Solution to the Grandfather Paradox

[Chris]

If time travel was possible and your story made millions I could come back in time and plagiarize it and make the money myself.

And then in an infinite loop he'd steal it from you.

[Chris]

Space itself is a substance, vacuuminium, which is energized from outside its interface with an underlying universe. All matter has a connection there, just like a box can be heated inside by the environment outside it.

Space, like time, came into existence at Big Bang. Space and time are variables.

[OGIS]

Probably time travels forward only so no paradox possible buts its fun to speculate. If time travel is possible people from the future may come back and study us. Maybe a lot of UFO sightings are time travelers. If they are like us in any way then some future Elon Musk might be offering tours.

If there is a paradox maybe someone came back and screwed things up causing Hitler to be a sicko or enabling his rise to power. People in the future said "phew, we barely survived that,We need rules." A time travel prime directive.

If time travel is possible but it works like it does when a choice is made and branches off as that choice is made then in effect it would create a scenario where it didn't really matter what we did if we traveled to the past. It would just open a new time line. Now that would be great because we could go back in time at any point, eons, and use our technology to create a "new" world. No overpopulation or even the need to travel outside our solar system. A kind of eternity.

You might enjoy this one:

Attachment 14728

[OGIS]

Why does it need a father?

why does this one?

[OGIS]

Space itself is a substance, vacuuminium, which is energized from outside its interface with an underlying universe. All matter has a connection there, just like a box can be heated inside by the environment outside it.

And what created THAT universe?

My brain insists that there must be a cause for every effect. (My wife, more easygoing, just says that the universe, in some form or other, always was and always will be.)

And this is the hangup for the two main metaphysics:
- God created the universe! Then who created God?
- The Universe came from a underlying Universe! Then where did IT come from?

I see no way around that logic. One cannot have their cake and eat it too; if one accepts one of the exclamatory sentences above, then one must also accept the related question that follows.

Perhaps this is because my brain uses logic constrained by the three dimensions of which it is aware, and the actual universe is the string theory multiverse with 11 or 12 dimensions. Perhaps, in 11 or 12 dimensions cause and effect work differently.

So until we can actually PROVE string theory with concepts not built on a house of cards, my wife's view wins by default. The universe is eternal and has no cause. And that's just the way it is.

[Standing Wolf]

You might enjoy this one:

Attachment 14728

I considered picking that book up and checking it out - I see that it has four sequels - but could not find a single positive review of it anywhere.

[Don]

If travel to the past was a possibility, and assuming that human life in the time-travel era does go on for some time, wouldn't one assume that such travelers would have been seen and heard from at some point in recorded history? (Or perhaps they have. There is some speculation that the ETs, with their flying saucers, are actually our own, evolved descendants, come back to study their primitive roots.)

Some people speculated that the animal "mutilations" were people from the future getting material to fix a mess they had made.

[Chris]

And what created THAT universe?

My brain insists that there must be a cause for every effect. (My wife, more easygoing, just says that the universe, in some form or other, always was and always will be.)

And this is the hangup for the two main metaphysics:
- God created the universe! Then who created God?
- The Universe came from a underlying Universe! Then where did IT come from?

I see no way around that logic. One cannot have their cake and eat it too; if one accepts one of the exclamatory sentences above, then one must also accept the related question that follows.

Perhaps this is because my brain uses logic constrained by the three dimensions of which it is aware, and the actual universe is the string theory multiverse with 11 or 12 dimensions. Perhaps, in 11 or 12 dimensions cause and effect work differently.

So until we can actually PROVE string theory with concepts not built on a house of cards, my wife's view wins by default. The universe is eternal and has no cause. And that's just the way it is.

The way around is to do away with the assumption anything was created from nothing rather than transformed.

[OGIS]

I considered picking that book up and checking it out - I see that it has four sequels - but could not find a single positive review of it anywhere.

Amazon has a bunch. but also negative ones.

http://www.amazon.com/Long-Earth-Ter...the+long+earth

The concept is fascinating and is probably the only thing of Pratchett's in the book: there are billions of parallel Earth's literally just a step away... if you have this little handheld gizmo a guy invented and which no one can figure out how it works. Also works for anything you are in contact with, like a horse, whatever you are carrying, and things like zeppelins. And ALL of those Earth (with occasional somewhat alien exceptions years of steps away) are uninhabited by humans.

The are a bit uneven, and sometimes a bit slow, and the first book is, IMO, the best one. It's almost pure Baxter.

The story I heard was that Pratchett had come up with the idea years ago, but didn't know how to tackle it. As his Alzheimer's worsened, it appears that friends and possibly even the farking Queen of England (he WAS knighted, you know) decided that he needed a literary minder and essentially dragooned a very willing Steve Baxter to help out. Baxter was the actual creative brain behind the books.

Very sad.

[The Sage of Main Street]

Space, like time, came into existence at Big Bang. Space and time are variables.

Time only exists in the present. There is no time out there waiting for us to reach it. It has no extension, so it can't be a dimension. It's as if, in going from New York to Boston, Boston didn't exist until you got there; in fact, if it is like time, each inch of the highway didn't either.