Which theory of time travel do you subscribe to?

[jonks]

*accept time travel is possible for the discussion*

1. Everything's Already Happened So It Can't Be Changed (the "Faraday")

- exemplified by Lost (so far anyway)
- attempts to alter the past are futile, and/or merely bring about the very result which was trying to be avoided
- generally avoids paradox by having an unchangeable timestream. You can't go back and kill your dad before you were born, because if that had happened, you wouldn't exist in the future so you wouldn't be there to go back and kill your dad, hence you didn't (can't) kill your dad.

2. Yes We Can a.k.a. alternate universe/timeline theory (the "McFly")

- exemplified by Back to the Future
- future paradox is wiped from existence (travel back and kill your dad, you go poof)


Not sure where Terminator fits in to the above. Seems like a combo of #1 and #2 since all attempts to avert the skynet apocalypse failed, but in T3 the Shebot does kill a few of John's future lieutenants so I'm guessing they won't exist in the future timeline. The Sarah Connor Chronicles implies the characters traveled back from multiple futures. Another problem with Terminator is Skynet sends back a robot the remains of which becomes the foundation for us to develop the technology to create Skynet. If the T800 never came back, would skynet ever have been built?

Personally, I lean towards #1. If you can change the past seems like everything would constantly be in flux, which if not impossible would at least be very confusing, especially from a plotline perspective.

 

[Lamont Burns]

two objects can't occupy the same space at the same time!

 

[soulcougher73]

Id fall in the #2 option. Can change the past. Seems simple if you were to just go back and kill Martin Luther King for example at an early age. Not to say what he did would not ever come to fruition, but it may be delayed for years.

 

[jonks]

Originally posted by: soulcougher73
Id fall in the #2 option. Can change the past. Seems simple if you were to just go back and kill Martin Luther King for example at an early age. Not to say what he did would not ever come to fruition, but it may be delayed for years.

But you didn't kill him, since he lived

Sayid tried to change the past by killing Ben as a child, but since we know Ben grew up to be an adult, clearly no one managed to kill him in the past, hence Sayid failed to kill him.

 

[Pepsei]

3. yes and no, when you go back to the past, it is not your timeline anymore... you can change anything you want and it only affect this new timeline you're in. you may (~1%) or may not (~99%) return to your timeline again, ala sliders.

 

[Kadarin]

In "the McFly" option, any changes to the past would have a direct effect on the future, as evidenced by the time when Marty started to fade and disappear. The third option is the "Fringe" model, where choices and decisions that have multiple possible outcomes lead to a multitude of alternate realities, each equally "real".

 

[Dirigible]

I subscribe to the "You can only go forward in time" theory. So you cannot change the past.

 

[lokiju]

I think you almost have to believe in alternate realities if you believe in time travel at all since even if you travel back and change something like kill someone your reality is still that that person did what they did, unless all the sudden you're standing over the body of someone you instantly don't know of the moment they're dead.

 

[JS80]

Originally posted by: jonks

Originally posted by: soulcougher73
Id fall in the #2 option. Can change the past. Seems simple if you were to just go back and kill Martin Luther King for example at an early age. Not to say what he did would not ever come to fruition, but it may be delayed for years.

But you didn't kill him, since he lived

Sayid tried to change the past by killing Ben as a child, but since we know Ben grew up to be an adult, clearly no one managed to kill him in the past, hence Sayid failed to kill him.

So does that mean Ben knew this whole time that Sayid was the one that shot him when he was a child?

 

[torpid]

I am ambivalent about the possibility of time traveling to the past at all. If it is possible, I'd be equally ambivalent about how it works. However, the Faraday model isn't really "you can't change things" as much as it is "you already changed things". Lost presents a lot of troubling questions in time travel - why do certain people feel compelled to make the past happen as it happened if it already happened as it happened? It's confusing. I think the McFly with forked roads into alternate universes makes more sense.

 

[MikeyLSU]

what happened already happened, and you can't change anything.

Otherwise there is a paradox.

If you go back and kill your mother, you go poof, doesn't make sense. If you go poof and never existed, how did you kill your mother?

 

[scott916]

Sort of like the first Terminator movie. Kyle is sent by John Connor to save his mother Sarah, but he fathers John in the process.

 

[SlitheryDee]

#1

It seems like the only way it could work without screwing everything up. If the universe were not able to keep things on track future time travelers would have already fucked it up.

 

[zinfamous]

#1 most likely, mainly b/c Ray Bradbury is full of shit. (the slightest alteration in past events will have vast implications on the future/present)

Thing is, if you kill off someone, say Hitler, someone else would simply replace him. Many seem to fall into the fallacy that historical individuals and events existed in a vacuum, and are entirely independent of the specific time in history. If Alexander Graham Bell hadn't patented the telephone, another would have. (I forget the other competitors, but there were many, many more working on the technology). Same with Edison, same with Marconi. Though, I suppose one thing you can say is that were it not for Tesla, these great inventors would have never had anyone to steal from

Hitler was not the only one that believed what he believed. Naziism simply would not have gained the power it did had their only been one person involved. Take out Hitler, take out Stalin or Lenin, and you get the similar story, different flavor.

While I think there are cases where achievement has been stifled due to controlled oppression, there is no one factor, or individual, that can be removed to completely change the course of history. Hell, you may want to argue that erasing the entrenched Christian hierarchy would have allowed mroe progressive thinkers, such as Galileo, Da Vinci, or Michelangelo and others to flourish, spurning a quicker adoption in scientific thinking and understanding, but you wouldn't. The masses simply would not have stood for it--if anything, it would likely embolden the larger populace to sympathize with an embattled institution, one that for generations offers the only chance at "salvation," the single most important concept for people of that day.

Terminator presents a problem, as it seems to hold onto this sentimentality, (SkyNet will always happen, this is simply the zeitgeist--it is inevitable), but retains the idea that altering past events will make such impossible. It also introduces the conundrum that the future as it stands could never have happened without the future having meddled in the past (birth of John Conner, T-800 remains providing the foundation of the creation of SkyNet).

 

[mugs]

Originally posted by: SlitheryDee
#1

It seems like the only way it could work without screwing everything up. If the universe were not able to keep things on track future time travelers would have already fucked it up.

Maybe they did. :Q

 

[Zenmervolt]

Option 1. Which is also the "Heinlein".

ZV

 

[jonks]

Originally posted by: JS80

Originally posted by: jonks

Originally posted by: soulcougher73
Id fall in the #2 option. Can change the past. Seems simple if you were to just go back and kill Martin Luther King for example at an early age. Not to say what he did would not ever come to fruition, but it may be delayed for years.

But you didn't kill him, since he lived

Sayid tried to change the past by killing Ben as a child, but since we know Ben grew up to be an adult, clearly no one managed to kill him in the past, hence Sayid failed to kill him.

So does that mean Ben knew this whole time that Sayid was the one that shot him when he was a child?

Discussed in the Lost thread I think, but Ben didn't seem to remember any of them when he met them in the future so maybe there was a memory wipe or something when the Others took him. Next season I guess.

 

[darkxshade]

If we're having a serious discussion and at the same time accept that time travel is possible. Then we should hypothesize based on our history and our present. To date, there is no historical data that shows that a person who had a major impact on the world claim they were able to do what they did because they were from the future. It's hard to accept the fact that ethics and morals alone in the future would prevent someone from attempting to change the past. Then from this I can only conclude that:

A. Time travel is in fact impossible or we as a civilization did not survive long enough to discover it.

B. Any attempt to change the past is doomed to fail or the time traveller has no ability to alter it. Maybe they can travel back in time but become incorporeal and are unable to physically interact in the world, they are only able to observe it. This would explain "ghosts" in a way.


It is also possible that alternate timelines are created where the present is the result of a change to the past but that's all speculative. So is it just by pure luck or coincidence that our current timeline show no signs of a changed past?

 

[Atomic Playboy]

Originally posted by: darkxshade
If we're having a serious discussion and at the same time accept that time travel is possible. Then we should hypothesize based on our history and our present. To date, there is no historical data that shows that a person who had a major impact on the world claim they were able to do what they did because they were from the future. It's hard to accept the fact that ethics and morals alone in the future would prevent someone from attempting to change the past. Then from this I can only conclude that:

A. Time travel is in fact impossible or we as a civilization did not survive long enough to discover it.

B. Any attempt to change the past is doomed to fail or the time traveller has no ability to alter it. Maybe they can travel back in time but become incorporeal and are unable to physically interact in the world, they are only able to observe it. This would explain "ghosts" in a way.


It is also possible that alternate timelines are created where the present is the result of a change to the past but that's all speculative. Additionally, is it just by pure luck or coincidence that our current timeline show no signs of a changed past? Even in infinite alternate realities, it's 50/50.

Don't forget the other obvious theory: time travel exists in the future, but no time travellers want to come back to our time. Let's face it, if you had a choice between going and seeing the dinosaurs or going back and looking at 7th century France, which would you choose?

As for the time travel belief, you can go into the past and change things, but you won't "poof" out of existence simultaneously. The matter that makes up your body is already there, it isn't just going to spontaneously turn into air. You simply divert the timeline into an alternate reality, the likes of which have not yet been explored. In this version of time travel, it is fully reasonable that there could be two (or more) of you in existence simultaneously, which would give you ample opportunity to explore the question "If you have sex with yourself in an alternate timeline, is it masturbation or just gay?"

 

[Demon-Xanth]

You can go to the future, but you can't go back.

 

[guyver01]

I'm more a believer in the Quantum Leap theory of time travel.

You can travel within your lifetime, and alter the past, but the present instantly rewrites itself to adjust to the change you made.

 

[mxyzptlk]

Option 2 only makes sense as part of a fictional narrative. Like how McFly doesn't go "poof," instead he slowly fades away at a rate that is perfectly in time with what he needs to do in order to "fix" things. So, option 1 it is.. if go back in time at all, everything you do (did) will have to happen in order for the universe to progress to the point where you went back in time in the first place. Like Fry being his own grandfather.

 

[guyver01]

Read WikiHistory for an interesting take on time travel..

 

[actuarial]

All of this assumes time is linear. If we accept time as a 4th dimension than time travel is not nearly as complicated as we think it is.

Though I guess time would still be linear within our specific instance of the 3rd dimension, in which case time travel would be akin to traveling backwards alone a straight line in 2d. I don't think we would be able to change time, we would just be playing it in reverse, though it wouldn't do us any good because I imagine we would forget anything we knew.

So I guess I'll go with #1, though I disagree with anything in which a person can simply JUMP in time, since that requires some starting point on our current time line.

 

[torpid]

Originally posted by: jonks

Originally posted by: JS80

Originally posted by: jonks

Originally posted by: soulcougher73
Id fall in the #2 option. Can change the past. Seems simple if you were to just go back and kill Martin Luther King for example at an early age. Not to say what he did would not ever come to fruition, but it may be delayed for years.

But you didn't kill him, since he lived

Sayid tried to change the past by killing Ben as a child, but since we know Ben grew up to be an adult, clearly no one managed to kill him in the past, hence Sayid failed to kill him.

So does that mean Ben knew this whole time that Sayid was the one that shot him when he was a child?

Discussed in the Lost thread I think, but Ben didn't seem to remember any of them when he met them in the future so maybe there was a memory wipe or something when the Others took him. Next season I guess.

Richard also explicitly stated that this would happen when he agreed to take Ben.