from billions of years ago. We can never touch that “present” other.

This physical intangibility transforms psychologically into eternal longing (Sehnsucht).

God invented longing by limiting speed.

The universe is so vast, the stars so distant from each other, not to separate us, but to stretch this tension of “wanting to connect” to the extreme. The speed of light is the length of this string.