time travel real?
- Thread starter varek
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Multiverse/Parallel Universes are not scientific. They aren't based on anything factual. It's just "made-up," sir.
^ Damn right.
It's why we love John Rhys-Davies saying "...blistering idiot".
It's why we love John Rhys-Davies saying "...blistering idiot".
Someone has been listening to TED talks by Brian Greene, but sure, Sliders, whatever. 
Haven't seen any real proof of time travel yet. And it should be easy to test the assertions of anyone who claims to be a time traveler. Just have them make some predictions for what will happen for the next few years and check them.
But I haven't totally ruled out that it could happen some day. So I am building my time traveler traps now...
Favourite time travel novel I read is Orson Scott Card's "Pastwatch: The Redemption of Christopher Columbus."
But I haven't totally ruled out that it could happen some day. So I am building my time traveler traps now...
Favourite time travel novel I read is Orson Scott Card's "Pastwatch: The Redemption of Christopher Columbus."
He was smart enough to specify that he wasn't actually in his own past, but in a very similar timeline's past, and to lay out some pretty good technobabble explaining why that was. And he said up front that his "predictions" were just him telling what had happened in the past where he was from, not necessarily what would happen here. A pretty obvious cop out, but at least he put that out there.
That's damn poetic, J. So much so, that I Googled the lines to see if they were from a poem. Instead, Google pointed back to your post.
When people bring up grandfather paradoxes as an argument against time travel, I wonder why that needs to be the case. Just because the human mind runs into a logical paradox, does that have to be the case in nature?
Since the human mind evolved due to the conditions of nature, and therefore the rules of nature are embedded firmware, so to speak, then there may be rare exceptions, but mostly, "yes".
You can throw out causality if you wish, but then you have to throw out all of science with it. That's why time travel stories that invoke paradoxes are pure fantasy. I explain some of the cop-outs in another thread.
Sorry, ebusinesstutor, but I stomp on PASTWATCH as an example of a bad time travel story. You might want to try James P. Hogan's THE PROTEUS OPERATION. It is very finely detailed, has an excellent cast of characters, and lots of wild sci-fi ideas. And no paradoxes.
I like BttF, it also is the only story that I know of that shows the origin of a time travel loop. Marty starts out in the "Two Pine Mall" universe, creates the "Lone Pine Mall" universe and ever since then, all Marty McFlys start out at Lone Pine Mall and find themselves in a predestined loop where everything happens the same way, always. It's only our Marty that comes from a non-predestined timeline.
Sorry, Jarod. The BACK TO THE FUTURE movies are riddled with problems, too, although they are a lot of fun.
By logic we can assume there are two basic universe types. (There may be more that I haven't thought of.) The "single history" universe is the grandfather paradox type. That means one cannot erase the causes of events. For example, if you go back in time to fix some problem, you will eliminate the reason for your having time traveled. See my above post for some of the fallacies used to side-step this.
The other model is the "multi-verse" type, where every possible juncture spawns another universe. If something can happen in two possible ways, it happens both ways, but we are aware of only one.
The first BTTF assumes the "single history" model, then proceeds to violate it several ways. Also, why would it take a whole week for Marty to start vanishing? This assumes time is nested within another time dimension. Despite keeping his parents together, Marty has invoked paradoxes: Lone Pine Mall, remembering that his parents told him a story about grand-dad hitting George with the car, etc. The only way to save the first movie is to assume a multi-verse, but then nothing Marty or any of his analogs could do would result in one of them vanishing. Anyone "changing" time would simply spawn another universe.
In BTTF2 Doc explains alternate timelines, then violates it. Jennifer passes out and is left on a porch in an alternate 1985. As Marty and Doc prepare to jump, Marty asks, "What about Jennifer?" Doc assures him that she will be fine when time is corrected around her... In reality, Doc just abandoned Jennifer from one universe in an alternate universe that they will never return to.
I could go on, but you get the idea. "Paradoxes" are fine in fantasy stories, however. Then they become wishful thinking on how some event might have been, if only... I've heard some people call GROUNDHOG DAY a time travel movie, but it is more of a karma story. So a deity is involved and no business of "science" fiction.
By logic we can assume there are two basic universe types. (There may be more that I haven't thought of.) The "single history" universe is the grandfather paradox type. That means one cannot erase the causes of events. For example, if you go back in time to fix some problem, you will eliminate the reason for your having time traveled. See my above post for some of the fallacies used to side-step this.
The other model is the "multi-verse" type, where every possible juncture spawns another universe. If something can happen in two possible ways, it happens both ways, but we are aware of only one.
The first BTTF assumes the "single history" model, then proceeds to violate it several ways. Also, why would it take a whole week for Marty to start vanishing? This assumes time is nested within another time dimension. Despite keeping his parents together, Marty has invoked paradoxes: Lone Pine Mall, remembering that his parents told him a story about grand-dad hitting George with the car, etc. The only way to save the first movie is to assume a multi-verse, but then nothing Marty or any of his analogs could do would result in one of them vanishing. Anyone "changing" time would simply spawn another universe.
In BTTF2 Doc explains alternate timelines, then violates it. Jennifer passes out and is left on a porch in an alternate 1985. As Marty and Doc prepare to jump, Marty asks, "What about Jennifer?" Doc assures him that she will be fine when time is corrected around her... In reality, Doc just abandoned Jennifer from one universe in an alternate universe that they will never return to.
I could go on, but you get the idea. "Paradoxes" are fine in fantasy stories, however. Then they become wishful thinking on how some event might have been, if only... I've heard some people call GROUNDHOG DAY a time travel movie, but it is more of a karma story. So a deity is involved and no business of "science" fiction.
It's a comforting thought that according to MWI, I recently sold Whatsapp for 19 billion, and I just came back from my honeymoon with Jessica Alba AND Emma Watson, because bigamy is not allowed, it's common practice, AND my fridge is full. And GTA V was released for PC and PS4.
^ Now that sounds like Laumer's DINOSAUR BEACH, if I'm remembering the correct title. It was just a jumble of weird junk with no rhyme or reason to the identity of the characters—like having Marty McFly's successful, got-get-'em parents still living in the same little Lyon Estates house. The SIMPSONS Halloween story "Time and Punishment" was more coherent.
But if every possible state at every moment in time spawns a universe, such universes can exist, can't they? There's a universe where Jessica Alba never pursued her acting career, and I didn't pursue my own. So we met at our other workplace. A friend of mine actually got accepted to that study abroad programme, where he met Emma Watson and then introduced me to her. Etc... etc... It's not physics defying, and not violating causality. Certainly there can't be universes with different constants, for example. But if it was ever possible that a random gene mutation turned the skin color of elephants blue, there is a universe with blue elephants.
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Yes, it is from my own mind (distorted and chaotic as it may be), and thank you for the compliment.
This whole question of personal identity has come up in every transporter thread, or cloned immortality discussion. Who we are is partly due to our past experiences. So your analogs would not be "you" exactly, unless you're assuming recently spawned alternate universes that differ in only the slightest of ways. In those universes, would Jessica and Emma not be popular actors and also married to you?
Granting your blue elephants and Hollywood wives, time traveling into this alternate world does not mean that your analog will conveniently disappear into some other universe just because you've arrived. So how does any of this ideal fantasy world benefit you? Or do you plan to bump off your analogs?
And now that we've strayed so far into fantasy land, how does any of this explain grandfather paradoxes, or the alleged "time loop" in BTTF? ("Time loops" are another one of those popular misconceptions based on the idea that time "happens again." For the past and future to exist to be traveled to, they must exist in a shape visible only from some higher dimensional standpoint. And that invalidates paradoxes and changing history. The only way around it is the multiverse, but then time doesn't actually change, people don't fade out, and analogs of all of us exist who probably aren't interested in stepping aside to let you claim their turf.)
Does each decision point create its own universe? I think so, meaning that each decision creates a stream of causality and could coexist, in different phases, perhaps.
