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Saturday, September 08, 2007
This is a very random blog entry.
Time travel.

Have you heard of the time travel paradox called the grandfather paradox?
Quoted from Wikipedia:

"The paradox is this: Suppose a man traveled back in time and killed his biological grandfather before the latter met the traveller's grandmother. As a result, one of the traveller's parents (and by extension, the traveller himself) would never have been conceived. This would imply that he could not have travelled back in time after all, which in turn implies the grandfather would still be alive, and the traveller would have been conceived, allowing him to travel back in time and kill his grandfather. Thus each possibility seems to imply its own negation, a type of logical paradox. It would either mean:

- The killer would vanish as soon as he killed his grandfather.
- The grandfather would not be killed. "


That can't be possible, isn't it? There must be some ending.


Another theory, Novikov's self-consistency principle, would be a more probable theory to explain the effects of time-travel. And its also a theory that I am more agreeable with. Assuming that history has already happened, and every single moment in time has already occured, including the future, that means that if someone goes back in time to do something, it would have already occured.

This can be explained simply. Let's say... a person in Singapore invents a time machine and go back in time to find out how Raffles found Singapore. But it turns out that Raffles had no intention to find a trading port and just wanted to stay in Britain to stone. But according to the person's knowledge of history, he knows that Raffles founded Singapore as a trading port. So he goes to Britain and convince Raffles to go to South East Asia to found a trading port on this island and to name it Singapore. And Raffles did. And Singapore was founded. That means history was fulfilled and remain unchanged since it already happened.

Or maybe we can use the example from Harry Potter. Harry used the Time-turner and hid himself near a spot where he thought he saw his father cast the Patronus Charm(Expecto Patronum). In the end, he concluded that it was not his father but it was him who casted the Patronus Charm, so he stands up and casts it, and he succeeds in doing so because he has already succeeded before. History has already occured, so he couldn't have failed because he has already seen himself succeed. So history was fulfilled.


So my conclusion is that a person cannot go back in time to kill himself or his grandfather before his father was conceived or anything that will affect his birth or his eventual invention of a time machine or his eventual decision to go back in time because every moment in time has already occured and he has already gone back in time. Somehow something would happen that would cause him to fail to kill his grandfather because he has already been born, implying that his grandfather had survived to the point where his father was conceived, and because all this has already occured.

What about the discussion of the emergence of different timelines?
Say a person goes back in time and really succeeds in killing Newton. Some people assume that a new timeline will then emerge, where Newton never existed and he never came up with the 3 laws. Perhaps someone else did. Perhaps the US president was Weird Al instead of Bush.

My argument to this is that if a person can really succeed in killing Newton, that means Newton would have been killed the instant the person thought of killing Newton. That means Newton died long ago before the killer was even destined to born.

Thinking of this, perhaps Newton wasn't the 1st person to come up with the 3 laws. Perhaps someone else in another timeline did.

So what is the conclusion? The timeline we are living in now, is the final timeline after every person who travelled in time(assuming we figure how to do so in future) went back and did something that changed the timeline. So we are governed in reality by only one timeline. Everything in our timeline has already happened. We cannot change anything else because there can be no more change. And there is a word for it. A word we have known before people started debating over time machines.


Destiny. We are governed by destiny.

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My mind's unweaving/ 6:41 PM

Me

xC Lai [luke281913]

Nov 14th

1996-1998: Kuo Chuan Presbyterian Primary School (1/6, 2F, 3F)
1999-2001: Nanyang Primary School (4L, 5I, 6I)
2002-2005: Catholic High School (1-3, 2-3, 3-5, 4-5)
2006-2008: Anderson Junior College (13/06, 22/06)
2008-2010: Singapore Armed Forces (BMT Orion, SISPEC Charlie, 35 SCE Bravo Company)
2010-present: Singapore Management University (School of Information Systems)

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