Spoilers Favorite Time Travel Paradoxes

[Huntn]

Devs could go in this thread - not "time travel" so much, kind of "time analysis"? Coming to grips with the Multi-verse? Reverse Matrix???

The idea that the time line is fixed or almost so, being almost predictable into the future was intriguingly displayed with a quantum element in the plot of Devs. I enjoyed it.

 

[D.T.]

The idea that the time line is fixed or almost so, being almost predictable into the future was intriguingly displayed with a quantum element in the plot of Devs. I enjoyed it.

Yep, it's a great exploration of determinism. Basically they extrapolated from all quantum states of all things, so they were able to algorithmically calculate any prior or future state - just like we can do now on infinitesimally smaller scale - i.e., if we take a snapshot of the present position of a ball, based on the physical nature of the ball (weight, material, etc.), the surface it's on, other external factors (was there a fan blowing? is the surface tilted), we can calculate where it probably rolled from, and where it's likely to be in a few seconds. It's that, but just for everything in the universe So if the thing that's going to happen in 5 minutes was always going to happen because of all things/states/interactions before it, is there even any guilt over that thing you do in 5 minutes?

Did you watch past EP1? There's only 8 total, and would appear to be a self-contained "mini series".

 

[Huntn]

Added to post 1 Along with associated spoilers. I don’t know why they were not there in the first place.

• The Terminator and Terminator 2:Judgement Day- These movies are so good, it’s easy to over look the time paradox.

Yep, it's a great exploration of determinism. Basically they extrapolated from all quantum states of all things, so they were able to algorithmically calculate any prior or future state - just like we can do now on infinitesimally smaller scale - i.e., if we take a snapshot of the present position of a ball, based on the physical nature of the ball (weight, material, etc.), the surface it's on, other external factors (was there a fan blowing? is the surface tilted), we can calculate where it probably rolled from, and where it's likely to be in a few seconds. It's that, but just for everything in the universe So if the thing that's going to happen in 5 minutes was always going to happen because of all things/states/interactions before it, is there even any guilt over that thing you do in 5 minutes?

Did you watch past EP1? There's only 8 total, and would appear to be a self-contained "mini series".

I watched the entire series, thumbs up!

Regarding determinism, I have been suggesting for a long time that the amount of choice we have is limited. I’m not prepared to say we have zero choice when it comes to “like” choices like would I prefer carrots or peas with my steak, but how we react fundamentally.

An example, my wife is much more generous than I am, with herself the time she devotes to other people and with our finances. The question is does she choose to be as generous as she is or is she generous?

Regarding choosing a profession, did you choose your profession or were you drawn to a profession that suited you? This is not the same as how “choice” is normally framed, as a neutral intellectual choice. I’ll say mostly, we do what we are inclined or programmed to do.

However, human beings should be viewed as complex biological entities, that can be prone to be bad and/or good, able to find redemption, but instead of saying they chose to be good or bad, they experienced a progression from one state to another.
This is similiar to the ending of Devs, their predictions were not quite right although, a bit of Liberty was taken as to the fate of a couple of the characters.

 

[dUnKle]

I’m not sure if this would be a paradox and I’m not sure what film it was from but it’s something that occurred to me whilst watching a few other films that have already been discussed

i do think the scenario is in a film but can’t think what was

anyway, an event occurs in, let’s say, 2010
The “hero” returns home to see his wife in the house through window
She walks away from window and house blows up shortly after

20 years later, our hero has the ability to travel back in time, his whole life fuelled by the anger and hatred of what caused the explosion

he returns to that night in 2010 and gets back to house shortly before the explosion

instead of preventing it, he waits in the house and just before it explodes (but after 2010 hero has seen wife through window) he saves the wife and gets her out of house

He then manages to explain his story (let’s take for granted she accepts it fairly easy) and then takes her back to future with him

so she looses 20 years and is thrown into a future that thought her dead, but as she was dead previously she never “touched” any of that previous missing time

he, the hero, has his wife back, although he still suffered the 20 year “loss” he would still have spent the time thinking she was dead

(And lets take for granted he was able to somehow fake the remains being found in the explosion in first place etc)

so, where is the pardox ? And what was the film

 

[vidjahgamz]

I’m not sure if this would be a paradox and I’m not sure what film it was from but it’s something that occurred to me whilst watching a few other films that have already been discussed

i do think the scenario is in a film but can’t think what was

anyway, an event occurs in, let’s say, 2010
The “hero” returns home to see his wife in the house through window
She walks away from window and house blows up shortly after

20 years later, our hero has the ability to travel back in time, his whole life fuelled by the anger and hatred of what caused the explosion

he returns to that night in 2010 and gets back to house shortly before the explosion

instead of preventing it, he waits in the house and just before it explodes (but after 2010 hero has seen wife through window) he saves the wife and gets her out of house

He then manages to explain his story (let’s take for granted she accepts it fairly easy) and then takes her back to future with him

so she looses 20 years and is thrown into a future that thought her dead, but as she was dead previously she never “touched” any of that previous missing time

he, the hero, has his wife back, although he still suffered the 20 year “loss” he would still have spent the time thinking she was dead

(And lets take for granted he was able to somehow fake the remains being found in the explosion in first place etc)

so, where is the pardox ? And what was the film

After about an hour of researching I believe the movie you're talking about is Timecop with Jean-Claude Van Damme.

Does that sound right?

 

[oneMadRssn]

Sorry to join this convo late, but I like the Groundhog Day style of time travel. Edge of Tomorrow does a similar thing. I know I've seen other movies play the same idea out differently, but in essence being able to re-run the same day over and over again with slight differences each time is a neat idea and doesn't lend itself to obvious plot holes. It doesn't have to be sci-fi either, for example Run Lola Run.

 

[dUnKle]

After about an hour of researching I believe the movie you're talking about is Timecop with Jean-Claude Van Damme.

Does that sound right?

Do you know what, I think you are sot on, however, I think my thought must of been one that was stuck, as, I swear, he goes back and saves his wife at the moment of the explosion and leaves her there as if she has just been rescued and then returns to his present time and all is lovely with his wife and child present (who he looks shocked to see)

I think what I have done is seen that "paradox" and possibly come up with a way around it

So future JCVD would whisk wife off to future, leaving present JCVD to mourn his wife
Whilst wife skips 20 or so years into the future (still pregnant) to live with a JCVD 20 years older than her
Thus, saving his wife and (I think) not messing with the timeline / the past

 

[Huntn]

I’m not sure if this would be a paradox and I’m not sure what film it was from but it’s something that occurred to me whilst watching a few other films that have already been discussed

i do think the scenario is in a film but can’t think what was

anyway, an event occurs in, let’s say, 2010
The “hero” returns home to see his wife in the house through window
She walks away from window and house blows up shortly after

20 years later, our hero has the ability to travel back in time, his whole life fuelled by the anger and hatred of what caused the explosion

he returns to that night in 2010 and gets back to house shortly before the explosion

instead of preventing it, he waits in the house and just before it explodes (but after 2010 hero has seen wife through window) he saves the wife and gets her out of house

He then manages to explain his story (let’s take for granted she accepts it fairly easy) and then takes her back to future with him

so she looses 20 years and is thrown into a future that thought her dead, but as she was dead previously she never “touched” any of that previous missing time

he, the hero, has his wife back, although he still suffered the 20 year “loss” he would still have spent the time thinking she was dead

(And lets take for granted he was able to somehow fake the remains being found in the explosion in first place etc)

so, where is the pardox ? And what was the film

As long as we accept time as a flowing river with more than just a present, a future and past that are equal, can be accessed and a human could travel out of their present to one of the other states, then no problem although a fundamental paradox might be where a future you is able to interact with a present or past you.

This is a good argument in itself why this type of time travel is impossible, even if based on speed you can experience a different rate of the passage of time. You in your light speed ship has the same present as those on Earth, but your time flows by slower as compared to Earth’s which would be faster, you’d both still have the same present, but time can pass at a different rate until you come back together.

The type of paradox I have the most trouble with is a bootstrap paradox as in Interstellar where future Matthew McConaughey interacts with the past, giving his daughter and himself the coordinates of a secret base, which in turn gets him launched into space to a place where he can interact with the past.
[automerge]1592423764[/automerge]

Sorry to join this convo late, but I like the Groundhog Day style of time travel. Edge of Tomorrow does a similar thing. I know I've seen other movies play the same idea out differently, but in essence being able to re-run the same day over and over again with slight differences each time is a neat idea and doesn't lend itself to obvious plot holes. It doesn't have to be sci-fi either, for example Run Lola Run.

I’d say a time loop is not the same as time travel per sey, instead of traveling at a different rate of time from your surrounds, with a time loop everything is reset, I think. The interesting thing is that inklings of what is happening is often retrained by those experiencing the loop.

 

[Huntn]

Sep 2020- I accept Avenger’s End Game as a good story because I‘ve now watched a series of time travel stories where you just accept what you see and enjoy it. It’s too complicated otherwise to try to make sense of.

However, I can reserve some ping for AEG because they go out of their way to sound scientific and explain to you how time travel works and does not work, then they proceed to do what they said could not be done, unless their premise is that the past is the past, and that you can visit the past, change things in the past, and it would have no effect on the present or I should say a present if you go with multiple time lines. Is time not a continuous flow? So if you want to read another Avenger’s rant continue...

Avengers End Game (2019)

• Quote: Why not go back and kill baby Thanos? Time travel does not work that way.
• Quote: If you go back in time, the past becomes your future and your (old) future becomes your past.

What does that mean?? Bruce Banner talks as if there are multiple time lines, but then the movie treats events as occurring in a single time line. As portrayed in the movie where a time machine was required and located at a point in time (in the future) there is no circumstance when they could have returned to their original point in time. Explanation follows.

Single time line
As soon as they stole the Infinity Stones, Thanos was prevented from gathering the stones, the future was changed, as long as they could keep them hidden, but there would be no time machine to return to, no reason to build a time machine. And if for some reason if they could go back to their original point in time, they could possibly not recognize anything because of the changes they made, by virtue of changing the past.

Multiple time lines
Changing the past would have split off another time line and they could not return to their original time line period. Thanos would have succeeded in the original time line. Yet in the new time line, it would have stopped Thanos unless he was able to somehow reaquire the stones, and no time machine to go back to in the new time line they just created.

One other thing, Thanos’s spaceship coming though the time machine portal, had no suits or pim particles. I don’t want to hear how by looking at Nebula’s memories who knew nothing of pim particles (even Ant Man had no clue) how Thanos figured out pim particles to do time travel better, bringing a huge ship through.

 

[ucfgrad93]

Sorry to join this convo late, but I like the Groundhog Day style of time travel. Edge of Tomorrow does a similar thing. I know I've seen other movies play the same idea out differently, but in essence being able to re-run the same day over and over again with slight differences each time is a neat idea and doesn't lend itself to obvious plot holes.

Great movies, love them both.

 

[daimos]

My favorite is Arrival, wherein the message is (spoilers ahead) humans only understand linear thought, and so aliens came to earth to teach them non-linear language which is necessary to achieve time travel. Aliens saw in the future that humans will help the aliens. But the story goes on to say that countries must work with each other as the first hurdle.
I guess it’s silly to understand a movie when we as viewers understand so little about time travel.

 

[Huntn]

My favorite is Arrival, wherein the message is (spoilers ahead) humans only understand linear thought, and so aliens came to earth to teach them non-linear language which is necessary to achieve time travel. Aliens saw in the future that humans will help the aliens. But the story goes on to say that countries must work with each other as the first hurdle.
I guess it’s silly to understand a movie when we as viewers understand so little about time travel.

I had some trouble with this premise although at this point I’m a bit foggy on the linear thought vs whatever the other thing was. In other words something about being able to see the future. For anyone who needs their memories jogged:

Arrival Explained (2016 Arrival Movie Explained) | This is Barry

A detailed plot analysis and explanation of the ending of the film Arrival. This is what the aliens have gifted, and Hannah is part of a future not the past

www.thisisbarry.com

.

 

[jwip]

It's not an anomaly, a conundrum, or a fallacy, it's a PARADOX! ​

For time travel stories, my impression is that despite the different names, they all involve inconsistent causal loops, unless the multiverse is introduced. The difficult part of time travel paradoxes is to think out of all of the possible ramifications due to the circular nature of events.
Time travel links that describe types of Time Travel are after the spoiler section.

Updated:

• 27May- Added Back To The Future Part 2.
• 2 May20-Added The Final Countdown
• 21Mar20- Added Harry Potter And The Prisoner Of Azkaban.
• 4Jan 2020- Update Interstellar description, added more paradox examples.
• 16Sep19- Added Timeline.
• 13Sep19- Added Deja Vu and Cause and Effect
• 10Sep19- Added The Time Machine, The Sound of Thunder, and Avengers Endgame.

Movie/TV list (not comprehensive)

• 12 Monkeys (1995)
• Avengers: Endgame
• Back To The Future (1985)
• Back To The Future Part 2 (1989)
• Deja Vu
• The Final Countdown (1980)
• Harry Potter And The Prisoner of Azkaban (2014)
• Interstellar
• Jumangi (1995)
• Looper
• The Sound of Thunder
• Star Trek Next Generation: All good things.
• Star Trek Next Generation: Cause and Effect
• The Terminator (1984)
• Terminator 2: Judgement Day (1991)
• Timeline
• The Time Machine

My take on time travel movies (spoilers)

• It’s intriguing, it can make for great stories, as long as they don’t go overboard. It’s best when they don’t make you think about it... too much.
• Traveling to the future has been proven by the theory of relativity, related to time. No paradoxes.
• Traveling back in time is much more problematic if the idea is you can travel both ways, especially if you do anything significant in the past and plan to go back to the same future, you left, because anything you do in the past will either change the future or split off the time line you are in, and you can’t go back.
• The Time Machine and The Sound of Thunder are two outstanding examples of uncomplicated time travel.
• Back to the Future is good because it addresses the altered time line because of Marty McFly first disrupting his parents romance, and then the way he got them back together. When he comes back to the present, his family's circumstances have changed significantly in mostly a good way.
• Back To The Future Part 2 (1989)- Not as good as the first one. However they took the time to explain how time travel works, at least this version of it.
• Looper and Avengers:Endgame are problematic if you are looking for coherence, IMO.
• Interstellar has a significant paradox which I was able to overlook.
• Harry Potter And The Prisoner of Azkaban- Incorporates one of the most seamless time travel sequences into a book/movie. You watch the sequence with the end result, than you flip back and see what specifically happened. Two lives are saved.
• The Terminator and Terminator 2:Judgement Day- These movies are so good, it’s easy to over look the time paradox.

==========
Spoilers follow, Time Travel Links follow that.
==========

Movie Discussion (Spoilers)
The Terminator (1984) and Terminator 2 (1991)- These stories are so good, it’s easy to overlook the time paradoxes. The whopper in this story is that future John Connor sends back Kyle Reece to save this mother from Terminator assassination and Reece becomes his father!

Timeline (2003)- Exciting Michael Crichton story, the arrogance of a corporation, who plays fast and loose with people’s lives after they accidentally discover time travel trying to fax 3D package. There are elements of an altered timeline, and a bootstrap paradox.

The Time Machine (1960)- is easy to comprehend because the time traveler goes to the future, and when he comes back it’s a week later and he stays long enough to grab some tools and personal items, then returns to the future. As best as I can tell no paradox involved.

In the Back to the Future movie, the concept is easy to understand that if McFly does not get his parents together, he will cease to exist, by virtue of a fading photograph, which as I recall, a photo was used in both the 1st and 3rd movies. However what the movie does not address is all of the peoples' lives he has effected by interacting with them, other than the benefit to his own family. Maybe he inspired the "soda jerk" to become mayor. This is an altered timeline. Best not to think about all the changes that occured to Marty by virtue of the altered time line, and how he would mesh returning back to his now changed former life.

Back To The Future Part 2 (1989)- Not as good as the first one. However they explained how when old Biff gave the sports almanac to young Biff, it caused a tangent in the time line so things in the future where they were (2015) did not change, because a new timeline was created in 1955 with the handing over of the book to young Biff. The solution was to go back before the divergence and take the book back.

The fallacy with this time travel example is that they use this one event, knowledge of the future outcome of sporting events, as the only thing that would drastically alter the future, although cumulatively all of the changes caused by Marty going back, then the Professor and Marty going back and interacting with people, any number of minute things could drastically altered the furture, but hey, that gets too complicated fast and... it’s a time paradox.

The Sound of Thunder- One of the earliest time travel stories I am aware of is The Sound of Thunder, a 1952 Ray Bradbury story which is the origin for the term "butterfly effect", where a time traveler steps on a butterfly and the future is changed. Also a mediocre 2005 movie, about traveling back in time, to hunt dinosaurs. If I recall properly, dinos that we’re going to die anyway in a particular time frame, but you can’t stray off a designated elevated path. Things go wrong, a character strays off the path, and the future is dramatically changed. This is an outstanding take on time travel, and an altered time line because it illustrates that a small change in the past could produce an unimaginable change in the future you left.

In 12 Monkeys (1995), a character Cole is sent back in time to look for an organization called the The Army of The 12 Monkeys, an organization believed to be responsible for the outbreak of a deadly disease that wipes out most of humanity. However he arrives earlier than the target date, inquires, and inspires an inmate at a mental institution, which starts a chain of events. This would be a bootstrap paradox.

In Interstellar,
I decided I really like this science fiction story because it‘s equal parts SciFi and an examination of human emotion in extreme circumstances, and what could be described as a perfect time paradox, a visual depiction of time as non-lineal and under certain vague hypothetical circumstances (a Tesseract) provided by advanced beings, (maybe advanced us), accessible at different points.

It also includes other vague plot points such as quantum data being transmitted from inside a black hole to help scientists on a dying Earth figure out ...something, survive? I’m not sure. But the important thing is that I was comfortable not focusing on hard technical, scientific details which are sparse and going with the story and accepting the narrative as presented. (Description updated Jan 2020.)

My favorite paradox occurred in Star Trek Next Generation series final All Good Things where Capt Piccard finds himself traveling through time, jumping back and forth in his life. This is another test perpetrated by Q. In the past, he becomes aware of a temporal anomaly close to the Devron System in the Neutral Zone and discovers that by virtue of being a temporal anomaly, it is moving backwards in time, growing as it moves backwards. His retired self vowes to cajole his friends into transporting him to the Devron System to look for it at an earlier state, searching by means of deploying a reverse tachyon beam. The cause of the paradox is that he is the one who causes its creation by looking for it!

Star Trek Next Generation: Cause and Effect- A brilliant episode.
The destruction of the Enterprise near a distortion in the space-time continuum causes a temporal causality loop to form, trapping the ship and crew in time and forcing them to relive the events that led to their deaths.

Jumangi (1995)- A favorite movie, no time travel, but creates a time line that is later erased when the game concludes. No paradox, simple to understand.

Looper- the worst time travel movie I've seen if the goal is to all most understand why things happened the way they did. Nine Problems With Looper.

Avengers: Endgame (2019)- This is a top rated fan film that not only features time travel, but shoves time travel in your face to undo a huge event, in a very specific way, as if you can go back and forth in time, but somehow not scrambling everything in the process.

Six immensely powerful relics, are removed from the past, but somehow does not turn the future completely upside down, but manages to restore half of all life that was destroyed (which makes sense in itself, because Thanos used those stones to destroy that life, and he could not find the stones, because they were taken), have a big fight, then go back to the past, put the stones back and somehow that does not undo everything that the time travel changed. Bottom line: Just Don’t Think About It.

Deja Vu (2006) is an enjoyable Denzil Washington movie where a police officer travels back in time (about a week) to prevent a terrorist attack on a ferry carrying passengers and automobiles. Yes, there are now 2 of him, but the story is surpringly coherent.

Some of these links have contrary ideas regarding time travel.

• A TimeTravel Website
• Rules of Time Travel@ Wikipedia.

1. Single fixed history, which is self-consistent and unchangeable. In this version, everything happens on a single timeline which does not contradict itself and cannot interact with anything potentially existing outside of it.
2. History is flexible and is subject to change (Plastic Time). Events can be altered, but there are different variations of this branch from time is easy to change (Back To The Future) to major changes are hard to achieve.
3. Alternate timelines. In this version of time travel, there are multiple coexisting alternate histories, so that when the traveler goes back in time, he/she ends up in a new timeline where historical events can differ from the timeline he/she came from, but his/her original timeline does not cease to exist (this means the grandfather paradox could be avoided.)

• Three types of Time Travel- Fixed Timeline, Dynamic Timeline, and Multiverse.

-Fixed Timeline- Even when parties travel back in time... the future they left cannot be changed. All events remain as fixed poinst in time. The actions of the traveler in the past have already become part of hisotry. This is known as the Novikov Self-Consistency Principle. For Example, say you travel back in time in order to kill Adolf Hitler as a baby in order to prvent WWII. You replace him with a orphaned baby, so that the family will not notice. You trave back to the Future, and the replaced baby grows up to become Adolf Hitler Himself (The Terminator, Harry Potter 3, 12 Monkeys).
-Dynamic Timeline- Altered events in the past have definite impact on the present. For example: If you travel back in time and kill your Grandfather... you also prevent your own birth, and your eventual trip back in time, in turn, your Grandfather is never killed, and you are born again, only to go back in time and kill Your Grandfather anyway. A Paradox as seen in Back to the Future. Confusing? YES.
-Alternate Timelines- With an infinite number of parallel universes, traveling into the past causes a new divergent timeline from the first. Because of this, the traveler can do anything with impunity, and only the new timeline will be effected. For example, if you kill all your grandparents, nothing happens. There is no paradox, you have simply created a new timeline in which you will not exit, but the original timeline is unaffected. However, you cannot return to the original timeline. (But I assume you are still existing in the new reality you created, you just magically appeared there?)

• Top Five Philosophical and Science Fiction Paradoxes

1. Grandfather
2. Bootstrap
3. Paradox of Value
4. Dream Argument
5. Paradox of Hedonism?

Bootstrap Paradox:


Grandfather Paradox- Inconsistent Causal Loop.



5 Bizarre Paradoxes Of Time Travel Explained

1. Predestination Paradox


2. Bootstrap Paradox


3: Grandfather Paradox


4: Let’s Kill Hitler Paradox


5: Polchinski’s Paradox

Damn that's a lot to digest.

 

[Huntn]

• 18 Sep- Added Umbrella Academy to post 1.

 

[Huntn]

Added a note to the Avengers: End Game time travel scenario.

The Problem With End Game: As said before, the easiest solution is to accept what the story tell you. However, if you think about it, The Avengers under the guidance of Banner send 3 teams back in time to retrieve 6 Infinity Stones. As soon as the time line was disrupted by these stones being intercepted, there are three possibilities. 1) They split off time into a new timeline and could not return to their original time line. 2) If the premise is altering a single time line, there never would have been an Infinity War, and there would have been no reason to build a quantum tunnel (time machine) to go back in time to fetch stones. Therefore the teams who went back in time, their future would have become their past, and they would have cut themselves off from returning to their former future, as the new future they created unfolds. 3) Now if the writers were clever enough, they might have concocted a story with a new future, where a quantum tunnel had been built giving the Avengers back in time, a route to return, but it would still not be the original future they left.

 

[decafjava]

Having rewatched Endgame recently I was bothered by some of the issues you brought up although I still enjoyed the film as long as I turned my brain off.

Other films/series have dealt with time travel in a more clever way. Star Trek and Doctor Who have portrayed all the varieties of time travel.

One interesting idea is the issue of temporal loops or more precisely casual loops. Here is one example of what is called the bootstrap paradox:

Although I have not watched Game of Thrones it appears in that series as well (the character Bran causing the whole "hodor" thing).

One of my favourite series, the anime Attack on Titan, appears that it will feature a causal loop as well.

I just want to say I have not read the manga from which it is adapted (pretty faithfully it seems) and for which the final chapter has just been published (though I have been exposed to some spoilers from @$#& ). The first half of the last season of the anime has also been completed with the second due in "Winter 2022".

The main character, Eren Jeager, I think will create some kind of paradox. Having watched so much sci-fi plus spoiler type comments (from the minority of nasty manga readers) have convinced me this will be the case. Starting with the fact the character's father before receiving a special power from another was told "to save Mikasa, Armin and the others" though none of them were born yet...and then saying all characters with their potential are linked through celestial "paths" that transcend time and space.

Spoiler

I am almost certain Eren who has the most powerful titan power will actually pass it to another in the past, Ymir Fritz a legendary character who was supposedly the first to receive it from either the devil, god or the source of all life, and also try to manipulate other past events.

How successful he is and how the future plays out remains to be seen.

Oh and I recall the Star Trek episode "Guardian of Tomorrow" that features "restoring" an original future. I also recently rewatched an episode of Star Trek the animated series where Spock goes back in time, again through the Guardian of tomorrow to meet his younger self and in fact notes he vaguely recalled meeting a family member who saved him during some trial young Vulcans are required to pass.

Discovery also featured this Guardian in a different form.

 

[Huntn]

Added a shielded spoiler section to Interstellar, and added Loki to post 1.

 

[Huntn]

Having rewatched Endgame recently I was bothered by some of the issues you brought up although I still enjoyed the film as long as I turned my brain off.

Other films/series have dealt with time travel in a more clever way. Star Trek and Doctor Who have portrayed all the varieties of time travel.

One interesting idea is the issue of temporal loops or more precisely casual loops. Here is one example of what is called the bootstrap paradox:

Although I have not watched Game of Thrones it appears in that series as well (the character Bran causing the whole "hodor" thing).

One of my favourite series, the anime Attack on Titan, appears that it will feature a causal loop as well.

I just want to say I have not read the manga from which it is adapted (pretty faithfully it seems) and for which the final chapter has just been published (though I have been exposed to some spoilers from @$#& ). The first half of the last season of the anime has also been completed with the second due in "Winter 2022".

The main character, Eren Jeager, I think will create some kind of paradox. Having watched so much sci-fi plus spoiler type comments (from the minority of nasty manga readers) have convinced me this will be the case. Starting with the fact the character's father before receiving a special power from another was told "to save Mikasa, Armin and the others" though none of them were born yet...and then saying all characters with their potential are linked through celestial "paths" that transcend time and space.

Spoiler

I am almost certain Eren who has the most powerful titan power will actually pass it to another in the past, Ymir Fritz a legendary character who was supposedly the first to receive it from either the devil, god or the source of all life, and also try to manipulate other past events.

How successful he is and how the future plays out remains to be seen.

Oh and I recall the Star Trek episode "Guardian of Tomorrow" that features "restoring" an original future. I also recently rewatched an episode of Star Trek the animated series where Spock goes back in time, again through the Guardian of tomorrow to meet his younger self and in fact notes he vaguely recalled meeting a family member who saved him during some trial young Vulcans are required to pass.

Discovery also featured this Guardian in a different form.

I admit there are different factors in a story and how they are presented that either make/help me accept or reject time paradoxes.

 

[Huntn]

​

Tenet (2020)- SPOILERS I’m a SciFi fan, Tenet is streaming on HBO and I tried, could just not stick with this movie. I might give it another chance, but as of now, it makes no sense. ?The idea of inverted/reverse time was too hard for me to understand what I was seeing. The idea that an object could be inverted and is moving backwards in time as the time around it moves forward just made no sense to me visually.

Sure I understood when a bullet gouge in the concrete disappeared, and the associated bullet that moved away from it was an “inverted” bullet. But the character observing this is moving forward In time, so if he sees a bullet gouge it all ready happened, then the gouge disappears. That bullet and the small bit of concrete effected is moving backwards while the surroundings move forward.

But then we see early the main character picks up an object (a gun?) that is laying on the ground and that triggers a fight where him and another participant are fighting, moving backwards. So I’ll assume we are watching the inverted fight as it happens, but the trigger seems to be disconnected. The character walks in at the end of a fight unaware it happened already, unless the idea that the ensuing fight exists in it’s entirety as happening in reverse time and at the end (beginning) of the fight, the character is has move to a point before he walked into the room and picked up the object. It’s confusing to watch and maintain continuity.

I plan on giving this story one more chance.

Tenet: Inversion & Reverse Time Travel Explained

Nolan's done it again!

screenrant.com

Tenet (2020) ⭐ 7.3 | Action, Sci-Fi, Thriller

2h 30m | PG-13

www.imdb.com

 

[pachyderm]

bump

 

[rhett7660]

Sorry to join this convo late, but I like the Groundhog Day style of time travel. Edge of Tomorrow does a similar thing. I know I've seen other movies play the same idea out differently, but in essence being able to re-run the same day over and over again with slight differences each time is a neat idea and doesn't lend itself to obvious plot holes. It doesn't have to be sci-fi either, for example Run Lola Run.

I love both of those movies! Groundhog Day is a yearly tradition for both me and the wife.

 

[rhett7660]

View attachment 2007848​

Tenet (2020)- SPOILERS I’m a SciFi fan, Tenet is streaming on HBO and I tried, could just not stick with this movie. I might give it another chance, but as of now, it makes no sense. ?The idea of inverted/reverse time was too hard for me to understand what I was seeing. The idea that an object could be inverted and is moving backwards in time as the time around it moves forward just made no sense to me visually.

Sure I understood when a bullet gouge in the concrete disappeared, and the associated bullet that moved away from it was an “inverted” bullet. But the character observing this is moving forward In time, so if he sees a bullet gouge it all ready happened, then the gouge disappears. That bullet and the small bit of concrete effected is moving backwards while the surroundings move forward.

But then we see early the main character picks up an object (a gun?) that is laying on the ground and that triggers a fight where him and another participant are fighting, moving backwards. So I’ll assume we are watching the inverted fight as it happens, but the trigger seems to be disconnected. The character walks in at the end of a fight unaware it happened already, unless the idea that the ensuing fight exists in it’s entirety as happening in reverse time and at the end (beginning) of the fight, the character is has move to a point before he walked into the room and picked up the object. It’s confusing to watch and maintain continuity.

I plan on giving this story one more chance.

Tenet: Inversion & Reverse Time Travel Explained

Nolan's done it again!

screenrant.com

Tenet (2020) ⭐ 7.3 | Action, Sci-Fi, Thriller

2h 30m | PG-13

www.imdb.com

This one took several showings for me to finally get it... and I still feel like I am missing something. Especially the ending.

I like to think this is a mind **** of a movie.

I also recommend Donnie Darko... good movie!

 

[Huntn]

This one took several showings for me to finally get it... and I still feel like I am missing something. Especially the ending.

I like to think this is a mind **** of a movie.

I also recommend Donnie Darko... good movie!

Tenet- I watched it a second time, but real life interfered and I have yet to see the end. I assume the end is not a now I understand moment, but just more of the same, and possible more confusing. The following represent misc ideas:

Time travel backwards is usually portrayed as usually instantaneous, jump from point A to B. Living things don’t function backwards soit has to be a jump. The sequences in Tenet, when they are moving back in time, they are not jumping , but living it. kind of make sense but seen disjointed to me, because the world does not function that way. When moving forward you have goals you work towards, as mentioned cause and effect, by altering behavior you can change the results.

Moving backwards is the equivalent of rewinding a movie. What happened has already happened and there is no ability to actively change the effect that happened first, if you end up farther back in time, is there? although…The key for anything to make any difference, you have to think of going back in time in such a manner would have to be a short lived thing.

Lets say there is a bomb, that goes off and kills people, but you are traveling backwards in time from the explosion, if when you reach the precise point where you press the count down button, except,you don’t press it, then the explosion would not happen in the future, in essence you change the future.But for it to count, you’d have to reverse your direction in time for it to make a difference, or it would equate to a history.

Replaying what happened in the past, the movie tries hard to make it look like when traveling back in time, you are moving forward, but backwards, and to those individuals it seems forwards as if they are still functioning normally. Yes, it can be argued that because is moving backwards that you should be talking backwards, but your brain percieves it properly because it’s backwards too. The issue here Imo is that and you’d have to be thinking backwards too like unwinding a spring. I don’t think things would be coherent.

Obviously it’s above my pay grade.

 

[chown33]

My favorite time travel paradox is this one, where I predict that @Huntn will make an October 2022 post about a Clifford D. Simak book entitled Mastodonia.

 

[Huntn]

Spoilers

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Mastadonia (Book 1978)- I will call this a good, light read story. It starts with a professor on sabatical on his Wisconsin farm, and his dog brings him fresh dinosaur bones. There is also an ancient crater with strange metal alloys in it and an friendly alien (Catface) who hangs out in the orchard.

The reason I am posting here is to discuss how time travel is approached in this story, as a single time line, along with the idea that if you went back to the Miocene (10000+ years ago), would there be any issue with polluting the time line, lasting ramifications that effect your modern existence? There is the idea of the Butterfly Effect. 🤔

How about small groups that go back and hunt Mastadons, or farther back and hunt dinosaurs? Or a couple who have a permanent road back and forth and decide they want to live during the time of Mastodons and build a house there? The worst would be to allow large groups of poor people to immigrate back and get a fresh start. Yep, that’s in the book.

Arguably even if you were not altering human development, if you killed enough critters, you might effect the development of future species including humans, so the change could range from subtle, not noticeable, or possibly monumental. 🤔

There are several ideas in the story that I take issue with, one would be that any authority allow a private entity to run a time travel business. However I was able to overlook them. My primary complaint is that the story just seemed to get going, when it ends. The Safari who is wiped out by Carnosaurs, I wanted more! I enjoyed it while it lasted.