Consistency in Time Travel

orionx103 · 2004-11-08T04:49:33

This is something that has always bothered me. It seems to me that no single medium has maintained a perfect consistency in a time travel story. I'll give you a for-instance. Dr. Alpha created an android that started a new wave in android technology. These androids eventually start to take over the world. Then, an android is reprogrammed to come back and stop him from building the first one. Once Dr. Alpha is convinced not to building the first android, the reprogrammed one could never exist, could never come back to stop Dr. Alpha, and Dr. Alpha wouldn't have that memory of the reprogrammed android, and would make the first one anyway. I really hope I make sense. If I don't, I'll try to restate. Thanks.

Writing for Games Game Design

Started by orionx103 October 10, 2004 09:45 PM

144 comments, last by Numsgil 19 years, 5 months ago

Red Falcon

142

October 11, 2004 05:28 AM

Quote:Original post by Trinka
Quote:Original post by Red Falcon
well... its traveling in time. if we wouldnt, we should be locked to the same moment for ever.

And here comes the movement into the play. As i said in my previous post: space, material and movement. It doesn't require the time.

Quote:
but the events keep in logical order... what happend today wont be "undone" tomorrow

We do not need time to see things in logical order. We need it only if we want to observe it (ie, calc speed etc). The logical order happens by itself, since it's all being driven at particle levels (atoms, electrons and stuff like that).

with locked i mean we would be in the same moment forever. you can do nothing cause time doesnt pass on. if u did something, time would change right? but if nothing can be done, time can still continue. so in fact, if it stops, all would stop

second, if time didnt excist, we couldnt see at all, cause nothing would happen. see it like downloading a file, if you get it in the wrong packet-order, ur pc needs to resort and eventually cant make a thing of it anymore. you get those packages in the wrong time(way) if time didnt excist at all. so we really need time to see in the logical order. otherwise we dont know what happend when

Smilediver

142

October 11, 2004 05:38 AM

Quote:Original post by Red Falcon
with locked i mean we would be in the same moment forever. you can do nothing cause time doesnt pass on

This is true if you force the time into the system as a driving force. But it's not the time that drives the universe. The movement doesn't happen because of time... time happens because of movement. Try to understand what i'm tryint to say here. :-)

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Red Falcon

142

October 11, 2004 05:44 AM

Quote:Original post by Trinka
Quote:Original post by Red Falcon
with locked i mean we would be in the same moment forever. you can do nothing cause time doesnt pass on

This is true if you force the time into the system as a driving force. But it's not the time that drives the universe. The movement doesn't happen because of time... time happens because of movement. Try to understand what i'm tryint to say here. :-)

well i get ur point :D the problem is that there isnt a definition of time, so in fact every explanation is right ;). but i give you 1 to think about. if everything stood still. nothing would move, wouldnt the time continue then? even if everything wasnt moving, it would be "later" no matter what. even if the clock doesnt tell so. time should continue to flow :D try thinking about this one ;)

darookie

1,441

October 11, 2004 05:45 AM

I wouldn't try to define what exactly time is. I won't because much brighter people than me tried and didn't come up with a general and sound solution (AFAIK). There are just some facts that we can observe and take for granted. Red Falcon has made a point here: no state-change - no time. Time and space are entangled to each other, which is why both cannot be described without the other. I can't provide an explanation because I lack the knowlegde, but I can throw in some random terms that should give you a start on the topic: Planck time and Planck space, Lorentz transformation and Muons.

Trinka: Can you descibe a state-change (such as movement) without time and space? What about frames of reference? For an isolated event your thoughts might be reasonable, but how would you correlate spacially independent events to each other using time?

Red Falcon

142

October 11, 2004 05:49 AM

i guess ur right... as long as time isnt defined, all you say can be true. i guess this is getting somewhat phylosophical, cause we are all aiming at the answer, without hitting the bulls-eye. i guess this is more a topic for the lounge now, cause its a pure discussion and its not about making games anymore ;)

Smilediver

142

October 11, 2004 06:04 AM

Quote:Original post by darookie
Trinka: Can you descibe a state-change (such as movement) without time and space?

The movement can happen in space and it doesn't require the time. But as i said, to observe the movement we need to add something to distinguish state changes - aka time. But it looks more like a human addition rather than a meaningfull thing in a system.

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Smilediver

142

October 11, 2004 06:07 AM

Quote:Original post by Red Falcon
even if everything wasnt moving, it would be "later" no matter what. even if the clock doesnt tell so. time should continue to flow :D try thinking about this one ;)

Yes, but this is a rule created by humans.

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Red Falcon

142

October 11, 2004 06:10 AM

Quote:Original post by Trinka
Quote:Original post by darookie
Trinka: Can you descibe a state-change (such as movement) without time and space?

The movement can happen in space and it doesn't require the time. But as i said, to observe the movement we need to add something to distinguish state changes - aka time. But it looks more like a human addition rather than a meaningfull thing in a system.

but TIME is what is linked to movement. if you move, the previous state passes, such creating more time. time is the same as things that happen. what happend ago is time. so, if i talk about what happend(movement) you MUST talk about time. movement is time changing, even if time is a human definition of things passed

Red Falcon

142

October 11, 2004 06:13 AM

Quote:Original post by Trinka
Quote:Original post by Red Falcon
even if everything wasnt moving, it would be "later" no matter what. even if the clock doesnt tell so. time should continue to flow :D try thinking about this one ;)

Yes, but this is a rule created by humans.

no it aint. its a general nature rule. the one thing happends after the other. if nothing happends, nothing keeps in that state. even if nothing stayed, nothing is still in that state for(u guess it) some time. time always flows and time cannot even be halted cause nothing moves. time is just the things that happen. and even if nothing happends, you can still say that nothing happened some time ago. so time keeps flowing like a river

Smilediver

142

October 11, 2004 06:14 AM

Quote:Original post by Red Falcon
but TIME is what is linked to movement. if you move, the previous state passes, such creating more time. time is the same as things that happen. what happend ago is time. so, if i talk about what happend(movement) you MUST talk about time. movement is time changing, even if time is a human definition of things passed

Yes, that's what i said... if you want to observe the movement, then you need a system of reference (time) to describe the movement.

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