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Imagine somehow you build a a time tunnel that stretches 1 minute into the past...

Viking11

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You pass through the tunnel and you can see yourself as you were 1 minute ago. Imagine that you decide to shoot your earlier self. You die before you even finish loading the pistol. So, who killed you? How were you able to go back in time to kill yourself if you died before you were ever able to go back in time to kill yourself?
 
Re: Imagine somehow you build a a time tunnel that stretches 1 minute into the past..

I'll need a few bourbons before answering this, and we will all want that... chemical help.
 
Re: Imagine somehow you build a a time tunnel that stretches 1 minute into the past..

That's better than what the Omega 13 Device will get you.
 
Re: Imagine somehow you build a a time tunnel that stretches 1 minute into the past..

This is basically the grandfather paradox on a much shorter scale. There are a few hypotheses on how it would play out.

A popular one is when you kill yourself you are creating a separate timeline. So the you in that time line dies and doesn't go on to kill himself in the future. But it doesn't affect your own timeline so you keep on living.
 
Re: Imagine somehow you build a a time tunnel that stretches 1 minute into the past..

hindi-bhavishya-purana-audio-052607-h900.jpg


You pass through the tunnel and you can see yourself as you were 1 minute ago. Imagine that you decide to shoot your earlier self. You die before you even finish loading the pistol. So, who killed you? How were you able to go back in time to kill yourself if you died before you were ever able to go back in time to kill yourself?

Basically it will be as though nothing happened because the result is you lose what ever reason for going back and therefore it never happened.


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grandfather_paradox

The grandfather paradox is a proposed paradox of time travel which results in an inconsistency through changing the past. The paradox was described as early as 1931, and even then it was described as "the age-old argument of preventing your birth by killing your grandparents".[SUP][1][/SUP][SUP]:vi[/SUP][SUP]:173[/SUP] Early science fiction stories dealing with the paradox are the short story Ancestral Voices by Nathaniel Schachner, published in 1933,[SUP][2][/SUP] and the 1943 book by René Barjavel Future Times Three.[SUP][3][/SUP] The paradox is described as follows: the time traveller goes back in time and kills his grandfather before his grandfather meets his grandmother. As a result, the time traveller is never born. But, if he was never born, then he is unable to travel through time and kill his grandfather, which means the traveller would be born after all, and so on.
Despite the name, the grandfather paradox does not exclusively regard the impossibility of one's own birth. Rather, it regards any action that eliminates the cause or means of traveling back in time.
 
Re: Imagine somehow you build a a time tunnel that stretches 1 minute into the past..

Ryan-Reynolds-confused.gif
 
Re: Imagine somehow you build a a time tunnel that stretches 1 minute into the past..

in my opinion, either

1. going back in time and killing an earlier version of yourself would simply create a different thread of reality. in this reality, that version of you would be dead, but you, the shooter, would remain alive on a different string. this is evidenced by the fact that the dead version of you can't travel back in time to kill you. there would have to be multiple planes of existence.

or

2. much more likely : if you built a time tunnel to a minute ago, you'd better hope that where you enter that tunnel doesn't matter.

How fast is the earth moving? - Scientific American

because otherwise, you're going to emerge from that tunnel out in space with the Earth rushing to meet you in a minute. good luck with that.
 
Re: Imagine somehow you build a a time tunnel that stretches 1 minute into the past..

You pass through the tunnel and you can see yourself as you were 1 minute ago. Imagine that you decide to shoot your earlier self. You die before you even finish loading the pistol. So, who killed you? How were you able to go back in time to kill yourself if you died before you were ever able to go back in time to kill yourself?

Well, the prospect of seemingly impossible causality paradoxes is one reason for many to reject the possibility of time travel. For the rest of us, it's a reason to be extremely apprehensive about ever attempting it.

There's no way to know what would happen in this or the more normal grandfather paradox situation, but I think it's a fairly safe bet that whatever would happen would be quite bad.
 
Re: Imagine somehow you build a a time tunnel that stretches 1 minute into the past..

That's better than what the Omega 13 Device will get you.



I can't believe you made that reference but awesome.
 
Re: Imagine somehow you build a a time tunnel that stretches 1 minute into the past..



I can't believe you made that reference but awesome.


Love the movie and can't wait for the TV show.
 
Re: Imagine somehow you build a a time tunnel that stretches 1 minute into the past..

You pass through the tunnel and you can see yourself as you were 1 minute ago. Imagine that you decide to shoot your earlier self. You die before you even finish loading the pistol. So, who killed you? How were you able to go back in time to kill yourself if you died before you were ever able to go back in time to kill yourself?

I'll need a few bourbons before answering this, and we will all want that... chemical help.

Amazingly enough and after the few bourbons, I decided to call up an old friend & philosophy professor of mine to talk about this. It became a good excuse to call.

The way I presented the paradox was "A person goes back in time just one minute, and in doing so see's himself standing at the device about to go through it. For a moment they are both standing there, one through the device and one about to go through. The one that went through the device decides to shoot the one that has not been through yet. What happens next?"

A brief pause then my friend says... "Nothing else happens, the person that went through the device already ends up standing over the body of himself who has not been through the device." It took a moment of some back and forth but in the end I agree.

What we want to say is a paradox of time is created in that instant where because the person who went through the device kills himself in a state before going through then time *corrects* itself for the paradox and both end up removed from the time line. The issue then becomes an idea of various Quantum Sciences theories on time lines (perhaps better said as time conditions.)

When I asked my friend the question explicitly as stated by the OP, the response was "none of that matters." I both agreed and disagreed.

My response was since all that really happened was the person that went through the device ends up at the same point of time as himself before going through the device then they both exist in the same "instance of time" (think abstract perhaps even cube, not exclusively as time on a single line level.) So when one kills the other then all that really happens is in that instance of time one is left standing, but there is no force for time to correct for the paradox. Why would it need to? The person left alive is simply standing over the body of himself before going through the device.

This friend then asked me, "Does it matter which one standing there kills the other?" My response was no, and for the same reason. In that instance of both standing there, it does not matter which one ends up dead as the other is still in that instance of time. Even if you have to reduce the whole thing to looking at time as a line, both are on a time line that cross. So going back in time one minute really only allowed for a second instance of the same person standing there, but those time lines are independent now.

And then we agreed that bourbon was far more fun to talk about.
 
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Re: Imagine somehow you build a a time tunnel that stretches 1 minute into the past..

I'll just send a terminator back in time instead to kill all my enemies.
 
Re: Imagine somehow you build a a time tunnel that stretches 1 minute into the past..

Amazingly enough and after the few bourbons, I decided to call up an old friend & philosophy professor of mine to talk about this. It became a good excuse to call.

The way I presented the paradox was "A person goes back in time just one minute, and in doing so see's himself standing at the device about to go through it. For a moment they are both standing there, one through the device and one about to go through. The one that went through the device decides to shoot the one that has not been through yet. What happens next?"

A brief pause then my friend says... "Nothing else happens, the person that went through the device already ends up standing over the body of himself who has not been through the device." It took a moment of some back and forth but in the end I agree.

What we want to say is a paradox of time is created in that instant where because the person who went through the device kills himself in a state before going through then time *corrects* itself for the paradox and both end up removed from the time line. The issue then becomes an idea of various Quantum Sciences theories on time lines (perhaps better said as time conditions.)

When I asked my friend the question explicitly as stated by the OP, the response was "none of that matters." I both agreed and disagreed.

My response was since all that really happened was the person that went through the device ends up at the same point of time as himself before going through the device then they both exist in the same "instance of time" (think abstract perhaps even cube, not exclusively as time on a single line level.) So when one kills the other then all that really happens is in that instance of time one is left standing, but there is no force for time to correct for the paradox. Why would it need to? The person left alive is simply standing over the body of himself before going through the device.

This friend then asked me, "Does it matter which one standing there kills the other?" My response was no, and for the same reason. In that instance of both standing there, it does not matter which one ends up dead as the other is still in that instance of time. Even if you have to reduce the whole thing to looking at time as a line, both are on a time line that cross. So going back in time one minute really only allowed for a second instance of the same person standing there, but those time lines are independent now.

And then we agreed that bourbon was far more fun to talk about.


I don't see how that resolves the problem of any variation of the basic causality paradox: by going back in time and killing yourself, you have removed the reason to go back and kill yourself. Because you are dead, you do not go back in time and kill yourself. Because you do not go back in time and kill yourself, you are not dead, so you do go back in time and kill yourself.

Repeat cycle infinitely. (And/or, the universe breaks and a lot of people are upset)

Unless there is presently established physics that says what happens in this instance is something other than that - and I was fairly certain we're not anywhere close to that at this point - I don't see how the above isn't still a problem. You note that your/his solution results from "an idea of various Quantum Sciences theories on time lines (perhaps better said as time conditions", but what are they and have said theories been proven? I suspect the answer remains "we don't really know, but it's probably bad and it makes my brain hurt".
 
Re: Imagine somehow you build a a time tunnel that stretches 1 minute into the past..

I don't see how that resolves the problem of any variation of the basic causality paradox: by going back in time and killing yourself, you have removed the reason to go back and kill yourself. Because you are dead, you do not go back in time and kill yourself. Because you do not go back in time and kill yourself, you are not dead, so you do go back in time and kill yourself.

Repeat cycle infinitely. (And/or, the universe breaks and a lot of people are upset)

Unless there is presently established physics that says what happens in this instance is something other than that - and I was fairly certain we're not anywhere close to that at this point - I don't see how the above isn't still a problem. You note that your/his solution results from "an idea of various Quantum Sciences theories on time lines (perhaps better said as time conditions", but what are they and have said theories been proven? I suspect the answer remains "we don't really know, but it's probably bad and it makes my brain hurt".

Look at is this way.

Going back in time to time to kill yourself is a misnomer. Who you are killing is a carbon copy of yourself, it is not like putting a gun to your own head. The whole idea here is going back through time one minute to a point before you yourself went through the device. The problem is in that instance there are two people standing there that are identical less one minute of their lives (the traveler has an additional minute.)

The act of going back in time is the important factor here to consider, then we need to evaluate the point of view of them both. What did they both really observe and what is the theoretical end result?

The one that went through we can call a traveler. What he observed was everything the other version of himself observed but with the additional step of going through the device (whatever that entails but is immaterial to this conversation) and ending up in the same room one minute prior. The traveler's timeline is still occurring for him, all of those things happened for him. The point that they are the same person is diminished in importance because of the condition, two people standing there in an instance of time that they both observe (sort of.)

The version of himself that has not gone through the device is interesting to consider. Technically all he observed is walking into a room with a time device, then all of a sudden they are dead. It might be important to theorize where the traveler ends up in the room but in many ways it does not change the outcome (assuming nothing messy happened but we can theorize the whole point is to not end up with two people trying to stand in the same exact space as the exact same point in their collective time.)

To go a step further, after the traveler kills the version of himself standing there, he can then destroy the device... and he is still standing there on his continued timeline after all of those events occurred for his timeline to that point. The timeline for the version dead is concluded, presumably the body is still on the floor in the same room.

What we do not have evidence of is some corrective action that time takes because of someone going back in time. What we have evidence of is that person who went through the device still subject to our physical laws once in our reality, less one minute that he traveled back in time. No one is necessarily frozen in time, and we can only theorize how everyone in the room would really act if they were facing one another.

The real paradox here is what happens if there is a third person in the room observing all of this.

Consider *that* point of view. One minute there is someone about to go through a time device, then that person goes through the device. By theory what happens next is instantaneous, that observer is all of a sudden seeing the same person with a gun and a carbon copy of that same person on the floor dead. But, what exactly did that observer really observe? Time is still occurring for everyone in the room by theory, so does the observer's reality "correct" to the concluded events as impacted by the traveler also standing there with a gun? We assume so. But if so, what happened to that observance of watching someone go through the device? Was it lost, and perhaps better asked... did it ever happen? Remember after all of this is concluded the observer is standing there, and so are two people that look identical with one of them being dead. Even a better question is did the observer end up on a new timeline? And with that question we get to also ask, is time really linear?

Now we get to have a headache, and off I go for more bourbon.
 
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