With the details I have thus far, the story in chronological order is absolutley possible.. What I mean is, all interaction from the main character while traveling in/out of different time periods wont have any impacts that change the future.. He doesnt kill his parents/grandparents... He doesnt make any drastic changes that werent done before...And he will definetly interact with himself, I will not justify the rules that matter cannot be in 2 different places at the same time.. The character does interact with a younger version of himself, but when he was younger he interacted with an older version of himself as well.. The future will not be changed by anything he does in the past. Just wanted to clear that up if this disscussion is going to continue, but what I notice is that usually when a post hits 2 pages, people stop posting.. But thanks to EVERYONE, this discussion has gone just how I hoped and I appreciate everyones input!

Just have to add a little...

tgraupman, your entire body is regenerated about once every seven years. If you go farther back or forward than that, you'd be able to meet a constellation of molecules that is just as much "you" as you are, but shares no common matter. Of course, you're using a postulate that somehow prevents matter from existing in different places at the same time. If matter can exist in the same place at different times, why is this impossible?

====================================

Okay, here's my kickass theory on time travel: Anything is possible in time travel, like killing yourself, or whatever, but the only world you, the time traveler, see is the one you're in right then, and there are infinite other possible worlds out there that you are not in. That didn't make any sense. Hang on.

Ever hear of Schrodinger's cat? It's a thought experiment. You get a cat (in your thoughts, it's probably illegal to do this without some kind of credentials) and stick it in a box, then you hook the box up to a system that has a 50% chance of killing the cat over the course of an hour. You set an egg timer for one hour, activate the device, then go get some beers. Exactly one hour later, there is a 50% chance that the cat is dead. basically, until you look at the inside of the box, you are living in two different worlds, one with a live cat, one with a dead cat, and everything else is exactly the same, because the cat's living or dying hasn't influenced anything yet. When you look in the box, and see that live cat (or dead cat) one of the possible worlds is destroyed, and your life continues in the remaining universe. That's a quick and easy description of the thought exeriment, but you get the idea.

Okay, so here's my theory: Just as there are infinite "instants" in time (don't give me any of that Max Planck crap), as there are points on a line, so too are there infinite possible worlds, in an infinitely complex "game tree" of possibilities. Likewise, there are infinitely many incarnations of each thing in the world. So there are infinite versions of me, in infinite parallel universes. The "present" is not a point on a line, but rather a point on a plane, or even in a cube, depending on how fancy you want this to get.

Here's an example:

Jim and Bill are standing together in Bill's house. Bill decides that he wants to get rid of an ugly chair that his dog just peed on. Jim, a skilled time traveler, offers to go back and throw out the chair BEFORE the dog peed on it, thus eliminating the ugly chair, the stink of dog urine, and the very event that linked those two phenonema together (forgive my referring to a chair as a phenomenon, it's a Kantian thing).

Jim puts on his time-hat and says, "Three hours ago". ZAP! He's in the past. However, just by introducing his presence, he's created a new world, a world in which he appears out of thin air at that moment. That world didn't exist until that event occurred. Now, he grabs the chair, hauls it to the curb, puts a note on it reading, "Dear Bill, you hate this chair, leave it on the curb," and puts his time hat back on. He says, "Two hours and fifty-five minutes from now." ZAP! He's standing in front of Bill in the living room, and the chair is gone. The dog peed outside that morning.

That's a big win, but here's the catch: Jim has travelled through two different dimensions, and this second one is not the one from which he departed. So, here's a run-down of the two dimensions Jim visited, and had a hand in creating:

Dimension 1: Bill watched Jim put on the hat and say "Three hours ago." Then Jim disappeared, and never, ever returned. The chair stayed right where it was. Bill felt bad about his friend disappearing into time, but got over it.

Dimension 2: The chair went to the curb mysteriously (had anyone been there, they would have seen Jim do it). Our Jim shows up in Bill's house, says, "Ta-daa!" and Bill looks at him funny. That world's Jim comes up out of the basement, and the two stare at each other.

Dimension 1 lost its Jim and Dimension two gained a Jim. Two Jims for two dimensions, but they've moved around.

So, Jim could go and kill his parents, but they wouldn't really be his parents, since he was really born. So he can't change HIS past, he can just change a SIMILAR past.

There it is. My champion time travel theory... of DOOOOM!

Questions?

Q: During the brief time that Jim was actually moving the chair, weren't there three Jims in two dimensions?

A: Yes, there were. Jim1 went backward a little bit and overlapped temporally with himself, so he'd have actually been three hours older than Jim2 if he hadn't zapped forward. As it stands, he stayed for six minutes moving the chair and zapped five minutes less into the future, so he's one minute YOUNGER than his alternate self. Wild.

Q: So, can't he just use his time hat to zap sideways through possibility, and wind up in a world where the chair was taken out, instead of going back in time and doing it?

A: No. The hat makes him travel through time, but his decisions and actions move him through possibility. In that way, we're all able to traverse this fifth dimension.

Q: But what about mechanistic materialism? Hard determinism?

A: Suck my balls. Hard determinism is a philosophical dead-end, and if it's wrong, I'll be damned if I'm going to live pretending that it is.

[edited by - Iron Chef Carnage on January 16, 2004 4:42:40 PM]

Iron Chef, interesting take..
Jim being a skilled time traveler would know that the new bill wouldnt recognize that he had just moved a chair. Being a skilled time traveler, he would know the difference in demensions from where he originated, and where he ended up, assuming he had traveled time before. Knowing this, Jim wouldnt have ever tried to help his friend by going back in time, as he would know that he would never have moved his friends chair, thus actually not helping him at all. This would be an excellent idea to implement into a story, however in my story, time travel within the same demension has to be accomplished, otherwise I dont have a story. But I do appreciate your input, as its started a whole new thought process for me, and I rather like reading this kind of thing..

Sorry if this is coming off a little "devils advocatish" but I just cant use that process in my story..

Technogoth:

Yeah, I don't think that our bodies turn to dust and reassemble from clay. I just didn't express it as clearly as I perhaps should have. Thanks.

Your summary of the journey has two main flaws: First, it was Jim, and second, there were only two dimensions involved. Your dimension 3 is actually an offshoot of D2, and it's created at the instant that Jim arrives, not beforehand. It's awkward nomenclature, but if you see causality as a one-way street, you'll understand.

As to the "best fit" scenario, it's okay if you don't actually want a metaphysical explanation beyond a cosmic order to the universe, but "magic" time travel has been spoken against already.

The cat/dog thing seems totally incongruous. If Jim only went back three hours, and Bill bought the dog last year, nothing he did in that three-hours-ago D2 would be able to change the dog into a cat, any more than something I do know could turn my Timex into a Rolex. I'd have to go back to a time when I could actually influence that causality, and when I returned to my present, I'd still have a Timex on my wrist, even though there might be a Rolex on my dresser. Of course, there'd be a version of me out there that BOUGHT that Rolex, so it wouldn't actually be mine.

As to the multiple dimensions thing, don't let that bother you so much. Look at it from Jim's perspective. He goes back in time, he moves the chair, he goes forward in time. Bill is there. The chair is out, and nothing smells like dog whiz. Jim2 comes up out of the basement, and they meet. Right then, Jim1 can say, "Hey, Me! You need to put on your time hat and travel into the past to move that stank chair! Trust me! Also, don't forget to wind your watch! 69, dude!" and then Jim2 puts on his hat and zaps out. Jim1 and Bill2 have a beer, and as far as Jim1 can tell, nothing happened that doesn't fit with his (wrong) theory of time travel. Of course, I just booted Jim2 out of convenience. He could stay, but once he goes, he can't get back.

Every present has infinite possible futures, but only one past. That's my theory in a nutshell.

Now, if you're getting upset about the poor Bill1 who lost his friend to the depths of time, or the unfortunate Jim2 who's travelling unnecessarily through the many-perilled depths of the universe, don't sweat it. After all, there are Jims out there who got hit by busses, and Bills who were stillborn. Every time Jim ate a potato chip, there's a Jim out there who choked to death on it.

So don't let the other dimensions get you down. Focus on your hero, and everything else will work out.

Nahoopii:

Well, your world is yours to build, and an unnecessarily complex metaphysic is an obstacle to storytelling. Thanks for giving me an opportunity to spout this particular nonsense. This is a good thread.

By the way, Jim being skilled doesn' t mean he necessarily understands how it works. Not every pilot can build a plane, even if they're aces. If Jim's quest had been to save Bill's sister's life, rather than throw away a chair, then he might have charged into the past and done it. For him, he'd be a great champion, but for the Bill he left behind, he'd have lost a sister and a friend.

Of course, the tragedy of this situation is mitigated by the same sort of rationale I used for Technogoth: Bill's sister died a billion grisly deaths and was queen of every nation at least a thousand times in the vast ocean of probability, and so his adventure would do nothing except put him in a more palatable universe. It's a little bit existentialist, actually.


[edited by - Iron Chef Carnage on January 16, 2004 6:03:55 PM]

teamonkey, you''re using the model that the Terminator movies used. Basically, there is a sort of soft determinism. If you understand my theory above, this explanation will make more sense.

Basically, all kinds of things are possible, but some things are NECESSARY. In "Terminator 3", you learn that Judgement day is inevitable. The events between John Connor''s conception and Judgement day are fluid (TX kills some people that would eventually have been John Connor''s lieutenants), but his conception, his survival, and the nuclear attack are "pinch points" in possibility, where that one aspect of history is consistent throughout the stratum of possibility. These times when history bottlenecks into one inexorable event is the core of soft determinism. You could be a farmer, a warrior, or a pimp, but on this day you will be a hero, and nothing you or anyone else does can stop it.

That''s something like what I hear you saying. You might also be alluding to concrete time, like in "12 Monkeys". That''s a great flick. He goes back in time to prevent a biological holocaust, and he not only fails, but lives out a childhood memory. He remembered seeing a man die in an airport when he was very young, and it was his death that he saw. The comic series "Animal Man" from the eightiest does this so stinking well that I can''t even describe it. If you can get those comics, read them. Even if you hate superhero comics, read them. They''re unbelievably well-written, and the story is so nuanced and deep that you''ll never forget it. Superb series.