Time Travel and Fate

[cozener]

I might be missing some fine point of logic here but I have come to the conclusion that as someone who doesn’t believe in fate I cannot believe that time travel is possible.

To me, the future is a concept. It isn’t real until it happens and nothing is set. The future does not exist as a physical thing in the same way that a road does. So how can you travel along it?

It seems to me that if you believe that time travel is possible then you must also believe in fate, that everything is predestined. This way, the future does exist and you can travel along it.

Perhaps I should amend that. I can’t see time travel into the future being possible but I suppose I could be more accepting of traveling into the past.

But like I said, I could be missing some important logical/mathematical building block here. After all, Einstein thought it was possible and I'm betting that he was at least a little smarter than me.

[Brice]

Well, mathematically speaking there is some degree of a possibility of time travel, although in my opinion it is unlikely and I think it is all theoretical mathematics. I believe there is a higher probability of some subatomic particle such as a tachyon travelling through time (which wouldn't necessarily prove fate) than a larger/more complex object (which to me seems highly unlikely).

[Matt]

I do believe in fate but I think the part of time travel people miss (imo of course) is the fact that travel along the continuum will always produce an alternate reality in the multi verse.

It doesn't matter, forward or backwards, its not the same timeline. It can't be because you weren't there after the "event" in any case.

[jayson]

this is a very interesting question Cozener. i would have said that i didn't believe in fate or predestination or whatever you want to call it, but the implications of your question make me wonder if i do since i do believe in the possibility of time travel. i shall have to think more on the metaphysics of it... good one dude!

[Brice]

i shall have to think more on the metaphysics of it

Does this maybe mean you may have to smoke something? :lol:

[jayson]

i shall have to think more on the metaphysics of it

Does this maybe mean you may have to smoke something? :lol:

it would certainly help :lol:

[Brice]

i shall have to think more on the metaphysics of it

Does this maybe mean you may have to smoke something? :lol:

it would certainly help :lol:


Hell, I'm relatively certain of my opinions on the subject and it still couldn't hurt. :lol:

[jayson]

i shall have to think more on the metaphysics of it

Does this maybe mean you may have to smoke something? :lol:

it would certainly help :lol:


Hell, I'm relatively certain of my opinions on the subject and it still couldn't hurt. :lol:

:rofl:
i still think i believe in the one and not the other, but i couldn't think of how to explain how that would be. perhaps in a bong hit or two it will all be much clearer...

[Brice]

i shall have to think more on the metaphysics of it

Does this maybe mean you may have to smoke something? :lol:

it would certainly help :lol:


Hell, I'm relatively certain of my opinions on the subject and it still couldn't hurt. :lol:

:rofl:
i still think i believe in the one and not the other, but i couldn't think of how to explain how that would be. perhaps in a bong hit or two it will all be much clearer...

Well, one doesn't have to necessarily negate the other.

I can guarantee it'll either be clearer or cloudier. :lol:

[cozener]

i shall have to think more on the metaphysics of it

Does this maybe mean you may have to smoke something? :lol:

How do you think I came up with the question in the first place? :)

[Brice]

i shall have to think more on the metaphysics of it

Does this maybe mean you may have to smoke something? :lol:

How do you think I came up with the question in the first place? :)

I should have guessed.

[Erin]

Leave it to Brice and Jayson to turn every thread into "The Pot Thread" :P

I kid! I kid!

[jayson]

Leave it to Brice and Jayson to turn every thread into "The Pot Thread" :P

I kid! I kid!

All things serve my bong.

[Darkthoughts]

Hmm, this rapidly degenerated into a stoners thread - does anyone want to get the thread back on track and save it from the clearing? :D

[CPU]

You're on a roll with the bumps Dark :lol:


I've always been fascinated with time-travel. I'm of two-minds about it (just like a lot of things :lol:). If the universe is actually many universes all intertwined then I believe that time-travel may be possible. Just like Matt above, I think that in a multiverse it's possible that every possible outcome exists simultaneously, or maybe more accurately the potential for every possible outcome exists. It's like the famous cat in the box, it exists and not exists at the same time until that timeline is actualized or all possible branches to that possibility are diverted. In such a universe time-travel might be possible, but it would be more like intra-dimensional travel since you'd end up in a variant of your original universe (just like that TV show that I liked: Sliders).

On the other hand, if time is strictly linear, and there is in fact only a single universe I don't see how it would be possible. There are just to many problems with causality to deal with.

[Ves'Ka Gan]

I'm not sure if I have an opinion one way or the other if it is possible, but I suppose that if it were, I would buy the most common sci-fi explanation--that when you travel forward you are seeing one of many possible outcomes of the future.

I do believe in fate--to an extent. I don't beleive that every thing is predestiend, from when I decide to brush my teeth in the morning to who I meet that day. I do beleive though, that there are certain things that are meant to happen, or people you are meant to meet--but not at some fixed point. With most of the very important people in my life (good & bad) I have been able to sort of trace the individual timelines and see that if we didn't meet when we did there were several other places & times where our paths may have crossed in the future & past.

[BeDaN]

I might be missing some fine point of logic here but I have come to the conclusion that as someone who doesn’t believe in fate I cannot believe that time travel is possible.

To me, the future is a concept. It isn’t real until it happens and nothing is set. The future does not exist as a physical thing in the same way that a road does. So how can you travel along it?

It seems to me that if you believe that time travel is possible then you must also believe in fate, that everything is predestined. This way, the future does exist and you can travel along it.

Perhaps I should amend that. I can’t see time travel into the future being possible but I suppose I could be more accepting of traveling into the past.

But like I said, I could be missing some important logical/mathematical building block here. After all, Einstein thought it was possible and I'm betting that he was at least a little smarter than me.

If you can travel BACK in time you are going back to another persons Present, meaning you are in fact from the future which would mean that the future of that person is preordained. Unless you were to in any way contact that person or disrupt an event that in some direct or indirect way affects the person.

[cozener]

If time travel is possible and there is a multiverse I would think these other universes only exist because time travelers from the future created them by interacting with the past. Once one was created their numbers would have increased exponentially and immediately into infinity. But there'd the initial real universe that would have had to have come along and advanced to where this kind of travel is possible by our own construction or by accident.

But I've come to the conclusion that time travel into the past isn't possible either. To me, time is just the concept with which we schedule ourselves, not a dimension.

[BeDaN]

This is getting deep. . . .

[Ves'Ka Gan]

If you want to get really deep--there is the idea that time is actually NOT straightline, everything all happening on top and around itself, but that human beings created the concept of time in order make some sense of our lives.

In that case, I suppose time travel could be possible...but you wouldn't really be traveling so much would you?

[theBeamisHome]

i love metaphysics!! :excited:
ok sooo.... i'm gonna go along with Ves here. i believe that there are many possible futures. my question has always been, what determines which future you travel to? if you can travel to the past... well then i agree with BeDan that you have made everyone in the past have a destiny with you being from the future. i also agree with Ves about the destiny thing. not everything is predestine but there are things that are supposed to happen.

[Mist_on_the_Water]

I dunno if anyone said this, I'm too tired to read everything, but I believe in a certain form of predestination...well..sort of...

I believe that there are an infinite amount of parallel dimensions, one for each ctiny choice people make. Each choice creates a different future, and the alternative is yet another dimension. Whatever choices we make in this dimension is simply how it appears, but in reality I think you could travel to the future, were time-travel possible, depending on how your future would be in this dimension, the way you are progressing at a given moment.

[Mist_on_the_Water]

Razz oughtta come here, he and I could do some serious commenting...Doctor Who may be a television show, but it'svery very clever in explaining time travel and the possibilities of it.

[alinda]

If you want to get really deep--there is the idea that time is actually NOT straightline, everything all happening on top and around itself, but that human beings created the concept of time in order make some sense of our lives.

In that case, I suppose time travel could be possible...but you wouldn't really be traveling so much would you?



Precisely my dear, cuz your we're already there! :grouphug:

[ladykatherine]

http://www.iep.utm.edu/t/time.htm

this is probably the most interesting set of explanations I have ever seen. I had a discussion like this not so long ago after a friend and I watched all three Back to the Futures and decided to research time travel at 3:30am :cool: hehehehe.

I really like how it explains at one point (im sorry folks, i've lost track of what page it's on!) that time is relative to it's starting point. That our future could theorectically be someone's past in another dimension. It seems strange, but it would definitely support the world has "moved on" idea in DT where everything slowly degenerates and de-evolves (if that's a word!). The articles also go on to support different theories; such as relativity and absolution. And things like time direction ("arrows"), multiple times existing at once, and even the flow of time are deeply covered. It's really way to much information to devulge here and make it make sense (because honestly, some of it goes wayyy over my head).

Okay, that was my two cents. Can anyone see what I mean? I'm horrible at explaining these abstract ideas sometimes

:pirate:Katie