Paradoxical Question

Well, I'm not sure if this actually qualifies as a paradox, seeing as I don't actually know what would happen if it did happen. As a warning, this deals with time machines and fucked-up thinking.

I've been wondering about this for quite a while, so here goes.

---

Alright. Hypothetically, let's say you have a time machine, right? And this time machine is your basic time machine. It travels through time at your command. OK. So, you want to insert yourself into the history of a band. Any band, it doesn't matter. So, you enter the year the band was formed, and get them associated with their first major record label. Except it's not the one that they historically would have gone to. So, they're thankful to you, until they all suffer nervous breakdowns from the pressure. Ugh, that sucks. When you go back home, you find that none of the band's albums even exist anymore!

Saddened, you decide to try and erase your mistakes. You go back in time BEFORE you went back in time and tell yourself not to do that in the first place.

---

Now, what would happen there? It doesn't matter the scenario so much as the actual concept, stopping yourself from doing something before you do it. Would seeing yourself come back and talk to you make you go terminally insane? Would it rip a hole in the space-time continuum or something? I'd actually like some brainstorms about this.

This is a really sad paradox, a 1, maybe 2, on a scale of 1 to 10. Honestly, read Bob and George if you want to learn about time travel and then try coming up with something better. Even the cliched, "If you went back in time and killed yourself, how could you exist in the future to be able to go back and kill yourself?" is a much higher level paradox than this. A lot of media involving time travel causes larger paradoxes and yet no one seems to notice. That's right, Ken Akamatsu, I'm talking bout Negima! In any case, you wouldn't go insane unless you're a retard. "Oh my goodness, I'm working on a time machine and here comes back myself to talk to me!" doesn't seem like that much of a shocker. He'd probably just say okay and not do what he did, thus cancelling out the effects. It'd be more complicated to ask yourself, "if the band didn't exist because you screwed up, how would your future self then know to go back in time to mess with them?" or something like that. In any case, just listen to Dave Anez, say, "I hate time travel," and realize that there's probably a reason we haven't been able to screw with time.

Actually, the paradox is in the first time travel, and is my major argument for time travel in general.

Okay, using your example, I jump into my time machine, and, let's say, go back to the formation of Black Sabbath or something. Okay, in your example, you change history in such a way that Black Sabbath never takes off, and gains no following.

Now, since history is changing, and there's nothing protecting you from changes in the timeline, either, you never knew who Black Sabbath was in the first place. Here we go, not knowing of the band, you never decide to go back and mess with history in the first place.

Now, clearly, if you don't go back to change it, the change never happens.

So, the jist is, Time Travel can work, but isn't plausible, since there would be no reason to go back in time, because if you did, then you would never have the desire to in the first place, thusly, it won't happen.

At anyrate, the best way to stop yourself from doing that, (assuming that my theory is false) would be to travel to right AFTER you ARRIVED, so that you would already know that time travel is amok, and you wouldn't kill yourself.

Alright, my personal idea on time travel is that if you go back to do something, you've already done it, and therefore it already would have happened in the present.

So, you would go back, and since they never joined with that label, they wouldn't then, because they already hadn't, and their albums would still exist.

Hence, the second time traveling incident is unnecessarily considered, because it would never be needed.

...

That's EXACTLY what I just said, PA.

My personal view on time travel is that you can't change the past, no matter how hard you try. If you went back in time, then that is what would have happened and was therefore meant to happen. Everything you do, or didn't do, would allow the timeline to progress up to the present without incident, because that's what already happened.

Like in the movie The Time Machine. The scientist's fiancee gets murdered, so he focuses all his time on making a time machine to prevent her death. But if he goes back and stops her from being killed, he wouldn't have created the time machine. Ergo, the paradox. So when he does prevent her death, she ends up dieing anyway, because that was what was supposed to happen.

All we can change is the future. Let's make it a good one.

Quote (MajinBooger)

This is a really sad paradox, a 1, maybe 2, on a scale of 1 to 10.

Thanks, you ass, I was asking a serous question. XD

Thanks, SMS, that helped me clear things up--I wasn't sure if there was an actual paradox involved.

I still like the kill-your-grandfather one. XD

Quote (Hiko)

I still like the kill-your-grandfather one. XD

Or like in Futurama, where you are your grandfather.

Eheh.

*high-fives Lego*

I read this thread, and that was the first thing that came to mind. XD

Quote (SpaceMonkeySteve)

...

That's EXACTLY what I just said, PA.

Actually, you said he'd never time travel, I'm saying he'd time travel but he wouldn't actually have any effect, more of what Lego expanded upon.

Quote (Hiko)

Quote (MajinBooger)

This is a really sad paradox, a 1, maybe 2, on a scale of 1 to 10.

Thanks, you ass, I was asking a serous question. XD

Thanks, SMS, that helped me clear things up--I wasn't sure if there was an actual paradox involved.

I still like the kill-your-grandfather one. XD

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temporal_paradox

A good place to start. Though I've learned most of these through outside sources.

actually, my view is different from youse guys. here's how it works...

first off, lets say you try to go to the future( this helps simplify it for the past). since you whent to the future and therefore do not exist( based on the Schrodinger's cat principal) in the present (which we shall call point A) which you created a milisecond since you left that point to go to the future(which is now called point B-2, as apposed to B-1 which is the future when you didn't travel to the future). This occurs because in the time you are experiencing(B-2) you haven't returned to time A because it hasn't happened yet. when you return to time A, B-2 will become B-1 because you exist in that part of the time line again(or B-3 to B-n cause you use the knowledge to change some fact outside of your life, like kill the guy who killed the president).

now since we did the easy part, lets move on to the hard part(yes I just said that)...

once again, when you go through time, you create your own timestream, and as you don't exist in the present when your in the future, you also don't exist in the present when your in the past(it's like cutting string then tying it to a different part). so if you go to the past(point B again), you could do anything to change the present(point A) with no repercussions on yourself, but it would effect the present around you.

lets say you go back to kill your parents. when you change point B to point B-2 by whichever way possible, YOU and your memories/items you have with you(which don't exist in the present(point A), because you removed yourself by time travel) stay the same, but everything else(in point A-2) changes. so you could go to the future(point A-2) and bask in whichever changes you make.

or you could, you know, grow up and realize that you guys are thinking about using something that just measures the rotation/orbit of the planet that was thought of a civilization that also thought the sun was a ball of flame pulled by a guy in a chariot, and doesn't really exist as a dimension you could travel.

seriously, it defies our laws of dimensions, if it's not our dimension we wouldn't be able to move or see effects from it, if it was a lower, we could do this stuff(aka. time jumping) all of the time. USE THE RAZOR!

Goddamn, first people talk about "If I see myself in the past/future, will the universe crash?" and now theres this "What happens if I kill my parents before I was born?"

the past is already installed with time travel, so everything that time travelers will do/have done are the SAME EXACT THING, so lets get back to the "If I see myself in the past/future, will the universe crash?" questions.

Damn people....

I think Niax is referring the Back To The Future clause, which goes something like this:



Say that the Black line is the current timeline. If you were to go back in time and somehow stop RE:RN from being created, then when you go back to the present, you'd be in the Red line instead of the Black line.

The Wiki that Steve presented pretty much has all the main theories, my favourite being the Bill and Ted one.

"How are we supposed to get them out of prison?"

"Dude, you could steal your dads keys!"

"But I can't, he lost them two days ago."

"Well, we could do it after the report! We travel back in time to before he lost them. Then, we come here and... leave them behind that sign! That way, when we get here now they'll be waiting for us!" *picks up keys from behind sign* "See?"

"Woah, awsome! But we can't forget to do this because then it'll never happen. But it did happen! Hey, it was me who stole my dad's keys!

Heheh, oh, the 80s...

I personally like this view...



edit: actually, I was refering do a(slightly) different theory...

no... wait wait wait...

like the future biff one in the second, but in the first and third they wouldn't be affected by the change because they are seperate from the timeline that changes...

*Brain explodes from reading the thread*

*Free roll for everyone :D*

Naix, you're talking about the temporal protection theory. Basically, a time traveler is protected by his own temporal incursion, and is thus not effected by changes in the timeline. This is commonly used in mainstream fiction, (Back to the Future, Bill and Ted(Though this is more of a predestination thing) the Time Machine, that sort of thing) However, this is only a theory, and time travel could just as easily work in the direction of you no being protected, which is more along the Star Trek lines of time travel.

Not to mention back to the future, where he almost makes his dad not meet his mom.

But in the sense of fate, he was born, and went back in time infinite times because of the way that, in the "true" history, he did go back, and cause his parents to meet.


Time travel sucks.
-George

or as previouly stated, THE RAZOR!

Quote ()

or you could, you know, grow up and realize that you guys are thinking about using something that just measures the rotation/orbit of the planet that was thought of a civilization that also thought the sun was a ball of flame pulled by a guy in a chariot, and doesn't really exist as a dimension you could travel.