Thread: Confusing paradox about time travel...

What??? Couldn't you explain that in words? Your diagram didnt make any sense.

Okay wait..

So, I really don't like my father, so I decide to go back in time and kill him. So then if my father got killed before I was born, how was I born in the first place to go back and kill him.. is that the type of situation you mean?

If you're saying that he would keep killing the same guy and continue going back in time then I don't believe that would be true.

Stopping himself from killing that person would alter the sequence of events allowing him not to go back in time again.


Bah, time travel doesn't even exist, though. There are quite a few flaws with the concept itself. Such as would the travelling back cause two versions of himself? If he travels back in time wouldn't whatever device he used to go back never exist in the first place? Would his aging and experience reverse and in accordance would his memories in turn be erased?

Argh, I thought no one would understand. In a way, he never COULD have killed someone in the first place because he already went back in time to stop himself from doing it, therefore since he didn't kill anyone, he doesn't go back in time therefore kind of making all of that never happen (him going back in time OR killing anyone).

Although, I think my idea is flawed because it could just create an entire version of the universe where it never happened and he never had any memory of it or anything.

The paradox is assuming that time travell is possible the way you explain it. But if we travelled into another time with our current selves, then we must be talking about inter-dimensional travel of a higher dimension than time. We do travell in time. Always foreward and if we did go backward we would never notice.

study quantum physics then!

wasup watch 'donnie darko' if you havent seen it already, it will cause your mind pain :-)

I personally don't think time travel is possible. In order to reverse time, you'd first have to stop it. Now, think of the numbers on a stopwatch: minutes, seconds, miliseconds, etc. There are an infinite number of divisions of each unit, therefore, making it impossible to "stop" time. Now, I have a theory (that I use in books) that a person can "split" time, creating two dimensions. Now, I don't think.....*CRAP!*

I just realized a flaw in that theory. Please disregard as I throw my head in a toilet.

In reality, time only exists in perception. We think time is "moving" forward, but it may just be the way we view it. So...ah, I dunno.

Originally posted by Amethyst Star
I personally don't think time travel is possible. *In order to reverse time, you'd first have to stop it. Now, think of the numbers on a stopwatch: minutes, seconds, miliseconds, etc. *There are an infinite number of divisions of each unit, therefore, making it impossible to \"stop\" time. *Now, I have a theory (that I use in books) that a person can \"split\" time, creating two dimensions. *Now, I don't think.....*CRAP!*

I just realized a flaw in that theory. *Please disregard as I throw my head in a toilet.

I'm saying if time travel was possible.

Maybe if lets say i collide in a car crash.. so when i recovered i decided to travel back in time and cut a hole in my tire(so that i couldnt drive that day). And precisly when i did i (the version that traveld back in time) would dissapear. And my unknowing self that now are pissed over the the tire would live on in an unknowing pissed over flat tire way of life?

Originally posted by gameover
What??? Couldn't you explain that in words? Your diagram didnt make any sense.

I think the point to wasup was that time traveling may cause a very paradox.

It sure is a paradox if someone travels back in time and change something so it haven't happened. In my opinion, it's completely impossible to change the past so a stated event not have happened.

I agree with that science theory that if a person "change" the past, that will only make a new Universe with the "new" event.
But the old original Universe will still be the same, include all of the events in the past.

It's a long time since I read about that theory, but if anyone is interested, I think it's somewhere on http://www.sciam.com/

I don't believe you can change the past either. I think everything that happened already happened.

So if you kill someone then go back in time to stop yourself you will fail. Maybe a car will run you over or someting who knows but you won't make. Your doomed to fail because if it changed you would have never went, and since you did go, you must have failed to change it.

However, changing the future seems very possible.

Originally posted by Alric
I don't believe you can change the past either. I think everything that happened already happened.

So if you kill someone then go back in time to stop yourself you will fail. Maybe a car will run you over or someting who knows but you won't make. *Your doomed to fail because if it changed you would have never went, and since you did go, you must have failed to change it.

I don't know about that. If you went back to stop yourself, you are from a time after when you have already done what you are going back to change so that cancels out the whole 'you never went' thing...

I get what you mean in the last part about how you couldn't change something, however I think it would only seem like you couldn't change it, because at some point it would have been changed, even if that point is now non-existant because of those changes. I mean from somebody's perspective at some time, the way time is after the changes is not the way they knew it...

Thats just what I meant. It will seem like you can't change anything because no matter what you do it already happened in your past. If you went back and killed someone then that person had to have died in your past. Its impossible to kill someone in the past then return to the future and the person still be alive. It goes even deeper than that if you consider all the things the person did.

Unless if you go back and do something, it creates a parallel yet alternate universe.. like in one of the Back to the Future movies!

Originally posted by Joseph_Stalin
However, changing the future seems very possible.

Changing the future is not a very paradox, in my opinion.
It's difficult to explain, but if someone change the future, they have IMO not done a very paradox, although changing the past is a paradox.

Everyone curious about time travel should seek out a book called "The Star Diaries" by Stanislaw Lem. Around the middle of the book the hero gets involved in a plan to travel through time to change history for the better, and, well, you should just read it.

Sorry bubble burster here but time travel isnt possible.

Time was just a meter set by earlyman to keep track of harvests and important parts of the day it isnt an energy in itself therefore you cant manipulate it so going back in time is impossible.

Going foreward on the other hand isnt - it is possible to change the speed of time - or at least the perception of the speed of time using electromagnetic feilds.

An experiment was done recently where a person was put in the feild - he was left in their for various amounts of time before the feild being shut down - each time he said only a second had past and his body hadnt aged a second from when he went in - Afterwards he was shocked to find that each time he had actually been in there for 30 seconds or more.

Now two perceptions were changed, the person in the feild saw time as if it had speed up in the world outside and everone outside the feild would have seen time as slowed down inside the feild.
From this they are trying to form stasus chambers or something or other from the research.

but anyway i hope that shows that the paradox couldn't happen unless something came along to change our perception of reality giving us the ability to harness time as an energy.