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Online BicuricoTopic starter

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Time Travel: some thoughts
« on: April 30, 2022, 12:25:23 pm »
Hi,

I was wondering that time travel does not exist or at least won't exist in the forseeable future, because otherwise someone would have traveled back in time and killed SOMEONE when it was easy enough to do so and before he could do harm.

Since we don't have such a present, either there will be no time travel or, when changing the past, a new parallel universe emerges, thus fixing any inconsistencies or paradoxes.

What are your thoughts?



Regards,
Vitor

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« Last Edit: April 30, 2022, 05:04:36 pm by Simon »
 

Offline Brumby

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Re: Time Travel: some thoughts
« Reply #1 on: April 30, 2022, 01:20:06 pm »
At this stage of our technological development, this is more a philosophical question than anything else.

I don't see that changing - but I'd love to be proven wrong.
 

Offline TimFox

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Re: Time Travel: some thoughts
« Reply #2 on: April 30, 2022, 01:42:38 pm »
A problem with the classic "go back 70 years and kill your own grandfather" paradox is that the situation would be oscillatory:  Yes-No-Yes-etc.

(edited to fix typo)
« Last Edit: April 30, 2022, 01:49:07 pm by TimFox »
 

Offline daqq

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Re: Time Travel: some thoughts
« Reply #3 on: April 30, 2022, 01:46:19 pm »
Going down that line of thought you immediately get a few problems:

1. Paradoxes - depending on how time travel or the Universe works/would work, then: X is bad, you go back in time, kill X (or set him on a nicer path where he finishes art school and becomes a mediocre artist instead of legendary baddie), problem caused by X is no longer. This sets the world on a completely different course where odds are that you were never born and even if you were, you don't know about the problem X caused, since it never happened. As such you have no reason to go to the past and kill/reeducate X. Grandfather paradox.

2. Is it reasonable to roll the dice? All that has led up to any point in history is a series of events that had some chance to not happen. Even if you go back in time, and do literally nothing but have history unfold again, will it unfold in the exact same way? Step on the wrong bug, it won't eat a tick in the forest that will in 1673 bite and infect some kid that will eventually grow up to be Super X.
Also, any single noble act can have absolutely devastating consequences. Killing X can, in the short run have a good impact (war doesn't happen), in the long run, have an absolutely catastrophic effect (tensions erupt in a different way and instead of X rising to power, Y rises to power in a different country and creates a dystopian horror state that will encompass the whole world and last for 10000 years).
Butterfly effect. This also likely destroys your civilization. Assuming that you have access to time travel technology, odds are that civilization is fairly advanced. Are you going to risk that when you have no way of knowing how even the tiniest change will affect stuff?

3. Ethical concerns - your reasons for altering the past may be noble, but someone's won't be. If time travel was invented, it would immediately become the most secreted and regulated technology. The amount of damage that can be done by someone going 5 years back is immense. 50 years is world changing.

There's more, but these are a few quick ones I can think of.
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Offline gabiz_ro

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Re: Time Travel: some thoughts
« Reply #4 on: April 30, 2022, 01:47:26 pm »
Starting from that,even is more SF thing,that thing maybe already happened.
But at time when this was done a new timeline spawned.
We are living on initial branch,but author of time travel who fixed "putin" incident live in new timeline branch.
As result we are unaware of this fix.

edit:
Could be a paradox if time travel was a result of that.
Also any little change can have unexpected results.
As for ethical concerns ... we can't be aware of that,that is for us.We live now.
« Last Edit: April 30, 2022, 01:52:49 pm by gabiz_ro »
 

Offline magic

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Re: Time Travel: some thoughts
« Reply #5 on: April 30, 2022, 01:52:08 pm »
Without diving too much into politics, my opinion is that Putin is a maniac dictator of the worst kind.
Good job so far :-+

I was wondering that time travel does not exist or at least won't exist in the forseeable future, because otherwise someone would have traveled back in time and killed Putin when it was easy enough to do so and before he could do harm.
Either that or I will invent it. I have already promised to take care of Steve Jobs and Mark Zuckerberg before even considering the Usual Suspects That Shall Remain Nameless ;D
 

Offline Brumby

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Re: Time Travel: some thoughts
« Reply #6 on: April 30, 2022, 03:44:23 pm »
Starting from that,even is more SF thing,that thing maybe already happened.
But at time when this was done a new timeline spawned.
We are living on initial branch,but author of time travel who fixed "putin" incident live in new timeline branch.
As result we are unaware of this fix.
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I don't believe it!
 

Offline Black Phoenix

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Re: Time Travel: some thoughts
« Reply #7 on: May 01, 2022, 12:05:25 pm »
Going down that line of thought you immediately get a few problems:

3. Ethical concerns - your reasons for altering the past may be noble, but someone's won't be. If time travel was invented, it would immediately become the most secreted and regulated technology. The amount of damage that can be done by someone going 5 years back is immense. 50 years is world changing.

There's more, but these are a few quick ones I can think of.

A good movie (in terms of setting, not really in terms of story and acting since it is average to say the minimum) that touches such concept of changing the present by knowing the future is Ben Affleck and Uma Thurman`s Paycheck.

Small synopsis: Michael Jennings (Ben Affleck) is a top-notch reverse engineer. Corporations pay him to crack the secrets of their competitors' products. When the job is done, he has his memory of it erased. Rethrick (Aaron Eckhart), head of a company called Allcom, hires Jennings to reverse-engineer a secret government device. After the job, Jennings wakes from the memory erasure to find himself being chased by various agencies. He soon realizes that the fate of the entire world may be in his hands.
 

Offline themadhippy

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Re: Time Travel: some thoughts
« Reply #8 on: May 01, 2022, 12:27:14 pm »
Not sure about time travel,but traveling at faster than the speed of light is certainly possible ,and most dog owners will have seen it.Your hound is sound asleep upstairs when you open the fridge door,but before the light in the fridge has come on ,said hound already has there snout in the butter.
 
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Offline CJay

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Re: Time Travel: some thoughts
« Reply #9 on: May 01, 2022, 01:08:14 pm »
Hi,

I was wondering that time travel does not exist or at least won't exist in the forseeable future, because otherwise someone would have traveled back in time and killed SOMEONE when it was easy enough to do so and before he could do harm.

How do you know someone hasn't already traveled back in time and killed someone?

It's not as if you'd have any idea when/where/how the timeline changed or the reason for killing said person.

I seem to have mastered the art of time travel to the future, now if only I could work out how to slow it down?
 
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Offline CJay

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Re: Time Travel: some thoughts
« Reply #10 on: May 01, 2022, 01:12:59 pm »

Small synopsis: Michael Jennings (Ben Affleck) is a top-notch reverse engineer. Corporations pay him to crack the secrets of their competitors' products. When the job is done, he has his memory of it erased. Rethrick (Aaron Eckhart), head of a company called Allcom, hires Jennings to reverse-engineer a secret government device. After the job, Jennings wakes from the memory erasure to find himself being chased by various agencies. He soon realizes that the fate of the entire world may be in his hands.

And on Netflix too, nice recommendation for my Sunday evening watching, thank you.
 

Offline Black Phoenix

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Re: Time Travel: some thoughts
« Reply #11 on: May 01, 2022, 02:16:29 pm »

Small synopsis: Michael Jennings (Ben Affleck) is a top-notch reverse engineer. Corporations pay him to crack the secrets of their competitors' products. When the job is done, he has his memory of it erased. Rethrick (Aaron Eckhart), head of a company called Allcom, hires Jennings to reverse-engineer a secret government device. After the job, Jennings wakes from the memory erasure to find himself being chased by various agencies. He soon realizes that the fate of the entire world may be in his hands.

And on Netflix too, nice recommendation for my Sunday evening watching, thank you.

Tone down your expectations OK, it's average at best in my opinion. Story wise is a good sci-fi, but the original source for adaptation was better.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paycheck_(novelette)
« Last Edit: May 01, 2022, 03:53:27 pm by Black Phoenix »
 

Offline eugene

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Re: Time Travel: some thoughts
« Reply #12 on: May 01, 2022, 04:12:20 pm »
Magic and mysticism aside, time travel is easiest to understand when you realize that we are all traveling forward through time continuously. Forward is the only direction that makes sense; you can't unstir coffee or uncook eggs. However we could travel forward at different speeds. By slowing down time for myself I can let the rest of the world go far forward. Then when I speed back up it would be as if I traveled forward in time. But you can never go back...
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Offline CJay

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Re: Time Travel: some thoughts
« Reply #13 on: May 01, 2022, 05:41:23 pm »

Small synopsis: Michael Jennings (Ben Affleck) is a top-notch reverse engineer. Corporations pay him to crack the secrets of their competitors' products. When the job is done, he has his memory of it erased. Rethrick (Aaron Eckhart), head of a company called Allcom, hires Jennings to reverse-engineer a secret government device. After the job, Jennings wakes from the memory erasure to find himself being chased by various agencies. He soon realizes that the fate of the entire world may be in his hands.

And on Netflix too, nice recommendation for my Sunday evening watching, thank you.

Tone down your expectations OK, it's average at best in my opinion. Story wise is a good sci-fi, but the original source for adaptation was better.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paycheck_(novelette)

Enjoyable enough for a Hollywood treatise, I wasn't expecting high art or deep and meaningful philosophical insight. A pleasant way to spend some time.

 

Online BicuricoTopic starter

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Re: Time Travel: some thoughts
« Reply #14 on: May 01, 2022, 07:13:55 pm »
Of course, time travel does not make any sense, if you consider determinism.

if everything is preconditioned to physical laws, in an expanding universe, there would be no free will for anyone to make decisions and hence no room for time travel "to correct things".

On the other hand, if you consider that any decision taken throughout the time line will generate a new parallel universe (one for when I turned left, another if I had turned right), then there would be an infinite amount of parallel universes. But... where would they be stored?

Just some thoughts for the end of a lazy sunday.

Cheers,
Vitor
 
 
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Offline SiliconWizard

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Re: Time Travel: some thoughts
« Reply #15 on: May 01, 2022, 07:19:55 pm »
We have enough trouble handling time as it flows. :-DD
 

Offline Black Phoenix

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Re: Time Travel: some thoughts
« Reply #16 on: May 01, 2022, 07:21:44 pm »
Enjoyable enough for a Hollywood treatise, I wasn't expecting high art or deep and meaningful philosophical insight. A pleasant way to spend some time.

Then great you enjoyed and find your time well spent. I like it, but I'm not that cinema guru most people are.

If a movie basically makes me stay glued to the screen without wanting to stop it or pause it to so someting or get annoyed because something made me have to rewind it its a good movie in my book.

The last part is important. Even with YouTube videos or music I see myself rewinding some seconds (music normally is back to the start of the track) if a loud noise or someone call me and distract me from the experience I'm having.

Reason really I don't know why, but I get really annoyed if such happen. Same as with books, if I'm reading something and for some reason stop for a while, I have to read from the start of that chapter (or if the stop does go for a long time from the beginning).
 

Online BicuricoTopic starter

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Re: Time Travel: some thoughts
« Reply #17 on: May 01, 2022, 08:02:05 pm »
When you rewind, you are going back in time!  :wtf:

Offline Simon

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Re: Time Travel: some thoughts
« Reply #18 on: May 02, 2022, 03:50:49 pm »
well do we know what is beyond the edge of the universe? I remember pondering this at something like 8 years old, it occurred to me that everything exists alongside similar things in a bigger entity that in turn is with similar entities contained in a bigger unit and so on, this stops with the universe, what is the universe in? what else is with the universe in what the universe is in. my 8 year old mind put a temporary hold on dilemma's progression this by imagining it must be a hug white space with other universes in it too and I managed to not worry about what contained the big white space of black universes as I was already into the unknown of multiple universes...... I didn't know about the big bang yet.
 

Online BicuricoTopic starter

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Re: Time Travel: some thoughts
« Reply #19 on: May 02, 2022, 07:19:42 pm »
My current interpretation is that nothing exists.
Our universe, all that is in it, is just an infinitely small disturbance in the nothingness, a singularity. To compensate this positive singularity, somewhere else there is a symmetric negative singularity. Both cancel each other out and the nothingness is perfect, except for this glitch.
Since time is relative, the millions of years it took from the big bang up to now is nothing in the infinite scale os nothing. It does not count.
It's like a positive quantum and a negative quantum emerged from nothing and disappeared again after a billionth of a nanosecond. Doesn't really count.
Are we that complex? Just because we have the notion of ourselves? Seems important to us, but again in the eternal and infinite nothingness, it is unremarkably unimportant. We are just a bunch of atoms that got together for a period of time.
I am not starting a religion nor do I want to convince anyone. This just happens my current state of belief. I would be grateful for ideas to believe in something better.

Offline eugene

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Re: Time Travel: some thoughts
« Reply #20 on: May 02, 2022, 07:41:31 pm »
When the subject of time travel comes up, I have to ask myself "what would Rick say?"

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Online BicuricoTopic starter

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Re: Time Travel: some thoughts
« Reply #21 on: May 02, 2022, 07:55:43 pm »
Never watched this show (Ricky & Morty, right?).

Is it good?

Offline eugene

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Re: Time Travel: some thoughts
« Reply #22 on: May 03, 2022, 03:31:28 pm »
Yeah, it's entertaining. The character Rick is a scientist and the "smartest man in the universe." He evidently has strong opinions about time travel but has never articulated them. He just thinks it's bullshit and not worth talking about.
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Offline joeqsmith

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Re: Time Travel: some thoughts
« Reply #23 on: May 03, 2022, 07:44:46 pm »
I saw where they now offer a new series of TTL  devices.  I picked up a couple to try.   Time travel logic.  A years ago, we would have never thought rise times this fast were possible.  I'm already working on a DAS system based on them and have applied for a patent.

Offline free_electron

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Re: Time Travel: some thoughts
« Reply #24 on: May 03, 2022, 08:08:51 pm »
wait.. what ? are you telling me none of you visit the annual time travellers conference ?
You're in luck ! Registration opens tomorrow. It will be held 23/24 February of this year.
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