NAME: Wolfgang Geissler
E-MAIL: wgeissler@lineone.net
Dear Chuck,
I received your message this morning advising me that you are back in business.
I tried to reply on your website but unfortunately it did not seem to work. (Member Form Email
There was an error while processing your form input:
(This dreaded Error Message came up)
I read your reply, which, as your essay, which prompted me in the first instance to post my own opinions (SEE TIMETRAVEL RESPONSES PAGE 34), was very interesting.
I go along, with your analysis, that "I talk subjectively", how the world would react upon my return. But there is more to it. (I will come back to "subjectivity" a little bit later.)
I said that it is harmless but inconclusive to travel into the future and gather information and that predictions of the "future" therefore CANNOT exist. Let me explain:
Let’s imagine there are two scientists and friends, Jim and Joe. The year is 2003 and the date, today’s, the 13th November 2003.
Jim and Joe know about the Theory of Relativity and have designed a spacecraft, which can fly at near the speed of light. Joe decides to have go, while Jim stays at home, and travels for 4 years at near speed of light and having calculated (there is actually a formula, < t’ = t/Ö 1 - vsquare/csquare > but I am too lazy to work anything out, so I am just inventing a result) that through time dilation 2000 years will have passed.
So Joe sets off on a 4 year round trip. On the 13th November 4003 he returns to earth, biologically only 4 years older but an earth 2000 years older.
He knows that his pal Jim will have died a long, long time ago, there are no illusions there, but he is curious about the how and when, so he finds something like a 4003 style library.
He learns about his own adventure, it’s in the history books, how people were proud of him, but he equally learns, as time went on, they just have forgotent about him. Well, 2000 years is a long time.
He equally learns that Jim had died in 2010 of a massive heart attack.
Jim, on the other hand waves bye, bye to his friend Joe on 13th November 2003 and by 2007, 4 years later, he knows he, Joe, has (WILL HAVE) arrived at is destination in 4003. Not knowing anything about Joe and what Joe has learned in 4003, and not likely to get any messages back from the "future", Jim lives happily ever after until he drops dead with an unexpected heart attack 3 years later in 2010.
"Tablets of Stone", "Predestination"? Most certainly NOT!
Now Joe in 4003 meets some eggheads who have just invented a Time Machine and they invite him to try it out. Being homesick to the old days and missing his pal Jim, he says yes, sets the co-ordinates to 2007, he is after all a clever guy, who takes into account that his biological clock has moved on by 4 years, and zzzzzzap, presses the button!
Imagine the surprise when Jim meets Joe again. Imagine also the hours Jim is spending listening to Joe’s experience of the future until Joe comes to the tricky part. Well, it is never easy to tell someone that in three years time he is going to die of a heart attack, but he told him. The effect was immediate. Jim stopped smoking, he was a 60 a day smoker, started to take exercise and loose weight, saw his doctor, who referred him to a specialist, who recommended a consultant, who did a triple bypass operation on Jim’s heart. Full success. Last time I looked, he was still going strong in 2021.
"Tablets of Stone", "Predestination"? Obviously not. Joe saw what did happen from his vantage point of view in Jim’s future. But CLEARLY it is only ONE of many futures for Jimboy.
On Joe’s return, Jim learnt about what for him could be a potential outcome, something that "might happen". He took actions and did not die.
Had Joe cared to re-visit 4003, he would undoubtedly found a different world to the one he had seen only a short time ago.
One point, which you have already touched, is that Joe can only return to 13th November 2003, but not before that date, without encountering the anomalies you have described in your essay.
I have not forgotten to come back to "subjectivity".
I said: You will only get a "one way" ticket if you travel into the past. And it cannot be your OWN past, otherwise you could be exposed to the paradox. Therefore you cannot return again to your own world.
I am married and have two children. It is obvious that I cannot take everyone with me on my time travels. This therefore means that I want to keep the risk as low as possible. What risk? The risk of never seeing my family again.
Exactly that would happen if I went on a journey into the past. On my return to the present I would not meet them again, since I will be in a different time line, and they, whom I have left behind, would neither see or hear from me again, since they could not even receive "messages" from the past, which was never theirs.
It is a one way ticket as far as my world, with my family in it, is concerned. Of course this is a very subjective view but it matters to me what, subjectively speaking, my world contains.
I wish, it were not so, therefore I hope you could debunk me on that.
Kind regards
Wolfgang.
Hi Wolfgang.
I appreciate your reply and apologize for not getting this posted up sooner.
Firstly, we all have this brain problem of only looking at time linearally. Even if we can picture the branching/merging of timelines (realities), it's all still so very hard to grasp implications of manipulating time.
Here's my opinion. You are objectively looking at Joe's reality and at Jim's reality separately. The scenario that you speak of, however, is only the experiences of Joe. It's never the experiences of Jim (just your objective observation). Each time Joe travels in (manipulates) time he is creating/changing his own existence (worldline/timeline). It is his reality and his only. Everything that you speak of is possible for a timetraveler. Jim dies/Jim doesn't die/Jim never existed. The whole "ride" is a totally free will experience for the timetraveler (Joe). There is no determinism (Even Stephen Hawking has withdrawn his "Chronological Protection Conjecture"). Nothing is set in "Tablets of Stone" as you expressed it. And that makes my argument for the pure subjectiveness of the experience solid. A timetraveler is truly the master of reality-his/her reality, which is all that there is. Nothing really matters, because it can be changed by a timetraveler. Jim is just part of Joe's experience. In a sense, Jim was created just to be a part of Joe's reality. And the reverse is also true. Quantum Theory relies on the observer or the act of observing. Is the cat dead or alive? Is the photon a wave or a particle? Does the electron even exist before it is observed?
I too, am a family man and can appreciate your concern. I realize that your very first instance of timetravel would make the "return trip" to "your present" in "your timeline" unattainable. Unless, of course, unbeknownst to you (at the time), your "present timeline" WAS one which you had timetraveled into the past (and it was already accounted for in played events of that particular reality).
If you can get past the objective viewpoint and look at it subjectively (as it surely must be), then you will realize that you will disappear in that ONE TIMELINE ONLY out of the infinite possible timelines allowed by the Quantum Theory. Your family will still be there upon your return. The objective argument would be, "But it's not my family, it's a variant version!" I don't consider that right. I consider that you are creating your entire reality "as you go". They are your family. There are just countless versions of them (as there are countless versions of you).
I'll end this the way that I began it: Here's my opinion.
Thanks for the "strain on the brain", my friend.
Chuck
