Welcome MildSkeptic:
Situation:
A time machine and pilot appear at date X. The pilot gives the machine to a company capable of mass producing it based on the model they have, and they do so. After making several copies, they send a pilot back to date X in one of the copies, upon which he gives the company the machine and the cycle is completed. This means that the 'prototype' was in fact a copy and the time machine was never, as such, invented or discovered.
My own personal opinion (and one which I believe many scientists share) is that any "paradox" is nothing more than a marker for incomplete or incorrect understanding of how a natural process works. Once we gather enough data to describe a proper model for how reality "works", the paradox goes away and is understood as merely limited understanding which was eventually corrected via the practice of "good science".
I believe the underlying scientific area which your "situation" is pointing at is the issue of "closed time-like loops", if they are "real", and posing the question of whether those loops are "fixed" or whether they can be modified. It is my belief (based on my own scientific knowledge of closed-loops) that the paradox arises through the assumption that we can treat time-like loops in the same manner that our current technology treats "conventional" loops (which operate in and on mass and space).
Allow me to try to explain further: Currently, our most advanced technologies utilize closed-loops in the form of feedback control systems to accomplish the vast majority of results that our technological advancements have provided. Indeed, mankind has become very, very good at manipulating our universe and its energy through implementation of such closed-loop control systems. But we must understand an underlying fact about our current technology in control systems: All of our science of control systems is based upon TIME as being the INDEPENDENT variable (i.e. the variable that we do NOT have control over). Rather, we design and implement control systems that treat Mass and Space (or Spatial) responses as DEPENDENT upon Time. The example I typically use (since it is my profession) is that an automatic pilot is a control system which controls the Mass of an aircraft as it moves through Space over given periods of Time. The control system has "control" over Space (where the airplane flies, how fast it flies, and under what accelerations the airplane moves). Furthermore, the control system also has "control" over Mass (it can control how much fuel is burned, and it can also control the center of Mass of the aircraft, thereby affecting the balance during flight). What this type of control system CANNOT control is Time. That is because it is the INDEPENDENT variable.
The underlying implication of your "situation" (whether you know it, or intended it) is that you are assuming that a system which can control Time-like loops would be similar to our existing systems. I propose that science tells us we cannot make this assumption. I would further suggest that we would need to choose which of the three variables (Mass, Time, or Space) we would "allow" to be the INDEPENDENT variable if we were to wish to control Time. Would we permit Mass or Space to be the independent variable? Whichever one you choose will have a distinct impact on the technology design for controlling Time. Are you following me here?
To deal specifically with your question (which is a very good one):
Could such events occur w/out actual stimulus?
It is my belief that if you take a "system of systems" analytical approach to this question, and your situation, you may very well arrive at the classical Many Worlds Interpretations (which may be better described as the Many Universes Interpretations). One analogy of how to visualize this "system of systems" topology is as a vast "sea" of bubbles, each of which has no overlap/interaction with other bubbles. Our universe could be described as one of these "closed" bubbles, within which are all the measurements that we have come to know as Mass, Space, and Time. Left on their own (i.e. a natural state) these bubbles do not and can not interact with each other without some "external force" causing them to overlap or interact.
This analogy falls in line with a classical treatment of thermodynamics and entropy in that energy must cross a system boundary in order for the local entropy of that system bubble to remain constant or to decrease. The "natural" tendency of any closed system which is far from thermal equilibrium is for entropy to increase.
I'm not sure if I answered your question in a manner in which you hoped... in fact, I do not even think I "answered" it, per se. But I do hope I have at least caused you to consider some of the scientific elements that come into play with such questions.
Kind Regards,
RMT
