If you go back in time and kill yourself, can you go back in time and kill yourself?
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If you go back in time and kill yourself, can you go back in time and kill yourself?
My personal theory for a single timeline is that when you go back in time to achieve X (your own early death), in the future/present X will be true and thus you will have no reason to go back in time, thus you will not go back in time to achieve X, thus X will not be achieved. You're own desire to achive your goal would prevent you from achieving your goal.
Of course, if there are indeed multiple timelines, then you have merely created a new timeline where X is true and have not really killed yourself at an earlier time.
In otherwords, no.
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Yes. And, you can be your own ancestor if that floats your boat too. There is only one timeline, it is fixed and immutable and all consequences of time travel have already been imbedded into its frame.
Think Terminator, not Back to the Future.
Huh... That sounds familiar...
I'll go check, be back with an answer in a minute...
...
Still waiting for him to come back...
Time as a line is a very Eurocentric concept. I like to think of time more as a giant loop.
Theres pretty much 2 ways of looking at timetravel (at least in movies).
Theres of course more than 2 but the big 2 are:
#1 - Time is already set and it cannot be changed. If you travel through time then the reasons things are the way they are is because you did so. In this example you simply CANNOT go back in time and kill yourself otherwise you never would have been an adult to go back in time to attempt it. If you try, something will occur where you are stopped and nothing would change.
#2 - Time is alterable. If you went back and killed yourself one of 2 things would happen. You would pop out of existance as soon as your younger self died....or you would make yourself a person who no longer exists anywhere in the timeline. If you went back to the present day you would find a different present where you dont exist because you were murdered as a youngster.
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#2 - Time is alterable. If you went back and killed yourself one of 2 things would happen. You would pop out of existance as soon as your younger self died....or you would make yourself a person who no longer exists anywhere in the timeline. If you went back to the present day you would find a different present where you dont exist because you were murdered as a youngster.
Which makes you an awesome disposable killer for hire, since there would literally be no record of you and any DNA tracing would point to your dead former self.
Two possibilities:
One - Determinism.
The timeline is set and immutable. Time travel is possible, but not to meaningful effect. You can be your own ancestor, and an object can have no origin. You cannot kill yourself, but you can meet yourself, as long as your 'future' self remembers the meeting from the other side.
Two - Non-determinism.
This one needs some sort of way to resolve paradoxes, be it alternate timelines, destruction of the universe, or just erasing time travellers. The problem with this universe is that nthe only stable configuration is one in which time travel is never invented. That is, since time travel can change the past, and thus the present and the future, the timeline will change repeatedly until time travel is not invented.
Expand you horizons, and don’t let pseudoscience hold you back. It’s fun to posit theories, but until someone proves it, they are all theoretical constructs. There’s nothing that says you can’t go back, murder whomever you like, then go forward exactly where you left off. It certainly raises many questions we can’t answer yet, so we slap a “that’s not possible” sticker on it and move on.
Two possibilities:
One - Determinism.
The timeline is set and immutable. Time travel is possible, but not to meaningful effect. You can be your own ancestor, and an object can have no origin. You cannot kill yourself, but you can meet yourself, as long as your 'future' self remembers the meeting from the other side.
What if each disruptive action cleaves off a new timeline?
Just a thought.
Example: Each quantifiable piece of time represents a finite position in the timeline. If you go back and murder yourself on March 11th of 1981 at exactly noon, only the you-slice of March 11th at noon is gone. There is a tiny "rip" in that piece of celluloid time film that the universe hiccups on, then self-repairs by pulling the next "frame" in. In order to remove yourself from the timeline, you have to murder every single instance of "you." Therefore, I, having existed in the timespace at all, am immortal, for a part of me will always be "in time."
Nasty. Did I catch you editing that out?
Nasty. Did I catch you editing that out?
I was busying killing myself off in the timeline...of course, by doing so, I occupied my previous space with my new self, slotting myself into the space and self-correcting. I can't win!
Oh, okay, I didn't know if it was me or you shifting between realities there. The one where you did post a cool idea and become a famous temporal theorist, or the one where you didn't.
Not sure if that was original thought or not, but if it was allow me to rubber stamp it and add:
Time is not a direction; time surrounds and permeates us as “everywhen.” Our limited perception gives us the conceptualization of linear time, but perhaps in successive generations we will teach ourselves to perceive there is no “now” or “before,” just different points to jump between.
We’ll call it the “looping celluloid projector” mental construct of time.
Super 8 Time ?
What if each disruptive action cleaves off a new timeline?Just a thought.
Doesn't parse. The universe can't possibly care about something as high-level as human interaction, let alone 'distruption'. For this to be true, the timeline would have to split either on a continous basis, or split immediately when a time travel occured. Either way, it is less time travel at that point than travel between parallel universes, and fits into the paradox absorbing crumple-zones in the second half of my post.
Example: Each quantifiable piece of time represents a finite position in the timeline. If you go back and murder yourself on March 11th of 1981 at exactly noon, only the you-slice of March 11th at noon is gone. There is a tiny "rip" in that piece of celluloid time film that the universe hiccups on, then self-repairs by pulling the next "frame" in. In order to remove yourself from the timeline, you have to murder every single instance of "you." Therefore, I, having existed in the timespace at all, am immortal, for a part of me will always be "in time."
Interesting. Under this plan, a time traveller is something like a ghost: They cannot interact with their environment, since on the next 'frame' all their changes are reversed. On the other hand, in the celluloid universe, shouldn't the film already record the time traveller?
I put some more thought into the theory while I was waiting in the doctor’s office.
The roll itself would be mostly impervious to damage, because the gap in the film would have to be the size of the universe, though say the unplanned destruction of an entire solar system would cause a substantial weakening in an area, while the death of an individual or even a planet in a single frame would be less than a pinhole. Disrupting several frames would create a more substantial weakening, perhaps causing fluctuations, tears, or “ripples” in all directions.
The question as to whether the loop is static is an interesting point. Perhaps the mere presence of a previously undefined element is destructive, no matter how well intentioned, like penciling in special effects (sort of Heisenberg-ish)?
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I believe there's a theory of the universe suggesting the concept of temporal vectors, which would expand the accepted 'fourth dimension' into multiple dimensions. This is mainly used to explain the redshifting universe, but you could also see it as a time-twisting possibility; by murdering yourself, you've created a new temporal vector for yourself.
Normally redshift is used to support the theory of an expanding universe. Wouldn’t additional temporal vectors branch off into their own universes?
What if each disruptive action cleaves off a new timeline?Just a thought.
Doesn't parse. The universe can't possibly care about something as high-level as human interaction, let alone 'distruption'. For this to be true, the timeline would have to split either on a continous basis, or split immediately when a time travel occured. Either way, it is less time travel at that point than travel between parallel universes, and fits into the paradox absorbing crumple-zones in the second half of my post.
Lol. Doesn't parse?
Oh, I get it, you mean don't poke at what you have said in any way because there can be neither space nor overlap between your deterministic time travel universe and your non-deterministic model where time-travel is inconceivable.
Or do I get that wrong?
I tend to shy away from that theory, Kruelaid, because I’ve contemplated it before and it is somewhat overwhelming and humbling.
It would mean for every possible consequence, the universe would split into an infinite number of universes in which every possible outcome was true somewhere.
This is also the idea that makes quantum teleportation possible and tends to get physicists all hot-and-bothered. The only hole I have to poke is at what level might the split occur? Human conscious choice (which would seem somewhat arrogant and personally, puts forward a strong argument for God), whether an ant walks left or right, or if a particular quantum state is On of Off?
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If you look at the Schroedinger-style Many Worlds theory, then it's all about probabilities. Every unit of Planck Time that passes by, an entire new forest of timelines would be born off of all the available possibilities.
This is not, however, to say that Everything Happens with this theory. Some things are essentially impossible; if you calculate out the odds, you pretty much get a 'divide by zero' error about some possibilities.
As for the redshift, yes, the commonly accepted reasoning is that the substance of spacetime is expanding, stretching out the energy crossing it as it does so. There's even potential evidence that this 'dark energy' is becoming more prevalent and overcoming gravitational pull, making the universe expand faster yet.
As for the timeline split, that'd be the case in one-dimensional time; I can't say for multidimensional, as the paper was unfortunately gone when I went to find it; my guess would be that different temporal vectors just diverge your apparent time rate compared to objects on other temporal vectors. I don't know, though.
Either way, I've always been fond of the Many World theory; it means that maybe, somewhere, the universe froze out of the initial singularity in such a way that in some distant region of the tree of time, there may well be dragons.
So if I’m reading you correctly, you are still arguing towards a model of linear time? All things are possible, but once a course has been decided upon (via whatever deterministic method) and begins to progress, any divergent paths are left behind to rot in “nontime.” The alternate paths are still present, adding substance to the current universe, but their timelines do not advance?
I tend to shy away from that theory, Kruelaid, because I’ve contemplated it before and it is somewhat overwhelming and humbling.
I don't buy it either, but the theory is worth consideration if one is willing to consider the possibility of time travel--I'm not the only one:
Vaidman, Lev. Many-Worlds Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics. Retrieved on 2006-10-28.
That bibliography entry comes from answers.com, which I accessed because I can't get wikipedia from here. In this theory you supposedly could alter your past (thus not determined), but once you do so you take a branch of history that is no longer your past, and you begin to travel a new branch until you decide to time travel again. I have also found what appears to be the original but haven't had time to read it all yet.
Humbling? Were there an infinite number of histories why should we feel overwhelmed or humbled? Whether we acknowledge the presence of so many realities or not, infinity remains infinity, and is no less humbling to me.
If time can be linear as mwbeeler likes to point out our flawed, European concept of it, why couldn’t it be planar and spacial as well? Time in a single line = 4th dimension. Time in a plane and time in space = 5th and 6th dimensions respectively.
Or maybe that is what some of you are already saying. As I said, I still do not fully grasp string theory.
As I said, I still do not fully grasp string theory.
No one does. We're flailing blindly in the dark. Nevertheless, it's a lot of fun to pretend. ;)
why should we feel overwhelmed or humbled?
Well, for starters, I simply can’t abide copies. I’m overwhelmed at the thought of having to kill all those other Mikes. Best get crackin’, because some of them have already started.
why should we feel overwhelmed or humbled?
Well, for starters, I simply can’t abide copies. I’m overwhelmed at the thought of having to kill all those other Mikes. Best get crackin’, because some of them have already started.
Yah, that bothers me too. Plus the whole idea of multiple worlds is so obscenely complex that is borders on ridiculous, and THEN I add in the idea of time travel to boot.... sheesh. And I do believe that none of these ideas cuts it as a scientific theory because they are quite simply not testable.
Nevertheless, many times have my friends and I played this idea game and your idea is the first one I've heard that wasn't quibbled over long ago when I gave a s~~$ about this stuff--so it's fun to entertain.
But in the end, were it possible to travel or even communicate across time in a limited way, it seems to me that it's gotta be so difficult or so limited that the possibility of a grandfather paradox arising is more or less nil... so yah, deep down I agree with Ross.
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Light cone -noun- A cone in space-time, with its vertex at your current location, extending out "diagonally" in a future direction at c in all directions. Under special relativity, you may affect only those things inside your light cone.
There is strong evidence --from physics (limitations on quantum entanglements) to mathematics (Newcomb's Paradox) which suggest that, in the real world, you cannot send information outside your light cone. That's not merely to say we haven't thought of a way to do it yet; there's strong evidence to suggest that the laws of the universe simply won't permit it.
A many-universes theory (F-space, if you like) might allow for that (you send messages/people back to somebody else's past) but that begs the question, "Why don't we see any messages from other people's futures?"
A many-universes theory (F-space, if you like) might allow for that (you send messages/people back to somebody else's past) but that begs the question, "Why don't we see any messages from other people's futures?"
Totally agree.
I sometimes wonder, however, if UFOs are from the future. Maybe they are afraid to disrupt the events of history and hence they hide themselves. Perhaps they already have created a grandfather paradox and know the answers to all our question.
I propose that we shoot one down and torture its pilots into answering our questions.
"Why don't we see any messages from other people's futures?"
Magnetic interference from the poles switching when the Earth lines up between the sun and the black hole in the center of our galaxy in 5 years.
Lol. Doesn't parse?Oh, I get it, you mean don't poke at what you have said in any way because there can be neither space nor overlap between your deterministic time travel universe and your non-deterministic model where time-travel is inconceivable.
Or do I get that wrong?
What I meant was that you were arguing with the wrong half of the post. In a deterministic universe, time travel is either impossible or irrelevant.
By definition, there cannot be overlap between a deterministic and non-deterministic model.
Can there be space between them? Maybe. I suppose that under the splitting universes theory, one can have non-determinism and have time travel, because the stable non-time travel universes simply cease to split, but thet doesn't rule out their previous incarnations. This model, however, is hard to think about because it requires causality without time. That is, what does it mean that a universe (or timeline) diverges when a timetraveller take an action?
Nor is the non-deterministic theory I put forth (stolen from an essay by Niven) ironclad. It only speaks of end states. But thermodynamics say the end state of the universe is a sea of infrared photons. We're not there yet either. Perhaps the universe as we know it is one of the ones with time travel: doomed to inevitablly edit itself, but still around for now. Whatever 'for now' and 'inevitably' mean when viewed from outside the timeline.
Personally, I'm a deterministic universe kind of guy. Most of the non-deterministic models for time travel play bloody hell with conservation laws. Relativity demonstrates that time travel is equivilent to travelling faster than the speed of light. That is not to say time travel is impossible: The equations for relativity can model faster than the speed of light just fine. This means that time loops of the kind one might expect in deterministic universe with time travel can occur. In fact, one of the models for anti-matter is that it is normal matter travelling the wrong way in time.
What I meant was that you were arguing with the wrong half of the post. In a deterministic universe, time travel is either impossible or irrelevant.
True.
By definition, there cannot be overlap between a deterministic and non-deterministic model.
Agreed
This model, however, is hard to think about because it requires causality without time. That is, what does it mean that a universe (or timeline) diverges when a timetraveller take an action?
Makes me dizzy trying. It's absurd and I don't agree with myself every time I say it.
Hmmm, Perhaps there is constantly infinite divergence. Travel is possible but irrelevant to those who don't travel. For those who do, they CAN kill their grandfathers and the rest is quite an adventure.
Insane. Slaps self for even thinking it to be so.
Alice laughed: "There's no use trying," she said; "one can't believe impossible things."
"I daresay you haven't had much practice," said the Queen. "When I was younger, I always did it for half an hour a day. Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast."
--Alice in Wonderland.
I think you caught me editing. I have expanded my post above.
I think you caught me editing. I have expanded my post above.
Still agree with you. Still standing in awe of the staggering possibilities of reality and humbly believing that in relation to infinity, we know nothing.
My first reply to you was just for the sake of disagreeing, all too easy to do when mentally masturbating to models of time travel.
#2 - Time is alterable. If you went back and killed yourself one of 2 things would happen. You would pop out of existance as soon as your younger self died....or you would make yourself a person who no longer exists anywhere in the timeline. If you went back to the present day you would find a different present where you dont exist because you were murdered as a youngster.
Of course the problem with this is that "as soon" is meaningless when you travel in time. If you try to draw a world line, this isn't really possible.
So I go with #1. If it never happened, you can't go back and do it.
But that's real life. In D&D, anything can happen.
Greg
I sometimes wonder, however, if UFOs are from the future.
They're picking people up before the blazar (non-wiki link for Kruelaid) torches the planet.
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Director of Sales
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"Why don't we see any messages from other people's futures?"
Ah HA! That one's easy to explain:
Men in black fly their ball lightning craft, disguised as black helicopters, out of their hole in the north pole which leads to their world within the hollow earth. These craft lay contrails which interrupt messages of hope... from the future!
Oh wait... wrong thread.
...
Yeah I have no idea why we don't see them.
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But that's real life. In D&D, anything can happen.
(re-typed after a mis-post)
In AD&D, there was the Chronoportation power (from "Will and the Way") and the Chronomancer supplement.
Chronoporters could muck with the past willy-nilly. Would you be able to go back to New Year's Day 50 years ago and kill your parents? Sure. Then you could jump back to the day before, and lie in ambush for yourself chronoporting back, and kill yourself before yourself would have a chance to kill your parents. Whatever makes you happy.
Chronomancers had a tougher time, because (a) the time travelling spells were high-level, (b) actually moving through the River of Time was something of an adventure itself, and (c) once you changed something in the past, it was fixed permanently and could not be changed again. Also, history was stable: stepping on a butterfly in the Pleosciene was unlikely to have any ramifications at all, either 20 years later, or 20,000.
3rd Edition hasn't revised either system, and even nerfed Time Stop. Just try killing the Circle of Eight with Time Stop now!
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Then there was PACESETTER game's Time Master, where you played people pulled out of their inconsequential lives and recruited by the Time Corps, to defend reality against the Demoreans, shape-shifting history-tampering aliens from Dimension A-228. The game worked fine: you travelled back to the injury in the time stream, did some detective work, found and fixed the problem, and then returned to Corps HQ on your two-button chrono-scooter.
The supplement "TimeTricks" changed all that, allowing agents to make multiple jumps, eliminate missions before they happened, and do all sorts of wacky things with equipment like the "Time Loop Avoidance Field Generator", which allowed you to be in two (or eight!) places at once. We figured that "TimeTricks" pretty much killed off TimeMaster, for the reasons discussed in this thread.
You know, all of this piques my interest in designing a kind of "Pleasantville" module where people need to get back to 2nd Edition AD&D for some reason.
Not the same thing, but here's my time travelling in D&D story.
For my bachelor party two years ago, my friends gave me gift certificates to an FLGS in town, so I used them to finally upgrade to 3.5 (yeah that was before the 4e announcement). So I used Monte Cook's Demon God's Fane to make the transition from 3.0 to 3.5.
Spoilers for those who may play this some day...
It worked for us.
Greg
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"Why don't we see any messages from other people's futures?"
Ah HA! That one's easy to explain:
Men in black fly their ball lightning craft, disguised as black helicopters, out of their hole in the north pole which leads to their world within the hollow earth. These craft lay contrails which interrupt messages of hope... from the future!
Oh wait... wrong thread.
...
Yeah I have no idea why we don't see them.
Black helicopters?
What a nice little song that was. How pleasant.
I sometimes wonder, however, if UFOs are from the future.They're picking people up before the blazar (non-wiki link for Kruelaid) torches the planet.
The funny thing about no wikipedia here in Shandong is that answers.com displays wikipedia entries and isn't blocked.
and isn't blocked.
5, 4, 3, *** Carrier Lost *** :)
