in time and were to kill our grandparents or parents...(not saying I want to)... but if this were to happen, would we automatically disappear? Since we would have never been able to be born.
2007-08-03 12:25:06 · 7 answers · asked by mommymanic 4 in Arts & Humanities ➔ Philosophy
I think we'd get time stuck on a figure 8 style time loop. Because if your grandparents were dead, then you'd have never been born, so you couldn't go back in time to kill them, so they'd live, so you'd be born, and you'd go back in time to kill them... murder, rinse, repeat...
2007-08-03 12:31:44 · answer #1 · answered by Beardog 7 · 3⤊ 1⤋
You assume any number of things that may not be true.
If time doesn't exist, for example, there's nothing to go back TO. The time of your grandparents doesn't exist, so a paradox like you describe can simply never occur.
Or perhaps time is not one-dimensional. If time is two-dimensional, then there can be an infinite number of timelines, and all killing your grandparents will do is shift you from one of them to another one of them. No big deal.
And arguably even in a one-dimensional timeline, when we start from the beginning, you just appear in your time machine from nowhere. If you take off in your time machine after the deed, you have just disappeared again. The cosmic bookkeeping is just fine - no extra stuff, no missing stuff. Perhaps even if you stick around in your grandparents time, all your atoms will disappear into the past at the same 'time' in the future when you started your trip.
Having you blink out of existance assumes that there's some intelligent, universal entity outside of time who is enforcing the rule that things have to make sense. If you believe in such, then this become a religious question instead of philosophy or perhaps physics.
2007-08-03 19:44:15 · answer #2 · answered by Doctor Why 7 · 1⤊ 0⤋
I think this has to do with determinism. If we believe that if we have a set of conditions A, then there will only be one outcome B, what will happen in the future is already pre-determined. We are then only experiencing. Decision making is only a perception in a pre-determined world. So, if we decide to go back in time, this was already pre-determined and already happened. The us of today already went back and visited the past and made the change. We are incapable of really changing anything.
If you don't believe in determinism, then sure, you could go back in time and not be born by sterilizing your dad or something. I don't know if you would disappear though. Just maybe you could return to your own time and no one would know you.
2007-08-03 19:37:55 · answer #3 · answered by LG 7 · 0⤊ 0⤋
I know that time travel like this will never be possible, because it would contradict God's character. However it's fun to think about.
I would agree to the theory that when you went back your matter would still exist, yet nobody would know who you were.
2007-08-03 19:49:25 · answer #4 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 1⤋
Your Grandparents or parents energy could not be destroyed so that same energy still exists in another form. The same would apply to yourself. Don't blame me if you ended up a cockroach.
2007-08-03 19:30:09 · answer #5 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 3⤋
sounds reasonable, everything in life could be changed by one thing being different,and it could be as miniscule as not getting up at your regular hour. Or not answering the phone when it rang.
2007-08-03 19:41:02 · answer #6 · answered by fuzzykitty 6 · 0⤊ 0⤋
I do not think we can change events back in time. It may just alter our memory.
2007-08-03 20:05:06 · answer #7 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 0⤋