Time Travel and Free Will: You can alter course of events but not the result according to physics

[W_L]

https://www.businessinsider.com/time-travel-possible-changing-past-isnt-physics-says-2020-9#:~:text=A 2020 study offered a,you couldn't change history.

https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1361-6382/aba4bc

I mentioned this weeks ago in my story about time travel, using the principle known as the Novikov's self-consistency principle, but I thought it might be a good idea to discuss and explore this topic with other writers and readers. For my story, I wanted to use a realistic concept around time travel being possible, but results from history cannot be changed. This kind of concept is based on the nature that the universe as a system recalibrates itself around results. You cannot exist without the results matching the causes.

If the theory and math hold true, the underlying idea around "Free Will" is kind of moot, except for minor variations. It opens up a lot of deeper questions around natural law, the limitations on chaotic elements, and human philosophies that invest heavily on absolute free will. 

Does that mean destiny and fate are real? Are we just a Thanos snap of a finger away from "inevitability"?

It's an interesting thing to consider for human beings.

[Talo Segura]

To reach any conclusion about time travel you would first need to understand time. It is easy to say that time is constant, the minutes, hours, days, years, tick away, at a regular pace. But that is not true. You know yourself how much longer a year was when you were young and how much quicker it passes when you are older. Your younger years were possibly marked on the wall as you grew taller, but it took forever for time to pass.

Time is perhaps a necessary concept for order, however it doesn't necessarily exist. And if it doesn't exist, or it doesn't neatly mark out our passage through life in an ordered, measurable way, then what would be time travel. You would go back to somewhere before, when there is no before, except in your memories which are like dreams, hard to make solid, distorted, and not real.

How about an ever changing now? No past, no future, it only seems like there is when actually there is only a huge now! Time makes sense because we physically grow old, if we didn't age it would make no sense at all to have time. You can't travel to a place that doesn't exist, so you cannot travel back to a past that never was. It is perhaps possible to cut through the now, but cutting through now is simply making connections and there are a huge number of those and they might influence the future, but not if they were there all along. Not if there is no future only a changing now, which seems like a future, but isn't.

Time travel does not exist because time does not exist, you can't travel on a concept! And yes, to a certain extent destiny and fate are real enough, but you don't properly know your destiny, you might recognise it when it arrives, let's hope so!

[Zombie]

4 hours ago, Talo Segura said:

Time travel does not exist because time does not exist, you can't travel on a concept! And yes, to a certain extent destiny and fate are real enough, but you don't properly know your destiny, you might recognise it when it arrives, let's hope so!

must have missed Relativity space-time being chucked in the trash can 🗑️  

 
 

 

Edited November 5 by Zombie

[Ron]

5 hours ago, Talo Segura said:

You know yourself how much longer a year was when you were young and how much quicker it passes when you are older. Your younger years were possibly marked on the wall as you grew taller, but it took forever for time to pass.

As anyone not experiencing a science phobia can tell you this is just balderdash! Perception of time does not equate with the actual passage of time. (One of these things is not like the other. - Sesame Street) As has been postulated but not yet truly demonstrated for the individual (no one has yet achieved this), the faster you go the slower time becomes until... Well, you arrive a few days later than you left, and many years have gone bye-bye for everyone else. Now that's the reality of time for you!

Edited November 5 by Ron

[Zombie]

the cover illustration of this 50s time travel adventure hooked my 13yo self 
 

it didn’t disappoint - teenager accidentally flung back 50,000 years in his uncle’s experimental time machine where he meets up with young+hunky Cro-Magnon guy (not the ‘bad guy’ Neanderthals shown ) and has exciting adventures. What’s not to like for a hormonal young adolescent…  

[Ron]

13 minutes ago, Zombie said:

What’s not to like for a hormonal young adolescent…

By an author named Chad no less. I’m beginning to see a connection… 

[W_L]

8 minutes ago, Zombie said:

the cover illustration of this 50s time travel adventure hooked my 13yo self 
 

it didn’t disappoint - teenager accidentally flung back 50,000 years in his uncle’s experimental time machine where he meets up with young+hunky Cro-Magnon guy (not the ‘bad guy’ Neanderthals shown ) and has exciting adventures. What’s not to like for a hormonal young adolescent…  

A primitive beefcake having fun with a teenage boy...  😛 

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@Talo Segura Time in the scientific context is meant as an observational measurement, so it can be calculated assuming the subject has a beginning and ending. Essentially, it is the study of entropy.

What I think you are referring to is the arrow of time as envisioned by British astrophysicist Arthur Eddington for the direction of time, based on his 3 principles, which includes conscious perception:

Quote

 

1. It is vividly recognized by consciousness.

2. It is equally insisted on by our reasoning faculty, which tells us that a reversal of the arrow would render the external world nonsensical.

3. It makes no appearance in physical science except in the study of organization of a number of individuals. In other words, it is only observed in entropy, a statistical mechanics phenomenon arising from a system.

 

 

 

 

[Ron]

5 hours ago, W_L said:

Essentially, it is the study of entropy. (Comment refers to time.)

According to the NIH, entropy has nothing to do with time. And let us not forget that there are many definitions of entropy. Entropy is specific for whichever calculation you have a need according to higher-educated minds than my own.

Entropy appears to be determined by how you want to apply it and what you want to apply it to. And yet entropy can have absolute value. (The mind boggles.)

[W_L]

3 hours ago, Ron said:

According to the NIH, entropy has nothing to do with time. And let us not forget that there are many definitions of entropy. Entropy is specific for whichever calculation you have a need according to higher-educated minds than my own.

Entropy appears to be determined by how you want to apply it and what you want to apply it to. And yet entropy can have absolute value. (The mind boggles.)

Isn't that glass half full or empty?

In either description, the substance being measured covers half the maximum potential capacity.

The arrow of time is biased with consciousness and perception is whether the substance is filled to reach half or depleted to reach half. Entropy in this case depends on on the system and observations. 

Pretty cool relationships.