It's interesting to note how light has become more and more "special" over the past century. It used to be that light was just another entity, similar to sound. That the speed of light was just another constant, like the speed of sound.
But at some point, the speed of light became so special that it became a constant from all reference frames, regardless of how fast the observer herself is traveling. And now we believe that light is so special, that it can be viewed to have agency. That it "decides which is the shortest time, or the extreme one... smell the nearby paths, and check them against each other... and chooses that path"
As someone who's knowledge of physics maxed out at Newton's laws, it's interesting to see how today's perspective of the universe is so different and "light-centric" as compared to centuries past.
There are other particles that move at the speed of light (gluons, gravitons), so in that sense, light is not special. Classical mechanics can be formulated in Lagrangian form such that the path that a particle takes is the path of least action (for light, action is proportional to time). Don't put too much weight on light having agency because this description of how particles move is mathematically equivalent to a system of differential equations, in which the infinitesimally future position of a particle is determined by local information. Classical mechanics is just an approximation of quantum mechanics anyway. Quantum mechanics clarifies why particles move according to the principle of least action: the paths close to the path of least action have large probability amplitudes.
Just triggered the thought that we should be trying to exploit the property of light to pursue the shortest path as a means to calculate hard problems. No idea how this would actually work... but I would gander someone already thought of this and it didn't pan out.
But at some point, the speed of light became so special that it became a constant from all reference frames, regardless of how fast the observer herself is traveling. And now we believe that light is so special, that it can be viewed to have agency. That it "decides which is the shortest time, or the extreme one... smell the nearby paths, and check them against each other... and chooses that path"
As someone who's knowledge of physics maxed out at Newton's laws, it's interesting to see how today's perspective of the universe is so different and "light-centric" as compared to centuries past.