Favorite Time Travel Paradoxes

[Edd]

So this vid is officially about the latest What If episode finale, but 5 minutes in they go on a several minute overview about how the stones work across timelines.

Huntn, I think it’ll be of interest to you.

 

[Huntn]

So this vid is officially about the latest What If episode finale, but 5 minutes in they go on a several minute overview about how the stones work across timelines.

Huntn, I think it’ll be of interest to you.

Possibly, but I’ve tuned out of the idea behind What If, because I don’t want or need to watch alternate reality story versions of what I have seen and am vested in. I suppose it has to do with a time paradox or a branching time line?

 

[Edd]

Possibly, but I’ve tuned out of the idea behind What If, because I don’t want or need to watch alternate reality story versions of what I have seen and am vested in. I suppose it has to do with a time paradox or a branching time line?

Sort of, but when discussing the stones, it leaves the What If deal altogether briefly.

 

[Huntn]

Sort of, but when discussing the stones, it leaves the What If deal altogether briefly.

Ok I I watched it and the issue remains, here is my explanation:

In the realm of actual scientists/theorists addressing the ramifications of traveling back in time, the entire idea “branching timelines” was thought of /proposed as a possibility for one purpose, to avoid a paradox and not alter the future you came from. The idea is the protected/sacred time line.

If a single time line, what the Avenger Infinity Stone retrieval teams did would have been to scramble their future so badly there would not have been a time machine created to bring them back, because there would not have been a reason to create one. Agreed?

So the alternative idea is of branching time lines. They were thought of as an explanation, a barrier to protect your original timeline, so when you go back and change the past your have broken yourself off into a new reality and the new timeline will play out In a different manner.

Once you find yourself in a new reality, there is no returning. When asked about going back and killing baby Thanos, Banner said, that is not how time works, you can’t go back and kill baby Thanos and fix anything in your original timeline because your (old) future becomes your past, that can’t be changed. This is as clear as it can possibly be. But then, the writers proceed to ignore that standard, the exact thing they made Banner say, lol!

So for convenience, Marvel decided to corrupt the idea of branching to time lines so they can create drama, ie wiping out half of all life and then restoring it just because they wanted too. So they made up the rules as they went. This is why I reject End Game as a satisfying time travel story, and why placing the the TVA in the realm of unexplainable is more satisfying. Just call it magic, then you can do anything you want.

But if the writers are going to include branching timelines, I’ll reject the narrative of being able to cross back to your original timeline unless maybe you are elevated to God or using something in the realm of magic. I’d suggest to Marvel, don’t try to have your cake and eat it too. Don’t try to sound scientific when you really want to practise magic.

This is why no one questions Dr. strange practicing mystic arts. But when you include a time machine created by man, then the writer runs into these issues trying to proved a scientific explanation.

 

[Yoused]

They're all nonsense. Time travel, whilst possible doesn't account for any other dimension such as movement of the earth, or the expansion of the universe. Travel 50 years into the future and you're liable to end up sucking the deep vacuum of space as anything else.

Yeah, pet peeve of mine!

I take a much more radical position: that the past is not carved in stone. The past is entirely and nothing more than what we understand it to be. It is information. That is all it is, and that information is constantly changing. In other words, the future may be a sea of probabilities, but so is the past. We can only guess what will happen, to varying degrees of accuracy, but we can also only guess what did happen, to varying degrees of accuracy.

The "butterfly effect" is nonsense. Any given event has a point-like focus that expands outward in ever-increasing diffuseness, the same way a gravity well weakens with distance. The present is a foam of event bubbles that lose meaning the further you get away from them in time and space. The shape of now is based on the information available from the past, as well as the incursion of information available about the future (what is probable and what is unlikely). The available information from both directions is imprecise.

Thus, if your amazing blue Time And Relative Dimensions In Space box could actually calculate the exact helical arc that would put you a couple Pm distant back in the exact spatio-temporal location where that thing happened, with the intact knowledge that you have, your understanding of what did happen would be inaccurate enough that you would (probably) be unable to make real, effective changes to the timeline.

That said, I do love a good TT paradox and as much as the aforesaid is top on my mind, I let it slide when it comes to particularly well done TT movies.

But, yes, it is fun entertainment, if you know how to suspend belief. One of my favorite short stories (cannot remember the title or author) was about the development of a time viewer that allowed the user to see the past as it actually was. The weakness of the viewer was the same as that of a telescope: the further back you tried to look, the less distinct the image was. It was not possible to get a clear image of dinosaurs, but it was possible to get a very good view of yesterday.

Or 5 minutes ago. Anywhere. Which meant that the easily-obtainable device was an excellent tool for spying on your neighbors. The unintended result was that there was no longer any privacy for anyone, and culture had to adapt drastically to accommodate this change.

 

[Huntn]

I take a much more radical position: that the past is not carved in stone. The past is entirely and nothing more than what we understand it to be. It is information. That is all it is, and that information is constantly changing. In other words, the future may be a sea of probabilities, but so is the past. We can only guess what will happen, to varying degrees of accuracy, but we can also only guess what did happen, to varying degrees of accuracy.

The "butterfly effect" is nonsense. Any given event has a point-like focus that expands outward in ever-increasing diffuseness, the same way a gravity well weakens with distance. The present is a foam of event bubbles that lose meaning the further you get away from them in time and space. The shape of now is based on the information available from the past, as well as the incursion of information available about the future (what is probable and what is unlikely). The available information from both directions is imprecise.

Thus, if your amazing blue Time And Relative Dimensions In Space box could actually calculate the exact helical arc that would put you a couple Pm distant back in the exact spatio-temporal location where that thing happened, with the intact knowledge that you have, your understanding of what did happen would be inaccurate enough that you would (probably) be unable to make real, effective changes to the timeline.



But, yes, it is fun entertainment, if you know how to suspend belief. One of my favorite short stories (cannot remember the title or author) was about the development of a time viewer that allowed the user to see the past as it actually was. The weakness of the viewer was the same as that of a telescope: the further back you tried to look, the less distinct the image was. It was not possible to get a clear image of dinosaurs, but it was possible to get a very good view of yesterday.

Or 5 minutes ago. Anywhere. Which meant that the easily-obtainable device was an excellent tool for spying on your neighbors. The unintended result was that there was no longer any privacy for anyone, and culture had to adapt drastically to accommodate this change.

If true movement could be measured, as you said, a time machine might be able to calculate future and past position. If it can calculate time, it should be able to account for movement too.

Our perception of time is the present flowing forward. Our evidence is observed aging. However, we can say the past effects the present and future, we can’t confidently say that the future effects the past. My perception is that once quantum mechanics is introduced everything gets weird and unexplainable. The mind blowing aspect of quantum mechanics is the idea of particles being everywhere at once, and things like that. That’s when things start looking like magic.

 

[Yoused]

My perception is that once quantum mechanics is introduced everything gets weird and unexplainable. The mind blowing aspect of quantum mechanics is the idea of particles being everywhere at once, and things like that. That’s when things start looking like magic.

As they say, "magic" is just the word for "outside the bounds of what we understand". QT is largely about how we cannot make precise measurements. And some other stuff. I read a bit about "holographic theory", which hypothesizes that what we observe is a shard of reality (if you shatter a hologram, each piece can still reveal the whole image) and each particle is just a manifestation of a sort of thing like the particle's equivalent of "the universal mind", but it is an avenue that has not been explored (kind of like fanciful/mystical physics).

My point is that the "butterfly effect", along with strict causality, treats the universe as a machine, which it most decidedly is not. And the more we learn, the more we realize how incomplete our knowledge is (if we do not arrive at that realization, the learning part was faulty). And really, if that were not the case, we would reach a point where we could not advance, which would be a depressing pass.

 

[Huntn]

As they say, "magic" is just the word for "outside the bounds of what we understand". QT is largely about how we cannot make precise measurements. And some other stuff. I read a bit about "holographic theory", which hypothesizes that what we observe is a shard of reality (if you shatter a hologram, each piece can still reveal the whole image) and each particle is just a manifestation of a sort of thing like the particle's equivalent of "the universal mind", but it is an avenue that has not been explored (kind of like fanciful/mystical physics).

My point is that the "butterfly effect", along with strict causality, treats the universe as a machine, which it most decidedly is not. And the more we learn, the more we realize how incomplete our knowledge is (if we do not arrive at that realization, the learning part was faulty). And really, if that were not the case, we would reach a point where we could not advance, which would be a depressing pass.

I admit to using the term Magic for that purpose. But It’s not just measurements, isn’t it currently beyond our understanding and perception as in particles that can be everywhere at once? Or do scientists understand it, but not most of us? I assume this and time travel is strictly the realm of theory? My understanding is that relativity (a form of time travel) has been proven and is accepted and that causality at some level exists, yes?

Probably not in the same context but when it comes to time travel there are theories/guesses, but some scientific guesses have been made based on what is known of science. Of note is the idea of the multiverse which if I recall correctly is related to the amount projected matter we expect to measure but can’t find, opening the door to the idea of parallel realities/spaces seperste from one another. And once you have a multiverse writers can produce stories with branching time lines.

Single timelines are the most problematic from a paradox standpoint, but in a way are the simplest. If you were to travel to your past, you mere presence there would cause changes, possibly dramatic changes that would ripple forward, possibly making for an unrecognizable future that you left.

My impression is that traveling back though time would be a degree less in difficulty than jumping to a parallel reality/universe, but if we are speaking of quantum mechanics, maybe not.

Sure, I admit it is all speculation and conjecture, but my understanding is that branching time lines recognize the sanctity of an existing timeline, the idea is rooted in protecting existing timelines and avoiding paradoxes. Hence go back, and you have split a point from the past off into a seperate reality, a separate timeline, and you would be stuck there.

And I do acknowledge that writers can construct any story they want regarding time travel, but when they try to start sounding scientific about it as Banner did, in his End Game time does not work that way statement, they may have boxed themselves somewhat into a corner, at least from my perspective. And ultimately it is the judgement of the audience as to whether a story holds water or not.

 

[Roller]

Some of my favorites Star Trek episodes were about time travel, especially in The Original Series:

• A 1960s fighter pilot gets beamed aboard the Enterprise
• Gary Seven tries to prevent an orbiting nuclear bomb from exploding on Earth
• McCoy and Spock go back to an ice age on a planet about to be destroyed
• Kirk and Spock pass through the Guardian of Forever to depression-era USA

Time travel also played a role in other ST series and movies, including The Voyage Home, where the Enterprise crew ends up in 1986 San Francisco trying to save two whales and bring them back to the future. Of course, none of this makes sense if you analyze too closely, especially the part about whipping the ship around the sun to go backward or forward in time. But it didn't make sense for Superman flying around the Earth, either.

 

[Huntn]

So this vid is officially about the latest What If episode finale, but 5 minutes in they go on a several minute overview about how the stones work across timelines.

Huntn, I think it’ll be of interest to you.

For fun, I watched this again, and I like where the narrator used the phrase Marvel wanted to have their cake and eat it too. That’s what I said,

As described in this video, infinity stones taken from our past, and put back into our past at the exact same point, to negate the effect of them being taken, and cut off the branching time lines. The issue if there is an issue, maybe not, is the ability of someone other than the TVA to jump around to different timelines, as in no big deal. Banner’s time machine would have had to to give this ability to the time travelers, but that was never explained. The only thing explained was this:

But as Bruce Banner (Hulk) tries to explain, "Time doesn't work that way... If you travel to the past, that past becomes your future, and your former present becomes the past, which can't now be changed by your new future."

To me that means half of life wiped out, Infinity Stones destroyed, that’s a done deal. Those people are dead, and the stones are no longer in existence to reverse it.

However, I found this intriguing article that I have not yet had time to digest where I pulled the above quote from. Maybe it will change my mind.

The Confusing Timeline Of 'Avengers: Endgame' Explained

The science behind the events in Marvel's biggest superhero movie (warning: spoilers!)

www.forbes.com

 

[Huntn]

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Tenet (2020)- SPOILERS I’m a SciFi fan, Tenet is streaming on HBO and I tried, could just not stick with this movie. I might give it another chance, but as of now, it makes no sense. The idea of inverted/reverse time was too hard for me to understand what I was seeing. The idea that an object could be inverted and is moving backwards in time as the time around it moves forward just made no sense to me visually.

Sure I understood when a bullet gouge in the concrete disappeared, and the associated bullet that moved away from it was an “inverted” bullet. But the character observing this is moving forward In time, so if he sees a bullet gouge it all ready happened, then the gouge disappears. That bullet and the small bit of concrete effected is moving backwards while the surroundings move forward.

But then we see early the main character picks up an object (a gun?) that is laying on the ground and that triggers a fight where him and another participant are fighting, moving backwards. So I’ll assume we are watching the inverted fight as it happens, but the trigger seems to be disconnected. The character walks in at the end of a fight unaware it happened already, unless the idea that the ensuing fight exists in it’s entirety as happening in reverse time and at the end (beginning) of the fight, the character is has move to a point before he walked into the room and picked up the object. It’s confusing to watch and maintain continuity.

I plan on giving this story one more chance.

https://screenrant.com/tenet-movie-nolan-inversion-reverse-time-travel-explained/

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt6723592/