14 replies to this topic

[Samael]

If your future self some how walked up to you one day and told you about how the rest of your life will go, would you change it or let your life play out and see what happens?

If something really bad that happen that your future self told you would you change it or let your life play out and see what happens?

If you had a choice to redo something would you go back in time and stop that from happening?


Answer these questions carefully but remeber every Pro has its Cons, I mean there is a down fall to everything that may mess up your life or someone elses which you close to.

[link.the.first]

Messing with time is a really tricky thing. There's no real way to know if you're actually changing the right thing. In fact, your future self is changing the future simply by being there in the present, even if he doesn't talk to anyone.

Chance to redo something: Maybe, maybe not. Most of the time you learn from your mistakes, but if you fix it and it never happened then there would be nothing to learn from and you might do it anyway later.

It all depends on what that something is.

[Nighthawk]

Technically also would you not have to then, in your own future, go back in time to tell your past self what your future self told you, otherwise would it not cause some sort of temporal paradox?

[link.the.first]

Let's see... You go back in time to tell your past self to fix the future. Your past self fixes that and never has to go back in time. But then he doesn't go back in time to tell himself to fix the future. If he never went back in time then he never told his past self to fix the future, so the only way changing the past is possible is with the alternate reality theory. Otherwise you go back, fix it, then undo it because you never went back, then you go back, and the entire galaxy explodes or something due to a temporal paradox. (That's another theory)

[Ash]

Yep, paradox.


However, let's, for the purpose of this thread, assume that the temporal paradox would NOT happen.

And yes, I'd listen to him. He's me, after all. If you can't trust yourself, who can you trust?

[AdmiralGT]

Essentially we're looking at the storyline of Minority Report, just slightly twisted in that we do not see the future, but our future self tells us. For anyone who's seen the film, they'll know, that because he knows the future, he tries to change what is going to happen, but in fact, merely facilitates what is meant to happen.

Presumably your former self will know you best (considering it's you), so how do you know that your future self has come back to tell you something, knowing you'll ignore it or try to avoid it and merely carry out what the future already intended to happen.

Personally, I don't think travelling back in time is possible, why not? Simply, if we could travel back in time, history would have written about meeting future travellers. Surely we could replicate this time machine in the present and be able to time travel too? We can keep going back telling people how to build this time machine to what is currently the present, and even the past. If people could go back in time, why have we never encountered anyone travelling back in time?

As for if I could go back in time and tell my former self to do something to avoid a bad thing, no. I've done some pretty bad things in my life, which I regret, but from those experiences I learn't and have become who I am today. You can only learn from your mistakes, and if you stop yourself learning, you'll just make them at some other time.

[link.the.first]

GT: Just because we haven't seen any time travelers in history doesn't mean it's impossible. Maybe they blended in really well. Maybe they simply chose not to go back. You never know.

[Tom]

An interesting site GT: http://www.johntitor.com Obviously the predictions are rather outdated, but if i was to explain my belief of it i would say its on a balance of fate and choice. Really the only possible way for such an event to happen is the multiverse theory. And then every worldline would be different. If you went back to another worldline why would you want to tell them how to build a time machine, for a start its not your world line, again its their choice and again it might not be the right "time" for the time machine to exist due to world power and other temporary elements that could be dangerous.

If i was to meet myself from the future would i listen to him? I would take my own words into account yes, but i'd also realise i'd still have a choice and i might play to see how things work out. I'll try to change my future if it is bad, but if it leads to the same fate, it would help me realised free will is an illusion and fate is really the only thing that exists

[Daeda]

Ever heard of the story of Oedipus.
Laius, Oedipus' father kidnapped and raped the young boy Chrysippus, and was then cursed by Chrysippus' father, Pelops. The weight of this curse bore down onto Oedipus himself. At his birth, it was prophesied that he would kill his father. Seeking to avoid such a fate, Laius had the infant's ankles pierced with nails (hence the Greek name oidipous, "swollen-foot") and had him exposed (placed in the wilderness to die). His servant, however, betrayed him, handing the boy instead to a shepherd who presented the child to King Polybus and Queen Merope (or Periboea) of Corinth, who raised him as their own son.

When an oracle prophesied that he would kill his father and marry his mother, he fled the kingdom. During his travels, he came to the area around Thebes, where he killed a stranger in a roadside argument, not knowing the man was his real father and the king. Oedipus then saved Thebes by answering the riddle of the Sphinx and was rewarded with the now-vacant throne of Thebes and the widowed queen's hand in marriage, with whom he had four children. Divine signs of misfortune and pollution began to appear in Thebes, which caused the king to seek out their cause. Finally, the seer Teiresias revealed to Oedipus that he himself was the source of the pollution. Oedipus discovered he was really the son of Laius and Jocasta and that all of the prophecies had indeed come to pass. Jocasta committed suicide and Oedipus blinded himself by forcing her brooch pins into his eyes.

The story learns us that knowing your future doesnt allow you to prevent it. In our dimentions Time is a linear line, hence you cant travel freely around it, like you can with the first 3 dimentions. So unless you can create 2 dimentions of time, for which a fifth dimention is nescessairy, you cant prevent the future.

[AdmiralGT]

I read all about John Titor and his predicitions. I vaguely remember someone actually admitting they wrote it and all the fabricated pictures they made but it's one of those things that can never really proven to be wrong.

As for it's not impossible, obviously not, but probability comes into effect. If someone can create a time machine in the future, then for as long as the human race exists, the technology for a time machine would exist. Now, that's billions of people (possibly even trillions or even more) capable of travelling back in time. That many people, travelling to a period of 2000 years (a period where we have documentation of what happened in the world) to be noticed.

That's a large chunk of time to conviently "miss" filled with events that would presumably be important to our future world (the first man in space for example).

As for time travel only existing in multi-reality universes, that isn't true. If you say that time is like a metre rule, you can place yourself anywhere on that metre rule. No matter where you are on the metre rule, you do not change the metre rule, you just are standing somewhere else.

It depends on whether the future exists already, or if the future is still yet to be made.

[Tom]

Actually yes that does make sense. As always theories are theories until they are proved to be correct. Obviously with titors story only time will tell. I think we could easily say if none of the predictions come to pass by 2008 then its obviously a hoax. Who knows.

[AdmiralGT]

You say that, but Nostradamus made a shed load of predictions, most of which haven't come true, and yet people still believe he has made many great predictions of the future world.

People will always try to find a link between an event and a prophecy, merely to delude themselves that someone has a higher power to travel through time and "prepare" us for the events that could devestate the world.

People like to make connections between what are seemingly random events.

[Prodigy]

I would change everything

So my life would be perfect!!!

[link.the.first]

Problem: How do you know how to change things to make your life better? For all you know you could accidentally make your past self forget about a big test or be late for work and get fired. It would be pretty hard to change your own life to the way you want it.

About fate: I do not believe in fate, and as for the prophecy it seems likely that the only reason he killed his father is because he heard the prophecy. That would be impossible except coincidence because the prophecy wouldn't have shown up (unless the person was just using pure logic or guessing, not actually reading the future) unless the kid would have killed his dad otherwise. You'll notice how few fortune-tellers there are today and I've never seen any proof that they're right. Sure, occasionally a true prediction makes the news, but that's out of the millions of predictions that were made in the world.

Also, if fate is real, it doesn't contradict time travel and changing the past. The reason anything happens to you (if there is a reason) could be so you can do something about it, not that you just have to accept it.

Example: A man falls into a pit of quicksand and thinks it's his fate to die there. Another man walks by with a rope. The man in the quicksand says "No this is my fate" but the other guy pulls him out anyway. Wouldn't that mean that it is also fate for the man with the rope to stop by and help? If everything that happens is fate, how do you know you're supposed to just deal with what happens? How do you know you're not meant to do something to fix your life? There is absolutely no way to know your fate until you die (until you actually die, not while you're sinking in quicksand).

On that note, it could be that you are destined to travel back in time and fix something. So everything that happens is supposed to happen, maybe it's supposed to happen only to convince you to go back in time and fix it.

[AdmiralGT]

How is it not fate that instead of dying, you fell in the quicksand for this man to save you, become a friend for life whom you have to give blood or an organ too when he dies. You have not stated a contradiction, you have merely proved the fallacy in that if fate exists, then you may not truely know what your destiny is.

In your example, there are many possibilites of what fate was attempting to do. Why would fate choose you to die, but give someone else the fate to save you? You make the predicition that fate only applies to a specific group of people.

If fate exists, then it is a plan for your life, and sub-consciously you will choose the path destined for you, because fate has chosen that to be. The existence of fate is essentially a decision between whether you believe you can influence the future, and that the future does not currently exist, or that you are merely walking a path set out before you.