Paradoxes [Digest urth.v024.n023]

John Bishop · 30 Mar 1999, 14:36 · from urth-v0024.mbox · original

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From: John Bishop <jbishop at blkbrd.zko.dec.com>
Subject: (urth) Re: Paradoxes [Digest urth.v024.n023]
Date: Tue, 30 Mar 1999 14:36:50
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It's not true that all time-travel (properly considered)=20
has to lead to paradoxes.

First, forward-in-time travel is non-paradoxical.  The
proof is that we are doing it right now!  Vinge did a lot
with fowards-only time travel, as have others (the oldest
such story I know of is _Sleeping_Beauty_, but _Rip_van_Winkel_
is more aware of the difference between the "now" of the
sleeper and the present).

Second, in the many-worlds model, timelines split at "change
points", either for all change points [to support quantuum
mechanics] or just for "imposed" points due to time travellers;
in that case, backwards time travel is non-paradoxical:

   The mad scientist Dr. Parah travels from 1999 to=20
   2002 and grabs copies of the best-selling novels
   from a bookstore.  He than travels back to 1999=20
   and (having copied them) sends the manuscripts
   to publishers as his own work. =20

The original author still wrote the book during 2000 in=20
timeline 1, and though the book appears full-fledged (with
no apparent author) in 1999 in timeline 2, that's not a
paradox.  Note that the theft from the bookstore only=20
happens in timeline 1.

"Many worlds" is prodigal of universes, but logically consistent.
The movie "Sliding Doors" is an example.

Third is the one I think more Wolfean: rather than a huge number
of timelines, we have a universe in which history has near-repeats.
Similiar causes, similiar effects: so there are ages of barbarism
and of civilization, ages of discovery and of forgetting.

Then you have a Severian, in one cycle, write a book but not read
it.  Another Severian (very much like the first) reads the book and
may or may not write another, etc.

See the discussion in Steven Pinker's _How_the_Mind_Works_ of how
repetition in time (via generations) can mimic backwards or
circular causation.

	-John Bishop

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