Another Breakthrough In Late Night Theoretical Physics

[bloodyrosemccoy]

Embrace Your Geekness Day (Amelia sez: And every day.)
Fast of Tammuz (Jewish)
Gruntled Workers Day
Feast of Lanterns (Japan)

 

Scene: The Living Room, The Treehouse.  Amelia and the Dude are having a late-night discussion on the narrative ramifications of time-travel, and how easy it is to get tangled up in the arrow of time.* The conversation wanders toward variations of the predestination paradox. 
 

Amelia: … so Sisko had to take the place of the historical figure he had gotten killed, and he appeared in the history books. So in a later episode somebody was reading that part of history and remarked upon the guy’s resemblance to Sisko.

 

The Dude:  Yeah, but how come the history books always change after the person goes through time?  Wouldn’t it have changed before?

 

Amelia: And you’d see yourself in the history book, and know you had to go back in time at some point?

 

The Dude: Yeah, and every time you’d read it, you’d be like, “I really have to get around to that at some point.”  I mean, what if you didn’t?

 

Amelia: Or what if you saw you were going to do it, and because you saw that you resolved not to, just to screw with predestination? And succeeded in not doing it? Wouldn’t that remove your reason for not doing it in the first place?

 

The Dude: Jeezus! I think we just made some sort of mirror image of the grandfather paradox!

 

 

*What? Doesn’t everybody?

Comments

[prodigal.livejournal.com]

The reason it doesn't change before you make the alteration to the past is that, until you reach the breakpoint between how things were and how things are about to were, you're in the old timeline where things always were the were.

When you make the fundamental change, you replace the were with the about to were, and you (and those who, like you, were in the changepoint nexus) get shifted into the about to were's timeline.

[luinmir.livejournal.com]

Late-night discussions about theoretical physics are the best.

[mile-high-death.livejournal.com]

Stibbons: What if you step on an ant that in some way prevents your birth
Arch-chancellor: then I wasn’t born to step on the ant thus problem solved!
(Paraphrased quote}

[chibicharibdys.livejournal.com]

I have in fact had that conversation with my brothers almost to that exact wording. The nature of a paradox being, of course, that it can't be solved.

[(Anonymous)]

I read that today is National Nude Day too.
~Liz

[gwalla.livejournal.com]

If you're really interested in this topic, Justin B. Rye has a good essay on sci-fi chronophysics.

[http://users.livejournal.com/_wastrel/]

We just watched the "Cause and Effect" episode of TNG earlier today. As you can imagine we have this kind of conversation all the time. XD