man kills self in the future?

Question

If a man travels into the future and kills himself. What happens? Does the killer live until his past kills him, and then he lives until his past kills him and ona and on forever?

Answer 1

You're describing a classic paradox which occurs whenever you try to combine the ideas of time-travel with free will. To avoid the paradox you either need to abandon the idea of free will or conclude that time-travel is impossible.

In the former case if you travel to the future (or past) something always prevents future self from killing past self. Hence you really lack the power to carry out your intentions and your free will is only an illusion. Your behavior (i.e. not killing your past self) is predetermined. But if you believe in free will then nothing can prevent you from carrying out your actions and you are completely free to change history. Then you run into the paradox of two contradictory histories. You need to conclude time-travel is simply impossible. Most questioners prefer not to abandon the concept of free will and assume time-travel must be impossible.

There is actually a third possibility, though. Some hypothesizers have conjectured the existence of an infinite number of parallel universes each with a slightly different history. Then, as the reasoning goes, when you travel to the past or future you do not actually travel to your own universe but to one of the slightly altered universes. So when you change history you're not really altering your own history. You are simply complying with the history of that slightly different universe. So no paradox occurs. (Some prefer to say a new altered universe comes into existence at the moment you change history.)

In other words when future self kills past self he isn't actually killing himself. Instead he's killing his double's past self in the alternate universe. His double simply dies at that time and lives no more. So he hasn't actually changed his own history and his past self can still travel in time to the alternate universe to carry out the deed. The paradox is avoided and two alternate histories exist side by side in parallel universes.

Which scenario is right? Who knows? When I was a young lad in college a friend and I used to have heated philosophical debates all the time over this topic. Of course we never settled it.

Answer 2

Well, I think that if the killing took place in the future then he would live until his past self came to kill him. "Past Bob" went into the future to kill "Future Bob". Future Bob dies right then, Past is still alive and can go back to the present and live his life. But when he gets to that time in the future, another him from the past will come and kill him. So basically, you've created a cycle of killing. If one man kills himself, then the killer will eventually become the killed, and he has to die the same way right? Because it technically already happened. So, this guy just keeps killing himself. That's what I think.

Answer 3

Let's split this into two different scenarios. In scenario one you never travel into the future and your whole life follows the normal linear time flow. In scenario two you travel ten years into the future with the hopes of killing your future self.

In scenario one exactly ten years from today let's say you are in a coffee shop from 9 am until 10 am.

In scenario two you have obtained the information that you should be in a coffee shop ten years from now at a specific time (This would be impossible, but I state this for arguments sake). You travel to that time to discover you are not there. The reason you are not there is because the moment you stepped into the "time machine" you removed yourself from the linear time-line of scenario one. For the next ten years you have essentially "disappeared" only to reappear ten years later. Since in scenario two you have not gone through the events that would have led up to the coffee shop trip, you will not be there to greet yourself. If you were able to travel into the future you would meet other peoples futures but never your own.

As for traveling into the past, that is a different story.......

Answer 4

Well, the past self would live until he killed himself. The plot hole in this scenerio is that the person could change thier mind and prepare for the attack, because he/she knows its coming. For example, they might wear a bullet proof vest, or bag a lunch that day, because they know they get run over by themselves when they go out to lunch. Then you would have alternate timelines. One where the guy successfully killed himself in the future. Then a second where he fails.

Answer 5

Well considering that time travel is not possible nothing happens until he kills himself, like he initially planned.

However if time travel was possible they would both die at the same time because it is the same person. Geeze to many people over analyze this stuff.

Answer 6

Past self=A
Future self=B

A goes forward in time and kills B. A will live until he becomes B at which time A will kill him like he killed B the first time.

Present self=A
Past self=B

A goes backwards in time and kills B. If B is dead, when does he turn into A to go back in time to kill himself?

Answer 7

nothing will happen to you, yet. its the future. so you will die when u reached that point where u kill yourself. but if its in the past, its different.

Answer 8

It's not possible to travel into the future.

Answer 9

your dead forever, you went to the furture, therefor you left the present, and you killed yourself, or did you kill your future self? because if you did that would be impossible, because you would have had dont the exact same thing before. get on zoloft or prozact, maybe even a job.

Answer 10

This is simple, if the action occured in the future then he would just live until his past person killed him. It is when you go in the past to kill yourself that the paradox occurs.