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Is time travel possible?

Discussion in 'Anything goes' started by NDJournalist, Jun 3, 2013.

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Is time travel possible?

  1. Yes

    7 vote(s)
    21.2%
  2. No

    20 vote(s)
    60.6%
  3. Maybe

    6 vote(s)
    18.2%
  1. EStreetJoe

    EStreetJoe Well-Known Member

    But how far back do you go?

    Do you go back to the Tower of Babel so people won't speak different languages?

    The Greeks and Romans to teach them that war and orgies are immoral?

    Back to ancient Jerusalem to keep Jesus from being crucified thus potentially setting up an entirely different religious belief system for his followers?

    Back to 1914 to prevent the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand to prevent World War I from happening, which in turn would have set up a different timeline of events where Hitler's rise to power might not have happened?
     
  2. Batman

    Batman Well-Known Member

    I'm a dog chasing a stick. Can't resist ...
    It's not about making the world better or worse. It's about making it cease to exist. You can't pick and choose what you want to change and play around with the outcomes until you get it right. If you change one thing, one million things change. It's all or nothing.
    If you stop someone from getting killed -- whether it's JFK or the clerk during a 7-11 holdup -- you might inadvertently cause someone else to die.
    If you stop someone from committing an armed robbery that sends them to jail for 10 years, you might stop the event that leads them to find God, become a better person, and influence thousands of people in a positive manner.

    On top of that, the bigger the event you stop, the bigger the ripple effect.
    If you stop Hitler from rising to power, or prevent the Japanese from attacking Pearl Harbor, and prevent WWII from unfolding just as it did, the future -- and reality as we know it -- could simply blink out of existence because all of those millions of people who fought in the war would have had different life experiences. Instead of your grandfather and grandmother meeting during the war, they never meet and you and your parents are never born.
    Now multiply that by 100 billion.
    See the problem here?
    The same principle can apply to seemingly trivial events. Say you're able to convince the Blazers to take Jordan instead of Bowie. Well, now you have thousands of people who never meet at sports bars, celebrations and parades at Bulls games in the 1990s. Friendships are never formed, business partnerships and romantic relationships become non-existent.

    You can NEVER make things better. There are always unintended consequences.
     
  3. EStreetJoe

    EStreetJoe Well-Known Member

    But would the ripple effect apply if you only wanted to go back in time to witness historical events as opposed to changing history?
    It might depend on the situation -- if it was to simply witness a major historical event (signing of the Declaration of Independence, Gettysburg address, the "I Have a Dream" speech", JFK's assassination, Woodstock, etc.) I don't think the ripple effect would apply.

    However if it was to witness a major sporting event or concert, the ripple effect would apply as the person whose place you're taking at that event wouldn't get to experience it and pass the stories of being there along or possibly become a fan of that team or musician in the first place if it was their first game/concert for that team/act.
     
  4. Batman

    Batman Well-Known Member

    Every human interaction would cause ripples, Joe.
    At Woodstock, for example, you might prevent two hippies from having sex and making a baby by doing something that prevents them from meeting -- something as simple as pissing in the wrong place at the wrong time, which keeps them from running into each other an hour later. Or you might accidentally bump into someone and start a fight that leaves someone seriously injured and alters the future.
    If you're in Dealey Plaza and stand in the wrong spot, maybe you obscure a key frame in the Zapruder film. Or, perhaps, if you stand off to the side your shadowy presence leads to countless conspiracy theories of a second or third gunman.
    If you go to the Gettysburg Address, you might stand in the spot where someone else originally did -- the spot where they dropped a piece of paper that was found 100 years later and became an important historical artifact.
    You can never know what small interactions have consequences moments, years, decades, even centuries later.
    There's an argument could be made that some of these interactions are supposed to happen -- maybe the shadowy figures in Dealey Plaza were actually time travelers -- but that takes you into the realm of loops and paradoxes I mentioned earlier.

    Another problem of traveling back in time is it'd be physically dangerous. Assuming time travel technology works like teleportation technology would, you'd have to have extremely precise historical data to know where and when you could safely travel to.
    Say your time travel equipment is set up in the basement of a 100-year old building. If you try to travel backward 105 years, you might end up under 50 feet of dirt. Or if you try to go 100 years into the future you might wind up in the middle of a busy freeway. Any unknown renovations or obstructions could bring you back as part of a wall.
     
  5. HejiraHenry

    HejiraHenry Well-Known Member

    This is a very interesting point. The Earth moves through time and space, as it were. If you built a machine and it moved you back in time why sitting in the same spot, you'd be dead in space with Earth (potentially, at least) far, far away.
     
  6. Riptide

    Riptide Well-Known Member

    That's why you pony up for the PosiTraction option.
     
  7. champ_kind

    champ_kind Well-Known Member

    Are you honestly saying the Tower of Babel is not only a real thing, but the reason people speak different languages? Even if we get time travel, it still won't take you to biblical allegories.
     
  8. NDJournalist

    NDJournalist Active Member

    I think you're overthinking this.
     
  9. Buck

    Buck Well-Known Member

    You can't make things better or worse, even in that linear, Wells model.
    You can only make things different.

    But that line of thinking is still linear, even it accounts for infinite variables.

    The key is: everything that can happen does happen.
     
  10. Batman

    Batman Well-Known Member

    Well, better or worse are relative terms in this discussion.
    Going back and saving 300 lives by preventing a plane crash is obviously good ...
    ... Unless in our reality that crash was what led to the discovery of a certain weather phenomenon that caused the crash, and the resulting investigation led to technology that allowed planes to avoid it -- and saved far, far more than the 300 lives you did by preventing the original crash.
    The weather phenomenon would likely be discovered at some point. The circumstances would be different, though. Different lives affected, and those lives touching others.
    The net effect is the same -- there was a plane crash, discoveries were made, lives affected -- but who and how things change alters reality. At the very least, if the time traveler alters their own reality, what do they return to? Wouldn't they return to a different reality where there's two of them? Or would they simply return to their own reality?
     
  11. Batman

    Batman Well-Known Member

    [​IMG]

    The law of the time-traveling land. Try to change anything and he'll fuck your shit up good.
     
    Last edited by a moderator: Dec 15, 2014
  12. Buck

    Buck Well-Known Member

    Both, and more. You're creating a new set of quantum outcomes.
    The act of going back created every possible outcome: malfunction, success, and every unforeseen shade and nuance in between.
    The act of attempting to change the initial outcome created every possible outcome: failure, success, and every unforeseen shade and nuance in between.

    You wouldn't know the results of your action because you can only live through/percieve one set of results, but there actually are an infinite number of results.

    Everything that can happen does happen, but you can only percieve/live through one line of outcomes.
    Unless you're Trafalmadorian.
     
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