Poll: Time Paradox

[Jamous]

Anything where something tries to change the past cannot work, as if you change anything that you have knowledge of, then you would already know about it and any knowledge that you had because something else happened in the event's place would be erased, so if you DO invent a time machine and go back in an attempt to 'change time' you are doomed to failure. (Basically anything you do if you go back in time simply contributes towards the current present, so you cannot change time.)

 

[PirateKing]

I always thought that you could just go back to a second after you left, thus retaining all of your memories of the incident and keeping the timestream clean.

 

[Veylon]

The paradigm I like to use is this:

If you go back in time, the point you back to is now the present, and everything is essentially 'rerolled', and effectively you just 'appear' out of nowhere. If you go back into the future, there's no spot waiting for you.

So, if Marty from Back to the Future goes back to 1955 in the time machine, there he is with a time machine. If his parents get together or not, he doesn't fade. He's just there. If they have a son and name him Marty, this second Marty will exist separately of the first, and will not be a clone. If the first Marty goes back to the future, there will be another Marty there, one who is a different person with his own life story.

I like this paradigm because it ditches paradoxes (which I loathe). Causality is cut the moment the jump through time backwards is made.

 

[TaborMallory]

Absolutely not. I don't feel like explaining the extent of my beliefs about time travel, but the important part is that altering things in the past has no effect whatsoever on the future. That's my belief, anyway. I might post the detailed version later.

The paradigm I like to use is this:

If you go back in time, the point you back to is now the present, and everything is essentially 'rerolled', and effectively you just 'appear' out of nowhere. If you go back into the future, there's no spot waiting for you.

So, if Marty from Back to the Future goes back to 1955 in the time machine, there he is with a time machine. If his parents get together or not, he doesn't fade. He's just there. If they have a son and name him Marty, this second Marty will exist separately of the first, and will not be a clone. If the first Marty goes back to the future, there will be another Marty there, one who is a different person with his own life story.

I like this paradigm because it ditches paradoxes (which I loathe). Causality is cut the moment the jump through time backwards is made.

This makes sense. It doesn't sound exactly the way I imagine time travel to be, but it definitely makes sense.

 

[Captain Blackout]

Causality is not what you think it is. It is only our limited perspective that leads us to believe that cause naturally follows effect. In truth there is no 'cause', no 'effect. There are merely related events. Time travel does not lead to paradoxes, only to a greater locus of related events. In fact there are no paradoxes, only events whose relation you do not yet understand.

 

[PlasticTree]

Anything where something tries to change the past cannot work, as if you change anything that you have knowledge of, then you would already know about it and any knowledge that you had because something else happened in the event's place would be erased, so if you DO invent a time machine and go back in an attempt to 'change time' you are doomed to failure. (Basically anything you do if you go back in time simply contributes towards the current present, so you cannot change time.)

Yeah, thought of that one quite some time ago. Shame it always ruins a bit your experience with timetravel-movies, as they never use this one.

 

[The Great Fa]

This reminds me strongly of the time travel rules in the Legacy of Kain series (which, by the way, is rather ridiculously good). Of course it does raise some disturbing questions about free will. If temporal paradoxes are impossible, it means that everything that will ever happen is already pre-determined.

 

[Frybird]

While i agree more to Jamous, but i find Veylons Post more interesting when it comes to time travel stories.

For example, this theory was nicely used in "Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles", where there were two people who travelled back in time and THOUGHT to know each other because they were together in "the future". But since they both did not travel back in the same moment, the changes made in the present by one traveller changed the future already in slight, but significant ways.

 

[nerdsamwich]

I choose not to believe in time travel of any sort(including prophecy) because it invalidates free will. If it is possible to travel from future to past, or even just to view the future, then the future has already happened, and is even more inevitable than paper burning in fire. Of course, I may believe in free will precisely because the course of history is already set in stone, but if that's the case it doesn't matter what I think because it's all predetermined anyway.

 

[goatzilla8463]

I'll tell you when I figure out time travel.

 

[StarStruckStrumpets]

The thing is, any action you do will have an opposite reaction, so even walking in the past would have it's consequences. I think the kind of time paradox we are talking about is something like this:

You go back in time to before you were concieved and kill your father. With your father dead, you would not be concieved, and you wouldn't exist, therefore never being able to kill your father in the first place. Then the cycle would repeat itself for an eternity because there would be no way of altering the action/consequence.

That's my theory.

 

[Captain Blackout]

I choose not to believe in time travel of any sort(including prophecy) because it invalidates free will. If it is possible to travel from future to past, or even just to view the future, then the future has already happened, and is even more inevitable than paper burning in fire. Of course, I may believe in free will precisely because the course of history is already set in stone, but if that's the case it doesn't matter what I think because it's all predetermined anyway.

Pre-determination does not invalidate free will. The future may well be set in stone, but if so, it is because of the choices we will make freely.

 

[Lukeje]

The alternative theory is that when you go back in time is given by the many worlds theory. Any changes that you made in the universe that you visit won't have any effect on your universe, only on the universe that you visit. Thus, no paradoxes.

 

[Vrex360]

The oldest paradox, man goes into the future to steal a piece of technology from the future and bring it back to the past. Pretends to invent it. Can you guess what would go wrong?

Answer: If he did that, then the person who really DID invent that thing would never have come up with the idea for it so therefore it couldn't exist in the future for him to take because no one ever invented it, but at the same time it would HAVE to have existed because otherwise what did he swipe? It has to exist because that's the only way it CAN'T exist. This goes in endless circles.
It would break the universe.

 

[lenin_117]

Anything where something tries to change the past cannot work, as if you change anything that you have knowledge of, then you would already know about it and any knowledge that you had because something else happened in the event's place would be erased, so if you DO invent a time machine and go back in an attempt to 'change time' you are doomed to failure. (Basically anything you do if you go back in time simply contributes towards the current present, so you cannot change time.)

True, but you can go back in the past and change it so the present comes true, which otherwise may not be the case.

 

[arc101]

You cannot change time, as you going back to change something actually would create the future in which you exist, because time fits together like a jigsaw and cannot be changed.
I believe the notion of creating paradoxes cannot happen because anything you do in the past would not change the future in anyway, because the past has happened, and your arrival would have already happened, in the time you aimed for, and any changes you could have made would have made the world you were born into, and thus you cannot go back and change it, because anything you would do would be cause of the events now.
In simple and less garbled terms: Time is linear, and changes made create the world you live in.
Also, the notion of time travel in itself is unfeasible for the future, as we would be constantly be visited, through history, by people, and this has not happened, so i can deduce that time travel is not possible.

 

[nerdsamwich]

I choose not to believe in time travel of any sort(including prophecy) because it invalidates free will. If it is possible to travel from future to past, or even just to view the future, then the future has already happened, and is even more inevitable than paper burning in fire. Of course, I may believe in free will precisely because the course of history is already set in stone, but if that's the case it doesn't matter what I think because it's all predetermined anyway.

Pre-determination does not invalidate free will. The future may well be set in stone, but if so, it is because of the choices we will make freely.

Speaking of paradoxes...how do you figure we have a choice if the choices are already made? That's like the Ford advertisement that the Model T comes in any color you want, as long as it's black.

 

[johnman]

I will let you all know when i get back from my visit to the 80's, i am going to go and see Men Without Hats Live as soon as i have fixed the temporal transfer.
I will try and make a paradox and see what happens.

 

[EMFCRACKSHOT]

You cannot change time, as you going back to change something actually would create the future in which you exist, because time fits together like a jigsaw and cannot be changed.
I believe the notion of creating paradoxes cannot happen because anything you do in the past would not change the future in anyway, because the past has happened, and your arrival would have already happened, in the time you aimed for, and any changes you could have made would have made the world you were born into, and thus you cannot go back and change it, because anything you would do would be cause of the events now.
Also, the notion of time travel in itself is unfeasible for the future, as we would be constantly be visited, through history, by people, and this has not happened, so i can deduce that time travel is not possible.

What he said.

 

[Stegofreak]

I like to think that straight forward time travel is impossible but that are many time-streams that you can switch between. Thus going back in time wouldn't change your timestream other than the fact that you are no longer in it. Of course that means you can seriously f**k up another timestream without worry but finding you way back to your own would be near impossible. At best you could arrive back in one that resembels your original home.