This needs to be made into a short film.

http://qntm.org/causal

It's absolutely perfect for a short film.

 

Interesting, and the writing style is familiar to me. Who wrote it?

Obvious paradoxes ensue... Time loops that would stop all progress from that point on.

 

Sam Hughes, the guy who made that website. He also wrote Fine Structure.

Indeed. Though the idea behind this is that because they can only get things from the future, they've basically proven that events are set in stone. So whatever is indicated will happen no matter what. Like that little twist at the end.

 

Yes, but if all events are set in stone, then the time travel would fail. The only difference between sending something to the past and pulling something the future is who is on the receiving end of the change in history.

 

If they're set in stone, then the artificial time travel was also set in stone. If I receive, from that machine, a leather jacket, then that means that the future from which the jacket came was dependent upon me receiving that jacket from the future.

 

However, because time is set in stone, the argument used against changing the past still applies. As I said, you are still changing someone's past. Sending something back is the same as pulling something back, they both try to change the past. The problem with your logic is that you do not think that the present is in the past, while it is. If time is set in stone, then it could be argued and rightly that there is no 'present', but only a set of pre-defined instances that exist in static. It is like watching a movie; if you cannot change something that from earlier in the movie, then you cannot change something now, either, because the movie is one static, defined image. If you change the now, you are changing the past for some later instance in the film, and you cannot change the past for them if you cannot change it for yourself; you cannot edit any instance in time. Watching the film and being so many minutes or hours in does not make that point in time 'the present', because the present does not truly exist if time is predefined. In other words, time travel is impossible if you cannot alter the past.

 

But the past was never changed. If all is set in stone, then one way or another that jacket would disappear from a specific point in the future and the jacket would spontaneously appear in a specific point in the past. Nothing changes because there was nothing to change.


I never really bought the "still frames" analogy. After all, let's take this comic book scan. I'm going to take something from the last panel and place it in the first panel. Panels, frames, same difference. Anyway, please point out any differences to the panels in between that may have been directly caused by the "panel travel" that I caused.

Spoiler: Original

Spoiler: Altered

As such, history, if time behaved like a series of still frames, would not be affected in the least if somebody were to cause something to cease to exist in the future and spontaneously materialize in the past.

And again, if the artificial time travel is already part of the past, then nothing was altered. If I went backwards in time to three days ago, that means that I would have to have existed in two places three days ago until the point where I decided to go back to three days after three days ago. I didn't change anything. The fact that I went back and then came back was already inevitable.

 

In such a case as you are describing, what is happening is not time travel, and your argument becomes invalid. It just so happens that an object appears at one point in time and a similar object disappears at another point. It was not 'pulled back', it just spontaneously appeared and disappeared; not by any choice of an individual's, but of the universe's deterministic nature. 'Time travel' implies that you can change the flow of time, and you cannot, even in your example. It qualifies as an act of nature, much like what was portrayed in Donnie Darko.

 

What's the difference? Object from future goes to the past. Regardless of whether or not it was natural, by your logic it still should have an effect on the future where by my logic, if everything is set in stone, then it may very well have happened because that object appeared in the past.

 

Uh wow.
I think my mind just exploded.

 

By that logic, going into the past is also possible, because you are not changing anything about the overall defined nature of time. The present does not exist, as I said. The story explicitly argued that you could take things from the future but not the past, and that is faulty according to this line of reasoning.

Building on that, if a piece of matter did exist, then it would alter all instances in which it existed. Imagine time as the process of a program running its course. If you add a variable at some point earlier on in the program, it will have to go back to that point and start recalculating each instance in which the variable existed. Each frame would change if it had that piece of mass in it where it did not before, and time would be rewritten. Recall the film 'The Butterfly Effect'; it illustrated this well. Also see Steins;Gate for a more complete explanation of world lines as used in this system.

 

Keep in mind, the story goes on the theory that history has not yet happened and thus the future can be mucked with all we want. The past, on the other hand, has and thus cannot be changed. My theory works off of that and states that anything going to the past from what we have determined to be the present must have been predestined to have gone to the past.

Regarding the Butterfly Effect: By my theory, going back and killing the butterfly wouldn't do anything because the butterfly was predestined to be killed by me going back and killing the butterfly. It's what TVTropes refers to as a stable time loop.

 

Nothing would change, but you would not be there to kill the butterfly. Causality would take a different course, probably one in which you did not exist as the same person, and you would have a paradox on your hands. Time travel is not possible if time is stable and pre-defined, as determined by causality. It would matter how far you back you went, though. You could only go back to a time after you existed, and you would have to be destined to seek out time travel no matter what happened. If your actions would in any way change your choice to go back in time, then you would not go back; the time travel would fail. A paradox.

 

Except my theory states that my existing to kill the butterfly hinges on me killing the butterfly. There is no paradox because it was predestined that I would kill the butterfly, thereby setting off the chain of events which ultimately led to me killing the butterfly. A stable time loop. The only case in which a paradox would occur is if due to chaos theory, in some iteration of the loop, something slightly different happened, possibly as minuscule as my index finger twitching in a different direction or the butterfly surviving for a few more nanoseconds. I will concede the possibility of the paradox, but this possibility is still extremely unlikely.

 

Wrong, only things that are logically possible are 'predestined'. It is better to say that it was 'determined' that you could do it. I will believe it when it happens, but until then, killing the butterfly would make it impossible for you to kill the butterfly, ending in a contradiction. Unless you can reason out how killing it both enabled you to exist at a later date and led you to kill it, then it cannot happen. Furthermore, if you killing the butterfly is what set your existence in motion, then the butterfly would have to die in order for you to be there to kill it, another contradiction. A and B cannot create each other, that is a circular argument and it ends in a paradox. The only way to kill the butterfly is to ensure that doing so will not affect your own existence in the least.

 

Don' t mind me, I' m not supposed to take sides ... I' ve said too much ...

 

My idea of predestination is that if it happens, logically possible or not, it was going to happen from the beginning.

As for the butterfly having to die for me to be there to kill it, that is not a contradiction. This stable time loop operates in its own series of events.
1. The loop starts with the birth of the butterfly.
2. KS A is born
3. KS A goes back in time and, incidentally, kills the butterfly.
4. Butterfly's death sets off the chain of events that causes KS A to be born.
5. This continues ad infinitum in the stretch of time that loop covers.
6. KS A goes back to what he knows to be the present, thus exiting the loop, now KS B.
7. KS A continues going through every iteration of the loop.
Actually, that explanation makes less sense than I thought it would. Here's a better explanation based on Final Fantasy.

Spoiler: The main twist of Final Fantasy

The story begins when the Light Warriors are sent to the nearby Temple of Chaos to kill the renegade knight Garland. As Garland is dying, the four Elemental Fiends of the game magically send him two thousand years into the past, when he becomes the demon Chaos, and sends the four Fiends to the still-the-past future to seize control of the four Elemental Orbs. The Fiends take roughly four hundred years to obtain all the Orbs and use them to wreck the world until the present day, when the Light Warriors fight Garland, slay the Fiends, and travel to the past to confront Chaos and die fighting him. The game ends when the Light Warriors kill Chaos and end the stable time loop.

 

If it is not logically possible, then it will never happen and never has, making your idea a moot point.

Neither explanation makes any sense, because of a contradiction in step two as given by step four. Let me explain this for you.

1. The loop starts with the birth of the butterfly.
2. KS A is born
3. KS A goes back in time and, incidentally, kills the butterfly.
4. Butterfly's death sets off the chain of events that causes KS A to be born.
5. This continues ad infinitum in the stretch of time that loop covers.
6. KS A goes back to what he knows to be the present, thus exiting the loop, now KS B.
7. KS A continues going through every iteration of the loop.

KS A cannot be born because the series of events that led to his birth has not happened yet. Step two happened before the step that enabled it to happen, and the prerequisites for its occurrence were not met; in order words, it did not happen. If you were to put these events in a time line, you would be skipping all of the other steps. What actually happens in this example is that the butterfly is born, a KS A appears randomly and kills it, and then later, KS A is born. But KS A was not born before the butterfly was killed, no matter what order you put the steps in. Time lines do not work that way. Therefore, he would not be there to kill the butterfly and enable his own existence, and no one can create themselves.

 

Except there is no contradiction because in the loop, KS going back in time came before KS killing the butterfly which, according to history as a whole, occurred before KS was born. Step four only comes after step two in terms of the loop. In terms of history, it comes before step 2. God, where's Dr. Dan Streetmentioner's book of 1001 Tense Formations when you need it? I hate this time travel tense trouble.

 

The prerequisites for the event of his birth were not met before he was born. His birth justifies itself, that is the point; it is a loop because it is a contradiction. Circular reasoning cannot exist in reality. If you have to create yourself in order to exist, then you will never come to exist. A time loop is the same as something that did not happen. Causality running its course.