Viking11
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You pass through the tunnel and you can see yourself as you were 1 minute ago. Imagine that you decide to shoot your earlier self. You die before you even finish loading the pistol. So, who killed you? How were you able to go back in time to kill yourself if you died before you were ever able to go back in time to kill yourself?
You pass through the tunnel and you can see yourself as you were 1 minute ago. Imagine that you decide to shoot your earlier self. You die before you even finish loading the pistol. So, who killed you? How were you able to go back in time to kill yourself if you died before you were ever able to go back in time to kill yourself?
That's better than what the Omega 13 Device will get you.
I can't believe you made that reference but awesome.
You pass through the tunnel and you can see yourself as you were 1 minute ago. Imagine that you decide to shoot your earlier self. You die before you even finish loading the pistol. So, who killed you? How were you able to go back in time to kill yourself if you died before you were ever able to go back in time to kill yourself?
I'll need a few bourbons before answering this, and we will all want that... chemical help.
Amazingly enough and after the few bourbons, I decided to call up an old friend & philosophy professor of mine to talk about this. It became a good excuse to call.
The way I presented the paradox was "A person goes back in time just one minute, and in doing so see's himself standing at the device about to go through it. For a moment they are both standing there, one through the device and one about to go through. The one that went through the device decides to shoot the one that has not been through yet. What happens next?"
A brief pause then my friend says... "Nothing else happens, the person that went through the device already ends up standing over the body of himself who has not been through the device." It took a moment of some back and forth but in the end I agree.
What we want to say is a paradox of time is created in that instant where because the person who went through the device kills himself in a state before going through then time *corrects* itself for the paradox and both end up removed from the time line. The issue then becomes an idea of various Quantum Sciences theories on time lines (perhaps better said as time conditions.)
When I asked my friend the question explicitly as stated by the OP, the response was "none of that matters." I both agreed and disagreed.
My response was since all that really happened was the person that went through the device ends up at the same point of time as himself before going through the device then they both exist in the same "instance of time" (think abstract perhaps even cube, not exclusively as time on a single line level.) So when one kills the other then all that really happens is in that instance of time one is left standing, but there is no force for time to correct for the paradox. Why would it need to? The person left alive is simply standing over the body of himself before going through the device.
This friend then asked me, "Does it matter which one standing there kills the other?" My response was no, and for the same reason. In that instance of both standing there, it does not matter which one ends up dead as the other is still in that instance of time. Even if you have to reduce the whole thing to looking at time as a line, both are on a time line that cross. So going back in time one minute really only allowed for a second instance of the same person standing there, but those time lines are independent now.
And then we agreed that bourbon was far more fun to talk about.
I don't see how that resolves the problem of any variation of the basic causality paradox: by going back in time and killing yourself, you have removed the reason to go back and kill yourself. Because you are dead, you do not go back in time and kill yourself. Because you do not go back in time and kill yourself, you are not dead, so you do go back in time and kill yourself.
Repeat cycle infinitely. (And/or, the universe breaks and a lot of people are upset)
Unless there is presently established physics that says what happens in this instance is something other than that - and I was fairly certain we're not anywhere close to that at this point - I don't see how the above isn't still a problem. You note that your/his solution results from "an idea of various Quantum Sciences theories on time lines (perhaps better said as time conditions", but what are they and have said theories been proven? I suspect the answer remains "we don't really know, but it's probably bad and it makes my brain hurt".
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