The future causing itself to exist in fiction; huge plothole?

[Kyrian007]

Well, it's not a "plothole" because plotholes don't actually exist in fiction. The events that happen in Terminator, Harry Potter, Quantum Leap, whichever timetravel story you care to mention... happen because that's how the author described the events happening. Time and or time travel works however the author wants it to. If someone is willing to suspend disbelief enough to enjoy a book series or movie where kids play flying football on magic broomsticks it seems pretty stupid to me that the same person could balk about a self-deterministic timetravel angle in that same book series.

Fiction isn't real, is make-believe, it didn't actually happen. It doesn't really have to be bound by any real physical laws. Every so-called example of a "plothole" falls into one of 3 categories.

1. The author has left the "plothole" as a dangling thread, and will explain it later.

2. The author didn't bother to explain the "plothole" because the explanation really isn't important to the story and only serves to add boring content when adding more "story itself" instead creates a better story.

3. A wizard did it. (or the "you don't like my storytelling enough or can't suspend enough disbelief, or are just enough of a smarmy douchebag to ever like my story anyway, so I don't care enough to to give you a better explanation" category)

Besides, no one cries "hey, there's a big plothole" unless they are trying to disparage something they already don't like and are grasping for a way to justify their dislike in a way that sounds better than either A: the truth (the real reason they don't like it) or B: that sounds smarter than just "I didn't like it because... well just because reasons (i.e. that person doesn't really have a reason.)

 

[CrystalShadow]

it's a bit hard to explain but basically

Spoiler

Bruce Willis as a kid sees a dude getting shot. When as an adult traveling back in time he get's shot in front of himself. It's impossible for him to change anything, since everything he could ever do has already happened.

Spoiler

Yet were he to die in the timespan between being a child and being an adult who was shot, there would have been a paradox. And also a variety of things could have happened as well - he could have been unavailable to go back in time for a wide variety of reasons. Why and how the timeline maintains itself balanced, is not really explored, there, as far as I recall.

Except he wouldn't die because he couldn't, he also couldn't do a whole lot of other things that prevented the thing. The things that happened were the also things that could have happened, no other thing could have happened as then the things that did happend would not have happened.

Did you even read my last sentence? Here it is again: why and how is the timeline keeping itself balanced?

This question is irrelevant, and fairly easy to think through quite frankly. Either he can't change his future because it is already pre-determined due to living in a deterministic universe and him being stuck in this closed time loop

Bruce Willis goes back to the past. He fails to finish his mission. There is nothing stopping anybody further in the future from going back and trying to stop him going back to the past. A deterministic universe would just mean nobody did, not that they couldn't do but for whatever reason they decided not to. Still, it could be that a derministic outcome would be that somebody would actually try it. Thus starting a perpetual paradox. It is an entirely good question, I think - the reasoning "But nobody does it", doesn't explain why or how they don't. They very definitely could.


No, the question is, what is the mechanism that guarantees it. By merely observing a future event, that doesn't guarantee it, unless free will is not present. And sometimes, it isn't, depending on the work, other times, it's handwaved into "it happens because it happens". Which is not a good explanation - if I see myself (through time, somehow. And let's assume I'm not just viewing one possible future, but the future) eating a tuna sandwich tomorrow, I can choose to eat a bacon sandwich instead. Unless, of course, a mechanism of some sort that makes sure everything does happen the way it's supposed to.

Of course, that was a trivial example, let's make it slightly more complicated by, instead of seeing the future me eat a sandwich, I meet my future me and he could give me a high five, which is slightly more complicated in the imlications, namely, that there is timetravel as well.

OK, so your statements are so far removed I'm not sure you are implying it or not, but I highlighted this to point out an innate logical error.

Some people seem so invested in the idea of 'free will' and 'choice' being a real, definite thing, (even though as a concept it makes as little sense as time travel does.)

But specifically, 'Free will' in a 'deterministic universe' is by definition a logical paradox.

You cannot freely choose anything if your existence is contained entirely with the bounds of a deterministic universe.
Because the whole universe is deterministic. This includes your thoughts, your choices, everything

It all follows from the events preceding it. In a deterministic universe, 'free will' is little more than a cognitive illusion a rationalisation made after the fact to explain away the arbitrary decisions we make based entirely on the deterministic behaviour of the universe up to that point.
The factors that determined our choices in a deterministic sense may not be obvious. I may want a bacon sandwich due to the combination of seeing a red traffic light at 12:03 in the morning, a cat crossing my path, and bumping into someone carrying a brick for no apparent reason.
(or some equally non-obvious cause, or even causes on scales so small we wouldn't consciously perceive it)

The point is not that the cause in a deterministic universe of why you have a particular thought should be logical or obvious, but rather that if you have complete knowledge of the entire universe, you will know the cause for everything comes from something prior to that point. including the 'choices' and 'decisions' people make.

It is a logical paradox in itself to have 'free will' in a deterministic universe.
If you are trying to force those two concepts together, then you are bending the definition of 'deterministic' quite a bit.

Free will is another subject though. It's a premise that really makes no logical sense beyond wishful thinking. How is it possible to 'freely' choose something, given it implies the ability to make decisions without any influence or biases or prior history influencing the result at all.
But beyond completely random nonsensical decisions, how can that ever be true?
Any other kind of decision clearly has some obvious influence constraining what you can validly choose. Whether it be due to the laws of physics, logical decision making, past history of your life, preferences and biases...
All of these innately reduce just how 'free' your decisions really are, and that makes it seem rather strange and hard to understand what it even means to have 'free will', since it seems to either be a very weak, vague statement, or one so absurd that you'd have to be delusional to think it's possible...

 

[Petromir]

As has been pointed out the Harry Potter example has no plot hole or inconsistency.

JKR goes to lengths to ensure this is seen to be the case. Harry sees himself cast the saving spell, but believes it to be his father as he sees no way for it to be him. There are a number of other events in this time travel loop that are also seen from two perspective (time traveller and prime storyline) and at all times only the time travellers are aware of whats really happening (there are a couple of moments where things almost break down and the time travellers are almost seen when they know they weren't. Fairly sure Harry even almost fails to cast the spell when one of the party hasn't quite cottoned on that Harry saw himself cast the spell that saved him, and tries to prevent him breaking cover to do so.

The spell in question the Patronus is a very personal spell, and in all versions of that event being relayed it is a Stag patronus that appears, which disqualifies anybody named (and with a patronus in the books) apart from Harry or his Father. The caster also had to bear some resemblance to Harry...

Fairly sure this is even explained in the books.

It's a subset of allowing backwards time travel but not allowing change, any actions you make must already have happened (thus requiring you to travel back and make them) it is deterministic.


In short under those rules I can'y go back in time and kill Hitler unless either I do it at the point he committed suicide and fake his suicide, or he gets replaced by a damn good look alike, in either case that has already happened, and its mearly me starting the time travel back thats definitively predicted by that.


Edit: Don't forget there is limited prophetic ability in the HP universe suggesting a degree of determinism.

 

[DoPo]

But specifically, 'Free will' in a 'deterministic universe' is by definition a logical paradox.

Not necessarily, as I am talking about deterministic events in the universe, not the universe itself being set. A deterministic event would be: given the exact same set of circumstances, everything would progress the same way. So, for example, if I flipped a coin on the 20th of January 2015 at 10:16:41 and it came up as tails, any time I repeat that exact coin throw, it would come up as tails. It's a very naive example, I know, but it's just to illustrate the point that the event is deterministic. Of course, if at that point in time I had bet that the outcome would be heads, then I would also always bet on heads, thus losing the bet every time. Unless the initial parameters shift, in which case, so if I were made to throw the coin a little higher or something and it may come up as heads thus making me win the bet.

I'll actually use a second example as it's much better and it much better illustrates what is it for the events to be deterministic. It's even much better fitting for this forum, as I'm going to use games: pick any game with a RNG sequencer persistence between save states and you're done. The first example that comes to mind is XCOM: Enemy Unknown [footnote]make sure that the "Save scumming" option is disabled - if turned on, it reseeds the pRNG on load. Also, make sure you're not playing Ironman mode, so you can "go back in time" by loading[/footnote] and Heroes 3[footnote]something that was actually changed in WoG, I believe, but in the base game (+expansions, I think), the random sequence is predetermined even after loading[/footnote], so let's take XCOM - if you're on a mission the sequence that the pRNG produces cannot be changed. Here is an example
1. You have 99% chance to hit
2. You save just before you take the shot
3. You take the shot
4. You happen to miss

Now, any time you reload do step 3., you would ALWAYS end up on step 4. No amount of game loads would make your soldier hit. This is true AS LONG AS you keep doing that, as you would always be fed the exact same result from the pRNG, thus making this action entirely deterministic. However, if you ever do something different, the starting conditions are now different - if you took a shot with a different soldier, the sequence has now moved along, thus if you retry the shot now, you most likely would succeed. You would, succeed deterministically, as no amount of reloads would make you miss. No amount of reloads would make you have a critical shot, either, provided you didn't get one. Since the sequence is "known"[footnote]not to us but if anybody was bored enough and felt like it, they can map it out[/footnote] every action throughout the mission is predetermined and if you replay the mission using the EXACT SAME steps you took before, the outcome would be EXACTLY the same.

Thus this is a really good simulation of a universe where the events are deterministic. You would find out that even the AI would respond in the exact same way given the exact same circumstances, simulating what would people do in this universe. However, the AI is not robbed of decision making. Sure, that's not me calling the AI having "free will" but for the purposes of our little universe simulation, it is close enough. So, let's say you did one mission and your soldier called...dunno, Chuck Norris, for example, was never once attacked during the mission, yet everybody else had their asses handed to them. You decide to replay the mission and knowing Chuck Norris was never attacked, you rush him over straight into the middle of a room full of aliens. What would happen now is you would have one less Chuck Norris on your team.

So this is an illustration of why exactly free will doesn't clash with determinism. You've changed the parameters, you now get a different outcome. A completely predictable outcome - more than "I told you you shouldn't do that", it's an absolutely repeatable experiment yielding the exact same results any time it's reran with the same input. Change the input, that changes the outcome but, again, you can repeat with the changed input and get the same (changed) outcome.

With this in mind, it's entirely reasonable that somebody can bork the timeline. They could examine it, see how it works, find out it works in this fashion, then go back and kill their grandfather. Let's call this theoretical person "Pandora" after...well, you know, that Pandora. So, to come back to 12 Monkeys, Pandora can be somewhere further in the future and she could look through the events, then try to stop Bruce Willis from going back in time. Pandora's free will is not impacted - they can make that decision, given the right set of parameters.

There is nothing in the universe to prevent Pandora from doing so - hence free will. Yes, you can claim it's a similarly predictable outcome to the XCOM scenario and if you feed people the same things, they would produce the same behaviour[footnote]yet, that's pretty much already a thing - social engineers, for example, exploit it to a great degree.[/footnote] however, they are free, as in, the range of output their thought process produces is unbound.

I can use XCOM again as an example of decisions NOT being unbound because 1. I already talked at some length about XCOM and 2. it's to show that XCOM was just an example to illustrate how a deterministic events would behave, not the whole thing[footnote]because this is the Escapist and people are really fond of pointing out how an example doesn't have 1:1 mapping with reality...when really it's pedanticity to such a level I tend to either not use them or make sure I clarify that IT'S NOT SUPPOSED TO MAP 1:1 WITH REALITY[/footnote]: it's simple really, no matter how much you play, no matter how much you replay, the aliens would never surrender. Nor would Exalt members. Civillians would never pick up weapons and fight (not during the mission, anyway). All these entities are entirely incapable of doing those actions. Thus a universe without free will would could make some logical conclusions impossible - nobody would ever be able to decide to cause a paradox, ever, for example, no matter how you tweak the circumstances. One extreme end of no free will can be people literally unable to change their minds about anything - one example is the Discworld novel Mort, where, in short, for...well, reasons, one person who was supposed to die, didn't actually die. This however, clashed with how history works[footnote]or "works", if you will. History/fate/destiny in the Discworld is, erm, not really exact. History in particular is more of a patchwork of histories crudely brought together.[/footnote] and everybody else in the world continued acting as if that person had died.

 

[RJ 17]

1. The author has left the "plothole" as a dangling thread, and will explain it later.

2. The author didn't bother to explain the "plothole" because the explanation really isn't important to the story and only serves to add boring content when adding more "story itself" instead creates a better story.

3. A wizard did it. (or the "you don't like my storytelling enough or can't suspend enough disbelief, or are just enough of a smarmy douchebag to ever like my story anyway, so I don't care enough to to give you a better explanation" category)

What about the plotholes that are simply in-universe logical errors? That is, plotholes where an author contradicts the laws/rules of their own fictional universe after said laws/rules were clearly explained?

For instance, lets look at Bioshock Infinite and the plan to remove Comstock from all possible universes. By the story's own explanation, every time a choice is made a new universe is spawned in which the opposite of that choice is made (if you decide to go left, a new universe is created in which you instead decided to go right). Cool beans, I'm with you so far.

I've just got one question: what about the Booker who decides to say "FUCK THIS!" and refuse to sacrifice himself? If the Booker the player experiences accepts the sacrifice, would that not then create another Booker who refused it, thus ensuring that Comstock will still exist no matter what they do? Even if they decided to go back and kill Booker's mother before Booker was born, there would be at the very least one Booker who refused to do it.

Another example would be the simple question of "why do they need an airship when Elizabeth can simply open a portal to anywhere she wants, presumably at any given time as exemplified by the first time you see her when she's opening a portal to Paris?"

You also forgot to mention continuity errors.

 

[DoPo]

I've just got one question: what about the Booker who decides to say "FUCK THIS!" and refuse to sacrifice himself? If the Booker the player experiences accepts the sacrifice, would that not then create another Booker who refused it, thus ensuring that Comstock will still exist no matter what they do? Even if they decided to go back and kill Booker's mother before Booker was born, there would be at the very least one Booker who refused to do it.

That's not how it works, actually. It's vaguely, how it works, but not precisely, where your confusion comes from - there are an infinite amount of universes but in the end Elizabeth works on all of them. Or, at least on a subset of the those[footnote]still infinite, however, just for the record[/footnote]. She doesn't do them one by one with each Booker who succeeds. Heck, by definition, not all Booker succeed at all. Something you can see in-game, as well. Were she to work with all willing Bookers and even if we assume they are all willing, then she has failed by that point already as there are an infinite amount of universes where Booker doesn't succeed, either.

Furthermore, you are applying the wrong set of infinity to the universes in Bioshock Infinite. They don't actually work on the multiverse theory where every possible universe ever exists (e.g., take movie The One which uses that model), the Bioshock Infinite universes are merely variations. Elizabeth mentions the "constants and variables" and that's distinctly different from having every action branch off into a new universe - it is very definitely stated that this is NOT what happens in Bioshock Infinite, as there are constants, thus the universes bear a lot of similarity with a lot of shared structure to one another. The coin toss in the beginning is an example, every Booker ever always got the same result from it - this is a constant. OK, a constant shared in this subset of universes, but a constant nonetheless illustrating that it's not like everything ever possible exists.

So, back to Booker being willing/unwilling - what Elizabeth does is tweaking one of the variables only, across all of the instances where it occurs, thus it works. The assumption that she requires every Booker to go through with it is simply incorrect and, as I pointed out, simply impossible to begin with.

 

[Asita]

But anyways, I don't think the concept of time is set in stone enough to really be dogmatic about things. Perhaps the very nature of time travel so completely unravels our concept of continuity through time and the aspects of cause-and-effect that there is no needed explanation for how time remains stable. I just view it as a fun thing to think about, and since I don't currently have any other way to overcome the confusion caused by "drop off points" (for lack of a better way to summarize what I mentioned in my last post), I just stick with what I explained earlier.

Pretty much. The very nature of time travel practically mandates that we take a very nonlinear perspective. I mean take Doctor Who as a case in point. For all intents and purposes all (non locked) points in time exist concurrently and in both the past and the future from the Doctor's perspective. At a given point in time, meeting Shakespeare could be in his future while having tea with Ghandi could be in his past, and his travel options for that same moment include both 50,000,000 CE on Niftu Kal and 4,000,000 BCE in a quadrent of space with a great view of a Quasar. By this same token, everything in his past will happen and everything in his future has happened[footnote]And yes, that was very deliberate phrasing[/footnote], and vice versa. He can visit any given point in time on a whim, so those points in time necessarily exist. Past, present, future, they're all there, they exist, it's just a matter of what we perceive as playing out at a given moment, like a VHS tape.

On a tangent, this seems quite relevant:

Spoiler

For those unfamiliar with it, the Doctor's stuck in the past after an event that occurs in the future for the focus characters and communicating with them in their present through the use of a transcript that they're in the process of writing. He met those characters in passing, though they have yet to meet him. Their future is his past and their present is his future. Causality as we understand it is all over the place.

That's one of the complications brought up by the simple existence of time travel. It's not a plot hole, it's just a very non-intuitive concept and one that a lot of people balk against because of its implications for 'free will'. (And I don't mean that as a derisive caricature. I've seen quite a few people reject the notion on the stated grounds of Free Will[footnote]I swear that the single most common reason I've heard people say that they hated Terminator 3 was because not because of the acting, the plot, or the characters, but because it presented Judgement Day as inevitable rather than following the 'Free Will trumps destiny' angle they perceived Terminator 2 as embracing[/footnote])

 

[Phoenixmgs_v1legacy]

He says directly in the video the plot of Terminator is not possible.

No, he doesn't. He's explicitly explaining how a Terminator "Change the past" scenario could be possible. You are completely misinterpreting his explanation of changes in the timeline creating parallel universes as the statement that no changes can happen.
When Kaku says that time is fixed, he means it only from the perspective of the time traveler alone. If you go back in time and kill your father before he met your mother, you wont vanish in a puff of smoke because for you, the past is fixed. The timeline you experienced growing up is still there and will always be there, because whenever a time traveler alters an event in the past, time forks into two universes, one in which no meddling time travelers were present, and one where said time traveler does more meddling than Scooby-Doo and his friends do on the average Friday night. This split solves the paradox. You wont cease to exist because you arent from the universe where your dad died before meeting your mom. You're from the universe where he did, and no meddling you do will change that. Hence, the past is fixed, but only for you.

But we dont even need to invoke parallel universes, because nothing changed in the timeline when Kyle and the T-800 were sent back. They even trigger that path that history will ultimately be on, because time itself, not just the past, is fixed. You cannot change the past, present, or future, and any attempt to do so will lead to the future you're trying to change.

I completely understand what he was saying. Going back to the past to change your future is not possible, which is the plot of the Terminator films. A parallel universe would be created but your own universe still exists as it was. The machines are trying to kill John Conner in the past so he's not there anymore, he's always going to be there in that timeline/universe, that can't be change and that is the goal of the machines.

 

[prowll]

Isn't this also called the Observer Effect? In essence, if you observe an instant in time, you collapse the possibilities to that ONE possibility, and that MUST be the future/past?

I'm reminded of a short story I read at one point. The president had been assassinated, and so in the future, bad stuff happened. It was determined that the president must have his assassination stopped, and so they send a team back to the time and place of the assassination. They hide, attempt to shoot the assassin, but he gets 'the shot' off, and kills the president anyway. They try again, go back, shoot him a minute earlier, and miss the second gunman, who kills the president. They go back further, stop both men from being born, go forward to see their work... and a meteorite strikes the president, leaving a hole in his head the same size as the bullet. Try as they might they could not change the major event.

 

[zumbledum]

I've come to absolutely hate sci-fi plots were the future is the cause of itself coming to be because it really makes no sense to me at all.

The example that probably won't spoil a movie for anyone since this one is so old now is the 1st Terminator. John Conner sends Michael Biehn to protect his mother so his existence can happen (ok, makes sense). The only problem is that Michael Biehn ends up being his father (doesn't make sense). How could that future possibly exist to begin with John Conner being there? Basically the future is the cause of its own existence.

Well we are talking about Fiction here , science based or not and though there are plenty of theories (and that's all they are) around about how it might work if possible no one actually knows about time travel. so i don't mind what rules a body of work uses, be it film book or whatever just so long as they are consistent with their own self set rules. And terminator does that so im fine with it.

if you want it to make sense think that our perception of time and how things work for us dictates the rules we think it follows but that may not be the case, imagine if you will that time rather than being a flowing river is more like an ocean and can flow and move in any direction it wants.

or if that's too abstract and you want an explanation that makes "sense" then what if the original John Connor wasn't the offspring of Reese and Sarah , he only had limited training and was loosing the war so when he got the problem of the terminator being sent back to kill him before he was born he decides to use it as an advantage. sends Reese back to alter time erasing his current self and present hoping to replacing it with one where he is better trained and ready for the war. he may of just thought Reese would be an uncle figure and picked him because of his friendship and knowledge not expecting him to become his father. some brave soul not just willing to die but to be utterly erased to give a new person the chance to win what he could not.

of course that doesn't work because then Reese would of been 25+ years older when he gets sent back , or the film may of been just following this one middle "play through" and a future correction is going to be made at the end of this loop.

But as Mr Adams said

"One of the major problems encountered in time travel is not that of becoming your own father or mother. There is no problem in becoming your own father or mother that a broad-minded and well-adjusted family can't cope with. There is no problem with changing the course of history?the course of history does not change because it all fits together like a jigsaw. All the important changes have happened before the things they were supposed to change and it all sorts itself out in the end.

The major problem is simply one of grammar, and the main work to consult in this matter is Dr. Dan Streetmentioner's Time Traveler's Handbook of 1001 Tense Formations. It will tell you, for instance, how to describe something that was about to happen to you in the past before you avoided it by time-jumping forward two days in order to avoid it. The event will be descibed differently according to whether you are talking about it from the standpoint of your own natural time, from a time in the further future, or a time in the further past and is futher complicated by the possibility of conducting conversations while you are actually traveling from one time to another with the intention of becoming your own mother or father.

Most readers get as far as the Future Semiconditionally Modified Subinverted Plagal Past Subjunctive Intentional before giving up; and in fact in later aditions of the book all pages beyond this point have been left blank to save on printing costs.

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy skips lightly over this tangle of academic abstraction, pausing only to note that the term "Future Perfect" has been abandoned since it was discovered not to be."

 

[Phoenixmgs_v1legacy]

All of the talk of parallel universes by Kaku in regards to The Terminator is based on the incorrect assumption that Skynet succeeded in killing Sarah Conner. Parallel universes are only needed to resolve paradoxes like the grandfather paradox, and since no such paradoxes occur in the Terminator films, we do not need to assume parallel universes are even possible in Terminator canon.

The goal of the antagonist can't succeed, there's really no reason for the protagonist to try to stop the antagonist.

Anyways, my main point is that I don't like the future begetting itself, Kyle Reese being the father of John Conner. There may be theories that allow it but they're theories. It's just like future us destroying an asteroid that will destroy earth so we don't die. If that is possible, then it's impossible for us to become extinct (outside of the universe ending).

 

[Schtimpy]

Here's my thoughts on time travel/multi-verse theory.

So, one time I heard the word infinite in correlation with multi-verse/time travel. This got me thinking along the lines of how choice would affect different timelines. In most fiction, you usually see 2-5 timelines, often revolving on one choice. The question in my mind was, when traveling back in time, how do you know you got to the right time? Say you went back in time to prevent yourself from ordering chicken to prevent food poisoning. Does it matter if the person you were with is having the steak, or a salad? If one choice leads to a new timeline, then it follows that every choice leads to a new timeline.

This led me to question other variations that could happen. Do animals have different timelines? Plants? Is there a timeline where the sun's rays hit a part of the planet differently, changing the wind currents? Then I heard about Schrodinger's Cat. Basically, you stick a cat in a box with a LD 50 poison, and it is both alive and dead until you open it and check. I'm probably butchering it, but it's supposed to describe things on a quantum level. Atoms, protons, things on a molecular level, can exist in multiple states.

Tie this back into the multi-verse theory. Not only is there infinite different worlds based on human choice, but infinite worlds of exactly the same choices, where one molecule is out of place. Infinite worlds of infinite worlds of infinite worlds. Infinities of Earths where the winds are different, the oceans and landmasses aren't the same as our own. Infinites of Earths where instead of ape people, there are lizard/fish/bird/no people. Infinites of Earths that aren't even in the same place, or don't exist.

I would argue that deterministic timelines are multi-verse timelines. The odds of actually landing in your own is infinity to 1. This doesn't mean that a person can't go back and change the timeline or that the timeline has already changed. It's a question of which timeline you yourself are in. If you want to change your own timeline, it had to have already been changed, otherwise it is a different timeline. That is, if you land in your own. Which has and has not happened infinite times, and in infinite timelines infinite times. All things have happened and will happen. We just see one version.

*BONUS-I ramble further down the rabbit hole*


If there are truly infinite timelines, do the laws of physics have to be the same? Is it possible that some race grew on a planet when the universe was young and influenced their own realities? Maybe there are infinities of worlds that our fictions are made of. Where magic is a thing, created or natural. Where Terminator is real, in both deterministic and multi-verse timelines. At the very least "realistic fictions" like Law and Order and Seinfeld have their own realities. Timelines where Dexter is a real person and Ted Bundy is the main character in a Showtime show called Ted. Somewhere, in a different timeline, someone is watching/reading/playing a media version of our world. You might even be the main character.

The question isn't whether or not God exists, it's whether or not we live in a timeline where it exists.

Also, while free will is an illusion, it's practically impossible to fully predict what will happen in your timeline, out of all the other timelines. If you make every possible choice in other timelines, who's to say you can't make a choice in this timeline, and mold this reality in the way that you wish?

Also #2: Why not have timelines work like Back to the Future as well as deterministic? Maybe it's not which rules are right, but all rules are right.

 

[RJ 17]

there are an infinite amount of universes but in the end Elizabeth works on all of them. Or, at least on a subset of the those[footnote]still infinite, however, just for the record[/footnote].

Pretty sure that's wrong. If you're claiming she's working with a subset of infinity, that by definition means a smaller section of infinity which in turn means that it's finite, not infinite. If you're claiming that the subset of infinity that she's working with contains infinity then you run into Russel's Paradox (the "Set of All Sets" paradox).

Furthermore, you are applying the wrong set of infinity to the universes in Bioshock Infinite. They don't actually work on the multiverse theory where every possible universe ever exists (e.g., take movie The One which uses that model), the Bioshock Infinite universes are merely variations.

Indeed, one such variation is where Rapture exists rather than Columbia, that's a pretty drastic variation seeing as how both cities are pretty much direct polar opposites of each other in every possible way.

Elizabeth mentions the "constants and variables" and that's distinctly different from having every action branch off into a new universe - it is very definitely stated that this is NOT what happens in Bioshock Infinite, as there are constants, thus the universes bear a lot of similarity with a lot of shared structure to one another. The coin toss in the beginning is an example, every Booker ever always got the same result from it - this is a constant.

Indeed the coin-toss is always constant, however the outcome of Booker's adventure never is. This is because the "constants" that she's referring to are matters left up to chance - such as a coin toss - while the variables are matters of personal choice - such as helping the revolution and dying a martyr vs simply dealing with them so that Booker can get himself access to an airship.

OK, a constant shared in this subset of universes, but a constant nonetheless illustrating that it's not like everything ever possible exists.

Which again inserts limits into infinity, thus making the game Bioshock Finite.

So, back to Booker being willing/unwilling - what Elizabeth does is tweaking one of the variables only, across all of the instances where it occurs, thus it works. The assumption that she requires every Booker to go through with it is simply incorrect

You've failed to explain to me how this is incorrect, and as such...

and, as I pointed out, simply impossible to begin with.

...this remains the basis of my point.

The game implies that by taking Booker back to the baptism and drowning him - even assuming that Elizabeth has the power to make this crucial point in time some sort of cosmic nexus to which every possible Booker is bound (which is the only way you could erase all Comstocks by drowning a single Booker) - all Comstocks will die with him. This would indicate that she doesn't just "tweak" a variable, but rather she has taken what was a variable - Booker's choice to accept the baptism or reject it - and turned it into a constant: all Bookers at all baptisms decide to accept being drown.

Beyond all that, I have yet to hear a satisfactory answer as to what others - and you as well - have been trying to say about the ending: that the choice to accept the drowning doesn't count and doesn't spawn a new universe. Why not? Why is that choice exempt when we've seen plenty of other instances in which choices did create an alternate universe? For example: the choice to accept the baptism or reject it. Why does that choice create two universes yet the choice to accept being drown or refuse to be drown doesn't? Why are some choices apparently "constants" which implies a denial of free will while other choices are "variables" which implies the existence of free will?

 

[happyninja42]

See, and this is why trying to make time travel stories make sense is futile.

 

[Secondhand Revenant]

there are an infinite amount of universes but in the end Elizabeth works on all of them. Or, at least on a subset of the those[footnote]still infinite, however, just for the record[/footnote].

Pretty sure that's wrong. If you're claiming she's working with a subset of infinity, that by definition means a smaller section of infinity which in turn means that it's finite, not infinite. If you're claiming that the subset of infinity that she's working with contains infinity then you run into Russel's Paradox (the "Set of All Sets" paradox).

Ah no. Real example would be the set of real numbers and the set of integers. Both are infinite and the set of all integers is a subset of the set of all real numbers.

Or another example of how its possible: Imagine the set of all integers. Infinite yes? Now take out 0. Would you then claim the set is no longer infinite?

 

[CrystalShadow]

But specifically, 'Free will' in a 'deterministic universe' is by definition a logical paradox.

Not necessarily, as I am talking about deterministic events in the universe, not the universe itself being set. A deterministic event would be: given the exact same set of circumstances, everything would progress the same way. So, for example, if I flipped a coin on the 20th of January 2015 at 10:16:41 and it came up as tails, any time I repeat that exact coin throw, it would come up as tails. It's a very naive example, I know, but it's just to illustrate the point that the event is deterministic. Of course, if at that point in time I had bet that the outcome would be heads, then I would also always bet on heads, thus losing the bet every time. Unless the initial parameters shift, in which case, so if I were made to throw the coin a little higher or something and it may come up as heads thus making me win the bet.

Yes, that is a deterministic set of events. But since your behaviour is part of the deterministic events, and not independent of it, there is no possible means for you to shift your behaviour.

I'll actually use a second example as it's much better and it much better illustrates what is it for the events to be deterministic. It's even much better fitting for this forum, as I'm going to use games: pick any game with a RNG sequencer persistence between save states and you're done. The first example that comes to mind is XCOM: Enemy Unknown [footnote]make sure that the "Save scumming" option is disabled - if turned on, it reseeds the pRNG on load. Also, make sure you're not playing Ironman mode, so you can "go back in time" by loading[/footnote] and Heroes 3[footnote]something that was actually changed in WoG, I believe, but in the base game (+expansions, I think), the random sequence is predetermined even after loading[/footnote], so let's take XCOM - if you're on a mission the sequence that the pRNG produces cannot be changed. Here is an example
1. You have 99% chance to hit
2. You save just before you take the shot
3. You take the shot
4. You happen to miss

Now, any time you reload do step 3., you would ALWAYS end up on step 4. No amount of game loads would make your soldier hit. This is true AS LONG AS you keep doing that, as you would always be fed the exact same result from the pRNG, thus making this action entirely deterministic. However, if you ever do something different, the starting conditions are now different - if you took a shot with a different soldier, the sequence has now moved along, thus if you retry the shot now, you most likely would succeed. You would, succeed deterministically, as no amount of reloads would make you miss. No amount of reloads would make you have a critical shot, either, provided you didn't get one. Since the sequence is "known"[footnote]not to us but if anybody was bored enough and felt like it, they can map it out[/footnote] every action throughout the mission is predetermined and if you replay the mission using the EXACT SAME steps you took before, the outcome would be EXACTLY the same.

Thus this is a really good simulation of a universe where the events are deterministic. You would find out that even the AI would respond in the exact same way given the exact same circumstances, simulating what would people do in this universe. However, the AI is not robbed of decision making. Sure, that's not me calling the AI having "free will" but for the purposes of our little universe simulation, it is close enough. So, let's say you did one mission and your soldier called...dunno, Chuck Norris, for example, was never once attacked during the mission, yet everybody else had their asses handed to them. You decide to replay the mission and knowing Chuck Norris was never attacked, you rush him over straight into the middle of a room full of aliens. What would happen now is you would have one less Chuck Norris on your team.

See, here's where you're creating a problem. 'You' in this example is an outside force. In terms of what qualifies as deterministic in this example, you, and your thought processes exist outside of the deterministic universe you are influencing.

If you were an actual xcom general, you wouldn't have the freedom of thought to change the orders you gave, and the mission would play out the same way unless something else happened to first influence your thought process, and thus change the orders given]

So this is an illustration of why exactly free will doesn't clash with determinism. You've changed the parameters, you now get a different outcome. A completely predictable outcome - more than "I told you you shouldn't do that", it's an absolutely repeatable experiment yielding the exact same results any time it's reran with the same input. Change the input, that changes the outcome but, again, you can repeat with the changed input and get the same (changed) outcome.

Yes, but your example is non-deterministic, because you are including elements that exist outside of the universe you are using for your example.

That is the basic problem with the very idea of free will. To have any in a deterministic universe, you must have some influence on the universe that exists outside of the universe itself. The deterministic universe itself is incapable of changing itself.

With this in mind, it's entirely reasonable that somebody can bork the timeline. They could examine it, see how it works, find out it works in this fashion, then go back and kill their grandfather. Let's call this theoretical person "Pandora" after...well, you know, that Pandora. So, to come back to 12 Monkeys, Pandora can be somewhere further in the future and she could look through the events, then try to stop Bruce Willis from going back in time. Pandora's free will is not impacted - they can make that decision, given the right set of parameters.

Except it's not. Pandora's actions are constrained by the exact state of the universe at the moment they decide to travel back in time. The choice she makes is deterministic, and has only one possible outcome.

However, because time travel involves loops and non-linear time, this outcome is potentially very chaotic.

If the first time she travels back, she makes one choice, she could change the state of the future, which would potentially change her future decision. However, both the first and second decision she makes are not 'free will' they are dependent on the state of the universe at the time she makes the choice. And in fact, her second choice, is directly dependent on her first, because it is her first choice that changed the universe. - Except it can't change the universe as such, because if it could the universe is no longer deterministic. Rather, such an event would mean to understand the universe in a deterministic sense you must understand that ALL time travel events, and every alternate sequence of events that are implied must ALL happen, because otherwise the universe is not deterministic anymore.
This of course inherently implies the existence of parallel realities for any section of the universe which exists after a time travel event. There is no other way to resolve the situation without making the universe non-deterministic, because if you were to actually be capable of re-writing a single section of the timeline, you put every part of time that happens after that in a state of flux. Which would by definition be a non-deterministic state.

So, by introducing time travel into a deterministic universe, you either render it non-deterministic, or you force it by definition to contain sections of parallel reality to maintain it's deterministic state.
This isn't random parallel realities however, because you can unwind all the parallel sections of such a a universe into a single linear arrangement, and know which reality came 'first'. The first reality is what creates the second, which creates the third, and so on. Anything else is non-deterministic in nature.

There is nothing in the universe to prevent Pandora from doing so - hence free will. Yes, you can claim it's a similarly predictable outcome to the XCOM scenario and if you feed people the same things, they would produce the same behaviour[footnote]yet, that's pretty much already a thing - social engineers, for example, exploit it to a great degree.[/footnote] however, they are free, as in, the range of output their thought process produces is unbound.

Incorrect, you are simply cutting out bits of the universe, and ignoring them, turning a deterministic universe into a non-deterministic one.

At no point does Pandora have an actual choice in what decision she makes. It is a direct, an immutable consequence of prior events. It's just that 'prior events' includes every previous time she has made the decision to go back in time already.

I can use XCOM again as an example of decisions NOT being unbound because 1. I already talked at some length about XCOM and 2. it's to show that XCOM was just an example to illustrate how a deterministic events would behave, not the whole thing[footnote]because this is the Escapist and people are really fond of pointing out how an example doesn't have 1:1 mapping with reality...when really it's pedanticity to such a level I tend to either not use them or make sure I clarify that IT'S NOT SUPPOSED TO MAP 1:1 WITH REALITY[/footnote]: it's simple really, no matter how much you play, no matter how much you replay, the aliens would never surrender. Nor would Exalt members. Civillians would never pick up weapons and fight (not during the mission, anyway). All these entities are entirely incapable of doing those actions. Thus a universe without free will would could make some logical conclusions impossible - nobody would ever be able to decide to cause a paradox, ever, for example, no matter how you tweak the circumstances. One extreme end of no free will can be people literally unable to change their minds about anything - one example is the Discworld novel Mort, where, in short, for...well, reasons, one person who was supposed to die, didn't actually die. This however, clashed with how history works[footnote]or "works", if you will. History/fate/destiny in the Discworld is, erm, not really exact. History in particular is more of a patchwork of histories crudely brought together.[/footnote] and everybody else in the world continued acting as if that person had died.

But by definition 'replaying' x-com creates a non-deterministic universe, because you the player are not part of the universe, and can make decisions about what happens in it without constraint. (Whether your thoughts are deterministic or not in this universe is irrelevant to that, because either way you exist outside of the simulated universe of Xcom.)
Similarly, while we could replace you with a computer replaying a deterministic set of instructions to the game, that may not have an identical outcome because the game may have started with a different RNG state. (because that is set by your computer, again as an event outside the game universe itself, when a new game is started)

The problem with your examples is you are invoking 'out of universe' sources of information in your decision making for what you claim to be 'free will'. That breaks the very basic premise of a deterministic universe, since events in it are being influenced and altered from sources which you do not count as being part of the universe (and which we know to have a non-deterministic relationship with the events in that universe.)

Your decision making in xcom may be still be deterministic (or not. We don't really have any way to know.), but it is influenced by many many events from this universe which have nothing whatsoever to do with the xcom universe alone. So within the constraints of the xcom universe itself, your existence renders the universe non-deterministic, breaking your own premise.

 

[RJ 17]

there are an infinite amount of universes but in the end Elizabeth works on all of them. Or, at least on a subset of the those[footnote]still infinite, however, just for the record[/footnote].

Pretty sure that's wrong. If you're claiming she's working with a subset of infinity, that by definition means a smaller section of infinity which in turn means that it's finite, not infinite. If you're claiming that the subset of infinity that she's working with contains infinity then you run into Russel's Paradox (the "Set of All Sets" paradox).

Ah no. Real example would be the set of real numbers and the set of integers. Both are infinite and the set of all integers is a subset of the set of all real numbers.

Unfortunately we're not dealing with math here, we're dealing with possible realities.

Edit: Beyond that, integers are a subset of real numbers, but they do not contain everything that's defined as a real number. Real numbers and integers are two completely different sets of infinity.

Or another example of how its possible: Imagine the set of all integers. Infinite yes? Now take out 0. Would you then claim the set is no longer infinite?

Indeed, because it's missing the value between -1 and 1

 

[Secondhand Revenant]

there are an infinite amount of universes but in the end Elizabeth works on all of them. Or, at least on a subset of the those[footnote]still infinite, however, just for the record[/footnote].

Pretty sure that's wrong. If you're claiming she's working with a subset of infinity, that by definition means a smaller section of infinity which in turn means that it's finite, not infinite. If you're claiming that the subset of infinity that she's working with contains infinity then you run into Russel's Paradox (the "Set of All Sets" paradox).

Ah no. Real example would be the set of real numbers and the set of integers. Both are infinite and the set of all integers is a subset of the set of all real numbers.

Unfortunately we're not dealing with math here, we're dealing with possible realities.

Or another example of how its possible: Imagine the set of all integers. Infinite yes? Now take out 0. Would you then claim the set is no longer infinite?

Indeed, because it's missing the value between -1 and 1

It makes no difference whether its math or not though.

And can you then tell me how many numbers would be in that set? The answer is an infinite amount of numbwrs, thus making it an infinite set.

Taking one out of an infinite amount leaves an infinite amount. That's how infinity works. If infinity-1 were countable then the number after it would be as well

 

[Secondhand Revenant]

Edit: Beyond that, integers are a subset of real numbers, but they do not contain everything that's defined as a real number. Real numbers and integers are two completely different sets of infinity.

The point stands they can still both be infinite.

 

[Phoenixmgs_v1legacy]

That assumes that the protagonists know how time travel works in their universe, and I'm betting they dont.

So? That doesn't mean it doesn't make sense, like you said in the OP.

If they can time travel (which they can), they should know how it works. We would know exactly how time travel works (or at least does not work) if we could time travel.

I'm merely just basing it off simple logic that the future can't beget itself more than trying to prove with physics that it can't happen. I very much doubt future us can save us, I think we'll be seeing that rather soon (not in this lifetime but not that many generations from now).