Time travel

[lordaxil]

I wonder if any scientist has had the nerve to test out the quantum suicide theory.

How would they know it was wrong? (since life or death of observer is not relevant to the issue)

The problem with all these many world interpretations is that they never tell you which one of the multiverses contains the unique sense of consciousness associated with the observer. They attempt to solve one problem by replicating it indefinitely and appealing to a sum over outcomes. Better off with some sort of objective reduction process, which rules out immortality, I'm afraid.

[Claude the Racecar Driving Rockstar Super Sleuth]

...Yes.

My brain hurts.

[hansen mork]

All this time travel talk has reminded me of a wonderful film i saw last week, called Primer. I'd recommend it to any who hasn't already seen it.

[Claude the Racecar Driving Rockstar Super Sleuth]

I borrowed Primer off a friend the other week. I couldn't work out whether it was brilliant or an emporer's new clothes sort of deal.

[SetToStun]

All this time travel talk has reminded me of a wonderful film i saw last week, called Primer. I'd recommend it to any who hasn't already seen it.

As you recommend it, I'm going to see it last week.

[Santa's Boyfriend]

All this time travel talk has reminded me of a wonderful film i saw last week, called Primer. I'd recommend it to any who hasn't already seen it.

As you recommend it, I'm going to see it last week.

Oh, very good.


That film made my head hurt too.

[hansen mork]

All this time travel talk has reminded me of a wonderful film i saw last week, called Primer. I'd recommend it to any who hasn't already seen it.

As you recommend it, I'm going to see it last week.

I know you did, im watching you do it now.

[Frinky]

I borrowed Primer off a friend the other week. I couldn't work out whether it was brilliant or an emporer's new clothes sort of deal.

Brilliant, no question.

Do yourself a favour, though, and don't look up the Primer "timeline" thats on various websites, unless you want the film to be even harder to understand.

I really liked it, though. Excellent example of how you can shoot sci-fi on film and with no budget at all. The prop-man inside me was really taken with thier hardware, had a great look about it. You also don't need to fully understand all the time-travel permutations to enjoy the film. Most of what's on screen can be explained but the film works just as well without you knowing. If you can work it out, well, that's your reward, but it's nice to watch their world falling apart without it having to be shoved in your face.

It actually looks good for what is a very low budget film. I've heard the whole thing cost $7,000 or so.

/derail

[SetToStun]

Oh, very good.

Oi! That said "very droll" earlier - change it back!

[El Unicornio, mang]

SetToStun, I think the theory only applies to YOU, not to anyone else.

But unless the entire multiverse exists just for me - all worlds in it and all possible timelines - it applies to everyone. In which case, if I'm immortal, eventually I'll end up as a million year old man sooner or later (well, in a pecisely defined time, I suppose), which means the same is true of everyone. I would elaborate more, but I fear it will make my brain hurt.

Or you take the view that the universe only exists for you, .

That's kind of how I see it, but not that it only exists for me, only that, if there's no afterlife, it might as well only exist for me because you can only experience the universe yourself, not through anyone else.
Imagine if, say, you had never been born, the universe would still exist, but it might as well not, since you wouldn't be there to know it ever existed, and it is only your own experience which makes things 'exist', even though they are existing for other people.

I'm having a lot of difficulty trying to explain this......

[Dark Sky]

I'm having a lot of difficulty trying to explain this......

Makes sense to me.

Basically what you're saying is that if I wasn't born you wouldn't exist, because everything only exists because I exist.  As in, if I didn't exist, I wouldn't know that anything existed, and ergo it wouldn't as far as I'm concerned.

[Slackboy]

Is this a good time to mention Frank Tipler's Omega Point theory?

[Eight Taiwanese Teenagers]

I can prove that time travel is possible, looky: http://chilled.cream.org/forums/viewtopic.php?p=371246#371246

[Lu tze]

SetToStun, I think the theory only applies to YOU, not to anyone else.

But unless the entire multiverse exists just for me - all worlds in it and all possible timelines - it applies to everyone. In which case, if I'm immortal, eventually I'll end up as a million year old man sooner or later (well, in a pecisely defined time, I suppose), which means the same is true of everyone. I would elaborate more, but I fear it will make my brain hurt.

Or you take the view that the universe only exists for you, .

That's kind of how I see it, but not that it only exists for me, only that, if there's no afterlife, it might as well only exist for me because you can only experience the universe yourself, not through anyone else.
Imagine if, say, you had never been born, the universe would still exist, but it might as well not, since you wouldn't be there to know it ever existed, and it is only your own experience which makes things 'exist', even though they are existing for other people.

I'm having a lot of difficulty trying to explain this......

So there is no future or past necessary. There just needs to be a 'now' and a mind to interpret events 'now'. There was no 'now' before me and there will be no 'now' after me. The quantum me, ie. the particles that I am constructed from exist 'now' but have always existed 'now' but before 'now' they were simply a little less close to each other than 'now'

Anyway that's enough for now. I left the screen on in my lower colon.

[hands cold, liver warm]

yes I've been wondering about what time is. I know what now is, its me sitting in front of my brother's computer. 2 minutes ago I was looking out my window at the lightning (very very frightening). How does that moment 2 minutes ago survive? where does it go? It must survive somewhere if time travel is possible, because how do you travel there if it doesn't exist anymore?

maybe there is a time library into which the universe makes deposits of space every nanosecond, deposits which capture in their sub-particular completeness every moment of everything in the universe. Once we know where the bank is, I can simply say that I want to go to 6.35pm-6.37pm 1984 brookside pub to see myself as a 5 year old playing with timothy the tortoise. That moment, along with all other moments, exists in the time library just waiting for someone to access it.

Plus there is no problem with affecting the past because you're not in the past, you're in a replica or mirror image of the past. In fact, as I'm accessing this moment in my past, the universe is creating a new library section of the present including me visiting my past.

it doesn't seem very likely,

[Dark Sky]

But the idea of "two minutes" is a human invention.  Time doesn't actually exist.

There's just an endless...now.  With a ghostly trail.

[hands cold, liver warm]

Time doesn't actually exist.

so time travel is a bit of non starter then.

actually doesn't time exist for particles? I've read a little bonkers (or quantum) physics and I remember something about how photons* exist in a time loop, oscillating between their past, present and future. This was used to show that time has no direction, it doesn't go forward or back, it just floats around.

maybe time is just a mathematical conceit. maybe not. My hunch says that time does exist, so ner

*are photons particles?

[Bingo Fury]

The problem with all these many world interpretations is that they never tell you which one of the multiverses contains the unique sense of consciousness associated with the observer.

That's a nice turn of phrase there, and it's reminded me, apropos of not very much, of something that used to bother me when I was a kid: if there's a constant creation of multiple worlds brought about by every choice anyone ever makes, then if aliens landed, which Earth would they find themselves on? After all, if they've been in total isolation from us, our decisions wouldn't have affected their multiverse, would it?

Bear in mind I haven't thought about this since I was at school, so haven't explored it with a great deal of rigour.

[Suttonpubcrawl]

http://timetraveler.ytmnd.com/

[TheWizard]

Safety not guaranteed!

[Santa's Boyfriend]

So it was him that shot Kennedy!

[Adrian Brezhnev]

Here's a centrict theory for you that I came up with: You never die.

Think about it. How many of you have died? None

That's a very good point. Another way of putting it is to ask yourself why is it that every time you go to a funeral, it is someone else's.

Is this a good time to mention Frank Tipler's Omega Point theory?

Blimey! That really is quite something. Invented by a pretentious French Jesuit with the even more pretentious name Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, and introducing concepts such as metamorphosing from the biosphere into the noosphere and transhumanists, that look a bit like this:

One thing that occurred to me the other day is this- we talk of there being one time dimension, and 3, 9, 10, or more space dimensions.... but is there any reason why there should be only one time dimension?