this post was submitted on 02 Jan 2025
154 points (95.3% liked)

Ask Lemmy

27380 readers
1168 users here now

A Fediverse community for open-ended, thought provoking questions


Rules: (interactive)


1) Be nice and; have funDoxxing, trolling, sealioning, racism, and toxicity are not welcomed in AskLemmy. Remember what your mother said: if you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all. In addition, the site-wide Lemmy.world terms of service also apply here. Please familiarize yourself with them


2) All posts must end with a '?'This is sort of like Jeopardy. Please phrase all post titles in the form of a proper question ending with ?


3) No spamPlease do not flood the community with nonsense. Actual suspected spammers will be banned on site. No astroturfing.


4) NSFW is okay, within reasonJust remember to tag posts with either a content warning or a [NSFW] tag. Overtly sexual posts are not allowed, please direct them to either [email protected] or [email protected]. NSFW comments should be restricted to posts tagged [NSFW].


5) This is not a support community.
It is not a place for 'how do I?', type questions. If you have any questions regarding the site itself or would like to report a community, please direct them to Lemmy.world Support or email [email protected]. For other questions check our partnered communities list, or use the search function.


6) No US Politics.
Please don't post about current US Politics. If you need to do this, try [email protected] or [email protected]


Reminder: The terms of service apply here too.

Partnered Communities:

Tech Support

No Stupid Questions

You Should Know

Reddit

Jokes

Ask Ouija


Logo design credit goes to: tubbadu


founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
 

Some ideas are:

  • You branch off into another timeline and your actions make no difference to the previous timeline
  • You’ve already taken said actions but just didn’t know about it so nothing changes
  • Actions taken can have an effect (so you could suddenly erase yourself if you killed your parents)
  • Only “nexus” or fixed events really matter, the timeline will sort itself out for minor changes
  • something else entirely
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] 5 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago)

Are you asking which system I think is the most plausible, or which is the most desirable?

Plausibility:

Well, I'd guess that time travel probably isn't possible, and if it is, it's probably under extremely limited conditions that render it impractical for viable exploitation. But if you're operating under the assumption that it is, I'd say the "your actions do not affect this timeline" or similar type.

Why?

We have had no record of time travel or seen phenomena likely resulting from it. If at time T, time travel is discovered, it seems unlikely that someone after that time wouldn't have come back in time and done something that we'd have noticed.

And it's not just us. If self-timeline-affecting time travel is possible, then you consider all the possible civilizations out there in the universe who might discover it at some point in time and want to take advantage of it. Yet we've seen nothing from them. It's the Fermi Paradox on steroids. The Fermi Paradox asks why intelligent aliens, half of whom statistically probably evolved before us and should have colonized the universe if they're out there, aren't visible to us. The time to travel over even huge distances, though it is large, is small compared to the time required to evolve a spacefaring civilization. But in the presence of self-timeline-affecting time travel, then even the evolutionary time becomes a non-factor, since civilizations from the future could also show up, and roll back in time with their advanced technology and make use of it from then. The question is no longer just "where is everyone", but the even harder to explain "where is everyone from all time?"

Okay, that's the plausibility question. How about the desirability one, which system I'd like to exist?

Hmm. I guess I'd give the same answer, the "no affecting your own timeline" form. I think that if you could affect your own timeline, that probably some kind of incident in the future -- only takes one -- would be likely to have mucked up things sufficiently to wipe out civilization, and we probably wouldn't be around to even be pondering the matter.