Paranormal: Coup de Gras
- Thread starter Stryder
- Start date
The grandfather paradox is a paradox of time travel, supposedly first conceived by the science fiction writer René Barjavel in his book "Future times three" ("Le voyageur imprudent", 1943). Suppose you travelled back in time and killed your biological grandfather before he met your grandmother. Then you would never have been conceived, so you could not have travelled back in time after all. In that case, your grandfather would still be alive and you would have been conceived, allowing you to travel back in time and kill your grandfather, and so on. (Wikipedia)
I persume you wouldn't realise, because if it all carried on like normal, and you were still conceived, how could you know about it? Because you wouldn't have travelled back in time to kill him, so it wouldn't have happened in your conscious memory, and you can't know about something which you can't remember.
I persume you wouldn't realise, because if it all carried on like normal, and you were still conceived, how could you know about it? Because you wouldn't have travelled back in time to kill him, so it wouldn't have happened in your conscious memory, and you can't know about something which you can't remember.
Futurama!
How would that work though? You couldn't be created until you went back in time to sleep with your grandmother, so you couldn't go back in time, because you hadn't been created yet, so you wouldn't exist.
How would that work though? You couldn't be created until you went back in time to sleep with your grandmother, so you couldn't go back in time, because you hadn't been created yet, so you wouldn't exist.
The one problem with the grandfather paradox is it's always coined that someone goes back to kill their grandfather. The problem is that people tend to get so centred on the death of their grandfather that they tend to lose focus on the actual paradox itself.
Lets say for one, a project was done to create a paradox where a time capsule was sent back in time to our past. When the capsule arrives what happens? Is it made known to the people that built it that they are to build one? Is it kept hidden from the public either until the original people build it or never made public? (in that sense generating a greater paradox) If any technology is inside, does it get reverse engineered? And if so are people allowed to steal the credit for the invention?
(again all of this is "hypothetical" and it's very easy to define what I would suggest to each question, however the one thing that seems to lack on it currently is any more rules than the Ethics or Morality of those that participate in such experiments or received such a capsule)
Lets say for one, a project was done to create a paradox where a time capsule was sent back in time to our past. When the capsule arrives what happens? Is it made known to the people that built it that they are to build one? Is it kept hidden from the public either until the original people build it or never made public? (in that sense generating a greater paradox) If any technology is inside, does it get reverse engineered? And if so are people allowed to steal the credit for the invention?
(again all of this is "hypothetical" and it's very easy to define what I would suggest to each question, however the one thing that seems to lack on it currently is any more rules than the Ethics or Morality of those that participate in such experiments or received such a capsule)
M
Mr Anonymous
Guest
Stryder said:
It rather depends upon who's responsible for committing the "Paradox" - although, in either instance no paradox would actually occur.
Traveling back in time requires you to arrive at a specific point in Time and Space only (the vertical line depicted in orange) - History, events subsequent to that specific point become irrelevant. As far as reality is concerned they simply haven't happened.
History, as you have experienced it, is depicted as taking place along the top event line as indicated in the diagram.
The lower event line running parallel to it is a separate chain of events linked only by the actual act of time travel itself.
It may be perhaps that parallel realities comparable to that of our own exist naturally, it may be that the actual act of time travel itself causes them to exist.
An actual time traveller themselves can't make that determination.
All that actually transpires in either event is simply what actually happens, thus - Say you travel back in time at a point before your father was born, kill or cause to be killed, your grandfather, you (being the time traveller) continue to exists because your actions have had absolutely zero physical effect on the reality you initially started in (the upper event line). Travel forward in time from that point and you find yourself in a reality in which your father was never actually born yet you exist perfectly happily - your actions have had absolutely no effect on your actual past, they have simply created an alternate reality in which you continue to exist.
If you personally are not the time traveller involved directly, but events subsequent to your birth prompt someone else to travel back in time, etc, etc, the exact same remains true - you continue with the flow of events in the top event line, never leave it, never actually witness the consequences of this other persons actions.
Thus, in both events, time travel occurs but no paradox does. we can know this to be true by the use of the term Paradox - paradoxes simply don't happen in the real world, only occasionally may they appear to...
M
Mr Anonymous
Guest
Stryder said:
Taking roughly the scenario you describe, in context you can play them all out equally together - some may give rise to events one can only describe as being complete alternates to the way "History" dictates events happened, others form close or equal parallels.
The point is, if the scenario you hypothesise remained true, one of the above event lines would correspond to the exact one we ourselves are currently living in.
The question of course remains, which particular one...?