Time Travel Paradox!

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ElJuski

ElJuski

Staff member
Okay, so my good ol' chum just brought up this argument we've been having for about eight years now.

It started when I was so mad at him I said I would build a time machine, travel forward in time and kill his children*, then travel back in time, killing him.

He posits that by doing the latter I couldn't have possibly committed the former. However, since time-lines are relative, I believe in my body act out these events in that sequential order before permanently changing the timeline.


WHAT DO YOU THINK HALFORUM????

*EL JUSKI ONLY CONDONES HYPOTHETICAL TIME TRAVEL MURDER OF CHILDREN. OTHERWISE ITS ALL ABOUT GOOD EDUCATION POKEMON AND CANDY AND PARENTS WATCHING OUT FOR THEIR KIDS SO THEY GROW UP TO BE NICE PEOPLE AND NOT HYPOTHETICALLY MURDERED BY THEIR PARENT'S BEST FRIEND.
 
Allen who is Quiet

Allen who is Quiet

I posit that you will travel forward in time, and land somewhere in earth's orbit and not on earth, killing yourself in the process.

His children grow up healthy.
 
D

Dusty668

I posit you will travel forward in time. DING! Wopah!

Done!
 
North_Ranger

North_Ranger

Staff member
You will create a non-linear intervention paradox, whereupon the time-space continuum will rupture and create an expanding multiphasic Eisenstadt-Wurmstein anomaly that will expand back in time, thereby negating the Big Bang.

In other words, you'll fuck up the universe.
 
Dave

Dave

Staff member
I believe that if you were to change something in the past you are not hypothetically changing the past but creating an alternative reality that would be the one you stay in. So if you came back to the same time/dimension everything would be the same as when you left regardless of what you did in the "past". If you went to the new time but the same dimension then the changes would be in effect but in the alternate timeline nothing would have changed.
 
MindDetective

MindDetective

Time being relative doesn't really extend to the notion that you can have two completely different events happening in the same place and period in history unless you posit a many worlds hypothesis. I don't think many worlds are likely, simply because it seems like an infinitely wasteful manner for matter and energy to exist. It doesn't seem to fit with what physics is capable of to me.

So in your scenario, I'd say you are both wrong. Since your friend is not dead, you failed to kill him in the past. Nor would it be possible to do so. You certainly may have killed his future children, though, before being past-foiled, possibly because you over shot and ended up as velociraptor food or because you attempted to carry out the assassination but ended up in a Clouseau-esque litany of events to have caused Bill Clinton's sex scandal to be outed and the Valdez to veer off course all while shooting a harpoon through your own foot.
 
phil

phil

Either A) New timelines are created with each visit, and you do what you plan on doing without a hitch.

or B) Killing him in the past causes you to never need to build the time machine in the first place. The moment you kill him, you either create a paradox that destroys reality, or jump pack to the point in reality where you would have traveled in time to find an altered world where he died young. You would not know it was new though, as you've grown up knowing that he died young. In fact, you may no longer exist because the you that grew up without your friend killed himself out of grief of his loss as such a young and tender age.

either way, I'd advise against it. Because if anything, how are you going to even produce the 1.21 jigawatts to power your machine?
 
strawman

strawman

Depends on your version of the sapce/time continuum.

If you believe in parallel universes, then your movement will merely be between dimensions, and your actions will simply spin off new parallel universes.

If you believe in the single time continuum, then when you travel backwards in time the future, by definition, has not occurred, so anything you do in the past changes the future so that it never happens. However, it would have happened to you, so while the kids will not be created in the 'new' future, you still did in fact kill them, and that should be all that matters to you.

-ADam
 
North_Ranger

North_Ranger

Staff member
ElJuski said:
no YOU suck
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No, you suck. You suck so much I'm going ten minutes back in time, knock you unconscious and write "U SUCK!!" on your forehead backwards, so you can see yourself from the mirror.

Also, I might schtoink some of your more attractive female relatives, because that's what time travels do. They schtoink people.
 
HCGLNS

HCGLNS

ElJuski said:
Okay, so my good ol' chum just brought up this argument we've been having for about eight years now.

It started when I was so mad at him I said I would build a time machine, travel forward in time and kill his children*, then travel back in time, killing him.

He posits that by doing the latter I couldn't have possibly committed the former. However, since time-lines are relative, I believe in my body act out these events in that sequential order before permanently changing the timeline.


WHAT DO YOU THINK HALFORUM????.
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You are correct. Just because he died before his children are born does not make this impossible. His children are clearly the result of his donated sperm. Or sperm you harvested from his corspe.
 
Gusto

Gusto

You can fuck up watever you want in the future because it will have no effect on present day. Doing something will effect everything AFTER it.

It's like if I decide whether or not I wanna crack open a beer tonight. Whichever option I choose, it doesn't change what happened yesterday.

*twists cap*
 
K

Kitty Sinatra

I posit that time travel is only possible in one direction.
 
D

Dusty668

OMG! you are still travelling into the Future! You even have Charlie doing it! You are play gods!
 
P

Pojodan

I beleive, that when he shows up in the future to kill his children, Charles Nelson Reilly will already be there, murdering the children, then will turn around and punch him in the face.
 
Silver Jelly

Silver Jelly

Future children will kill Juski with their future mutant powers. Then they'll take his time machine and will go bone some prehistoric chicks.

HAPPY ENDING!
 
@Li3n

@Li3n

Dude, it's pretty obvious... you'll go kill the kids, and then when you go back to kill him that future will be erased and you won't even remember killing the kids...
 
Vytamindi

Vytamindi

@Li3n said:
Dude, it's pretty obvious... you'll go kill the kids, and then when you go back to kill him that future will be erased and you won't even remember killing the kids...
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Yea. And when he comes back his friend will tell him how he was born with no testicles, rendering any chance of him producing offspring useless.
 
sixpackshaker

sixpackshaker

You are currently married with children. You time travel back to a point before you had children, and forced a vasectomy onto your past self (or husband if female.) Would you be morally responsible for the murder of your children?

---------- Post added at 05:57 PM ---------- Previous post was at 05:55 PM ----------

Or will it be a Rodney Dangerfield act? He tells his misbehaving son.

"One of these days you will have kids of your own."

To which his son replies...

"Don't worry Dad, someday you will too."
 
@Li3n

@Li3n

sixpackshaker said:
You are currently married with children. You time travel back to a point before you had children, and forced a vasectomy onto your past self (or husband if female.) Would you be morally responsible for the murder of your children?
Click to expand...
What children?!
 
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