Why do we think time paradoxes exist?

[nicholas1M7]

The oft quoted example of

"I got back in time to before i was born and kill my mother, therefore I could never have been born, therefore i couldnt go back and kill my mother"

I'm wondering why there would even be this sequence of events? Who's to say that, as soon as I kill my mother, I would disappear because I was never born? As a pattern of atoms and molecules at a point in spacetime, why should I be linked to another point in spacetime just because I was there briefly? Why can I not (as a block of matter) be inserted into a location in spacetime and proceed from there? My actions have consequences for my future from that point, but who is to say that any of them are breaking changes that will affect me right there and then? At the moment I kill my mother, she is destined never to have me as a child, but why would that affect my presence in the timeline at that moment? I think i'd still be there, the date would be 1979, I'd be 27 years old rather than -1 years old. I'd die 27 years earlier relative to the rest of the world. I would rewrite a future such that I never have the sibling that I left behind when i travelled back, but so what..? Why does all that mean that I would never be born and hence I'd vanish from that spacetimeline? I'm there!

Does this question make sense?

ABSOLUTELY! Your confusion is not without merit. Time is like Santa Clause and the Tooth Fairy - pure conspiracy and fraud. We have, and have always, lived in the moment. Past, present and future are names we give to the moment that comes before and after this very moment.

A kid kicks a football into your garden overnight. All you know, in the morning, is that a new object (block of matter) has appeared in a proximal location in spacetime. It might influence your future, it might not. Now suppose it came from the future, it appeared overnight, as though kicked there, but actually it was put there by some alien with the power to move through time. What's the difference?

I want to know why we're obsessed with this need to explain how "time" will right itself and iron out paradoxes instantaneously - is it that we arrogantly believe the course of travel through spacetime is the only one that exists and hence deviations from it are automatically restored?

It is arrogance! Pure arrogance. We do not travel through spacetime, only space. The words past, present and future are mere vocabulary that should be removed from our language if we are to grasp the truth, which is that the moment never ceases to exist. Past, present and future? 100% fantasy stuff.

 

[devils_reject]

Time paradoxes exist because not all the clock in the world can be right at the same time.

 

[Farsight]

Ooh, you'll like TIME EXPLAINED, nicholas1M7. Here:

http://www.sciforums.com/showthread.php?t=60883

 

[RoyLennigan]

It is arrogance! Pure arrogance. We do not travel through spacetime, only space. The words past, present and future are mere vocabulary that should be removed from our language if we are to grasp the truth, which is that the moment never ceases to exist. Past, present and future? 100% fantasy stuff.

although i agree 120% that past and future do not exist as the present does, i disagree with your statement about travel through time.

everything travels through space and time. differences in momentum and accelleration in any one thing means that everything is moving through the dimension of time at different speeds, if ever so slightly--according to relativity. time travel into the future is acheived merely by accellerating relatively close to the speed of light. but this doesn't mean that time is hypothetically subject to your will--it will most likely never be.

 

[RoyLennigan]

Time paradoxes exist because not all the clock in the world can be right at the same time.

heh, its only paradox because we are the ones who don't understand it.

remember that all we describe is only a description for ourselves.

 

[Farsight]

although i agree 120% that past and future do not exist as the present does, i disagree with your statement about travel through time. everything travels through space and time. differences in momentum and accelleration in any one thing means that everything is moving through the dimension of time at different speeds, if ever so slightly--according to relativity. time travel into the future is acheived merely by accellerating relatively close to the speed of light. but this doesn't mean that time is hypothetically subject to your will--it will most likely never be.

Look at your language, Roy. Try to be literal and ontological here. You talk about the future as if it's a place. It isn't a place. Maybe it's the places where all the things that are here now are going to be at. But it's not a place. So you really can't travel to it. And unlike space, you really can't travel through time. I might be here and you might be there, and I can travel from here to there as can you. But for both of us, the time is always "now". There's no flowing to it, and there really ain't no travelling through it.