Virtual time travel

W

worldmachine

Temporal Novice
Is physical time travel a necessary aim? I believe that the mind and body are not one but two separate entities. If were to find a way to travel through time in our minds would that be a satisfactory result in achieving the ultimate aim?

The closest we are getting to this experience is with virtual time travel, apparently researchers from the university of Barcelona have created some kind of virtual reality experience that let volunteers experience time travel. They claim that this experiment worked and the participants felt they had travelled back in time. The explanation is that virtual reality is immersive and you quickly forget you are in a physical space and assume you are in the virtual environment. Fascinating stuff.

 
Is physical time travel a necessary aim? I believe that the mind and body are not one but two separate entities. If were to find a way to travel through time in our minds would that be a satisfactory result in achieving the ultimate aim?The closest we are getting to this experience is with virtual time travel, apparently researchers from the university of Barcelona have created some kind of virtual reality experience that let volunteers experience time travel. They claim that this experiment worked and the participants felt they had travelled back in time. The explanation is that virtual reality is immersive and you quickly forget you are in a physical space and assume you are in the virtual environment. Fascinating stuff.
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This sounds awesome - Do you have a link?As cool as this would be though, I think one of the larger desires to travel through time relate to being able to do things like see who really shot JFK or hear what Abraham Lincoln's voice sounded like... Also to interact with actual people and not (currently) simplistic input-output computer AI. Any virtual realty experience isn't going to satisfy this curiosity.

 
This is an interesting thread.

Ok, first, since the human mind is a powerful simulator of reality, it is impossible if not difficult to distinguish otherwise. How do we know that we are all just like in the movie 'The Matrix'? There is actually a possibility that we are all in a very powerful system that makes us create our own perception of reality.

Second, the human mind, if it is only simulating, then it will destroy all the problems of time travel paradoxes and logic. It's so simple, it will just assume the emotions and memories you'll have. So if you go back in time, you might actually change what you perceive is the history.

 
I have experienced time travel in a dream once. But I don't know what to say. It's weird. Because as always, we only remember 90 percent of our dreams, and now I don't even remember what I changed back in the past. All I know is the relief and the logic that happened next. After I came back to the present, I remember everything like it is what really happened; even what I feel about them is the same. But when I wake up, I know for sure that this and that didn't happen, but my mind is so tricked. I really believed it. I think that if this is the case, we have no way of telling if we did go back in time or are we capable of time travel all along..

 
Virtual time travel is useless. The real time travel is that can benefit the humanity.

To compare the real time travel with the virtual is equally to compare masturbation with real sex.

 
Virtual time travel is useless. The real time travel is that can benefit the humanity.To compare the real time travel with the virtual is equally to compare masturbation with real sex.
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I wouldn't say it's useless, it just doesn't offer the exploratory and "discovering the unknown" factors that most people want out of an experience like that.
Supposing something is so well documented as to have no question about its accuracy would be satisfying enough for some people I think... Or in cases where the point is simply to experience the spectacle of it all vs. doing some kind of fact-finding mission. If you were to stick me in a holodeck where I could watch the Hindenburg go down or witness the chaos of trench warfare in WW1, that'd be close enough for me as far as those things go.

But you're right, it still wouldn't satisfy curiosity about things that are unknown or improperly documented.

 
Virtual Time Travel has been around for a very long time, to both past and future.

It's called TV and Movies. I love old John Wayne westerns and WWII movies.

 
I don't really believe that this would count as time travel. It is certainly an amazing breakthrough in virtual reality technology, but it is not time travel, it is a simulation of a certain perception of the "past" or "future". One wouldn't be able to alter timelines, see new things, or discover something no one else has, because someone would have coded that program and all possibilities would be realized, aside from any minor bugs or glitches.

 
There have been NUMEROUS times that I misheard or misread something. Sometimes my misunderstanding is for the better, sometimes not so much. I had rather know a disappointing truth rather than act on my misunderstanding (my perception). My interest in time travel is primarily about discovering the truth. People's perceptions of the truth have done enough damage already.

 
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