The Grandmother Paradox

[Cubby]

Re: The Grandmother Paradox

How funny to say that many ancient stories tell unto us a tale of "Gluttony sucks after awhile" while simultaneously saying "Just look, it's there and it will be around for as long as we/it form/s it/self".
Until of course gluttony wears thin the supply faster then it can be replenished.
Oil anyone?

As for the killing of the grandmother and concurrent death of self (or as Star may have put it, a concurrent disconnection from Universe)... well.. debatable is wether killing's one's forebearer's is.. ahem, flipping that idea over; All those who die today are closing a door to a possible life later.. no one gripes over the unconceived, but neither do few who kill these days come to peace with their reasons for killing. A school shooting is out of hate among many factors and many who kill for such reasoning, a native hunting party for food and with deep respect for their fellow creatures. But apparently the latter reason was too uncivilized for us.

The paradox itself seems simply to stand in it's possibility of actions and reactions to acquire the goal of paradox. As for encapsulating oneself in a time bubble, I saw that one in the movie The Time Machine. Except the bubble was only needed as long as the speed of shifting events around oneself was being accelerated and sent in any direction of time mapping/navigating. After the person was free to roam in what became the new present.

Which brings me to say, all we can do is make the machine and experiment, as we've always done. And if we mess up... who will know? After all, in altering time to observe one's self-centered view of what will happen, we may just unravel so many people's roles in their current "nows"

Or perhaps grandma may be backed by the universe on this one and react in extraordinary ways to deflect the meddlesome nature of said time-traveler. After all, humans perform amazing feats to deal with extraordinary circumstances quite often.

 

[MutableTimeLine]

Re: The Grandmother Paradox

Whew! This is pretty heavy. I'm new so I'll start with this.

From someone's POV in 1973, there's a future world they're imagining with all sorts of high tech equipment like flying cars, not 30 GB IPods, or space travel and aliens not extremely gratifying movies about them. But since we are in their future we know how their lives turn out. As far as 55-year-old man in 2005 is concerned when he was 23 in '73, he never encountered his "older self." If you zap that guy back to '73 right now from his POV it'll be 1973 and he'll have NO clue how his actions are affecting "the future", if they even do, until he "returns." He could spend two months in 1973 and seem to fade in and out of three-dimensional space for two seconds from our viewpoints and some on-looker could say, "Nuthin happened!" Ultimately it depends on your frame of reference. (Like everyone here knows.)

I like to believe people have choices to make. You could go out, get wasted as sh*t and drive home and likely get into an accident depending on the amount cars driving that night, where you live, etc. Or you could not leave the house, not drink and you won't be involved in an accident near your favorite pub, but someone else will. I can't speak for anyone else, but there are "X factors" you really can predict. You can make plans, but not results. "...even if your intentions are good, they can backfire drastically..." heeeee

How can you monitor change before change happens? We grew up with a particular kind of knowledge. (For example, we all grew up knowing certain public figures were assassinated. If some ?goes back? and stops a death from happening, how would anyone growing up know that person was killed in another timeline?? I feel events can occur differently in one timeline. (Not to keen on the parallel theories, but still appreciate.)

Anyway. My nanna paradox.

I look at it like this. Say a time traveler named Steve decides to be an ass and journey to November 12, 1958, three months before his mother will be born. He decides to test the "grandmother paradox." He feels it can't happen and he'll "magically" reappear in his own time the instant his grandmother is killed. He breaks into the farm house and strangles his 33-year-old grandmother, Ruth. There are no witnesses to see the assailant suddenly vanish from three-dimensional space when the woman dies. The husband discovers Ruth ten minutes later when he returns from town. He calls the local police and the murder is investigated and eventually goes unsolved. The husband remarries two years later and starts a new family.

This is an alternate reality from our perspective since we know about the future the traveler is from; a future in which he manages to construct a time machine and journey back forty-seven years to 1958 and kill his grandmother. He changed his past, so his future was radically different. We know the husband would never have remarried if his wife was not killed. BUT she was killed, by her grandson. The police could never figure this out of course since the fingerprint(s) will never match because the killer will never be born. But the physical evidence remains. The year 1958 was the present at one time, obviously. As time gradually passes and 2005 is the present year, the husband will take some time on November 12 and remember the wife and child he lost almost fifty years ago. It's sad, but that how it would happen in real life.

Here's a little nugget: what if the next hit-and-run you hear about is actually a TT killing someone who in his/her time does something unspeakable and the TT is "righting wrongs." The event will never take place because the person is deceased. We'll never know about this event cause...how's it going happen? The "guilty party" is murdered before they can have some life-changing experience that makes them dangerous.

*I like IooqxpooI's concise statement. Very, very good. But...what if the traveler gets scared and can't go through with it? Will someone else come along and murder little old nanna? Will a future version of the traveler be hidden from view watching him walk away thinking, "what a p***y. I'll take care of this." SHRUG.*

 

[StarLord]

Re: The Grandmother Paradox

Unless you had a portable DNA test kit, there is no way to prove that the second 'wife' is not your grandmother. After all you were born.

 

[darkbreed]

Re: The Grandmother Paradox

Starlord: I never get a hangover so I dont really worry Feel free sending that scotch this way Who knows, maybe I actually WILL wake up in some different time!

 

[MutableTimeLine]

Re: The Grandmother Paradox

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(\"StarLord\")</div>

Unless you had a portable DNA test kit, there is no way to prove that the second 'wife' is not your grandmother. After all you were born.[/b]

That\'s a great point. Never thought of it. It\'s a nice, modern CSI twist, but I\'m sure our hypothetical time traveler/killer Steve knows his own family history. And in this alternate reality, no one knows about him since his mother died prior to his conception. And as time gradually moves forward, Steve\'s father marries someone else and a different child is born. Now, if you want to assume this different kid (I\'ll call him Ian) builds a time machine and goes back to Nov. 12, 1958, that\'s going someplace else.

 

[Farstar65]

Re: The Grandmother Paradox

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(\"darkbreed\")</div>

To put it short, you travel back in time, but since you are in a place where you allready exist, its a copy of the \"real\" timeline from where you came. Its not the original one in any case, as you didnt meet a future self when you originally was the age of your younger self in the above example. So whatever you do there affects that \"copy\" and not the one you came from.[/b]

I heartily agree with this. I don't see how any time travel theory so fraught with the potential for paradox can possibly be considered viable.

 

[StarLord]

Re: The Grandmother Paradox

True,

But you sure will know when someone starts to screw with time as the bubblegum machine you are checking out suddenly changes and holds to tiny capsules of Grahk larve instead.

 

[darkbreed]

Re: The Grandmother Paradox

Nothing willl change What has happend, has happend, what is, still is, what will be will be. No one, except the time traveler, will notice the changes in the travels through time, as he himself make the "changes" in those timelines. Different timelines will be experienced by the ones living in it, and for them whatever happens will be their reality. Just like what happens in our reality is ours. Our past cant be changed and it never will. I dare anyone to disprove this

 

[MutableTimeLine]

Re: The Grandmother Paradox

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(\"StarLord\")</div>

True,

But you sure will know when someone starts to screw with time as the bubblegum machine you are checking out suddenly changes and holds to tiny capsules of Grahk larve instead.[/b]

I can't imagine how Grahk larve would taste. Probably exact how it sounds. BUT, say someone went back and convinced those folks who made bubblegum machines to put Grahk larve in there instead all those years ago. We all would have grown up chewing and blowing Grahk larve bubbles. (ugh) We wouldn't have known what bubble gum taste like.

BUT... maybe this Grahk larve experiment didn't do so well and they decided to stick with their original idea of the bubble gum. No wonder we don't have that stuff.

But to try and DISPROVE Mr. DarkBreed....

I can't, but... I can offer a strong rebuttle.

*Tone drastically deepens for first word.*

Look, I chose my handle because I think (<--keyword) we live in a mutable timeline. You're right, what's happened has happened. What is still is, what will be will be, and what we know is what we know. But we human beings have such a limited understanding of time, the universe, God.

Will anyone ever truly understand time and harness its power? Sure, you can plan things, have good time management and finish your homework by 4:15, study until 6:00, eat supper, watch Brian Williams at 6:30, go out to the movies, be home to watch Law and Order, Leno go to sleep and be productive the next day. But no one is going to be able to sit down and predict what will happen next or how to circumvent those "curves" life tends to throw. In their personal life, nationally or on a global scale.

The universe is big. Well, not just big. Super-huge. Six trillion miles in a light-year. With what we know as current space technology a trip to our nearest star, Alpha Centauri, would take forever. The space team would die of natural causes or what ever medical conditions they'll develop as they age due to genetics and family history before they're half way there. As aforementioned, the universe is big. We're an infinitesimal dot by comparison. There are such great secrets about space that we don't know. Like why is this the only planet in our entire solar system that has humanoid life that we know of? (Sure you can say because of the conditions and how Earth is the perfect distance from the sun, but we already know all that. Everything we know of is documented, conceived, theorized and/or hypothesized or de-classified and is what we know.)

God is the ultimate mystery. God is not God's name. That's right. The God of the universe has a name, but "God" isn't it. "God" is what God is. "Human being" is not your name, "Human being" is what you are. You also have a name. Whether it is "DarkBreed" or "StarLord" or "Farstar 65" or "MutableTimeLine", you have your own personal name. So does God. We can only have one God. (He's got an ego. As do human beings. Guess that's where we got it.)

Man isn't meant to know much more than what our civilization has discovered and ultimately will discover when those future dates arrive.

But I digress. Back to the topic of time.


Thomas Mann is quoted as saying:

"Time has no divisions to mark its passage, there is never a thunderstorm or blare of trumpets to annouce the beginning of a new month or year. Even when a new century begins, it is only we mortals who ring bells and fire off pistols."

Hmm. Sounds like he has a little disdain for New Year's, more so the guys who get kissed or laid on New Year's, but that's another story.

Can't disprove, can't prove...well, it can be proved since it hasn't been done. Who knows if physical temporal displacement will occur in our lifetime, if ever. But, if some man or some woman goes back to a time (<--keyword) before this forum is created and before these posts are written or before any of us have conscious memory and tweak our reality in some significant way (without acting real stupid and trying to tell or scream to people "I'ma time travela. Believe me!") and just do their mission, we wouldn't even know because that would be our reality. Because what's happened has happened, what is still is, what will be will be and what we know is what we know.

And thus, how could you possibly prove someone has broken the barrier of time?
But if someone did, how could you possibly know about it?

 

[Farstar65]

Re: The Grandmother Paradox

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(\"MutableTimeLine\")</div>

Can't disprove, can't prove...well, it can be proved since it hasn't been done. Who knows if physical temporal displacement will occur in our lifetime, if ever. But, if some man or some woman goes back to a time (<--keyword) before this forum is created and before these posts are written or before any of us have conscious memory and tweak our reality in some significant way (without acting real stupid and trying to tell or scream to people \"I'ma time travela. Believe me!\") and just do their mission, we wouldn't even know because that would be our reality. Because what's happened has happened, what is still is, what will be will be and what we know is what we know.

And thus, how could you possibly prove someone has broken the barrier of time?
But if someone did, how could you possibly know about it?
[/b]

If said man or woman went back in time with the purpose of altering some certain set of conditions that existed in his or her reality of origin (again, keeping to the theory I hold to be most realistic), they would only be altering (or simply participating in) some other timeline, in which this "alteration" would just be seen as the prevailing reality. The time traveler's timeline of origin would still survive intact, complete with the conditions which first inspired them to go back and induce change, but to experience the results of the change the time traveler would have to find his/her way to the future that developed from their interference, i.e., that particular, divergent timeline.

As for proof of anything on the basis of something that doesn't seem to have happened... well, who can say?