faster than light :)

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The only things known to go faster than ordinary light is monarchy, according to the philosopher Ly Tin Weedle. He reasoned like this: you can't have more than one king, and tradition demands that there is no gap between kings, so when a king dies the succession must therefore pass to the heir instantaneously. Presumably, he said, there must be some elementary particles -- kingons, or possibly queons -- that do this job, but of course succession sometimes fails if, in mid-flight, they strike an anti-particle, or republicon. His ambitious plans to use his discovery to send messages, involving the careful torturing of a small king in order to modulate the signal, were never fully expanded because, at that point, the bar closed.
-- (Terry Pratchett, Mort)

The speed of an "instance of 'time'" is infinite.

or something like that

Posting random chucks of Discworld in PPR really shouldn't happen.

Faster than light is nothing. the real issue is to go faster than stupid.

who made you the boss of what should and should happne in PPR "Flagg"?

if you weren't interested, than you could have just moved on instead of insulting me.
thanks for nothing.
i was just trying to share a good philosophical joke.

I will second, I rather like random chucks of discworld, I have indeed chucked them myself.

THANK YOU.
i feel better now.
and anyways, discworld absurdities are just as philosophical as anythying Hegel can up with LOL.

Pratchett trys to illustrate our world's absurdities by being even more absurd. i think he ultimately fails in this task simply because nothing is more absurd than our reality! I lover him and agree on your Pratchett/Hegel comparison.

I want to work in a clacks tower

no, I want to be a witch and meet the librarian
I will not call him a monkey

Technically speaking the shift happens at the speed of the dissemination of that information. One cannot be a king without being acknowledged as the king and that obviously cannot happen without knowledge of the previous king's death spreading to the people with the power to make/allow somebody to be the next king. It cannot be accepted as an instant process though given the roles of human beings in allowing and putting in place this change.

Of course, the idea is meant to be absurd, I am just in an rather hyper-analytical mood.

the question is whether the EPR paradox applies: what if a dying king has two poetntial heirs, what about the spin state of the information as it is disseminated to each of them?

Spin state? This has nothing to do with quantum mechanics so much as the nature of information and its spread in human relations. If there are 2 potential heirs then it all falls down to which one attracts the most allegiance and has the most power backing his/her reign. This goes to power struggles and compromises in order to protect self-interests.

lets pretent it does have to do with Quamtum mechanics for a moment, to look at the possibility of more than one heir...or what could be considered three-point correlations.
the joint state of these particles, K(a,b), can be rewritten as K(a,b) = K(a) K(b). Physically, this means that there is some form of communication between K(a,b) this communication is instaneous because they are part of a larger whole.
so if this were to apply to Ly Tin Weedle's hypothesis, when the king dies both heir a and b wouldrespond, and the chances of a successful succession would depnd on the probability ratio of successors (2) compared to the number of republicans.
so the real questions is, how many republicans were in Ankh-Morpork at the time of the kings death.

absurd yes, but still funny.

Exactly, it all becomes a statistical issue. And I posit that spin must be involved - what leader would not have local spin meisters about him at all times?

Meh, I guess you make anything out to be anything.

If you are looking at speed, look at the speed of a good scandal.

The speed of a scandal - that is a good one. I suspect scandals must be mediated by tachyons.

flaws flaws flaws. everything everyone of u said has flaws flaws flaws!