Merry Christmas to everyone! That being said, I have a bit of a claim/hypothesis I'd like to put forth, that may be considered a bit of a hot take for reasons that shall become clear shortly, regarding time travel. And in particular, around the idea of paradoxes. This sprang up due to a conversation I was having with someone about time travel, alterations to history, and in particular, Novikov's Self-Consistency Principle came up.
This person said something I agree with, that the principle is more than a tad weird and impossible to justify, because there's nothing to stop a person from time traveling back to the same exact moment a hundred times to change something or save someone until it works. As they said, it would be weird for the universe to always stop you, almost like magic, every time you tried to change something by pure stubbornness and force. There's no physics that can explain such a crazy phenomenon.
This conversation made me again consider a point of view or possibility that may be rather difficult for people to wrap their heads around, simply because it fundamentally challenges our human understanding and our anthropocentric view that is part of our discussions about fundamental physical laws:
The very idea of the universe forbidding paradoxes, particularly in time travel, could be a complete fallacy and construct created by mankind and their view of reality, causality and linear time.
Now, like I said at the start, that is indeed a hot take, but follow me along here to understand my line of thinking.
Our current understanding of physics, in particular the subject of general relativity, does allow for the theoretical possibility of time travel through things like closed timelike curves and such. However, with that comes the discussion about paradoxes, like the grandfather paradox. Always, the common response to these scenarios posited, involves mechanisms that, for lack of a better term, "resolves" them. This includes Novikov's Self-Consistency Principle, which, as you know, basically says trying to change anything is impossible, or would be conspired to prevent the paradox from occuring. You also have the Many Worlds Interpretation/Multiverse Theory, with it's branching timeline theory.
However, in this lies a potential major blind spot we are always running on, and this lies in our own ingrained perception of causality. Until time travel is invented, as humans, we experience time in a strict, linear manner: From past, to present, to future. This also means every effect has a preceding cause. This linear causality to us is fundamental to our understanding of the world itself, and the ability to make sense of events. So, naturally, when we think of time travel, we apply this same linear, causal framework to it. A paradox comes along when an action in or from the future, affects the past in a way that contradicts the initial conditions that led to it in the first place. This makes it seem impossible, as it creates a loop our minds struggle to reconcile with.
And thus, the blind spot becomes clear: We may have applied an anthropocentric viewpoint, to something utterly inhuman. And it's a blunder we as a species have often done. How many times have you seen people assigning anthropomorphic explanations or reflections to animals such as dogs, sharks, tigers, bears, etc? How many times have they tried to understand why they act the way they do, explain their behaviors, many times unpredictable, through that human line of thinking, something that is incompatible with it?
Far too often.
Now apply that same thought process to our understanding, or at least view of time itself. Are we guilty of this same thing? Most definitely yes.
The truth, as unnerving and incomprehensible as it may seem to the mind is, the universe itself may not actually operate under such strict, human defined linear causality. After all, let's not forget that that Quantum Mechanics introduces concepts like quantum entanglement and superposition, which can show causality to appear to be less straightforward, or even non-local. And that's on top of the discovery recently by scientists that data from the future can, on a current micro level, affect the past state of things.
And yes, I know all this is currently on a micro level, not a macro one. But, the fact remains that they indeed hint at at a reality that may be much more complex, and much less intuitive than our everyday experiences on earth suggest
And that means that the very idea that the universe "forbids" paradoxes, may be yet another example of humanity attempting to foist an anthropomorphic projection of our own logical constraints onto a system that operates on principles far beyond our current comprehension. And while our current comprehension and interpretation of these laws we speak of are incredibly successful at predicting and explaining the universe within certain domains, at the end of the day, they are ultimately only models.
So, it's not entirely inconceivable that in extreme circumstances, with one clear example being time travel, our current models and the underlying assumptions may break down or require significant revisions.
Bottom line: The universe has no inherent obligation to adhere to human-defined rules of law and causality, and it's true nature regarding and revolving around time travel may be far more complex and less constrained than our own logical expectations believe.
I apologize for the length of this post, but any shorter, and I wouldn't have been able to articulate and explain my thoughts about this properly. I hope I may have given you something to think about, and I welcome any conversations, arguments or questions, either with me or others in the comments! I believe it makes an interesting premise and hypothesis to launch from.
Have a wonderful rest of your holiday, guys!
The universe cares only for balance and will follow the path of least resistance to achieve it. Simple...easy peasy
This
Funny enough, you saying this lines with one possibility I came to the conclusion on from this possible framework, which is a Non-Linear Reconfiguration or example of Dynamic Causality
To borrow what I said to another earlier about this, The universe might dynamically reconfigure its causal relationships to accommodate the intervention without creating a logical contradiction from its own perspective. The best way I can describe this is like throwing a rock into a river or stream, with the impact being the change a time traveler makes. The river (the universe) doesn't "fight" the stone or try to restore the water to its previous, undisturbed state. Instead, the water flows around the stone, creating new currents and patterns. The river adapts, and the stone becomes an integrated part of its new flow.
The universe might subtly adjust all the preceding and subsequent events that led to the original outcome, not preventing it, but rerouting the causal impact. The specific chain may still exist, but either it affects someone else, affects no one but is still present. The change occurs due to a series of seemingly unrelated prior events that were subtly influenced by the time traveler's presence or actions. Any change is absorbed into the universal fabric, and the universe finds a way to maintain its internal consistency, even if that consistency defies our linear understanding.
Exactly ... Well stated
I get the intuition, but that framing is still kind of sneaking human metaphors in through the back door.
Human metAphors? Huh?
So true, its like we just assume the universe will fix paradoxes or make them a problem just because we see it as a problem.
Who cares if you kill your grandfather and hence you should exist anymore? Why would the universe care about it, or try to fix this incongruity. The universe doesnt think or care, nor it affects the universe if paradoxes exist.
In one hand we are stating the universe is sentient, aware, and will act on "you kill gramps you should not exist" as in there some physics already pre-programed in the universe to fix such eventualities... thats some crazy expectations.
Then the universe also interferes with the past, by unkilling gramps, so u can exist again... that is ludicrous!!! If anything you kill gramps hence you stop existing, The End, thats how it stays cause the action of killing gramps in the past... wait for it... is in the past. Its illogical the universe would revert that, so u can exist again, so u can go back to the past a kill gramps again, only for this cycle keep repeating.
Cause expecting the universe to "act" or "fix" paradoxes is this anthropomorphism we are giving it. When in reality the true word to define this is retrocausality, a sort of physics that the universes would naturally have.
And turns out several physics papers about retrocausality have been debunked or proven wrong, as in there is no retrocausality, because it makes sense for such physics to not exist when time travel doesn't happen naturally.
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In other words, if paradoxes are true, they will just happen, and the world will be in a state of mess that only us will recognize and see. Cause the universe doesnt care nor it affects it, if you both kill your grandfather and yet still exist at the same time.
This is my strongly preferred version of time travel: the universe doesn't care if you're a paradox. And by the way, if you go back in time then the instant you appear in the past you're a paradox -- you're acausal, an effect with no cause -- long before you even do anything at the macro scale like killing somebody. If the universe was going to do something about you, that's when it should happen.
Damn, so right, never even thought about it that way
Wouldn't call it a paradox, but being in the past is acausal in deed
And this point actually lends more credibility towards this hypothesis, in my view, particularly with the outcome I mentioned to you earlier regarding a Non-Linear Reconfiguration. It would fit here, with the time traveler arriving in the past, being acausal, and the universe simply adapts to their presence to flow around them.
Paradoxes are not really they are nothing more than intellectual exercises,
i agree, most paradoxes are just fake logic, that are only true within our conversations or minds, they dont need solving or fixing, cause they dont truly exist.
Yet the previous example still aint a paradox
True, true...
Depends how time works. It may be a single timeline where you always appeared at that point and you're not actually changing anything, just fulfilling what already chronologically happened.
It has nothing to do with the universe caring, or not, and everything to do with resolving the math. Stepping outside our human experienced flow of time, and viewing spacetime as fixed data points that exist simultaneously can give you a better idea of why paradoxes simply can’t exist in our understanding of fundamental universal law. If you believe 1 + 1 =2 is a mathematical law then at best something could only appear to be a paradox with unresolved data needing to be discovered to resolve it. On the other hand, if you believe true paradoxes can exist then our scientific knowledge is fairly useless.
I dont think science takes paradoxes seriously, nor they should.
As there is no such evidence for paradoxes to exist, in other words its not even scientific to assume a thought experiment is a real thing, when it only exists as philosophy and logic (bad logic).
Yet in a more scientific vein, it is reasonable to debate how past events can be true and yet if we could go back and change them, how would both events still coexist or how would they resolve. It would be a case of how 1+1=3 and that would have to be regarded as a true statement, specially in physics where math is so important.
Plus i think i did mention, science so far does agree that retrocausality is a concept that is inherently wrong and not existent, hence the grandfather paradox cant ever materialize itself as most people describe it, hence why science doesnt need to consider this paradox seriously.
So yah, we do agree, maybe u misread my intention of "the universe doesnt care".
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I didnt understand ur last statement:
Cant follow the logic or the intention of it, nor how it fits with the rest u wrote.
Like the bootstrap paradox, maybe its not so much of a paradox, cause it doesnt create conflicts or issues, and it potentially extinguishing itself, as in it solves its own paradoxical nature on its own.
This is a paradox with potential to be true, how would this make scientific knowledge useless ?
Sorry, it was late. What I meant by that is that if we ever do find that 1 + 1 =3 (an actual paradox) then our most basic understanding of mathematics would be somehow fundamentally flawed which would be a big problem.
ohhh ok, yes i agree ;)
Though time travel is such a non-linear system, as in events do not need to proceed each other, maybe its not a conflict for physics.
And by that i mean, it would be something like quantum physics vs classical physics, they work so differently that what is true in one, doesn't need to be true on the other, and yet they do not clash.
With time travel we would give birth to chrono physics, with its own principles and quirks, that couldn't be compared to existing laws.
... maybe
It’s why I personally prefer the Quantum Superposition Model when considering traversing to the past. It conceptually resolves the math while allowing for both past histories to exist albeit in a very weird state.
When considering classical vs quantum physics, I admit that they often times don’t seemingly agree with one another, but they are both consistent in with what is considered foundational mathematical law. Obviously, with quantum gravity not yet reconciled; I can’t technically say with 100 percent certainty that wont change in the future.
To consider the possible reality where our mathematics is sufficient enough to actually time travel to the past, but also completely wrong on the most basic level is too hard for me to rectify.
Fun to think about.
Yup, quantum physics vs classical physics dont clash... technically true, and also not true.
Was gonna mention it, yet thats a whole different long topic.
We can just say, they both work within our universe right now, hence "dont clash"
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Once upon a time i also shared that idea of quantum superposition as a solution, both existing simultaneously and both being truth.
Yet, we end up falling in the same mistake people that say the MWI theory solves paradoxes. When it doesnt, it is a quantum theory that only works for quantum mechanics, its bastardizing and science mystification to just borrow that knowledge and haphazardly apply it to anything else. (not to mention all other issues the multiverse brings with it, so it really doesnt work)
Cause wile superposition sounds good, that is not something that could work in the macro world, quantum phenomenon seem to only work in the quantum realm. And probably another million other problems that i have not even though of yet.
But even you realize its problematic "albeit in a very weird state"
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But yah, every time i debate TT in this sub, its like "this and that could work..." but so many intrusive thoughts about every other technicalities why it doesn't.
And also "dont mention details, cause thats gonna derail the conversation into specificity"
Yet, it is fun :)
https://youtu.be/BXwALAkPubc?si=p_ajrYLxOty3m_rr
Hehehe
crazy, she lost me at manifolds... which was almost her first word xD
More like more like x,y,z,q axis of a .... Hypercube... Sorry cant spell decadoighhedron...dyslexia you know,
First, my own head cannon kinda prohibits it, (doesn't mean I'm saying your idea is bad, wrong, or anything like that) basically all matter is traveling through time and if you go back a second all the matter not going with you is in the present, not in the past with you anymore.
And second, if you were to go back in time, as in travel to the past to kill your grandfather or sleep with you grandmother kinda travel, and you fail, then go back and try again, you are so there from your first try, maybe you are the reason you failed in the first place, but sabotaging your past self to try and succeed on this time, for as many tries as you do. Or trying to kill Hitler or save Kennedy each try you make adds more "yous" to the equation, each one knowing more and more and not knowing why you keep failing, but how many of you end up on the same place together, what does that do to the planet of the first time you show up there's a million more of you showing up at close to the same time, maybe something acute, maybe something butterfly effect for the future?
And maybe anthropomorphizing time is a blunder being made, but it may be correct if some far flung future people is trying, while attempting to interfere with time as little as possible, to stop you from doing damage to the fabric of space time? Could be humans in a few billion years, could be aliens from a billion years in the past monitoring time.
I also like the idea from 11/22/63 that time is like a river. You change things in small enough ways, like throwing rocks in a river, you make ripples and splashes that may affect a small portion of a larger river but ultimately the river is going to go where it's intended, whether it's some higher beings plan or just nature itself. Or you make a huge change, like diverting the river with a dam and it ends up someplace very different. If you make a change like that it affects everything downstream in extremely unexpected waves, (in the book the earth was being destroyed by massive city destroying earthquakes everywhere, regularly, which I took as maybe the goldilocks zone is more than just the make up of a solar system and specific distances and the existence of liquid water)
Maybe I'm just rambling, but I don't think because something is anthropomorphically described, means time won't resist change, just maybe not for the motivations humans might ascribe to try and explain it.
Oh and paradoxes only exist in mental exercises...they are just ways to theorize...in reality ...in the physical construct...paradoxes always resolve, rarely as predicted but they do resolve ...following the path of lease resistance
I think there is physics that can explain such a phenomenon, at least explain the result we would perceive. All you would need is 2 things to be true 1) The Many-Worlds Interpretation in quantum mechanics, where every possible outcome of a quantum event physically happens, but in branching universes and 2) All time travel paradoxes instantly destroy the universe in which they happen.
If those two things are true, you would precieve the exact result you describe. Let's say you travel back in time with a plan to kill your grandpa. Your plan has a 99.999% chance of success, and a 0.001% chance of failure (if the gun jams or something). Well, congrats, you just destroyed 99.999% of realities, leaving only the 0.001% of realities (where the gun jammed) to exist. But, 0.001% of infinity is... Infinity. So the end result is no different from before, except it appears to us that the universe stopped you. It didn't stop you, it let you do it with catastrophic results.
No... Just no... Temporal displacement can be catastrophic to the displaced mass in that it must be contained within a vehicle but we in no way have the capacity to cause a cascading reaction such as you describe. Time is just a coordinate, it is a construct that delineates exact moments in the movement of objects in a gravity bound three dimensional construct, where gravity is not a force but an effect of bi-polar elecromagetic attraction and stasis is an effect of bi-polar electronagnetic repulsion. Time dialation is a legitimate side effect of electromagnetic gravity negation... But i digress... Not a physicist...that is how i understand it on the most basic level
My points were merely supposition. You, however, appear to be claiming to know... facts... about time travel. Claiming to know about the impact of mass that travels back through time, and the potential impacts of a paradox. Pretty big claims. But you never mentioned, what is your solution to the grandfather paradox?
Unless there is a multiverse, if someone were to discover time travel in 2050, then travel back to 1950 (just a random year) then it would have already happened and anything they did would have already happened. Since one person traveling back in time isn’t likely to reset the entire memories and experiences of billions of other people.
I’ve always seen time as linear, just the perceived speed at which things change. It can slow down or speed up, but can’t be reversed no matter your perspective.
Ive always personally found things like the grandfather paradox to be bs. Yes, going back in time and killing your grandfather could result in you not being born, but that wouldn't erase the you that killed your grandfather.
By timetraveling you have physically removed yourself from "the present" and inserted yourself in to "the past". You are essentially new matter added to the universe. You're not going to go poof because you erase the events that led to "your" birth. You already exist.
I believe, just me here, that it's a leap to assume that a human that travels back or forward in time that your "consciousness" exits that portal with your physical body. A human traveler could exit that time portal in a vegetative state, eliminating paradoxes where decision making on the other end happen. Who says consciousness can travel through time. We dont even know what consciousness is ,maybe consciousness is anchored to the present. Or who says that if you do exit the portal conscious that your memory is intact. You could exit the portal with you no memory of who you are, why you are there, where you came from. Can the information of one timeline physically travel to another. Maybe you can ship physical matter and the information associated to that matter only like the atomic structure of that physical matter makes the trip but does memory that is time dependent survive? Is memory which is information anchored to the present timeline as well or can memory not travel through time? What if it does detach but it is shipped with you on a digital or even physical storage device to "cheat the system"? What if it's not a conscious being like a robot? Or any decion-making avatar? It can change time lines based on the decisions it makes. It can be programmed to kill me grandfather, I don't need to do it. It arrives with an intact mission statement in the form of physically stored information from one time line of what to do in another time line. I. Think there are still too many logistical questions that need to be answered before we even get to paradoxes. Too many assumptive leaps from what the equations say when we say time travel is possible. Maybe a hydrogen atom can be made to time travel but who says a human being with a suitcase full of encyclopedias and an AI enabled smartphone can time travel.
Maybe overthinking it. There is no observable physical test where we are able to send information back in time. Putting time on an axis in a graph does not mean that time is equivalent to space, even though it works that way mathematically somewhat. Time travel forward is simply compressing or speeding up of time, not actual travel. The universe may not keep saves. There may not be a place to go to when travelling backwards. If the universe is made up of a gazillion little states interacting, then going backwards would have the same quantum state problem that going forwards has - that it is all random as far as we know. Certainly going forward again would result in a different state, so you would not be able to get back to your previous future.
Our current understanding of physics includes general relativity, quantum mechanics, and string theory.
Of course there is a slight wrinkle: general relativity doesn’t play nice with the other two, and while both quantum and string prove out individually there’s the minor rub that as we understand them, only one of them can be true.
There's no physics that can explain any aspect of what would happen in time travel though. We don't know if paradoxes are possible, and the fact that none currently exist may be proof that you cannot cause one.
I don't think it's particularly human-centric thinking besides that humans are the only entities (hypothetically) capable of getting into a position to cause a paradox.
It's real simple. The time line gets overwritten if you change something and yes, if you kill your mother before you were conceived you are never born. How could you come back to do it then? Because before you didn't exist you did.
Physical reality doesn't know the cause. It's not conscious. If a bullet hits you, it hits you. Doesn't matter to the matter that the bullet was fired by someone who is never going to exist if the bullet hits the target. How could physical reality respond? It has no thought process of it's own.
You don't come into existence but the you who went back still lives. He doesn't disappear like in the movies. Moments are like rooms in a house. What is in them can be changed. The timeline can be altered, not branched. The old one is erased.
To branch a new timeline would require all the energy in the universe to be doubled. One set for one timeline and another set for the new timeline. Where does all this extra energy come from?
In a time travel scenario, you would not be able to kill your grandfather.
But the way it could work is something like this:
Read online that someone won the lottery. But do not read names, write lotto numbers.
Go back in time, purchase winning ticket in the time-place of the winning ticket.
Mail this ticket to your house. Return to present, open mailbox. Winning ticket.
If time travel is possible, this is an example where you can "change" the past. But you are not really changing the past
I thought the mamy worlds model covered paradoxs...you can go back and kill ypur grandparents but they wont be YOUR granfparents but one of abother timeline
Time travel isn't possible on a mental level; our brain can only store and use memory; it has no way to rewrite the memory-recording process and recreate moments from the past.
The one true outcome of modern science is that it has people looking outside themselves for answers.
It has people externalsizing their power to a few who then give them a blueprint and manifest that blueprint into belief.
It has people addicted to matter.
Christianity (or religion) does the same thing. People give away their power to something outside themself and worship it.
When you are born you are complete. There is nothing missing. You have everything necessary to know and do.
To understand the complex one only need study the simple. As Above So Below.
If each and every human being turned off the thinking mind in a meditative state then the power switch to the material plane goes off and all returns to void.
We all have the ability to create reality now in the present. All it takes is one person to make a change and alter it.
Right now humanity is asleep. Humanity externalizes knowledge, divinity, salvation, power and the collective consciousness down shifts into a slumber of materialism.
If you want to "time travel" then learn to astral project. Start looking within. Because that's where the answers are.
I mean — there absolutely are basic laws of physics that would prevent it. The Law of Conservation of Momentum, for example, could not be maintained if you went back a CTC and interacted with the past. You would be affecting the momentum of countless molecules, particles, and macroscopic objects. The same is true with nearly all 5r conservation laws—energy, matter, information, etc—all fail to be conserved in this situation.
I do somewhat agree with your point that paradoxes my just be our hand-wavy attempt to maintain cause and effect and I generally find them unsatisfying, particularly when they are manifested as the universe creating coincidences to stop time travel from happening.
It is more like faster than light travel, or escaping Earth gravity well by jumping really high on a trampoline, or a perpetual motion machine—these things aren’t impossible because the universe contrives paradoxes to stop them, they are simply impossible-to-be-solved equations within the framework of our universe. For me, a perfect and compelling time travel story would show how those things aren’t actually conserved and we just didn’t realize it.
The argument hinges on the idea that the universe has no obligation to maintain causality, but is seemingly ignoring the fact that “the universe forbids a paradox” is not a philosophical argument, but a mathematical proof.
We know the universe does not “care” about paradoxes, but the mathematical calculations that make theoretical time travel possible do. 1 + 1 =2 is not a condescending dismissal, but a simple, yet profoundly elegant expression that our most complex mathematical concepts are built upon, including quantum mechanics.
Fielding your example of the repeated travelers attempting to change the past only to be “stopped” by the universe, and it not being explainable by any known physics … well again, we end up at 1 + 1 =2. Known physics would literally be the reason why the traveler is repeatedly stopped as, at least in this one version of theoretical time travel, two different data sets cannot mathematically occupy the same point in spacetime.
There are other feasible, mathematically consistent theories of time travel (many worlds, quantum superposition model, evolving block) that allow for seemingly paradoxical (but they are not actual paradoxes) events to occur, but none of them allow for changing the past, and also having that same past exist within a cohesive singular reality.
I think the anthropomorphic nature of humanity is more likely explain perspectives such as yours above. The misinterpretation that the universe “resolves” paradoxes because it “forbids” them is an anthropomorphism in and of itself. Paradoxes aren’t forbidden because of the universes distaste for them, but because by definition; they simply don’t add up, and in the event that they do then they are no longer paradoxes.
We really don't know how time travel works, but I reject the block universe, and believe in what I call the eternal now, the past and future are just different configurations of the now. With that in mind there may be ways to reconstruct the past by altering the direction of time's arrow. In that case if you can visit a reconstructed past then killing your grandfather doesn't impact you.