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Post by dalekbuster523finish on Feb 18, 2018 20:51:32 GMT
I can't imagine stepping on a butterfly or knocking some random person over would alter history that much really, unless the person you knocked over was an important historical figure. You're only thinking linear time here. Are you saying that accidently knocking some random person over wouldn't alter history because they're not an important historical figure? To perhaps cause said random figure that in time will never eventually meet their partner and bare a child that would go on to cure some very serious illness or a vaccine to a very aggresive new strain of virus that in turn will help your very own future lineage that could quite possibly cease to be. That is the Butterfly Effect. You're assuming it's a person whose about to meet a partner, who has a child that would go on to cure some very serious illness or a vaccine to a very aggresive new strain of virus that in turn will help our very own future lineage that could quite possibly cease to be who is knocked over.
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Post by Deleted on Feb 18, 2018 21:00:44 GMT
You're only thinking linear time here. Are you saying that accidently knocking some random person over wouldn't alter history because they're not an important historical figure? To perhaps cause said random figure that in time will never eventually meet their partner and bare a child that would go on to cure some very serious illness or a vaccine to a very aggresive new strain of virus that in turn will help your very own future lineage that could quite possibly cease to be. That is the Butterfly Effect. You're assuming it's a person whose about to meet a partner, who has a child that would go on to cure some very serious illness or a vaccine to a very aggresive new strain of virus that in turn will help our very own future lineage that could quite possibly cease to be who is knocked over. Not just that though, their child could donate their kidney which might have saved someones life that then goes on to meet & marry someone who invites friends to their wedding who share a cab together & then get married & have a kid who grows up to find the cure for cancer. The links in personal history could have huge ramifications by casual incidental actions of time travellers. It is just too dangerous.
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Post by dalekbuster523finish on Feb 18, 2018 21:01:59 GMT
You're assuming it's a person whose about to meet a partner, who has a child that would go on to cure some very serious illness or a vaccine to a very aggresive new strain of virus that in turn will help our very own future lineage that could quite possibly cease to be who is knocked over. Not just that though, their child could donate their kidney which might have saved someones life that then goes on to meet & marry someone who invites friends to their wedding who share a cab together & then get married & have a kid who grows up to find the cure for cancer. The links in personal history could have huge ramifications by casual incidental actions of time travellers. It is just too dangerous. There's always a chance he doesn't do any of that though.
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Post by Deleted on Feb 18, 2018 21:18:13 GMT
Not just that though, their child could donate their kidney which might have saved someones life that then goes on to meet & marry someone who invites friends to their wedding who share a cab together & then get married & have a kid who grows up to find the cure for cancer. The links in personal history could have huge ramifications by casual incidental actions of time travellers. It is just too dangerous. There's always a chance he doesn't do any of that though. Err, we are working from the supposition that he does. That is the point of this hypothetical time travel discussion.
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Post by dalekbuster523finish on Feb 18, 2018 21:20:51 GMT
There's always a chance he doesn't do any of that though. Err, we are working from the supposition that he does. That is the point of this hypothetical time travel discussion. Whose to say you couldn't accidentally change things and he does something better?
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Post by omega on Feb 18, 2018 21:21:12 GMT
Okay Dalekbuster. Let's say I travel back in time and alter a crucial point in your personal timeline. This changes who you are and because you are changed, you have no idea that I've done this. For all you know you have always been in your altered state and no one else is aware of this. And that's just one intentional act. I can't predict what will happen beyond a few hours because there are too many unknown variables.
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Post by dalekbuster523finish on Feb 18, 2018 21:22:45 GMT
Okay Dalekbuster. Let's say I travel back in time and alter a crucial point in your personal timeline. This changes who you are and because you are changed, you have no idea that I've done this. For all you know you have always been in your altered state and no one else is aware of this. And that's just one intentional act. I can't predict what will happen beyond a few hours because there are too many unknown variables. You already have. You did that last Tuesday.
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Post by Deleted on Feb 18, 2018 21:27:32 GMT
Okay Dalekbuster. Let's say I travel back in time and alter a crucial point in your personal timeline. This changes who you are and because you are changed, you have no idea that I've done this. For all you know you have always been in your altered state and no one else is aware of this. And that's just one intentional act. I can't predict what will happen beyond a few hours because there are too many unknown variables. You already have. You did that last Tuesday. No intelligent response again. You know you've lost this debate.
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Post by omega on Feb 18, 2018 21:29:28 GMT
A good example of the unpredictability of changing established history is in the Animorphs book Elfangor's Secret. A controller (a Yeerk parasite in a human host) locates the Time Matrix, the key to time travel. The book starts in the altered timeline, where it takes the Drode (the servant of the omniscient Crayak) to return them to their proper selves. By following the controller through history, it turns out this controller is losing track of the changes that are made to history, to the point where the Germans weren't a big power in D-Day and Hitler was just a truck driver instead of the big dictator. The book ends with the Animorphs using the Time Matrix to prevent the host's parents meeting, undoing the plot of the book in the process.
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Post by omega on Feb 18, 2018 21:34:11 GMT
Okay Dalekbuster. Let's say I travel back in time and alter a crucial point in your personal timeline. This changes who you are and because you are changed, you have no idea that I've done this. For all you know you have always been in your altered state and no one else is aware of this. And that's just one intentional act. I can't predict what will happen beyond a few hours because there are too many unknown variables. You already have. You did that last Tuesday. For all your qualities, I'd want you nowhere near time travel in the past, present or future. If humanity can't be responsible in the here and now, would we have an sense of temporal responsibility?
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Post by omega on Feb 18, 2018 21:35:46 GMT
You're assuming it's a person whose about to meet a partner, who has a child that would go on to cure some very serious illness or a vaccine to a very aggresive new strain of virus that in turn will help our very own future lineage that could quite possibly cease to be who is knocked over. Not just that though, their child could donate their kidney which might have saved someones life that then goes on to meet & marry someone who invites friends to their wedding who share a cab together & then get married & have a kid who grows up to find the cure for cancer. The links in personal history could have huge ramifications by casual incidental actions of time travellers. It is just too dangerous. One of the stories in a Short Trips audio collection plays on this. I think it's Wings of a Butterfly, and read by Colin Baker.
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Post by dalekbuster523finish on Feb 18, 2018 21:36:46 GMT
You already have. You did that last Tuesday. No intelligent response again. You know you've lost this debate. It's all theoretical anyway. May as well have a laugh about it rather than a serious debate.
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Post by dalekbuster523finish on Feb 18, 2018 21:38:22 GMT
You already have. You did that last Tuesday. For all your qualities, I'd want you nowhere near time travel in the past, present or future. If humanity can't be responsible in the here and now, would we have an sense of temporal responsibility? Good point. We voted for Brexit, so God knows what irresponsible decisions we could make with all of time at our disposal.
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Post by mrperson on Feb 18, 2018 22:28:32 GMT
To me this is "same schtuff, different day" - how many times have various people claimed this sort of thing? I love Dr. Who, don't get me wrong. But I also agree with Larry Niven's view that Time Travel is FANTASY, not sci-fi. You can surround it with the trappings and rules of "hard sci-fi" but in the end, it really isn't. And I really don't think it's actually possible. That doesn't stop me from enjoying seeing a certain blue box spinning it's way through the cosmos... Well, I'd say there's no reason to believe it is possible (let alone happened), but there's also no reason to say it's impossible at the moment. Time travel would violate a number of physical laws, but then, we know we do not have the whole picture. We could very well have only a small portion of the total picture which, while valid as far as we can measure it, does not account for other things. That's not to say I believe this guy. I very very very strongly suspect that it's either a hoax, or he is sadly delusional and needs help.
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Post by mrperson on Feb 18, 2018 22:30:26 GMT
I just cannot see it possible to allow the public access to time travel tech. Have you not read A Sound of Thunder? I haven't, but I'd argue a car can also be a weapon in the wrong hands yet we are all from the age of 17 allowed to buy one. You can't destroy reality with a car.
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Post by mrperson on Feb 18, 2018 22:33:40 GMT
They could just put a tracker in each time machine. Even then how would paradox policing occur? We'd need to construct something that sits outside of time to record how history should happen and a system that alerts when things are going off track. Basically we'd need a Celestial Intervention Agency. Our first move would have to be to record how all of history happened before doing anything else. Even just the one experimental trip could change everything (so how do you record history? Yup.) If it's possible, I doubt that that'd be our first move, but one hopes....
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Post by mrperson on Feb 18, 2018 22:39:03 GMT
But how would that stop them changing things? Once they change an event in the past then the present is changed. So those observing the tracker would have changed & would therefore not know what the time traveller in question had done in the past. A camera would give them a reason to time travel back in time and stop the time traveller before he changes things. And therefore he never left at all, therefore they had no reason to travel back in time to stop the time traveller before he changes things, therefore he leaves, therefore he travels back in time, therefore they have a reason to travel back in time to stop the time traveler before he changes things, and therefore he never left at all, therefore they had no reason to travel back in time to stop the time traveller before he changes things, therefore he leaves, therefore he travels back in time, therefore they have a reason to travel back in time to stop the time traveler before he changes things, and therefore he never left at all, therefore they had no reason to travel back in time to stop the time traveller before he changes things, therefore he leaves, therefore he travels back in time, therefore they have a reason to travel back in time to stop the time traveler before he changes things, and therefore he never left at all, therefore they had no reason to travel back in time to stop the time traveller before he changes things, therefore he leaves, therefore he travels back in time, therefore they have a reason to travel back in time to stop the time traveler before he changes things, and therefore he never left at all, therefore they had no reason to travel back in time to stop the time traveller before he changes things, therefore he leaves, therefore he travels back in time, therefore they have a reason to travel back in time to stop the time traveler before he changes things.......
Edit: Oh, wait, you're saying go back and interfere with the time traveler, not stop him before he leaves? Ok, but you're just introducing more potential changes into the timeline he/she went to.
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Post by mrperson on Feb 18, 2018 22:42:21 GMT
But surely that would just create an alternate timeline, and there'd still be another timeline where they exist? Surely? DB, this is all 100% speculation with no connection to known or possible physics. There may be no such thing as an "alternate" timeline. There may be just this universe, there may be a multiverse that accounts for all possible iterations of actions in this universe ("Actions" including X quark interacts with Y quark, not just human decisions - to some extent suggested by known quantum physics), there may be a robust multiverse where all possible iterations of all possible actions in all possible universes exists, there may even be a super-robust multiverse with an infinity of infinities - for all possible actions and all possible universes, an infinite number of each combination of possiblity. It may be that if you alter history to put it on an "alternate timeline", assuming the exist, then you cannot get back to the original one. Ever. You're in a new universe created by an altered decision. There may be anything inbetween. There may be alternate timelines. There may be a possibility that time travel gets around the conservation of mass-energy in the universe. There may be situations where changing history causes the collapse of reality. There's no point in guessing at it unless we're just having fun, because really, we don't have a clue. If we know anything, it's that we know just about nothing in the grand scheme of potential things to know. There are no rules about what time travel would have to look like. We just have what fiction made up for us to have, and what philosophers speculated at.
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Post by dalekbuster523finish on Feb 18, 2018 22:52:27 GMT
Even then how would paradox policing occur? We'd need to construct something that sits outside of time to record how history should happen and a system that alerts when things are going off track. Basically we'd need a Celestial Intervention Agency. Our first move would have to be to record how all of history happened before doing anything else. Even just the one experimental trip could change everything (so how do you record history? Yup.) If it's possible, I doubt that that'd be our first move, but one hopes.... Maybe travelling back in time will be illegal, but travelling forward in time will be allowed.
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Post by Deleted on Feb 18, 2018 22:58:25 GMT
Our first move would have to be to record how all of history happened before doing anything else. Even just the one experimental trip could change everything (so how do you record history? Yup.) If it's possible, I doubt that that'd be our first move, but one hopes.... Maybe travelling back in time will be illegal, but travelling forward in time will be allowed. Why would travelling forward in time be allowed? What if someone brought back knowledge of future events, from the trivial such as sporting results or lottery numbers, to technology that we don't yet have knowledge of.
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