Time Travel Paradox

[Zenn3k]

Without Stalin, its likely the Bolsheviks would not have gained power within the Soviet Government. This would have made the country vastly weaker militarily.

...except, you know, that the bolsheviks were already in full power years before Stalin nicked the throne. Have you ever heard of Lenin?

It was under Stalin the country became an industrial powerhouse...without him there, they would have never done that, hence, likely been run over by the Nazi army.

Oh yes, because without Stalin, no industrial development would EVER have taken place! Really, not a single russian leader during all those years wanted industrialisation, it was exclusively Stalin, noone else!

Sure, the weather played a role in the Nazi's failed Invasion, but once the Soviets were able to muster their military, they were unstoppable.

Their military? You mean it wasn't just Stalins bollocks that did the whole job?

Without Stalin in power, its likely the Nazi would have rolled into Moscow nearly unchallenged.

You know, Napoleon did that. You know what happened then? Fuck all. Nothing whatsoever. The russians just let the french freeze to death in Moscow, then mopped them up once they were too frozen and starved to resist. What, you think all it takes to conquer the Sovjet Union is to take Moscow?

Learn some history yourself before you say such stupid things.

...says the guy who thinks the one and only reason the Sovjet Union, the single largest country in the entire world at the time, wasn't conquered in a few months was because of one single individual.

I bet you're one of those people who thinks the CSA would've won the american civil war if only they hadn't lost at Gettysburg?

God I hate people who quote like you just did. Its really pointless.

I'm just gonna link you to this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Stalin

I'm right, you're wrong, deal with it.

Stalin MADE the USSR into an Industrial Power House, before then it was farm land.

Assuming someone else would have done it, is rather presumptuous.

Without having been turned into a industrial power, the USSR wouldn't have had the military power to compete with the Nazis.

As far as Lenin and the bolsheviks go, true, but Stalin was a major part of that revolution in the first place. Its possible than Lenin might not have ever taken power himself without Stalin's existence.

Regardless. Stalin was the reason for the military strength of the USSR during the Period of World War 2, without him, the Nazi's would have either ignored Russia completely, or taken it easily, either way, the Nazi's wouldn't have been fighting on two fronts, and likely would have won WW2. Least we forget it was the USSR that took Berlin and accounted for the majority of the damage dealt to the Nazi army. By the time D-day occurred, Nazi Germany was already well on its way to losing.

 

[Veylon]

Ah. Back to time non-existent time paradoxes, are we?

Without nitpicking every detail of World War II, I think it's worth pointing out that the 30's were so volatile that even the broad strokes could easily have been different. What if it was a left-wing party that had led Germany against the allies? Or merely a normal right-wing party uninterested in world order? A Britain or France focused on dive bombers - or an early adoption of anti-tank weaponry - might have given us cause to remember the conflict as no more than the "Second Franco-Prussian War". What if the Soviets had eagerly jumped onto the Nazis backs while they were busy fighting in France? I kind of wonder what sort of outlook America would have today if the we hadn't fought a major war since 1917.

 

[mesoforte]

The Doctor explains this in two ways, first off, some events in time are time locked and cannot be changed, these are generally large events that would cause too many problems if they were undone, like the Dalek-Timelord war or possibly, WWII.

The second is that when you are traveling, the knowledge that you have and the events that you cause are now your existence. So for example, you would be aware of the changes, but everyone else wouldn't be in the future.


So in summary, Hitler probably couldn't be killed because WWII is time locked and even if you could kill him, you would still remember the atrocities committed, but everyone else wouldn't.

Wibbly Wobbly Timey Wimey


There, I just explained time.

Also Reavers. I can't find a good clip of reavers. Eat away at whatever causes a paradox until the paradox is resolved.

 

[legendp]

I heard the thoery that if you went back and changed the time line it would split off and create another reality within wich you then exist

 

[mesoforte]

Ah. Back to time non-existent time paradoxes, are we?

Without nitpicking every detail of World War II, I think it's worth pointing out that the 30's were so volatile that even the broad strokes could easily have been different. What if it was a left-wing party that had led Germany against the allies? Or merely a normal right-wing party uninterested in world order? A Britain or France focused on dive bombers - or an early adoption of anti-tank weaponry - might have given us cause to remember the conflict as no more than the "Second Franco-Prussian War". What if the Soviets had eagerly jumped onto the Nazis backs while they were busy fighting in France? I kind of wonder what sort of outlook America would have today if the we hadn't fought a major war since 1917.

A lot worse tech and economy-wise. The destruction and rebuilding after WWII pretty much made the monolith that was the American economy afterwards.

 

[Shoggoth2588]

Is it string theory that says for every point in every day for every person, each decision said person makes kind of splits reality. There is the reality in which they made that choice (say, by eating that pack of pop-tarts) and the alternate reality in which they didn't.

I think the same would apply to time travel. If you go back in time and change something, you continue living on knowing that the reality you came from had a Hitler, had a WWII, had a Holocost. When you get to your new timeline, that doesn't stop you from remembering the old time line. You know that you went backwards in time and killed Hitler but when you return "home" you may find that you're a stranger in a strange land. You may not officially even exist anymore. Also, when you try telling people about Hitler, the Holocost and, WWII they'll think you're crazy either because everyone knows WWII started in 1947 when Japan launched an armada of walking battle tanks (or something like that).

 

[The Virgo]

Why do people always reference killing Hilter in relation to time travel? I can think of some 'worse' people, Stalin, Khan... Michael Bay. In all seriousness, humans cannot bear our minds around time travel, its just how we process things. Because whenever I start up a talk, it always ends up turning into a subject about singularities.
Yeah we know how to do time travel, exceed or match light speed. But the conseqences to killing Michael Bay or whatever are out of our reach.

While killing Michael Bay would benefit everyone...actually the killing of Stalin would have likely causes Hitler to win the 2nd World War.

He would have easily invaded and conquered Russia, and not being attacked from both sides, would have probably made landfall in the United States sometime around 1949.

Agreed ... for the most part.

Yes, without Stalin, Hitler would have probably rolled right into Moscow, since there wouldn't have been Stalingrad ... well, there would have been a city there, but the reason why it was so important for the Russians to hold the city was because for the city named after the leader to have fallen into the hands of enemy would bad for morale.

So without Stalin, the battle of Stalingrad would have probably been another city battle while the Russian army fortified in Moscow.

However, I doubt Hitler would have invaded the United States. It is totally impossible for a nation whose (according to http://www.tacitus.nu/historical-atlas/population/germany.htm) population in 1939 was 8.7 million to occupy a nation the size as the US. And Japan wouldn't have been able to be of much help either to hold a nation several hundred thousand miles in area. It is totally impossible.

 

[Dr Pyramid Head]

I would say that if you caused such a thing to happen, you then travel in a time stream not of your own world. Because of the new event you live in a parallel dimension where all the inhabitants of said world can't remember what happened on your world, only theirs, since it didn't actually happen.
Think of time as a river. The water flows in a direction and all the people of a stream travel along it. There is no way to travel the other way or cross land to another stream.
And say that there are rocks in those streams. And that you, as one of the inhabitants of the neverending stream, can switch to any point within your own stream, but not any other.
So you travel backwards until you meet a point which is littered with a massive amount of rocks. You remember how the placement of rocks there caused the stream to move. And you decide to interfere with the placement, changing the way the stream moves. There a new stream is created and leads somewhere else. YOu follow it, and you realize that eveyone you know (And everyone you don't) respond to your question as to what happened in a drastically different way, as this is a cause of what you did.
So you created a reality where only you remember two different outcomes of a situation, whereas the original inhabitants of each dimension only rememeber their version of events. So unless you change the situation to fit the exact version fo what happened in your world (Which is nigh-impossible, I speculate)you cannot return.


The rocks represent the certain criteria that effect the outcome. The change of these rocks (Or criteria) create a different outcome, resulting in two streams.
What a horrible metaphor I have made.

 

[Grospoliner]

I was thinking the other day after watching the new Torchwood (and wondering when the new Doctor Who will come out) about time travel, when I thought of something: If you go back in time for the purpose of changing an event, that would create a paradox.
Say if you do back in time to kill Hitler before the Second World War, and you succeed, WWII is averted, many lives are saved, doesn't this create a paradox? In the future of that time, Hitler died before he did anything historically significant, and since he would have no historical importance, you would have had no reason to kill him, or likely even know of him, so you wouldn't go back in time, and he wouldn't be assassinated.
If you go forward in time, for any reason (unless someone came back in time, and told you to change a future event) this wouldn't happen, as it wouldn't change the present history.

I don't know if this is a particularly original thought, or if I am completely wrong. The scenario above just applies to out known rules of time, not parallel universes, or fixed points in time.

This only creates a paradox if we're functioning within the Copenhagen understanding of quantum physics. In it, all of time and space is deterministic, meaning that once it can be defined entirely at one point, we can then extrapolate in either direction and determine what will happen, as every causal event will have only one outcome. Thus, traveling back in time to kill Hitler, will create a paradox as, should he not exist, you would never have had reason to travel back in time in the first place.

However, the many-worlds interpretation of quantum physics provides a potentially workable resolution to the whole time travel paradox problem. In the MWI understanding, every causal event creates not only the resultant effect you are a part of (your world track), but an infinite number of infinitely diverging alternate world tracks in which every possible outcome for every possible causal event occurs. As such, in MWI, a potential time traveler could indeed travel back in time to kill Hitler without generating a paradox as the actual causal event of killing Hitler would generate an entirely new world track.

The real problem comes when the traveler attempts to return to his own time, at which point a number of possible outcomes could potentially occur. 1) Nothing would change as the traveler returns to his own world track, illustrating the futility of time travel. 2) The traveler would return to a radically altered world track, as if nothing ever happened, and either feel radically out of place or forget anything ever happened. 3) The traveler would be unable to return to his own world track as the physics involved in sundering time and space are woefully complex and require an monumental undertaking of Grecian Divinity scale that even Zeus himself would be hard-pressed to replicate with the most advanced of technology, let alone the pathetic equipment available in World War 2 era Europe.

As to which interpretation of quantum mechanics is correct... Well no one can really say as of yet. There is much conjecture and hypothetical mathematical evidence for both, be they the legendary works of Einstein or the random unpredictable decay of some radioactive isotopes (or the wonderful fun of dual slit electron experiments). So as they say...

"Time will tell... Sooner or later... time will tell."

 

[FalloutJack]

I was thinking the other day after watching the new Torchwood (and wondering when the new Doctor Who will come out) about time travel, when I thought of something: If you go back in time for the purpose of changing an event, that would create a paradox.
Say if you do back in time to kill Hitler before the Second World War, and you succeed, WWII is averted, many lives are saved, doesn't this create a paradox? In the future of that time, Hitler died before he did anything historically significant, and since he would have no historical importance, you would have had no reason to kill him, or likely even know of him, so you wouldn't go back in time, and he wouldn't be assassinated.
If you go forward in time, for any reason (unless someone came back in time, and told you to change a future event) this wouldn't happen, as it wouldn't change the present history.

I don't know if this is a particularly original thought, or if I am completely wrong. The scenario above just applies to out known rules of time, not parallel universes, or fixed points in time.

Well, believe it or not, I actually understand Doctor Who and Torchwood for all its timey-wimeyness. Put simply, our paradox pretty much creates new reality around it, as the universe doesn't die because of one actor's mistake. I support the idea that parallel worlds play out with all possibilities, which is why I'm fairly certain you can't kill yourself with time travel OR be your own grandfather. (Sorry, Fry.) You simply invalidate the universe you were in and your status in it in favor of a different one that's changed around you, foreign to how you remember things.

This is all assuming a Stable Time Loop did not occur.

 

[Aaron Frederick]

Time, it is set in stone. Think about it this way. Lets say that you go back in time to try and... i dont know... Kill Ghandi (i couldnt think of anything else). Because you went back in time, Whatever you did had already happened in the future you were living in beforehand (because it had already happened) Therefore, by traveling in time nothing would change, everything would happen in the exact same way it happened in recorded history because whatever you did that day IS recorded history, BECAUSE IT HAPPENED IN THE PAST! i get so tired of these time travel threads.

EDIT: Also, you may want to stop basing your knowledge of time travel on a fictional TV Program

 

[idodo35]

I don't know if this is a particularly original thought, or if I am completely wrong. The scenario above just applies to out known rules of time, not parallel universes, or fixed points in time.

well its not very original but it is very true...
anyway thats why you can only travel forward!

 

[Karma168]

exactly, its actually...

Damn Ninja'd. Anyway Doctor Who has an mechanic for this; there are fluid and fixed points in time, the fluid ones can be changed but the fixed ones have to happen (see; pompeii episode).

WW2 would likely be fixed, Hitler maybe not. This means you go back kill snd kill Hitler, WW2 would still happen; someone else would just take Hitlers place, someone then goes back to kill him (thus leaving hitler alone) and Hitler takes over. As the timeline changes the target changes. There would be no way to avoid WW2.

 

[Woodsey]

The Doctor explains this in two ways, first off, some events in time are time locked and cannot be changed, these are generally large events that would cause too many problems if they were undone, like the Dalek-Timelord war or possibly, WWII.

The second is that when you are traveling, the knowledge that you have and the events that you cause are now your existence. So for example, you would be aware of the changes, but everyone else wouldn't be in the future.


So in summary, Hitler probably couldn't be killed because WWII is time locked and even if you could kill him, you would still remember the atrocities committed, but everyone else wouldn't.

But that's just in the world of Doctor Who, which lacks almost any semblance of internal logic.

 

[standokan]

My conclusion is parallel dimensions, a paradox creates two streams, one in which the time travel has a effect and one in which it never happened. It's the best I could come up with/

 

[grimmreapervi]

Why isn't anyone considering the laws of conservation?

 

[thejdcole]

500 years ago we thought that the earth was flat. I'm sure in 500 years time people will look back and laugh at our current understanding of space-time.