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[Kagus]

But maybe not in that order.

[Strife26]

It gets really creeps if you switch the verbs around.


For paradoxes, who can forget the classic Catch 22?

There was only one catch and that was Catch-22, which specified that a concern for one's own safety in the face of dangers that were real and immediate was the process of a rational mind. Orr was crazy and could be grounded. All he had to do was ask; and as soon as he did, he would no longer be crazy and would have to fly more missions. Orr would be crazy to fly more missions and sane if he didn't, but if he was sane he had to fly them. If he flew them he was crazy and didn't have to; but if he didn't want to he was sane and had to.

[qwertyuiopas]

Not quite, but try to imagine nonexistance.
Or, if your mind was transfered to a computer, though there would be no change to an observer, do you cease to exist, regardless of a soul? And by you, I mean the you that sees a computer screen with text at the moment. Does the you get transfered(proving the existance of a soul, maybe?), or is a new, identical one created and the old one terminated? Do you have the same issue if the brain is kept alive and transfered one neuron at a time?

OR, try to prove the existance or lack of existance of God from this starting point:
Considering a linear timeline and a nonlinear(branch at every possibility) timeline, and that in infinite time(chance breaks entropy at a nonzero rate, right?), someone will create a device that destroys all branches of the timeline. This proves either the impossibility of such technology, that the universe does not follow an infinite branching timeline, or that a omnicient being exists outside of all possibility(possibly created in an unlikely branch, but then split off of it) that is benevolent enough in the sense of preserving all possibility by cutting timelines leading to such technology.

Bonus question: Extend it to prove or disprove the existance of free will.

[zchris13]

Or does God just take that timeline, and stop everything dead the moment before the world is destroyed, and start riffing the apocalypse from there.

Or can you even touch the alternate realities? Are they severed from ours? Is the foundation of your argument sound?

[Strife26]

It'd cause an instant split in all the time lines. There'd have to be one where it doesn't work, and one for every possible iteration of how it does work.

[eerr]

it seems to me energy only moves forward with time, not back.
also, entering a black hole as a worm hole is absurd, because a black hole is at the very least, as heavy as a medium star.

a star that will crush(and maybe burn) you to death on the impact, thousands of miles from your destination.

ignoring weather or not there actually is such a thing as a wormhole that allows inter dimensional travel.

[chaoticag]

If you cannot go back in time and kill your grandfather, then what about going forward in time and getting killed by your grandson? How does that workout? What if your grandson had to be restrained because he'd kill you, but because you didn't get killed wouldn't be restrained?

[Mr Tk]

Time Travel: A Writer's Guide to the Real Science of Plausible Time Travel

This book (which I recommend even for people who are not going to write science fiction) covers many MANY different ways of time traveling, and also all the different effects it would have.

The problem with time travel is that all our knowledge is based off maths and assumptions. While the maths may be accurate given what we know, it doesn't always give us the answer things for things which we haven't found out about yet.

Multi-verse, wormholes, space cones, space cylinders, telephones, rivers, grandfathers and flies. There as many theories about this as stones on the beach.

Personally I like the Legacy of Kain idea of time, that we are like a stone in a river, that it doesn't matter where we are in the river, it will just keep on flowing, same as ever.

[cerapa]

If you cannot go back in time and kill your grandfather, then what about going forward in time and getting killed by your grandson? How does that workout? What if your grandson had to be restrained because he'd kill you, but because you didn't get killed wouldn't be restrained?

Simple, nothing happens. There is no paradox here, just you getting killed by your grandson.

For there to be a paradox, you would need to SEE the future.

[LegoLord]

Actually, I've had a few ideas about time travel myself (never heard them from anywhere else, at least.  Dunno if it's been said before).

I think traveling to the past - if time travel is possible at all - could easily work, so long as you neither A) went the intention to change the past, and B) decide to change something after finding yourself there, or C) do something other than the previous two that would prevent you from wanting or being able to go back in time.

[Christes]

If you cannot go back in time and kill your grandfather, then what about going forward in time and getting killed by your grandson? How does that workout? What if your grandson had to be restrained because he'd kill you, but because you didn't get killed wouldn't be restrained?

Simple, nothing happens. There is no paradox here, just you getting killed by your grandson.

For there to be a paradox, you would need to SEE the future.

Actually, the real issue is: would you even have a grandson?  If he was conceived before you left ... simple, there is no paradox.  If not, how did he get conceived?  You left the timeline when you travelled forward.

[zchris13]

You are assuming that we do not already have kids. Which you cannot do.

EDIT: D'OH!!

[Christes]

You are assuming that we do not already have kids. Which you cannot do.

If he was conceived before you left ... simple, there is no paradox.

[Sensei]

Schrodinger's Cat, anyone? I believe it was he (Schrodinger, not the breeding menace) that coined the term 'paradox', which of course is something that cannot exist in reality, proving the theory in question wrong.

[Lord Dakoth]

Anyone familiar with the <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DfPeprQ7oGc>Double Slit Experiment?[/url]

Yes, I know Dr. Quantum is tacky, but he explains it so much better than Wikipedia.