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Why Exactly Is It Bad To Meet Yourself In The Past?

Joined
Mar 2, 2012
So if you go back in time say 1 year and you meet yourself, what would happen? Why is it imperative that you never meet yourself in the past?
 
Joined
Dec 23, 2011
Time travel to the past is paradoxical in general; I really don't think there's anything exceptionally paradoxical about meeting a past version of yourself though. Heck, in Back to the Future, part 2, Biff, Doc and Jennifer all met past versions of themselves and the universe was fine. :P
 

Kuddlesnot

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Southern California
It depends on a million things, and it depends on how you view time travel. Two common thought processes are:

1) When you go and meet yourself in the past you create a new timeline - where that meeting set events in motion down another path, and it becomes an alternate universe. The universe where you initially traveled from (this one) would remain unaffected, as it still exists and all that happened was the timelines split.

2) All timelines are interconnected - you go in the past and step on a butterfly, suddenly a whole species is extinct or some other drastic effect like that. You would disappear - this person right now who traveled in the past - because that very meeting of yourself and your past self led to different decisions being made by your past self and you would not be the same person at the same place. However, this also means that if you were visited by yourself in the past, you are here now, so you are the current timeline, and you should go back in the past in order to keep it the same. Because if you didn't, then the decisions your past self would make would change, and everything would be different.

It is much more complicated than this, and no one is sure exactly what would happen (whether alternate timelines, interconnected timelines, or even just everything ceases to exist due to the paradox)

It is less about meeting yourself in the past, its about traveling in the past at all. But you would directly affect you own timeline if you meet with yourself. Or maintain it, as you have already met with yourself. See what I'm getting at?
 

Krazy4Krash

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What a good time to bring this up. I just finished watching Back to the Future II less than ten minutes ago. :P

I think it's just because it would cause a change of events that should off never occurred. As in, a new timeline split that shouldn't happen, because the future would be different. Not necessarily in a bad case, just not the preferred 'normal' flow of events.
 
Joined
Jan 29, 2012
Location
United Kingdom
Well, if you go back in time and meet yourself then something about your life in the past has changed. It may not seem like much at the time but it could change past you's entire thought process which would change present you's entire thought process. Unless, you're supposed to do something amazingly special in your life though I'd say it really only personally affects you.
 

TwilightDeku

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If you go back and meet yourself in the past... then you will have to make like Nintendo and create a split timeline. One where you did not meet yourself in the past and one where you did. This is exactly why time travel should not be created. WAY too many paradoxes... come to think of it I am VERY curious about what would happen if we actually made a paradox in the real world.... would the universe explode? Would it be impossible because some random thing would always stop us? Would the universe get a top hat and start tap dancing? We shall never know.
 

Turo602

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First off, that would be impossible because time travel is impossible. But let's say you "do" go back in time and see yourself...how is that gonna work exactly? I mean, you can't exist twice in the same world. A more logical way of seeing this (although still impossible) is that when you go back in time, you can only go as far back as your age lets you. You're simply reversing time and not literally traveling because that's just absurd.
 

Ventus

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First off, that would be impossible because time travel is impossible. But let's say you "do" go back in time and see yourself...how is that gonna work exactly? I mean, you can't exist twice in the same world. A more logical way of seeing this (although still impossible) is that when you go back in time, you can only go as far back as your age lets you. You're simply reversing time and not literally traveling because that's just absurd.

This. I mean, time travel sounds like a cool concept, but you yourself and the world around you are simply one. There aren't multiple copies, and timelines do not exist for the simple fact that I will always be me.

Now, *if* time TRAVEL were possible, I guess the problem is that you'd simply cause a paradox. Let's put this into video game terms. Let's say RE6 Leon travels back in time to RE2 Raccoon City. What'll happen if the RPD sees Leon old and young? What would Claire do? How would Ada react (sensually, I suppose, because she is a dirty lying cheat)? Paradoxes just don't work well.
 

Johnny Sooshi

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First off, that would be impossible because time travel is impossible. But let's say you "do" go back in time and see yourself...how is that gonna work exactly? I mean, you can't exist twice in the same world. A more logical way of seeing this (although still impossible) is that when you go back in time, you can only go as far back as your age lets you. You're simply reversing time and not literally traveling because that's just absurd.

Well....not exactly. See what you're talking about is more of a time reversal and not time travel. If you could reverse time you'd simply do this. You'd go back to a specific point in time. Time travel literally opens up a parallel universe that would be directly linked to the original via the time traveling device or method.

A parallel universe exists when ANYTHING happens. Basically every single movement, every choice, every single THING can create a parallel universe. Think of the study of entropy in chemistry. S represents randomness and according to the second law of thermodynamics the universes entropy is constantly increasing. This logic can be applied to just about any thing. So let's apply it to the idea of a parallel universes. Based on a thing that happens entropy increases. Because I woke up at 6AM this morning I contributed, if only a little bit, to the entropy of the universe. Most of the entropy in the universe can't be controlled. I don't have an estimate but if you look at the 6 billion people on earth compared to the vast enormity of the universe I'd say over 99% of entropy in the universe is uncontrollable.

Now that I've discussed the universe I'll relate it to the idea of time travel. Time travel is directly linked to parallel universes. If time travel were possible it would basically be just another choice and open up another infinite amount of choices that could lead to more parallel universes. Thus it would do nothing more than what it was meant to do. However the possibilities of opening up a noticeably different parallel universe would rise quite a bit. This is easily apparent by the relative weirdness of two of yourself that would exist at the same time. Not only is this awkward but the both of you would lead completely different lives since you now have that possibility.

I know that these ideas are REALLY tough to follow and understand and probably harder to swallow but I believe that what would happen.
A good relation to these ideas would be movies such as Back to the Future, Star Trek (the 2009 release), and Donny Darko as well as studying both entropy and Schrodinger's cat. So that's about it. I'd also be more than willing to clarify things since some of you are more than likely to ask for it.
 

Turo602

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Well....not exactly. See what you're talking about is more of a time reversal and not time travel. If you could reverse time you'd simply do this. You'd go back to a specific point in time. Time travel literally opens up a parallel universe that would be directly linked to the original via the time traveling device or method.

A parallel universe exists when ANYTHING happens. Basically every single movement, every choice, every single THING can create a parallel universe. Think of the study of entropy in chemistry. S represents randomness and according to the second law of thermodynamics the universes entropy is constantly increasing. This logic can be applied to just about any thing. So let's apply it to the idea of a parallel universes. Based on a thing that happens entropy increases. Because I woke up at 6AM this morning I contributed, if only a little bit, to the entropy of the universe. Most of the entropy in the universe can't be controlled. I don't have an estimate but if you look at the 6 billion people on earth compared to the vast enormity of the universe I'd say over 99% of entropy in the universe is uncontrollable.

Now that I've discussed the universe I'll relate it to the idea of time travel. Time travel is directly linked to parallel universes. If time travel were possible it would basically be just another choice and open up another infinite amount of choices that could lead to more parallel universes. Thus it would do nothing more than what it was meant to do. However the possibilities of opening up a noticeably different parallel universe would rise quite a bit. This is easily apparent by the relative weirdness of two of yourself that would exist at the same time. Not only is this awkward but the both of you would lead completely different lives since you now have that possibility.

I know that these ideas are REALLY tough to follow and understand and probably harder to swallow but I believe that what would happen.
A good relation to these ideas would be movies such as Back to the Future, Star Trek (the 2009 release), and Donny Darko as well as studying both entropy and Schrodinger's cat. So that's about it. I'd also be more than willing to clarify things since some of you are more than likely to ask for it.

Yes, I said time reversal because I've already put the idea of time travel down because it's physically impossible. No explanation can ever prove it right. Until someone makes a "time machine" and it actually works, then I'll be proven wrong. But until then, time travel can't work. I used the idea of time reversal because it's not as ridiculous as time travel, although still very impossible. Time is nothing, it's simply a man made concept in which we live by in order to stay organized. Other than that, time doesn't really exist. Therefore, we can't do anything with it.
 

CCG <3 Zelda

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If this happened, wouldn't I (me in 2011) remember meeting myself (me in 2012)? With that theory, it will never happen
 

Johnny Sooshi

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Yes, I said time reversal because I've already put the idea of time travel down because it's physically impossible. No explanation can ever prove it right. Until someone makes a "time machine" and it actually works, then I'll be proven wrong. But until then, time travel can't work. I used the idea of time reversal because it's not as ridiculous as time travel, although still very impossible. Time is nothing, it's simply a man made concept in which we live by in order to stay organized. Other than that, time doesn't really exist. Therefore, we can't do anything with it.

I agree that there is no method yet but I see time reversal and time travel (at least to the past) as almost equal things in terms of impossibility. However if you look at time as nothing more than a relative idea you get space. Based on space-time continuum theories we could theoretically time travel via the multiverse. This would be done by finding a universe in which time is behind. Say you wanted to go time travel backwards 2 hours. You would have to look through the multiverse till you found a universe that was perfectly the same as ours except for the fact that it was 2 hours behind. This is much more possible than reversing time where you would literally be rewinding time. You could possibly do something different but you'd have kill off yourself in that universe and then hide the body well enough because if it was discovered there'd be some really serious consequences (I read a manga that used this theory. It's called Marai Nikki AKA Future Diary). Now the process to getting to another universe that I am familiar with based on theory and movies/books (the latter two of which are not so reliable) involves the ability to use some sort of vessel (it can be anything, even you as yourself) to travel at light speed and the entrance into a wormhole. Once in you can, theoretically, go to any universe.
 

Turo602

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I agree that there is no method yet but I see time reversal and time travel (at least to the past) as almost equal things in terms of impossibility. However if you look at time as nothing more than a relative idea you get space. Based on space-time continuum theories we could theoretically time travel via the multiverse. This would be done by finding a universe in which time is behind. Say you wanted to go time travel backwards 2 hours. You would have to look through the multiverse till you found a universe that was perfectly the same as ours except for the fact that it was 2 hours behind. This is much more possible than reversing time where you would literally be rewinding time. You could possibly do something different but you'd have kill off yourself in that universe and then hide the body well enough because if it was discovered there'd be some really serious consequences (I read a manga that used this theory. It's called Marai Nikki AKA Future Diary). Now the process to getting to another universe that I am familiar with based on theory and movies/books (the latter two of which are not so reliable) involves the ability to use some sort of vessel (it can be anything, even you as yourself) to travel at light speed and the entrance into a wormhole. Once in you can, theoretically, go to any universe.

They're both equally impossible, but one sounds less ridiculous than the other.

And did you just say that looking through multiveres' is more possible than reversing time? Really? None of them are possible, dude. They're all just theories, no facts. I also wouldn't take anything from comics, movies, cartoons, manga, and so on, into consideration because...I mean, really?
 

Johnny Sooshi

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a Taco Bell dumpster
They're both equally impossible, but one sounds less ridiculous than the other.

And did you just say that looking through multiveres' is more possible than reversing time? Really? None of them are possible, dude. They're all just theories, no facts. I also wouldn't take anything from comics, movies, cartoons, manga, and so on, into consideration because...I mean, really?

Like I said there is theory as well.

Let's agree to disagree and never speak of this again.
 

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