Then, one day, the man realizes the meaning of it all; time travel could never exist in a universe that was absent skeptics!
That is pretty funny, Jim. Can you not identify the immediate falsification of that premise? Without making any assumptions about physics, and using only syllogistic logic:
If there is no one available to be skeptical of any claim, then "time travel" could most certainly exist... and in fact it could be argued to be the source of
all phenomenon... for there is no one to question any such conclusion! In a universe where no one questions claims, we are all time travelers, magicians, and even gods with limitless power.
Each time a traveler did something like predict a famous person's death a month in advance, belief would explode all over the world on that fated day. Future travelers could never risk such a thing.
It would not even take a time traveler's action to cause this. ANY action, whether time-traveling or not, would cause this. In fact, in a universe with no skeptics, any time traveler could not possibly avoid such an "explosion" for it would be a continuously-occurring phenomenon. Such a universe would have infinite probabilities for all things, at least in the minds of the observers.
Changing their past with mass belief would likely end their lives as they knew it.
Technically, they would never have an existence to begin with, because what is being described is a homogenous continuum. We know from physics that imbalance is required for energy to flow... symmetry breaking is what the physicists call it.
Disbelief, doubt and suspicion are the most important ingredients.
Almost. It is the interplay of belief and non-belief, for that is what arises from a break in symmetry. This is the
Principle of Polarity, which is just one of the fundamental principles described by the Kybalion (and other Hermetic texts).
Hypothetically speaking, of course! /ttiforum/images/graemlins/smile.gif
RMT