Sheldon´s housemate contract

P

petesede

Temporal Novice
One of the funnier, and to me more clever moments of the Big Bang Theory was when Sheldon required, in the housemate agreement that if the roommate invented or could time travel in the future, he would be required to travel back in time to the moment when the contract is being signed. As the roommate signs the contract, Sheldon pauses for a second... as if awaiting a visitor from the future.

But it really presents one of the paradoxes, and why I think time travel will never be possible. Because if it is possible someday, then someone would have come back and already taught us how to do it now.

 
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I'm picturing the roommate's future self appearing only to proclaim: "Don't do it! He's the most annoying roommate one could ever have! I know I'm creating a paradox by doing this, but I beg of me: don't sign that contract! Find somewhere else to live!" The roommate's future self would then have an odd look of utter relief and contentment as he or she fades out of existence, overwritten by the new continuity in which he or she found somewhere else to live! ;)

 
I make the assumption that time is like a gyroscope. As long as the wheel keeps spinning and it remains stable. If you push it, it wobbles but rights itself. If you pull it, it wobbles, but rights itself. You can change its course over the path of the table, but eventually it stops roaming and resumes a stable rotation.

If you went back in time and changed an event to cause a paradox, I think the universe will do whatever it takes to right itself. I also believe that if you go back in time, you are leaving your own timeline and then exist in a completely separate timeline that until that point was identical, and that there are two versions of you in that world. If Leonard went back in time to stop himself from moving in with Sheldon, Old Leonard would still exist, and young Leonard wouldn't be affected by his existence. Sort of like how in the recent Star Trek movies Spock is able to interact with his younger self from an alternate reality and neither are much worse for the contact.

 
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I make the assumption that time is like a gyroscope. As long as the wheel keeps spinning and it remains stable. If you push it, it wobbles but rights itself. If you pull it, it wobbles, but rights itself. You can change its course over the path of the table, but eventually it stops roaming and resumes a stable rotation.
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I don´t think so, because at that point you would have to admit to a God-like being that would determine was was an acceptable amount of wobble. You go back in time and kill your grandfather.. survey says... not acceptable... you go back and tell you dad to buy you braces? acceptable?

 
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I don´t think so, because at that point you would have to admit to a God-like being that would determine was was an acceptable amount of wobble. You go back in time and kill your grandfather.. survey says... not acceptable... you go back and tell you dad to buy you braces? acceptable?
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Does a god-like being determine how much wobble a gyroscope? Nature is self-balancing, at least in my viewpoint, and it would depend on the size of the disturbance created. A tiny disturbance (e.g., bumping into your grandfather on the street) might cause small damage, but nothing irreparable. A large disturbance, such as getting your father killed would cause a bigger distortion that would require more balancing it, and there's no way to know what kind of effects that could have on the timeline.
We're ants on the wheel and we have know way of knowing how big it is, or when we'll get crushed by it. All we know is it spins.

 
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Just don´t see it. Let´s do the assassination of Hitler and say that the universe needs things to wobble on a small amount. So I go back and kill HItler when he is 18 and in my opinion, prevent the holocaust. But the universe doesn´t allow that much wobble, so what does it do? Alter someone else´s life to make them Hitler 2.0? In order for the universe to prevent too big of a wobble, it would have to have strategic intelligence to ´right´ the changes I made so the timeline had a similar experience.

 
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