Forums → The Tavern → Time Travel Debate
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This thread has been made for several people who have been squabbling in the "Time Travel" thread. It is about wether time travel is plausible/possible and the effects of it. I think.
Anyway, debate.
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Time travel is possible. You can only travel to the future though and not the past.
I guess I'll remake my last post (and the related arguments) from there for simplicities sake
It is a belief, and considering you can not present irrefutable proof to the contrary that I am wrong
I don't need to present proof, I need to prove your argument incorrect. I can't prove to you your argument incorrect if you won't answer the question i present to you. Why do those jets change? What force is causing them to vary? What is causing that force? You haven't even yet to prove that "randomness" exists, and yet you keep using it as a factor.
It is a belief, and considering you can not present irrefutable proof to the contrary that I am wrong (unless you have a time machine that is)
You don't always need physical proof to prove something, in an argument of the logic of both sides, you shouldn't need any, it would just help.
Neither of us can prove our hypothesis.
Yes we can, through logic.
You can sit there and argue a point you can't prove
Same as before, you can prove it.
It's not like I'm not presenting anything new, you didn't respond to my argument about string theory or the one about randomness having to be magic, which i brought up in the last post.
These are the two arguments mentioned in the paragraph above
I'll start off this post by once again saying, nothing is random. If you believe something can happen for absolutely no reason, then what you believe in is called magic. Things can happen for uncontrollable reasons, and those uncontrollable reasons can happen for other uncontrollable reasons, which can happen for other uncontrollable reasons, and this can go on and on. The only argument against this is the creation of the universe.
According to string theory, every possible timeline to every possible universe exists, so it's not exactly that it's preset, it's that everything that could happen, will happen somewhere in some universe in some timeline.
and not the past.
If multiverse travel were possible, then could you travel to the past of an alternate or parallel timeline?
If multiverse travel were possible, then could you travel to the past of an alternate or parallel timeline?
But that would not be your past. Past is relative to the viewer.
but I haven't seen a single insult in this debate
Nope, just the way it should be.
I promise I will reference to this as soon as I can though.
You have all the time in the world on an online debate (though i usually stop caring after 2 or 3 days)
is because they are not a constant.
They aren't constant because something changed them. Now what changed them?
Logic doesn't answer the unpredictable nature of that air jet though does it?
It doesn't answer what they will be, it answers why it's unpredictable. It's unpredictable because something changes it. That something changes it because something made it change it. This keeps going on until we get to the beginning of the universe, which was the first force to push anything.
Neither of us can logically determine where the air will be
We don't need to, all we need to know is that if nothing changes in the experiment, neither does the result. If something changed in the experiment, it's because something else caused it to change, and something caused that to cause it to change, ect. If something changed, then once again, we aren't in the same timeline. Also please reply to the string theory and nothing being random arguments (they were quoted at the end of my last post.
Sorry, that last post was a response to the most recent post on the other thread.
According to string theory, every possible timeline to every possible universe exists, so it's not exactly that it's preset, it's that everything that could happen, will happen somewhere in some universe in some timeline.
I thought that this is chaos theory.
I thought that this is chaos theory.
I don't know much about the two, but in string theory, the 6th dimension is described as every possible timeline that could occur between the beginning of out universe, to the end of it, and the 7th dimension describes it as every possible timeline to every possible universe.
It is a chaos theory discussion, but I need to do a little reading. Can I postpone my answer for a bit while I read up a bit?
Doesn't change my argument (as it stands at the moment) but it is interesting to investigate some possible angles before I respond.
It is a chaos theory discussion, but I need to do a little reading. Can I postpone my answer for a bit while I read up a bit?
Watch this video, and the second part of it. Pay attention specifaclly to the 6th and 7th dimensions.
Watch this video, and the second part of it. Pay attention specifaclly to the 6th and 7th dimensions.
ouch that was one complex video
nothing being random arguments (they were quoted at the end of my last post.
Sounds like you were talking about causal determinism. I posted a thread on this a while back...
I argued for it, however there were some pretty convincing arguments against it. If causal determinism is not true, this might allow for certain types of randomness. In other words, you could travel back in time, and NOT be able to win the lottery.
Of course, the fact that your state in the "new" present is different from the "old" present, means that the overall state of the universe is different. In other words, by possessing knowledge of the lottery numbers (which you did not posses before) you change the conditions of the entire universe. Couldn't this affect the lotto numbers picked, therefore preventing you from winning the lottery (even if causal determinism is true)?
I realize that this has been said in the other thread, but I don't think the issue was ever resolved...
Sounds like you were talking about causal determinism. I posted a thread on this a while back...
That's exactly what I'm talking about, I didn't know there was a name for it.
I argued for it, however there were some pretty convincing arguments against it
The arguments for it always seemed to have a logical counter-argument to the one's against it. Anyways, you seem to have also given the answer of how our thoughts aren't random, and the possibility of variation in human decision was one of the problems in our argument. Our brains are made up of atoms and molecules just like everything else, and are subject to the same rules. Our thoughts are still just the result of the reactions going on in our brains, which is why I have a hard time saying that living beings actually have free will.
Of course, the fact that your state in the "new" present is different from the "old" present, means that the overall state of the universe is different. In other words, by possessing knowledge of the lottery numbers (which you did not posses before) you change the conditions of the entire universe. Couldn't this affect the lotto numbers picked, therefore preventing you from winning the lottery (even if causal determinism is true)?
Well, this is kind of what I've been saying, that when you travel into the past, the only thing that can change anything is you. The way I see it, nothing other than what you're actually affecting should change, so if the knowledge of the lottery numbers doesn't affect the machine, then it should produce the same results.
On a side thought, thinking about casual determinism, if it's correct, than it could possibly disprove multiple timelines (and the idea of the 6th and 7th dimension). The 6th dimension is supposed to contain every possible timeline that could happen in our universe. The 7th dimension contains every possible variations of initial conditions of the universe, and all the timelines that could happen in every single one of those universes. The problem is, if our universe is one of the universes described in the 7th dimension, and casual determinism is true, there could only be one possible timeline and end for it. Initial conditions would have to be different to produce different results. If each differently started universe had only 1 possible timeline, then the 6th dimension couldn't possibly exist. Unless I'm wrong, this means one of the two ideas, the 6th dimension or casual determinism, is incorrect.
(sixth dimension stuff)
That video doesn't really explain string theory very well. That's not really how the dimensions work... as someone in another forum said:
However, this is more an interesting piece of fiction than a meaningful representation of string theory. Also, the odd claim that you can only have 10 dimensions is flat wrong.
In string theory, the "extra" dimensions are really, really, tightly wound space dimensions that are unobservable by beings in our universe. I don't really know why they matter, except for gravity leakage or something, just that they are necessary to prove string theory (I'm not a physicist, just friends with a lot of them). Anyway, I would just take the video as more philosophical than scientific. In string theory, dimensions have nothing to do with "alternate realities" or anything like that (at least not in the highly convenient way described in the video).
See Antonfire's post about halfway down the page. Or just read up on string theory. You don't have to read very far to realize the guy in that video is full of it.
But anyway:
the only thing that can change anything is you
Under CD, yes. But, CD also implies that you must change EVERYTHING. Think of it like this:
Suppose we lump the entire existence of the universe together prior to the lotto and call it even A. We call the state of the universe during the picking of those precise lotto numbers event B. Then, we know that:
If A
then B
BUT, by going back in time, we create event A' =/= A. It doesn't matter what we do in A'. It can never be A.
Then, the statement
If A implies B
Then A' implies B
Is FALSE. We cannot use any information from A to determine what A' implies. A' In fact, under CD, A' cannot imply B; it can only imply B'. B' might contain the event of picking the same lotto numbers, but it must differ in some aspect from B.
This is because CD is bijective: each event implies exactly one event, and each event can only be implied by exactly one event.
In other words:
If C implies E
and D implies E
Then C=D
And if F implies H
And if G implies not H
Then F does not imply G, and G does not imply F
Therefore, if we were to extrapolate the entire timeline of A, it would never again intersect the time line of A'.
(Of course, this logically violates CD, since they must have had some common point in the past.)
In short: under CD, you can't travel back in time.
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