A tough puzzle for everyone to discuss

[ThePatriot]

Originally posted by Aranarth
And at 1200 he sent the 'newer' ball back to become the 'older' ball. Thus, poor tom only had balls for three minutes of his life.
As to the old grandfather act. . . It didn't happen, did it? Well, guess its not going to, because it already did.
Follow?
-AranarthX

Actually, Tom always Had a ball, think he had to have a ball to send off back in time, in the first place. So, he gets a ball, getting ready to send it, but at 11:57 another ball(the one he sent) appears on his desk, he then proceeds to send his actual one away, and he has the one he received from the future, which he doesnt send. Therefor he still has 1 ball.

[magking1971]

The paradox of it all....
Take this, say you go back in time, now for some reason you kill the you in the past, now if you are dead you couldn't have gone back in time, and if you didn't go back in time you are alive, if your alive you went back in time and you killed your past self.. and on and on and on.

[ThePatriot]

Theoretically speaking, if you did go back and kill yourself in the past, you actually would never be alive to do it. The timeline is a continous thing, i think all events are happening all the time, it just depends where you are on it. Alright, lets say you do go back in time, and you do kill yourself, well if you died in the past, all the timeline changes and you never existed in the future. If you never existed in the future, how could you come back and kill yourself? So is it impossible to kill yourself in the past?

For those of you who saw the series finale of Voyager, it didnt make sense. The future Janeway, went back into time, and got Voyager home earlier than the older Janeway got back. The only problem i see with that is, if Voyager got back earlier all along, how did the older Janeway ever exist to save them?? She could not have existed, ever, the older janeway was a product of coming home late, you cannot use her to change the past, because she is a product of something, she cannot be used to change the past, because she wouldnt exist.

The timeline is a very confusing thing, however i have thought about this ever since i was little, in my family, and amongst most my friends im the only one who can grasp my own concepts, maybe im just crazy.

[rightsidefight]

acctually...jimmy has no balls...hahahah...but really...he is sitting there and all of a sudden a ball is on his desk...he says o ill send it back in time to test this thing..but that already happened...he sent the first ball back 3 min which means the the ball he threw in was the ball from 3 min.early that he threw in the machine...which means he never had any balls to begin with therefore there is no balls....

[oldsoldier]

Jonno06, actually, when I think about it, the ball isnt the same. It has aged 3 minutes. So, at least in this case, it isnt the same ball. So i guess even my post was wrong.
Anyway, we cant do it. to go back in time, you need some external force to stop the acceleration. Cryogenics is currently our only "time machine", and it hasnt worked yet. But, I am dumb, and thats my opinion.

[alkafluence]

Originally posted by Aranarth
All you gotta do is get these basic concepts:
1) Time is not not linear on a past to present axis

Actually, I would tend to argue that time doesn't exist PER SE. Since time is really only a human invention to allow us to quantify something that we cannot really explain.

For the sake of example, let us use time as an invention. Instead of looking at tomorrow as 24 hours away, look at it from a "wider" perspective - say from the perspective of 20,000 years. In looking at it this way, those 24 hours are but a simultaneous pin prick in the wider period of 20,000 years.

How would you explain this without some quantified invention like time? You most likely can't unless you just accept the fact that things simply "exist."


Now on another topic, all this argument about parallel universes and shifting quantum states reminds me of Sliders.


EDIT: After reading the patriot's last post- Only if you held to theory that once you went back into time, you separated yourself from the normal continuity of events would you be able to explain your Voyager reference.

OTOH- you do seem to agree with me that in a wider perspective events are occurring simultaneously

[Krazy Ivan]

I have always been interested in the concept of time, and the paradox which it entails, ever since I was a kid and thought about going back in time to do my homework, or clean..etc.

Now I think about it, with a tweaked experiment A. Let's say johnny is a homocidal maniac, and he buys a ball at 12pm. Now he has a time machine and uses it at 12:30pm to send the ball an hour back in time to 11:30am. Now when 12pm comes around for him, he will have bought a new ball, then a old ball would have already been there. He now has 2 balls.
Now two problems arise, at 12:30pm he would have to send the ball back in time, or else one of the balls would no longer be able to exist. (The older ball)
Also, if he decides at 11:30 that he now has a ball and won't need to buy one, then therefore the ball will never have come into his possession and the ball will not be able to exist in his timeframe.

From this you can derive that if you send a ball back in time, you will be mandated and forced to send it back in time when you can. Otherwise the ball will never exist and your memory will reflect that. If you decide not to send the ball, technically it was never sent, and you would have no recollection of it being sent.

[Krazy Ivan]

For clarity I broke this into 2 posts. I know, I know, post whore, but still it adds to clarify the 2 different things, so you won't get them mixed up.

Scenario B: We have Johnny who is a homocidal maniac now coming in and figuring out a much more useful way to use his time machine. So Johnny goes back in time at 12pm, to 11am. At 11am he finds himself lying in his bed, and he decides to kill himself. Now having maimed his own body from 11am, he can no longer exist because he was going to send himself back in time in 1 hour. Since he is dead reality cannot fix itself, and a paradox ensues. In theory, Johnny would then, for lack of better way to put it, blink from existence due to realities inablity to deal with said paradox.

On a lighter note, if Johnny was so suicidal why didn't he just kill himself now, instead of projecting it on his hour younger self?

[SqueegeeKid]

I think that nothing has been proven about time travel and such because noone has ever done it. So saying you can't travel back in time but forward is silly. Noone's done either! It's all theories and guesses.

I think that if you did something in the past it would greatly affect the future. If the kid sent the ball back in time, when he got the ball he might be too surprised to put the original ball into the machine (wehre the heck did this ball come from???) and when he doesn't send it, the "future" ball disapears cause it was "never sent"

If you killed someone in the past, they wouldn't show up in the future cause they'd be dead. If you killed your past self, your future self would die too.

These are just my guesses, i didn't read some of the posts before mine (a little too much to read at once) so if any of this was mentioned before, sorry.

[Minimag4me]

If he doesnt then send the ball back at 1200 the entire universe ends and were all blinked out of existance. Then we can all thank Jimmy for killing us all or wait no we cant. We can just be pissed at him for not allowing us to be. Would that make Jimmy the "God" of that singular universe? Whoever holds the machine has way too much power and we should as a society kill him and destroy the machine before it erases our existance. AHHHHHHHHH and have a good day...or just having a day is all we need, huh.

[Krazy Ivan]

Originally posted by Minimag4me
Jimmy for killing us all

Originally posted by Krazy Ivan
We have Johnny

For clarity, we could keep one name, maybe Johnny?

Originally posted by SqueegeeKid
I think that nothing has been proven about time travel and such because noone has ever done it. So saying you can't travel back in time but forward is silly. Noone's done either!

Umm, I'm traveling forward in time constantly, don't know about you, but I'm willing to bet $1,000,000,000,000 that you are too.. While it's not a jump it's still moving forward.

[ThePatriot]

He got you there, I will bet any of you anything you like, that given 12 minutes preparation, i can travel 12 minutes into the future during those 12 preparation minutes, anyone wanna take me up on the offer?

[Jonno06]

lol....its impossible to know the future......

by me writing this post i changed the future....may not be a big change.....maybe it will...who knows.....

and there is the law...."what happens,happens"..that means i dun care...

[SqueegeeKid]

OK, sure you got me there but that's a given we're always traveling forward in time. Lame response.

I'm talking about jumping forward instantly. But i bet you knew that, you were just being a meathead

[epterry]

And for the answer we turn to DR. WHO