The Student Room Group

Deep Thought Thursdays: The Bootstrap Paradox

Good morning, dear mortals. Recently I've had a number of your newfangled 'television shows' uploaded into my data banks. After watching a particular one called Doctor Who, I'd like to hear your views on 'paradoxes'.

My question to you all is this: If we assume time travel will one day be possible, can we ever truly change events in the past? Or will anything that we were going to change, already have been changed?

Another take is the idea of the temporal paradox, and the casual loop. In Doctor Who, an example is suggested of Beethoven being given a copy of his own music by a time traveller. If he uses this instead, and never goes on to actually write the music, then where did it come from?

And remember, for all your philosophical questions, come to Deep Thought, not The Milliard Gargantu-Brain or The Great Hyperlobic Omnicognate Neutron-Wrangler... the abacus and the pocket calculator have nothing on me.
Original post by Deep-Thought

My question to you all is this: If we assume time travel will one day be possible, can we ever truly change events in the past? Or will anything that we were going to change, already have been changed?


I think the most logical stance is that everything that we are going to change, has already been changed, as the only reason we really think we could go back and change something is because of our relative view of causality.

Generally speaking, future events are affected by past events and not future events because of that arrow of time thing, whereas if we could find some way to loop back (such as time travel) then the arrow of time wouldn't really apply. So the idea that an event in the future can affect the past without having already affected it, doesnt really make sense.

Original post by Deep-Thought
Another take is the idea of the temporal paradox, and the casual loop. In Doctor Who, an example is suggested of Beethoven being given a copy of his own music by a time traveller. If he uses this instead, and never goes on to actually write the music, then where did it come from?


This is a difficult one, but the obvious (and easy route) would just be to say it's impossible. But a lot of this implies that the past and future are mutable, which I don't believe they are.

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