h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Someone said that the grandfather paradox could only be solved if there were no free will. This clearly isn't a necessity: all we need is that fatalism should hold. The grandfather paradox isn't a problem if we simply accept that there is a fact about the matter about things in the past and future. Think about it this way: if I am going to buy an ice cream tomorrow, we know that I'm not not going to buy an ice cream. If that's a fact, there is a definite sense in which I 'can't' buy an ice cream, but that's just a different sort of can't. It's the sort of can't that says if 2 + 2 = 4 then it can't also be that 2 + 2 =/= 4. So what? That doesn't mean I don't get to choose whether I buy an ice cream or not. All that fatalism says is that I can make a claim *now* that is true or false *now* about something that happens in the future. If we can make the same sorts of claims about the past then yes, you 'can't' kill your grandfather, but that doesn't stop you doing what you choose.

I was replying to BlueGerbil, bit BuffySquirrel simposted me. Too many furry creatures in this thread...

bit = but

btw, there isn't a "grandfather paradox" if we're allowed to have a "figure-8" shaped timeline...

I see.

Doesn't matter whether BlueGerbil and I have anything useful or interesting to contribute.

All that matters is that we're furry and humans are not.

Speciesism yet.

Now don't you just wish you could go back in time and unsay what you said?

Sorry

If it's any help, I'm quite furry at the moment too...

You're forgiven.

Now, what's this figure-8 timeline thingy again?

A leads to B leads to C leads to A.

That's a circle.

Oh yeah-sorry.

It's where the Grandfather paradox exists, but just leads to a period where two timelines run in parallel, with those entities which never interact with the events affected by the paradox carrying on regardless. I've always seen the diagram drawn as a "figure-8", but there's no reason wht it couldn't equally well be drawn as a circle...

Effectively, from the point where the Grandson does or doesn't shoot the Grandfather, up until the point where the difference would be moot (say, when the Sun has gone supernova and vaporised all the matter on the Earth) there are two equally valid realities running in parallel. Some "multiple universe" theories suggest that every "quantum decision" splits off two timelines; this is just a specialised version of those theories.

Our sun isn't massive (massy?) enough to go supernova. Or so I've always been lead to believe.

I can't see how you can have a valid reality in which someone negates his own existence. So what exactly is happening in each of these parallel places?

I hope someone's ordered industrial quantities of painkillers.

Hm, multiple realities. We'd surely never know. Certainly I'd never know!

There might be one (or more) of you who'd know.

But probably they wouldn't be able to tell the others.

Anyone know how to surf the quantum wave?

That's the hole idea of multpiple realities...
Two bodies who share the same space but are unaware of each others existence-Don't say anything Buffysquirrel, I know this is from RD but never the less it's true.

Order resieved, a truck with you 6 tons of aspirins should arrive any day.

You might want to have Holly look at your light bee Arnie, it seems to be malfunctioning.

I agree, we have no idea what our doppelgangers are up to. Maybe they've got the job we've always wanted. Or maybe something's got them!

Hope those aspirins are nut-flavoured.

Maybe they are trying to figure out what their dopplegangers are like.

Meatball-flavoured.

Maybe they are trying to figure out what their dopplegangers are like.

Meatball-flavoured.

Are there two Arnies in this thread?

Meatball-flavoured? MEATBALL-FLAVOURED?

Right, that's it, I'm off to burn your soldiers. Say au revoir to the Armee du Nord!

Where's your guitar?
Fuzz-face!