Three Laws of Chronodynamics

[Chronodynamic Jim]

Three Laws of Chronodynamics

I have taken all that is wrong with time travel and fixed it with just three, count them three, little Laws. Possessing the spirit of the Three Laws of Robotics, and the linguistic flare of the Three Laws of Thermodynamics, I present to you:

Third Law
Law of Conservation of Causality

Cause MUST preceed Effect, but may seem to do so to the Staionary Observer


I do not have the strength, time or mental fortitude to go into great detail tonight. I will save that for later.

But suffice it to say that contained in these three succinct Laws is a powerful paradigm allowing an adherent to avoid the pitfalls of paradox and to see his way clear to a more perfect understanding of the universe in which we live. In fact it allows us to live in the real world as it does not call for us to prop it up with imagined "Parallel Universes", or require impossible happenings and endless cycles of grandsons killing grandfathers, thus blinking in and out of existance as a result.

No, A Chronodynamic world-view is no different than our own everyday real world. It merely asks us to assume for the sake of argument that time travel IS possible, and postulates how it would have to work in order not to drastically change the way we know the universe to work.

If you have an open mind I invite you to discuss with me the merits of these Laws, each of which I will discuss in more detail later. I am confidant that given I am able to impart to you, the reader, a clear understanding of these Laws and their underlying paradigm, you will agree that they are at least worth your time considering.

One last point I wish to make before opening this topic up for discussion. When I presented these Laws several months ago on the earlier incarnation of these forums, I think the impression was made that I was putting these forward as a real honest to god scientific theory. I am doing nothing of the sort! The Laws of Chronodynamics are nothing more than a guideline for time travel as Science Fiction, more Laws of Robotics than Thermodynamics. Personaly speaking, I don't believe time travel is possible in the real world. However, that being said, I believe that if it were possible ( we are now in the realm of science fiction), and all other properties of the universe being unchanged, I feel Chronodynamics paints the picture as it should look.

With that off my chest, please, discuss.

 

[StarLord]

Re: Three Laws of Chronodynamics

Of course, we are assuming that time travel is possible. I have read a plethora of stories concerning this. Some of the conundrums / paradoxes that croped up were a delight for the grey matter, or brain candy if you will.

As you have said, it is not possible at this moment in time. I hope it never becomes a reality due to the nature and state of consciousness of humans at this time. All we know as reality would cease to be in a few short months, if that long. The furor over time travel would make the race for the atomic bomb look like sunday recital of poems.
The rich would want to be richer, the powerful would seek more power. A never ending scrable to the top of the heap.

 

[Lucidus]

Re: Three Laws of Chronodynamics

I'll bite.

Second Law
Law of Temporal Invariance
?
Time Travel multiplies the Traveler NOT the Event, which remains singular and immutable

This one I am not too sure about. Part of the fun of time travel would be to change things. If you can't then you are just observing the timeline the way you would watch a movie. Now don't get me wrong, it would be fun to watch actual historical events, but it would be MORE FUN to alter them.

 

[Chronodynamic Jim]

Re: Three Laws of Chronodynamics

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

Now don't get me wrong, it would be fun to watch actual historical events, but it would be MORE FUN to alter them.[/b]

It would also be MORE FUN to breathe in space but it ain't gonna happen.

 

[Lucidus]

Re: Three Laws of Chronodynamics

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

It would also be MORE FUN to breathe in space but it ain't gonna happen.[/b]

OK, but the law of temporal invariance eliminates many of the motivations for time travel. Time travel would be limited to historians and tourist. And this is assuming that the second law is interpreted rather loosely so that observation of events is possible without interference. In a strict interpretation even observation of the events would not be possible because doing so would alter something and therefore violate the second law.

 

[StarLord]

Re: Three Laws of Chronodynamics

So, where is the 'second' guy if the time traveler is duplicated? What happenes to the 'original' traveler?

 

[Chronodynamic Jim]

Re: Three Laws of Chronodynamics

Both Lucidus' and StarLord's comments are related, so...

The Second Law can best be understood with the following example:

A young man builds a time machine and travels back in time to witness the execution of Jesus Christ. Upon his arival he pushes through the crowd to reach the stake to which the dying Messiah is nailed. In his mad rush he knocks down an older gentleman with a scar on his right bicept. At the foot of the stake, he rashley attempts a rescue of the unjustly accused former carpenter. This attempt is thwarted by a roman soldier and the young Time Traveler recieves a nasty cut on his right bicept for his troubles. He goes back to his time and tends to his wound.
Later in his life he decides on another trip. On his second trip, he is content to simpley observe. Lost in his thoughts and the mood he is unexpectedly knocked down by a familiar looking young fool who goes on to attempt to rescue Jesus. The young man is injured in the attempt and flees. The older Time Traveler rubs his right bicept in painful memory.

In Classic Time Travel, multiple trips to the same point in time meant replaying that point somehow, like a video or DVD, allowing the traveler to make whatever changes he could manage. This viewpoint allows paradoxes to creep in and calls for no end of imaginative inventions to fix them. There has got to be a flaw in this reasoning. A paradox by definition is an event that is impossible. It can't happen. Therefore if your Time Travel Paradigm leads to paradoxes, there is something fundamentally flawed in your paradigm.
The flaw with Classic Time Travel is the concept that by time traveling we are somehow forcing the universe to replay a moment of time at our whim, then we change it and now demand that the universe spawn another altered version to accomodate our changes! This is paramount to declaring that as we move about on the surface of the earth, it is actually the earth that is rotating in a direction opposite to our direction so that we are infact not moving. Preposterous! and Yet that is how Classic Time Travel would have us think.

The Chronodynamic Viewpoint is summed up in the Second Law. It shows that it is the Traveler that moves about in time, not time replaying itself (strictly speaking, the traveler Multiplies only when visiting a time more than once, as in the above example, however the Law is equaly valid when this is not the case). This is more than mere semantics, it reveals a paradigm shift neccesary to make the transision from Classic Time Travel to Chronodynamics. If the event is immutable and singular, then we must see that it is meaningless to refer to the "first time" something happened, or to refer to the "original event".

In a strict interpretation even observation of the events would not be possible because doing so would alter something and therefore violate the second law.

You cannot alter an event because in order to alter something there must be another unaltered version of that event with which to compare. Otherwise how does one determine an alteration. Since, Chronodynamically speaking, events happen once and only once, they are by their very nature unalterable.

All things that happen at an event, all the actions taken by natives or all time travelers who ever visit happen simultaneously at the one and only point at which that particular event takes place!

With all this in mind re-read the above example and see if it sinks in.

I have work to do. I'll check back in later.

 

[Lucidus]

Re: Three Laws of Chronodynamics

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

Both Lucidus' and StarLord's comments are related, so...

The Second Law can best be understood with the following example:

A young man builds a time machine and travels back in time to witness the execution of Jesus Christ. Upon his arival he pushes through the crowd to reach the stake to which the dying Messiah is nailed. In his mad rush he knocks down an older gentleman with a scar on his right bicept. At the foot of the stake, he rashley attempts a rescue of the unjustly accused former carpenter. This attempt is thwarted by a roman soldier and the young Time Traveler recieves a nasty cut on his right bicept for his troubles. He goes back to his time and tends to his wound.
Later in his life he decides on another trip. On his second trip, he is content to simpley observe. Lost in his thoughts and the mood he is unexpectedly knocked down by a familiar looking young fool who goes on to attempt to rescue Jesus. The young man is injured in the attempt and flees. The older Time Traveler rubs his right bicept in painful memory.

In Classic Time Travel, multiple trips to the same point in time meant replaying that point somehow, like a video or DVD, allowing the traveler to make whatever changes he could manage. This viewpoint allows paradoxes to creep in and calls for no end of imaginative inventions to fix them. There has got to be a flaw in this reasoning. A paradox by definition is an event that is impossible. It can't happen. Therefore if your Time Travel Paradigm leads to paradoxes, there is something fundamentally flawed in your paradigm.
The flaw with Classic Time Travel is the concept that by time traveling we are somehow forcing the universe to replay a moment of time at our whim, then we change it and now demand that the universe spawn another altered version to accomodate our changes! This is paramount to declaring that as we move about on the surface of the earth, it is actually the earth that is rotating in a direction opposite to our direction so that we are infact not moving. Preposterous! and Yet that is how Classic Time Travel would have us think.

The Chronodynamic Viewpoint is summed up in the Second Law. It shows that it is the Traveler that moves about in time, not time replaying itself (strictly speaking, the traveler Multiplies only when visiting a time more than once, as in the above example, however the Law is equaly valid when this is not the case). This is more than mere semantics, it reveals a paradigm shift neccesary to make the transision from Classic Time Travel to Chronodynamics. If the event is immutable and singular, then we must see that it is meaningless to refer to the \"first time\" something happened, or to refer to the \"original event\". You cannot alter an event because in order to alter something there must be another unaltered version of that event with which to compare. Otherwise how does one determine an alteration. Since, Chronodynamically speaking, events happen once and only once, they are by their very nature unalterable.

All things that happen at an event, all the actions taken by natives or all time travelers who ever visit happen simultaneously at the one and only point at which that particular event takes place!

With all this in mind re-read the above example and see if it sinks in.

I have work to do. I'll check back in later.[/b]

OK, I understand now. This is the same argument that was put forth by Igor Novikov in an essay called Can We Change the Past?

 

[Chronodynamic Jim]

Re: Three Laws of Chronodynamics

Is Igor Novikov by any chance the billiards ball guy?
Where can I find That Essay BTW?

 

[Chronodynamic Jim]

Re: Three Laws of Chronodynamics

Here is a simple rookie flash movie demonstrating a Time Travel experiment utilizing a pool table with an entry port (Innie), and an exit port (Outie). With the time difference set to 0, the cue ball will enter Innie and exit Outie simultaneously. With Time Diff set to 1, the cue ball will exit one second after entering. And with the Time Diff set to -1, the cue ball exits Outie one second before entering Innie.

Play around with it. It will make sense if you think about it enough.