18th July 2008, 8:52 PM
Let me try that again. First I was responding to ASM there.
There's the "closed loop" style of time travel. This is just a closed loop. Intention is irrelevent. No, I wasn't suggesting someone was intentionally going back to make SURE the future happened as it did (ala Time Squad). I was suggesting that even if they tried to make sure it didn't happen that way, their efforts are what MADE the future happen like it did. That's the closed loop.
The time paradox is not quite what you seem to think it is. I wasn't saying that all the damage should have been "reverted". That makes no sense. Their memories ALONE being altered? What? They'd have to also be at home or wherever they'd normally be before that all happened.
Here's the paradox. Robots travel back in time, the end result being that skynet is never made. Yes the past already happened, but that's the problem, we're dealing with time travel. There is a rather pointless distinction of past and future at this point. As a result, we get to the future where no one ever travels back in time, or do we? The cause and effect is "broken". Did the robots just spawn out of nowhere? Of course not. Indeed, no robots would ever go back at all, so the past is undone, and skynet is made, and so they are sent back, so they aren't made, and not sent back. This is the very essence of a paradox.
There are two ways to resolve it. The first is an alternate reality. The second is a locked "switching time loop". History will repeat forever alternating between two versions.
Of course the third way is that it's a moot point if time travel is impossible. Of course that means faster than light travel is also impossible (the speed of light limit is not really due to any property of light, but rather spacetime, and while many don't seem to get WHY faster than light travel would not just imply, but NEED to be time travel backwards, it takes looking into the math to really get that it's a must).
The forth is far too "spiritual" for my tastes, which is the time conservation principle, which is not unlike other conservasion principles that past physicists suggested that would do things like prevent a black hole from ever forming. Suggesting a principle like that, to me, suggests that the universe is somehow able to "figure out" if something will result in a paradox and take steps to fatalistically prevent the paradox by forcing time to take place properly. Yes I know the idea is rather than the time travel event actually forced a future and without the time travel the future would actually be different, but that only means a reverse paradox, what if someone didn't go back in time and alter history when it's needed for that particular future? Again, the universe would need to be able to detect this and fatalistically play a part in assuring that the time travel occurs. I just don't see that happening.
By the way, let me say what I meant with Star Trek. It's inconsistant in terms of WHICH form of time travel they say their universe works with. Some episodes say "time travel is fatalistic, it's all closed loops", and other episodes say "time travel is paradoxical, the future can be changed via time travel". Some say the time travel changes, even if they prevent future time travel, work "just fine" as they are, and others say that such changes would create "temporal feedback that destroys the universe".
There's no good way to resolve that. Time travel works in ways sometimes that it doesn't in other times.
There's the "closed loop" style of time travel. This is just a closed loop. Intention is irrelevent. No, I wasn't suggesting someone was intentionally going back to make SURE the future happened as it did (ala Time Squad). I was suggesting that even if they tried to make sure it didn't happen that way, their efforts are what MADE the future happen like it did. That's the closed loop.
The time paradox is not quite what you seem to think it is. I wasn't saying that all the damage should have been "reverted". That makes no sense. Their memories ALONE being altered? What? They'd have to also be at home or wherever they'd normally be before that all happened.
Here's the paradox. Robots travel back in time, the end result being that skynet is never made. Yes the past already happened, but that's the problem, we're dealing with time travel. There is a rather pointless distinction of past and future at this point. As a result, we get to the future where no one ever travels back in time, or do we? The cause and effect is "broken". Did the robots just spawn out of nowhere? Of course not. Indeed, no robots would ever go back at all, so the past is undone, and skynet is made, and so they are sent back, so they aren't made, and not sent back. This is the very essence of a paradox.
There are two ways to resolve it. The first is an alternate reality. The second is a locked "switching time loop". History will repeat forever alternating between two versions.
Of course the third way is that it's a moot point if time travel is impossible. Of course that means faster than light travel is also impossible (the speed of light limit is not really due to any property of light, but rather spacetime, and while many don't seem to get WHY faster than light travel would not just imply, but NEED to be time travel backwards, it takes looking into the math to really get that it's a must).
The forth is far too "spiritual" for my tastes, which is the time conservation principle, which is not unlike other conservasion principles that past physicists suggested that would do things like prevent a black hole from ever forming. Suggesting a principle like that, to me, suggests that the universe is somehow able to "figure out" if something will result in a paradox and take steps to fatalistically prevent the paradox by forcing time to take place properly. Yes I know the idea is rather than the time travel event actually forced a future and without the time travel the future would actually be different, but that only means a reverse paradox, what if someone didn't go back in time and alter history when it's needed for that particular future? Again, the universe would need to be able to detect this and fatalistically play a part in assuring that the time travel occurs. I just don't see that happening.
By the way, let me say what I meant with Star Trek. It's inconsistant in terms of WHICH form of time travel they say their universe works with. Some episodes say "time travel is fatalistic, it's all closed loops", and other episodes say "time travel is paradoxical, the future can be changed via time travel". Some say the time travel changes, even if they prevent future time travel, work "just fine" as they are, and others say that such changes would create "temporal feedback that destroys the universe".
There's no good way to resolve that. Time travel works in ways sometimes that it doesn't in other times.
"On two occasions, I have been asked [by members of Parliament], 'Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?' I am not able to rightly apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question." ~ Charles Babbage (1791-1871)