The argument a time-traveller could return and make time-travel legal is flawed. You cannot change the past, which everyone know. If the time-traveller lived in a society where it was already illegal then there is nothing they could do about it. I agree with the argument we are ALL travelling through time, so the Judge and Jury would also be committing a crime.
Everyone not know. Time travel is speculative. So is time travel being impossible. Changing the past is speculative. So is not being able to change the past. Finally, if your assertion were true - that time travellers cannot change the past - there would be no reason to make it illegal. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
If time travel in both directions were possible, making it enforceably illegal at any time could eliminate it from eternity for anyone (except possibly the police of that time). If only travel into the past were possible, it would be impossible to make it illegal.
But then they would never have the catalyst event (the outlawing of time travel) to cause them to go back in time and change the past... Paradox!
I'll see your paradox and raise you a multi-verse theory of time travel! Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
Except quantum-foam based time travel is outside the boundaries of singular location time travel (you are, in essence, in an alternate universe, albeit one extremely similar). Ah... Timeline was SUCH a good book Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
Ah, but can you prove that it is a different universe, absent of a reality-crushing paradox? If not, then... then... well... yeah! Are you referring to the Michael Crichton book? Only ever seen the film... which is... um... well... not great but not as bad as everyone else thinks.
Increasingly, I noticed in MCs books a strong tendency away from the really interesting 'I've studied the hell out of this discipline (X) and now I'm going to pass all that on to you as I tell the story' and toward the disappointing 'this-is-a-screenplay-please-buy-it-and-make-it-a-movie'. Or, put another way, a change from 'this story is a science story, and it's full of science' to 'this story is an action movie, here's some magical science to serve as a plot vehicle'. Timeline was the first in which I noticed this. Prey had it to esome extent. But Micro was the worst. He just gave up on plausibility completely.
Of course "time travel" is based on the presumption that "time" even exists. If one were to consider that Universe is infinite then there can be no paradox. The "butterfly effect" would be completely irrelevant. In other words, if I were to "go back in time" and kill my mom or dad before I was born then it wouldn't matter because the reality in which I was born would still exist. So making time travel illegal would be folly.
The concept of time is interesting in that if its as physical as matter. How can one undo an event unless those events have actual matter somewhere or somehow. For instance, if i traveled from point a to b and that timeline changed, that event cannot be blotted out (it occurred) unless time is physical itself not just sequence of change with matter around us. It seems its like evidence or lack thereof. I can create an object and destroy it to where no one would know yet the fact those events occurred is still true even if there is no evidence. Or did it according to time if all the effects are gone beginning, middle and end with even those who remember? It did and it didnt because if there is no transference of effect. Strange paradox. I say it did so you can alter events but whatever ocurred did.
The concept of time travel within your own timeline is like cheating and creating another one, not undoing that timeline in actuality. In order to really undo a timeline would be to reverse it from the point where you are at. So if you drop a glass and it shatters, it would be like playing the tape backwards. Or is it? If you can really go back by skipping through time and undo, prevent or change an event thats already occurred to literally mean it never did, then time is more physical than we think. Strangely the memory of what did occur would just be in your mind like an imaginative thought. Confusing.
Okay, like the theory of relativity you could only be an observor of your own timeline like a train going backwards viewing events in reverse but you would never be allowed to affect it because you were a part of those events unfolding. You were in the same track. Only an observor from another timeline or track could intrude and make an impact. Think about it, how can you derail except onto another track or another train derail into you?
What makes you think it doesn't? There seems to be some failure of logic here, or something you haven't actually put into words. Why do you think the butterfly effect would be irrelevant? Why do you think the "reality in which you were born would still exist"?
Because it doesn't. It's a perception, an illusion. In reality there is no "time" and there is no "space", therefore there is no "past" or "future". There is only right here right now. Time is not a constant simply because the reference points for the arbitrary measurement and recording of time as we experience here are specific to Earth. If you lived on a different planet, of a different size, with a different speed of rotation, and distance from its sun, with or without one or more moons - Jupiter for example - then the referential basis for the measurement of "time", such as our clocks and calendars for example, would be completely different. You would still live in the same physical Universe subject to the same absolute Universal principles, but your measurement and concept of "time" would be unrecognizable. Is "time" therefore "correct" on Earth or "correct" on the other planet such as Jupiter? Remove all of these arbitrary and fixed reference points and "time" becomes completely meaningless, except in the context of a subjective experience, or illusion, which is what indeed "time" really is. "Time" as we know and experience it simply does not exist except to the extent it is perceived to be experienced and believed to exist, and cannot be measured or quantified in isolation. For example, if you were to place yourself in a permanently illuminated room, or darkened room if you prefer, without windows, clocks or other mechanical means of measuring "time" - what happens to your perception of "time"? Very quickly you have no idea what "minute", "hour", "day", "month" or "year" it is. You can guess of course, but you would invariably be wrong due to the lack of reference points. As your isolation progresses, any best guesses about "time", "date", or "year" would become increasingly flawed. Once we remove all the mechanical human reference points, "time" immediately becomes meaningless. Even if the best scientists in the world were placed in a room, with no external windows or other modes of reference, and then allowed them access to any scientific instruments and computers of their choosing, except for clocks and other means of measuring "time", then these scientists would not be able to define or quantify time in any accurate way. "Time" cannot be measured because "time" is an entirely subjective experience and never objective, and can never be measured objectively, and in any case only exists as a concept within the context of "space". Even the subjectivity is relative to the perspective of the experience. "Time" is therefore not a constant to the extent it even exists. Humans attempt to reduce "time" to an objective experience by arbitrarily introducing methods of measurement based upon the relationships between the Earth, the Moon and the Sun. Because Universe is infinite, therefore ALL realities, "past", present, and "future" already exist. So even if someone were to "travel" back in "time", what we label as the "past", to a reality that had already been experienced and try to alter events at that point in "time", it would have absolutely no effect on what we are experiencing now because this reality already exists, has always existed, and will always exist.
That is one possible resolution of the paradox, but it makes a bunch of assumptions. Just because the universe is "infinite" (in what capacity? distance? time?) does not actually have anything to do with time travel. What you are proposing is that time travel is really defined as 'keep leaping forward by huge time intervals until you find a state of the universe that is identical to this one, then change it.' That's a fine proposition, but it does not go without saying.
So we just take your word for it? Utterly irrelevant, we could still talk to those people and agree on a common unit. Sheer nonsense, you're confusing the measurement (units) of time with time itself. And yet time would still pass - you'd get old and die regardless. Except with clocks... So, just another claim then?
On those grounds, there is no "right here" or "right now". There is no reason to privilege some mental constructions of that type. You have to have time and space to have locations of any kind within them - "here" and "now" no less than any others.
You should do whatever you feel is appropriate of course. You should never take someone's word as truth if it does not agree with you. You take whatever information you need and throw aside the rest, or keep it on the back burner - whatever you decide. Hmmm really? What if there was another civilization that lived in a world where no one aged, there were no seasons, there was only day and no night, and everything they experienced was instantaneous at the speed of thought, and there is never waiting on anything to morph or change into what you wanted, it was just instantaneous? What unit would be in common with that world and this world we live in now in regards to time? In that world there would not even be any thought of this mythical concept known as "time". "Time" would not even be in their vocabulary. And how can you prove that "time" exists? The perception of "time", the illusion of "time" would still pass. Everything throughout Universe shifts from one form to another, including what we perceive within this reality here. Getting old is just a change in energy vibration from one form to another, everything and every event we see and experience eventually changes from one form to another like changing from one individual frame to another on a movie projector film. This change or shift in appearance is not evidence that "time" exists. All this does is give us the illusion of time based upon everything "moving", or I should say shifting in a sequential linear manner. When you stop a movie film you get one still image frame. When you start to move the individual frames through the camera you get the illusion of movement and time. Consistent change from one form to another in a repetitive and persistent manner is measured with clocks, and we label that change as "time". Clocks cannot measure "time" because "time" does not exist. Change does not exist because of "time" nor does anything change as a result of "time". The perception of and the definition of "time" as we perceive it and define it exists because of the constant change that we experience. Which part? That Universe is infinite?
There is only Now. There is nothing else but Now. What one would consider the "past" is just a memory, and the "future" is just a mental projection. The thing is, given that Universe is infinite, all "past" and "future" events exist now. I like to analogize Universe to a library. Every book in the library represents a potential experiential reality, and there are an infinite number of books in the library, and just like in any typical library, all the books in the library all exist at this very moment, any one of which can be experienced to one's choosing, just like picking a book off the shelf and reading it. But they all exist right here right now.
