Present time-travellers - a thread for you!

Hmm...I should explain the above graphically...

Let's imagine a vertical line as 'our timeline'. Now, a change occurs and there is a split.....let us represent the split off timeline as a line at 45 degrees to the main timeline.

Now, these 'split off' timelines include the 'no change' scenario. In other words, our timeline is NOT just a line going up the graph but is ALSO the diagonal line branching off that. Our timeline is a timeline of itself. It is that diagonal line that is spawning the changed timelines ( which are vertical lines ). Each diagonal line then in turn spawns a 'no change' copy of itself as one of the vertical lines.....which then in turn spawn more 'changed' timelines.

Now....if you want to TOTALLY confound the issue.......when a single quantum change occurs in the universe, a new timeline is created. BUT....one of the options for that timeline is for that change to undo itself. Which effectively means that 'our timeline' is re-created. Identical. Indeed, all the other timelines would be doing the same.

Timelines are thus not 'fixed' entities at all. As time goes by the ability of one to change into an identical other one diminishes.....but it never becomes impossible. Thus, timelines are constantly branching off...merging back again....creating more identical copies that do the same...and so on.

The whole 'tree and branch' structure is absurdly inadequate to display what is really going on.
 
What you read my statement as is not what I meant it. I was saying that nothing is ever guaranteed to a single specific timeline... and that as a whole atleast one timeline should never get a time traveler
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OK, but by the same token, you appear to not be understanding what myself and Twighlight are saying. Let me try it this way:

That nice little diagram you provided in this reply? I could draw any other configuration of it and attach any other expository text to go along with it, in a similar vein to what you did, and it would be just as valid. That is a result of the fact that we have presumed "infinite timelines". And moreover, you also appear to have an implied restriction (as I mentioned) that timelines cannot loop back on themselves (independent of any alleged time traveler).

The point (again) is that this is all pseudo-scientific gibberish because it is based upon a presumption which is not only not axiomatic (does not stand-up to simple reason) but also has no means to be falsified. It is sheer science fiction, and so trying to put a scientific spin on it is disingenuous and leads to the very correct branding of pseudo-science.

But have fun with it! I don't mean to spoil your fun, only point out that nothing you are saying should be construed as "true or meaningful" in any scientific sense.

RMT
 
The whole 'tree and branch' structure is absurdly inadequate to display what is really going on.
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Exactly. Better analogies might be dynamic rather than geometric. Rather than a whole lot of branching off as the result of individual decisions, treat those minor variations like changes in the speed and direction of molecules in a gas.Instead of splitting time lines, the gas gets hotter or colder and many of their motions cancel out.
Billions of people make trillions of decisions and changes, but most of them fall into broad categories, producing a mass result which ends up as history.
A butterfly flapping its wings above the Amazon doesn't cause a windstorm in Norway, for Heaven's sake. Most of what an average person does in their lifetime ends up as no more than a minor addition to the noise of humanity. And rather than a "time line" this greater history is more like a group of probabilities moving along together in time, I suspect. :D
 
In reality it "might" be that we actually do travel back on our own timeline, but that from the TT's POV he thinks he is in a new timeline.
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Hmm..timelines run into Zeno's paradox.

One tends to imagine a timeline as just that.....a line. That presupposes something that 'remains the same' for a measurable period of time. BUT, quantum changes occur every trillionth of a second. There must be quadrillions of timelines 'branching off' every second......and that's just in the local domain ( one supposes that changes to the universe spread at the speed of light..which limits the number of local new timelines ).

What meaning does a timeLINE have when one applies the 'principle of local causes' ? That problem exists regardless of whether timelines exist across the entire universe instantly.....or they 'spread' their effects at the speed of light.

What I mean is, time and space are themselves relative. There is no such thing as a universal ( or even local ) 'now'. If a quantum change occurs at point X and generates a new universe...we run into serious problems when we consider the viewpoint of someone at point Y even a short distance away. If the change in the universe spreads at the speed of light, then we have the bizzare situation where an observer at point Y is actually under the influence of two timelines ( indeed, multiple timelines ) simultaneously........as the new timeline will not yet have changed the universe in the opposite direction to point X.

Conversely, if the change creates an entire new universe instantly, then we have another problem. Creates the universe as it existed when ?? There is no universal 'now'. How does a quantum of energy in a lab at CERN know how to create the entire Andromeda galaxy ( let alone the whole universe ) as it exists 'now' ? And, even if it did.....the EFFECTS of such would still have to spread at the speed of light..which would mean that an observer on Earth would still see the old Andromeda galaxy timeline for anothe 2 million years.

So the idea of an entire universe ( or even a local domain ) having a 'timeline' comes quickly unstuck....precisly because space and time are relative and a thing exists ( and is one of the pillars of science ) called the Principle of Local Causes.
 
Exactly. Better analogies might be dynamic rather than geometric.
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Well.....the whole thing is a boiling, seething cauldron rather than a nice, neat little X/Y graph. One would need something called 'hypertime' to even begin to plot the 'location' of timelines ( as they do not exist in normal space or time ).

The universe is much more like rain falling onto a pond. There are no 'timelines' ( which violate the principle of local causes ).....there is just a series of local 'states' where ripples either have or have not interacted. A true 'timeline' would not be anything like those espoused here....it would be more akin to being able to describe a single 'quantum state' at the macroscopic level.....for example of an entire galaxy.

That's where the merging of relativity and quantum mechanics comes in.
 
Exactly. Better analogies might be dynamic rather than geometric. Rather than a whole lot of branching off as the result of individual decisions, treat those minor variations like changes in the speed and direction of molecules in a gas.Instead of splitting time lines, the gas gets hotter or colder and many of their motions cancel out.
Billions of people make trillions of decisions and changes, but most of them fall into broad categories, producing a mass result which ends up as history.
A butterfly flapping its wings above the Amazon doesn't cause a windstorm in Norway, for Heaven's sake. Most of what an average person does in their lifetime ends up as no more than a minor addition to the noise of humanity. And rather than a "time line" this greater history is more like a group of probabilities moving along together in time, I suspect.
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Precisely. Continuous process vs. discrete process. Also stoichastic vs. deterministic.

One is real. The other is an approximation made by the human mind to approach understanding.
RMT
 
That nice little diagram you provided in this reply? I could draw any other configuration of it and attach any other expository text to go along with it, in a similar vein to what you did, and it would be just as valid. That is a result of the fact that we have presumed "infinite timelines". And moreover, you also appear to have an implied restriction (as I mentioned) that timelines cannot loop back on themselves (independent of any alleged time traveler).
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Theres no implied anything, all I was trying to illustrate with my drawing was how a time traveler would create a new timeline in a basic way and show what you called a "logical fallacy" wasn't a logical fallacy. Not trying to map out the entirety of all possible timelines. /ttiforum/images/graemlins/ooo.gif

The point (again) is that this is all pseudo-scientific gibberish because it is based upon a presumption which is not only not axiomatic (does not stand-up to simple reason) but also has no means to be falsified. It is sheer science fiction, and so trying to put a scientific spin on it is disingenuous and leads to the very correct branding of pseudo-science.
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I've noticed a trend with you RMT. Your replies usually consistent of "No you ignorant fool, you no nothing becuase I don't agree with you and science fiction and the gibberish and the off the wall example with curse words."

Most of the other posters are along the lines of "Actually, I think it works or could work like this..."

Do you see the difference?

But have fun with it! I don't mean to spoil your fun, only point out that nothing you are saying should be construed as "true or meaningful" in any scientific sense.
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What allows you to make the diffetence between what is "truthful and meaningful" are you a supreme being with knowledge of all science? And I'm beginning to think you are not scincere when you say "I don't mean to spoil your fun."
 
The problem with timelines is they do not actually resolve the problem they were invented to resolve.

The 'grandfather paradox' describes how a person could theoretically travel back in time, shoot their own grandfather, and thus prevent themselves ever being born in the first place. Films like 'Back To The Future' make play on this. H.G Wells even uses it in The Time Machine ( the book..not the film ) where his attempts to save a partner fail because he cannot alter a past that has already happened.

Clearly, if you did travel back into the past in such manner, then whatever you did there would have had to already have happened before you even travelled. You cannot travel back and shoot your own grandfather....quite simply because that didn't happen.

So.....some bright spark invents 'timelines'. Supposedly based upon the 'many worlds' interpretation of quantum mechanics. Entire alternate realities splitting off every time there is......well...nobody ever defined what the exact criteria is for the split.

The trouble is....the many worlds theorem ( and it IS just a theory, not a scrap of evidence ) is primarily based upon scientists not being able to get their heads round the concepts of quantum superposition. And the fact is, quantum superposition does NOT describe multiple realities but instead a SINGLE reality that has superimposed components that add up to a single whole.

In other words, the components of superposition are not entire seperate realites. It only APPEARS to be the case. You could measure a particle's position precisely, and then think 'hmm..but the momentum must 'exist' somewhere in another reality'.....but that is not how it works. Both components exist simultaneously, not as seperate entities but as part of a single whole in which the more precisely you measure one...the less precisely you can know the other. This does not make intuitive sense ( as with the wave-particle paradox ) but then neither does it make sense to try and 'force' an intuitive solution as 'multiple realities'. The universe does it's own thing....it is not obliged to make sense to us.

But by far the worst problem with timelines is the 'non-Copernican' nature of 'our timeline'. OUR timeline is treated as special......you cannot travel back in time and zap grandad. Yet...it's OK to go zap grandad in some other timeline. And yet....that OTHER timeline must have a NOW ( i.e September 12th 2009 ) whose past is every bit as sacrosanct as we regard ours as being ! Every single believer of timelines misses this crucial point. If you cannot change the past in OUR timeline.....why the blazes is it OK to go screw up someone else's ?? This conundrum arises because people fail to grasp that every single timeline must have a corresponding NOW that is equivalent to our own. That being the case, you can no more alter the past of another timeline than you can that of our own.
 
So.....some bright spark invents 'timelines'. Supposedly based upon the 'many worlds' interpretation of quantum mechanics. Entire alternate realities splitting off every time there is......well...nobody ever defined what the exact criteria is for the split.
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The criteria for a new timeline splitting off is when one option is chosen. This would include all the quantum "decisions" and a living things consious decisions. Becuase everything has a probability, and a probability of 0.00000000000001% still has a chance of occuring, all options are included, not just the oposite of the one percieved to have happened in my timeline.

The trouble is....the many worlds theorem ( and it IS just a theory, not a scrap of evidence ) is primarily based upon scientists not being able to get their heads round the concepts of quantum superposition. And the fact is, quantum superposition does NOT describe multiple realities but instead a SINGLE reality that has superimposed components that add up to a single whole.
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I agree it is just a theory, and my explaining it here is just that... Not agreeing 100%, just explaining as I understand. I read up on quantum superpostions and correct me if i'm wrong but from my understanding it says that all options exist simeltaneousLy, it is just that as soon as we observe it, all other options go away.

The universe does it's own thing....it is not obliged to make sense to us.
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Screw you Universe, why won't you ever listen to me /ttiforum/images/graemlins/cry.gif /ttiforum/images/graemlins/cry.gif /ttiforum/images/graemlins/cry.gif

But by far the worst problem with timelines is the 'non-Copernican' nature of 'our timeline'. OUR timeline is treated as special......you cannot travel back in time and zap grandad. Yet...it's OK to go zap grandad in some other timeline. And yet....that OTHER timeline must have a NOW ( i.e September 12th 2009 ) whose past is every bit as sacrosanct as we regard ours as being ! Every single believer of timelines misses this crucial point. If you cannot change the past in OUR timeline.....why the blazes is it OK to go screw up someone else's ?? This conundrum arises because people fail to grasp that every single timeline must have a corresponding NOW that is equivalent to our own. That being the case, you can no more alter the past of another timeline than you can that of our own.
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You are thinking along the lines of going to a different universe. When you try to over come the effects of the grandfather paradox for example, when you go back in time to lets say October 9th, 1925 you make a new timeline that doesn't have a set of future events yet. Allowing you to make the future events different from the ones in your own timeline.
 
You are thinking along the lines of going to a different universe. When you try to over come the effects of the grandfather paradox for example, when you go back in time to lets say October 9th, 1925 you make a new timeline that doesn't have a set of future events yet. Allowing you to make the future events different from the ones in your own timeline.
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No.....that thinking is erroneous. There is a logical problem with it....and it is a mistake so many timeline advocates make. Let me try and explain :-

The timeline you travel to does not JUST exist in 1925.....it must also have a corresponding 'now' ( and all the intervening time in between ). In other words...RIGHT NOW that timeline has a corresponding September 12th.

So..let us say you travel back to 1925 in on hour's time. Hmmm....so where is your new timeline ? As you have not yet travelled...surely it does not yet exist. But hold on......your new timeline DOES ( indeed must ) have a moment in it corresponding to one hour before you travelled....it must do !

So....you have the bizzare situation where your new timeline MUST have a moment in it corresponding to 'now' ( i.e 1 hour before you travel )....but that moment does not exist 'now'..because you have not yet travelled.

This is a logical absurdity. How can something simultaneously exist now.....and yet not exist now because you don't create it for another hour ???
 
So..let us say you travel back to 1925 in on hour's time. Hmmm....so where is your new timeline ? As you have not yet travelled...surely it does not yet exist. But hold on......your new timeline DOES ( indeed must ) have a moment in it corresponding to one hour before you travelled....it must do !
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I'm not sure exactly what you aresaying. Is it that You are saying what about the hour before I arrive and would make it a new timeline. Ignore the dots.


............................October 8 at 3:14"53'12 p.m. w/ grandfather
...........................................................|
October 8 at 2:14"53'12 p.m.-------------|
...........................................................|
............................October 8 at 3:14"53'12 p.m. w/o Grandfather

This would show that the hour before for both timelines are the same hour.
 
all I was trying to illustrate with my drawing was how a time traveler would create a new timeline in a basic way and show what you called a "logical fallacy" wasn't a logical fallacy.
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You have not disproved your logical fallacy, because every time you attempt to explain "here is how timelines work" you are committing a logical fallacy. Being that the idea of timelines, as you seek to establish them, is not a fact, your continuing logical fallacy is a combination of post-hoc and the non-sequitor. Technically speaking.

I've noticed a trend with you RMT. Your replies usually consistent of "No you ignorant fool, you no nothing becuase I don't agree with you and science fiction and the gibberish and the off the wall example with curse words."

Most of the other posters are along the lines of "Actually, I think it works or could work like this..."

Do you see the difference?
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Do I care about the difference? Or are you saying that all people should be alike? Indeed, differences yield variety, and variety is the spice of life. For example, have you ever heard of "good cop and bad cop"? Such variety leads to productive replies from a suspect. So if you must, call me the "bad cop". I won't care one bit.

Oh and by ignoring the issues I put forth and saying there is something "wrong" with me, you are on the verge of the next logical fallacy: ad hominem. The fallacy that because there is "something wrong" with me that there must be "something wrong" with my arguments.

What allows you to make the diffetence between what is "truthful and meaningful" are you a supreme being with knowledge of all science?
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Now this is an example of a strawman logical fallacy. You will note that nowhere have I claimed that I determine what is truthful and meaningful. The authority for such is usually ascribed to the scientific method. Popper falsifiability is one aspect of the scientific method. And none of your timeline fantasies are even remotely falsifiable. You have merely constructed a world that you think appears logical because a human mind can follow the argument. That does not make is scientific and certainly does not make it truthful or meaningful, in a scientific sense.

And I'm beginning to think you are not scincere when you say "I don't mean to spoil your fun."
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This forum is about time travel claims. The biggest element of debunking time travel claims is the scientific method. You wish to apply fantasy to try and bolster such claims. That is your right to do so, and I do hope you are having fun. But it is also my right to point out your logical fallacies and show how they cannot be considered scientific, and thus do not further your ambition to essentially say "yeah, but time travel could be real and here is how it could work."

If you admit that your timeline gibberish is just good fun and fantasy, then there is a fan fiction forum where you can describe your timeline mechanics all you want and I would not even bother to intervene because it is labeled as fiction. But as long as you attempt to claim that you know how "timelines" work and try to pretend to be scientific about describing how they work, I am free to point out just how ridiculous it is. Right?

Yes, I know...some people get their fun in weird ways. Call me weird. I don't much care.

RMT
 
Rainyman, you take this stuff seriously don't you? :oops: I admit it's tedious to read the same "arguments" repeatedly, but at some point I just skip the posts. Is this fun to you? :D

Since most knowledgable people know that time lines are not to be considered, maybe you should make a "sticky" post in a forum explaining it and leave it at that. I'm not sure how many of your >5000 posts are dealing with this topic alone. Then just let the others have their fun. :oops:
 
Rainman has his own system of beliefs and thinking but he cannot accept others to have their own system of beliefs and thinking. Because of this he cannot effectively communicate without conflict.



****************ATTENTION TIME TRAVEL CLAIMANTS:*****************
If you interest me I may ask you questions.
This does not mean I necessarily believe what you are saying but only
that I am interested and curious about what you have to say.
I like to gather all the information first and save judgement till the end.
I am here to have fun, interesting and thought provoking conversation.
If you have a sense of humor, are highly intelligent and creative I may end up liking you!
However, This does not mean I will have interdimensional babies with you. LOL /ttiforum/images/graemlins/smile.gif
 
Thanks aerohead. I will keep that in mind! LOL :D


****************ATTENTION TIME TRAVEL CLAIMANTS:*****************
If you interest me I may ask you questions.
This does not mean I necessarily believe what you are saying but only
that I am interested and curious about what you have to say.
I like to gather all the information first and save judgement till the end.
<font color="red"> I am here to have fun, interesting and thought provoking conversation.[/COLOR]
If you have a sense of humor, are highly intelligent and creative I may end up liking you!
However, This does not mean I will have interdimensional babies with you. LOL /ttiforum/images/graemlins/smile.gif
 
Somewhat. But what is more fun to me is watching Brett Favre get sacked and Adrian Peterson get nailed behind the line of scrimmage by my Browns!
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I've come to the conclusion that if the CIA really wants to encrypt it's messages.....forget quantum encryption. All they have to do is start talking American Football and nobody else from any other nation will have the faintest idea what it means.

/ttiforum/images/graemlins/smile.gif
 
All they have to do is start talking American Football and nobody else from any other nation will have the faintest idea what it means.
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/ttiforum/images/graemlins/smile.gif Good one! Of course, one could say the exact same thing about cricket!
In fact, I recall my very first trip to New Zealand. I was getting pissed in a pub and making friends with the Kiwis (they are the warmest people on the planet, IMO) while a test match between NZ and Sri Lanka was on the TV. My drinking mate and I came to an agreement: He would explain cricket to me and I would explain baseball to him. It turned out to be quite amusing (and a good activity to observe as we got progressively more pissed) because we both realized some of the odd rules that both games possess. But still... a game that can last for days? I like drinking beer and all, but that is a bit of a stretch don't you think?


RMT
 
But still... a game that can last for days? I like drinking beer and all, but that is a bit of a stretch don't you think?
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That's really only the test matches....which are provisionally booked for 5 days, though can be over in just 3.

Both sides get 2 'innings'....but the real goal is to get such a high level of runs on the first innings that you can 'declare'....which means no second innings, as you really want to give the opposition a chance to play too. Cricket is very much a game of strategy.....and the time factor is a main element of that.
 
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