The time travellers wife.

Discussion in 'General Philosophy' started by TheFrogger, Feb 3, 2017.

  1. TheFrogger Banned Valued Senior Member

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    Hello. The title of this thread is a film. In the film a scientist's wife is killed, inspiring him to build a time machine. He subsequently travels back in time and saves her, but she dies another way. Every time he saves her she dies differently. As such he travels into the future and meets a Morlock who explains how the death of his wife was what inspired him to build the time-machine. Had she not died, he would not be inspired to build a time-machine. What would you do in such a situation. Disregard the time-machine and live out your days with your wife, or allow your wife to die, but have a time-machine.

    I have a feeling many will sacrifice their wife...

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  3. Sarkus Hippomonstrosesquippedalo phobe Valued Senior Member

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    First, the film you are referring to is simply called "The Time Machine" and is based on a book of the same name by HG Wells. The film you refer to introduced the wife and the discussion with the Morlock of the temporal paradox.

    "The Time Traveler's Wife", however, is a different book (and subsequent film), the debut novel by Audrey Niffenegger. It is about a man who has a genetic disorder that causes him to jump through time (back and forward) in an unpredictable manner, and how he manages to hold on to a relationship with his wife, who never quite knows where he is in his life compared to her own.

    Anyhow, assuming you do mean "The Time Machine" film from 2002, then there is no choice to "live out your days with your wife"... as she died, which is what prompted him to build the machine. So the building of the machine is a direct result of being unable to live out your days with your wife. It is not a case of the wife not dying if you choose not to build a time machine. At least, that's not how causality tends to work.

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  5. TheFrogger Banned Valued Senior Member

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    Okay smarty pants. Yes, the reversal of time is impossible so he could not save his wife as she had already died, but He could spend forever in the same day with his wife...
     
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  7. Sarkus Hippomonstrosesquippedalo phobe Valued Senior Member

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    How, exactly?
    Imagine the you go back in time to spend that day day with your wife... when you next go back in time to that day you will see your wife with your previous version.
    And if you keep going back to the same day then that day would be littered with countless versions of you, each slightly different in age to the others.

    Ther is a theory (?) that time travel into the past, and alteration of that timeline, might be possible - under the many-world's theorem, where rather than go back in time to your own time-line you actually just jump into a parallel universe/world which is identical other than running a few days later than your original one. In this new timeline you can make whatever actions you want as you are no longer part of your own original timeline.

    If you want to go back further then you find a parallel world that is running that much later.

    So this can avoid the pitfalls and paradoxes of time travel into the past, as it is only a perceived past and not the actual past of your own original world.
     
  8. wellwisher Banned Banned

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    The second law states that the entropy of the universe has to increase. Entropy is sort of a measure of change and increasing complexity. If we could go back into time, we would go to an earlier state of the universe, where the entropy of the universe is lower.

    Since we will need a machine to go back into time, and since no machine is 100% efficient, our movement backward into time will add machine entropy, to a past, which had less entropy than the present. The net effect is we will change the past, by adding some entropy.

    Because we added entropy to the past, our wife from the past, will not be exactly the same as when we first met. The wife we will see, from the past, would contain more entropy than the original, at that point in time. This extra entropy may well be the cause of the disease that kills her.

    Her increase in entropy, would change her path of the future. This added entropy in their relationship, may result in the time machine no longer being built, in advance. Instead the entropy increases results in the time machine being built, now after the disease causes the wife's death. With each iteration is like a movement up spiral where there is displacement along the z-axis due to the compounding entropy added.
     
  9. TheFrogger Banned Valued Senior Member

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    Can any of you posters posting about the if's but's and maybe's of time travel actually time-travel...? A show of hands please...

    If you could travel into the future and negate your time would you then travel THROUGH your Mother and Father and every single creature that has existed before until the singularity. This is a glow in the dark black-man (radioactive-man if you like) who calls himself God. Of course I have never been there myself: I'm still here, but I am informed by myself that He does exist, and I believe me. I will never know if this is true but liar's are not popular with God and his wife.

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  10. Equinox Registered Senior Member

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    Having the ability to do something is not a prerequisite to discussing the topic - particularly if the topic is largely a thought experiment. Science has indicated that time travel in any kind of practical manner (such as sending information back and forth from past/present/future) is likely to be impossible - and that's ignoring all the possible paradoxes that go along with time travel.

    As for the second part of your post... I have absolutely no idea what you are trying to say

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  11. TheFrogger Banned Valued Senior Member

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    I agree. Time-travel is impossible. How do I know? It is because I have done it.

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  12. danshawen Valued Senior Member

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    As H. G. Wells suggested, better to travel far into the future, find either Mara or Weena, kill either the morlocks or Jeremy Irons, and never go back.
     
  13. DaveC426913 Valued Senior Member

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    For anyone interested in the further adventures of Wells' protag (who is never named, BTW), Stephen Baxter wrote a sequel (blessed by the Wells estate), called The Time Ships, and it won several awards.
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Time_Ships

    It is much MUCH MUCH broader than the original, spanning the early age of the Earth through the twilight of the universe and intimately involves the Morlocks.

    A really good read.
     
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