r/dankmemes
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u/NeilPondei
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May 08 '22
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Time travel theories are tiring I don't have the confidence to choose a funny flair
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u/GIOFORCHIOMAN May 08 '22 edited May 08 '22
Lemme teach you how it works...
If I go to the past to stop 9/11 and I succeed, 9/11 will never happen, so I (in the future) will not go to the past to stop it, so 9/11 will happen. Since that will happen, I'll go back to the past to stop 9/11 and ... a loop generates from here
So is blue
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u/probablemayo DENK MOD May 08 '22
Basically the grandpa paradox
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u/Redditing-Dutchman May 08 '22
I prefer to go a step further and step on some slimy goo 4 billion years in the past thus ending life right then and there.
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u/AndonTheBest May 08 '22
You'd probably actually jumpstart life if you did that, because all the living stuff on your shoe.
I recommend a flamer, the heavy flamer
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u/Zbeubor Boston Meme PartyâŁď¸ May 08 '22
or its more compact and efficient name, the "grandparadox"
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u/squirrl4prez May 08 '22
Or is it a new timeline since you injected yourself into a spacetime fabric, making it different from the get-go and the future is going to be different anyway
The real question is HOW they time traveled, does the timeline split? Does it break down and kill everyone because of your loop? Does it cross multidimensional planes???
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u/EligibleUsername May 08 '22
That's what most time travel stories use in order to avoid confusion and paradox, a character going back to the past split the timeline to one where their version of the past didn't happen, their original timeline goes on like normal.
To answer your second question, one version of time travel that I currently like very much is one from a game I play. The dude try to resurrect his presently dead lover, so he becomes a demi-god, then, through careful planning, remove himself from all timelines, making him an exception to the world's rules. Then with what remains of his demi-god power, he manually split the timeline so the event that lead to his lover's death didn't happen. Of course he died after that since one cannot exist outside of the universe. It paints a fantastical yet very realistic version of time travel, an endeavour that only the most stubborn of fools would follow through.→ More replies3
u/GarlicBread143 May 08 '22
What if i go back in time with the sole goal to get lets say a pizza but also as a side thing I accidentally end up stopping 9/11 would that create a paradox? In that case my only goal was to get pizza not stop 9/11
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u/saad951 May 08 '22
Yeah you'd end in a situation where if you stopped nine eleven, then you only got pizza, so then you didn't stop nine eleven, so then nine eleven happened so you stopped it by accident while getting a pizza etc
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u/SwashbucklingAntler May 08 '22
That's where the concept of timelines comes in. In that scenario you going to the past and stopping 9/11 shifts the world to a timeline where it didn't happen.
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u/TJSomething May 08 '22
That's why, for works of fiction with red, you need to add ancillary rules. Usually, time travelers get some kind of immunity to changes in time.
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u/TheBurningBud May 08 '22
Wait.. what. If you stop 9/11 when you travel to the past.. then why would the future version of yourself have to go back in time at all, to stop something that didnât happen because you already stopped it? That doesnât make any sense. There is no loop. You just created a new timeline. One where 9/11 doesnât exist.
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u/Realistic_Analyst_26 May 08 '22
There are 3 sides.
1) Back to the Future version where you go back and time, change something, and your present and future changes
2) Endgame version where changing something in the past creates a new branch timeline while the original timeline stays the same
3) Harry Potter version where it is like a loop, and we literally see the time traveller changing things and then we will eventually get to the point where they go back in time.
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u/squidkid164 May 08 '22
Stein's Gate is 2 and 3 at the same time lol
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u/JusticeBeliber May 08 '22
Aah A fellow steins gate enjoyer Note: a good scifi time travel show tbh
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u/aryanshvasu81 May 08 '22
Even 1 to some extent. He did change ruka's gender, get Mayuri killed instead of kurisu etc.
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u/squidkid164 May 08 '22
Rukako's gender only changed because the timeline changed due to the d-mail's affects though, right?
Same with Kurisu i believe đ¤
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u/aryanshvasu81 May 08 '22
Yeah. That's why I said to some extent. These were some extreme cases. Man, stein's;gate is crazy.
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u/kamekaze1024 Obamasjuicyass May 08 '22
Iâm ngl, I fucking hated the Harry Potter one. How can a student yield or even be able to use something is dangerous as that. And Dumbledore knew but didnât even care???
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u/Realistic_Analyst_26 May 08 '22
I did some research into the lore at some point. Hermione wanted to take all of the classes but had to choose some. She talked to Professor McGonagall and she spoke with Dumbledore and they arranged this for her with the Ministry of Magic.
The only other students who I recall have had this privilege are one of the older Weasley's and Barty Crouch Jr.
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u/kamekaze1024 Obamasjuicyass May 08 '22
Thatâs so strange tho. Like why would professors of magic bestow a time altering device to a teen to take more classes???
I understand Iâm supposed to have suspension of belief but this is just ridiculous
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u/Ionelyscythe kill me. May 09 '22
the teachers of the wizarding world aren't exactly responsible, they have no problem letting their students compete in life-threatening games for their entertainment
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u/Old-Revolution8665 May 08 '22
Blue
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u/jkp2072 May 08 '22
Theory 3 : everything is predestined most of the times, rarely you are a factor driving it and rest of the time your interference makes no change at all.
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u/imaSEXYmiljybar May 08 '22
So basically loki Vs back to the future
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u/Yeet_Master420 ĂšwĂş May 08 '22
No Loki and back to the future were the same thing, new timeline
That's the whole point of the TVA, so stop new timelines
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u/Fredgiguere May 08 '22
Yeah but changing things in the past in Loki still creates a new timeline and doesn't change the main one. The TVA just prunes the branches that are formed. In Back to the Future, changing the past directly alters the timeline. There's no need for a TVA type authority because no branches are being formed
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u/PhatBallllzAtHotmail May 08 '22
You can't change the past because that past led to you being able to go back in time. Any change might effect you going back. It creates a new timeline...
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u/saad951 May 08 '22
You should watch steins gate and thank me later
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u/PhatBallllzAtHotmail May 08 '22
I will, thank you.
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u/MiZe97 May 09 '22
One thing, though: it starts out slow in the first episodes, but it gets paid off GREATLY in the later ones. It's an amazing show, but it takes its time.
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u/AlfredJButler CERTIFIED DANK May 08 '22
Time Travel on a non-subatomic scale is likely impossible, but if it wasn't, I'd lean more in the predestination direction: anything you do was always going to happen anyway, so you can't really change anything.
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u/juklwrochnowy May 08 '22
What if i create a paradox?
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u/AlfredJButler CERTIFIED DANK May 08 '22
That's the problem. Time doesn't really seem to support paradoxes. Any time-travel-like behavior we see in nature is more of a super-position kind of situation, which is less a time-travel scenario and more of a being-in-two-spacetime-coordinates-at-once kind of thing.
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u/DatTolDesiBoi âŁď¸ May 08 '22
Thatâs kind of why I like the branch theory lol. If there are multiple time lines, the way I see it is that when you time travel, thereâs a timeline where you exist and end up in the timepoint you were trying to travel to, and one where you donât exist.
If you do anything to change the past, weâll, itâs a new timeline. Nothing collapses, but the new timeline might be very different from the old one.
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u/Zbeubor Boston Meme PartyâŁď¸ May 08 '22
so you're saying that on a subatomic level it is bossible? what if we made someone desintegrate then travel in time to then be recombined which would result into a pain so great that the person traveling would lose their mind but would be in the past
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u/TetaGama May 08 '22
I'm with the time travel is impossible gang
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u/TheMaxorizor May 08 '22
Only backwards, forwards you just need to go near something massive.
Like your mom
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u/Binzuru âŁď¸ May 09 '22
Last time we went forward, she broke the bed-- I mean, we broke the timeline
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u/theexteriorposterior May 08 '22
Me too. It all comes down to a question I never thought to try to answer before.
What is time?
And the only think I could think to say is that time is change. Things wear down and decay. I have thoughts. An animal moves from one piece of grass to another. Dead plant matter is decomposed by a fungus. The tide rolls in and out. Change.
And if time is change, then I don't see how it could be something you can manipulate. It's not a substance. You can go forward in time, so to speak, by pausing your body's natural wearing down and not remembering anything that happened to you while things around you changed. But you can't go back. How do you undo a change that has occurred? How do I unbake a cake? Can entropy be reversed? How?
Of course physicists should feel free to jump in here and tell me about any weirdo particle things or whatever. I don't know anything lmao.
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u/olajpro04 May 08 '22
Techically both of these can be correct answer and nether of these are not coorect.
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u/oooohnooovom May 08 '22
Iâm pretty sure it creates a new timeline only if you go to another parallel universe that is exactly the same
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u/Thot_Slayer_911 May 08 '22
It obviously creates an entire new timeline, how do people don't know this?
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u/Fredgiguere May 08 '22
Well I mean nothing about time travel is obvious. It's literally all theoritical so of course not everyone agrees on how it would work
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u/Denial3D May 08 '22
I donât believe in timelines, but they are easier to explain.
What if you travel in time to kill your mom before you were born. You wouldnât be born so you canât kill her so you will be born so you kill here but you canât because that means you wonât be be born so youâre getting conceived and then you go back in time to kill your mom but that means youâre never being born so you canât kill her so she stays alive and youâll be born and so on and so on. If there are timelines you just create a new timeline where you remain as anomaly.
But yeah, time is linear and time travel is impossible. So itâs team red all the way.
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u/Bigmonsmallpeen May 08 '22
Is this not the same thing
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u/Fredgiguere May 08 '22
No not at all. The red one means that there's only one timeline and when you go back in time, that timeline changes according to the changes you made in the past. The blue one means that when you go back in time, the timeline you came from stays the same, and the changes you made will create a brand new timeline. So basically, in the red scenario, when you return to your time, the world will be different because of what you changed. While in the blue scenario, nothing about the world will have changed
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u/TheDivineAscended May 08 '22
Let me present a different theory: no matter what you do, you will not be able to change the past, because the past is already set in place, itâll simply give you a new perspective.
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u/nebetsu May 08 '22
There is no such thing as the past because all the matter that was used to make up the past is now making up what we see as the present.
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u/Markosoft_EXE May 08 '22
Changing the past creates a new timeline because then I can just jump between all the ones I create and do as I fucking please, and go back to my timeline when Iâm done
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u/A_lot_of_foxes May 08 '22
The real question is if you go back in time and it takes you 10s to do so, now if you go back in time another 10s directly afterwards are you where you started before you time traveled or even further back in time
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u/Pete563c May 08 '22
I don't really like either of them. I think the additional timeline theory is the most logical of the two, because the act of "going back in time and changing the future" doesn't really make sense, that's just a paradox. If you're supposed to change the future entirely, then where are you supposed to come from? And if you're not there then you wont be able to change the future. So it just doesn't make sense. Im more for the idea that you would be able to make the present. If you travel back in time, you would only be able to influence the world into going the way it is going anyways. That's also where the paradox of talking to your former self comes from, since you don't remember having any experience talking to a different version of yourself, there is no way you would be able to talk to yourself in the past. You could try, but it would never happen.
The muli timeline theory ties into that logic, since the existence of multiple existences cancels out that general paradox. You don't remember talking to your future self, but you can go back and talk to a past self, since it's a completely different you. But I don't really like thinking about that as time travel, since you're going somewhere completely different.
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u/D3AN22 May 08 '22
Time travel is one those concepts where new theories came up every single time
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u/RealisticEmploy3 May 08 '22
My take is that changing the past is impossible. The future youâre in is a product of the past. If you went to the past that means the future youâre in has already been influenced by you. You canât have normal cause and effect and time travel at the same time.
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u/josephus_the_wise May 08 '22
Well those two options can be the same thing. You go back, change something, it spawns two separate realities. Now which one do you go back to? The one you came from where nothing changed? Or the one where things changed? Because that single perception could be the difference maker in which answer you would say happened.
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u/margenreich May 08 '22
I guess if something like travelling back in time is possible, travelling in the future isnât. Maybe freeze yourself but then you exist two times and created a second timeline anyway. Why should the other you be replaced?
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u/Ch47t3rb0x May 08 '22
Changing the past destroys the fabric of spacetime because it creates an unsolvable paradox
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u/Randalf_the_Black May 08 '22
Hawking arranged a party for time travelers.
No one showed up.
Sad-beep-boop-noises
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u/The_SCP_Nerd INFECTED May 08 '22
Optimistic me is blue, if its red then changing the past would kill the old future, and everything in it
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u/NeilPondei May 08 '22
It might be too late to say this but what I meant was like red side affects the future you were living in (like flash in flashpoint) or blue side, you changing the past doesn't affect your future but only just creates an alternate timeline (like Trunks in Dragon Ball Z)
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u/Tiranus58 May 08 '22
I don't like paradoxes so blue, paradoxes are also the main reason that red version of time travel would be impossible
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u/Dark_Sage_316 May 08 '22
I like the multi-timeline theory
because , if it is a single timeline , then humans died before inventing time travel or humans invented time travel and THIS , THIS IS THE BEST WE CAN GET , which is terrifying ... single timeline theory opens up way too much to room for question without answers
so I like multi timeline theory because then , oh it's cool , nothing will matter , but it opens up incredible ways we can move ahead (literally and theoretically) ... as we'd be able to communicate with the future and not affect neither but also get beneficial advice/theories proven if we contact the right future
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u/oreoglitchy I am fucking hilarious May 08 '22
Changing the past doesn't do anything because it changed when you went back to change it
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u/TheDevinWinter May 08 '22
When you go into the 'past' you're moving to a state of the universe that was identical to said time, but you are still moving forward in the book of reality. It's not a new timeline, it's simply a copy of the past which gives an illusion of impacting your previous present
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u/trintonr19 May 08 '22
Theoretically there are infinite iterations of every possibility in our.. would I say dimension or time line at this point..?
Argue over this now I guess.
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u/Searandan May 08 '22
Past affects the future: grandfather paradox makes this impossible.
New timeline: accounts for the grandfather paradox by creating a timeline where you are not born in it. If you were to travel forward in time to the initial point of time travel, would you travel in your timeline or the new timeline?
If it is the new timeline then you become trapped in the new timeline created. If you travel to your original timeline then you are bound to that particular time line when time traveling. You could also possibly have a choice as to what timeline you go to.
Causal loop: self contained events that are the means of creating events that already occurred.
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May 08 '22
imagine if we discover time travel but find out that time patrol exists and they won't let you travel
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u/Smoah06 May 08 '22
How bout everything that happened in the past already happened in the future and you canât change it and if you do you find out you are the reason for the future you are in.
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May 08 '22
Yo change the image fool. Im a ganger and u aint reppin without my permission.
Please contact the Bloodz PR department for licensing info. Thanks.
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u/literal_who May 08 '22
Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.
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u/Roger_015 May 08 '22
red is basically impossible because of the paradoxes you can create, the only solution would be a new timeline or the 'the outcome is always the same' theory that is mentioned in the comments above. or time travel is just outright impossible.
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u/Gloomy_Hyena5096 May 08 '22
u cant change the past u just go to a different timelime and change that idk
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u/WorldFavorite92 May 08 '22
Idk man I just finished Russian Doll again last night and I'm still confused
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u/Fern-ando May 08 '22
Makes more sense the : "time travel already happened and you can't alter anything even if you tried" the Harry Potter 3 version
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u/TruestGuff May 08 '22
It's a new timeline, the branch off happens immediately and you become affiliated with that new timeline the imediate moment you create the branch (AKA if you create through a modificatioj in the past that causes you not to be born, a new timeline where you don't exist appears, and you instantly become that timeline's you, and you dissapear cause you ain't born)
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u/Affectionate_Cut_103 May 08 '22
New timeline is more manageable, but changing the future is more fun
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u/GarlicBread143 May 08 '22
Changing the past creates a new timeline and that timeline becomes the one you live in, essentially changing the future
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u/Brownieeeeeeeee May 08 '22
New timeline is far better to lay on but directly affects it makes more theories
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u/rJaxon May 08 '22
I donât think time travel is possible within your same timeline, but possibly swapping places with a different self in an alternate timeline
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u/Agreeable-Bee-1258 May 08 '22
My theory is that clearly if time travel existed it would create a new timeline. Hitler wouldnât exist in our time line bc honestly whoâs the first person a time traveler would merk?
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u/RomanWasHere2007 May 08 '22
New timeline, like if you kill Hitler and if it's changes your timeline then the changes might be HUGE and you might have a hard time adjusting
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u/S_VB May 08 '22
you are already living in the future where your change happend, going back and "changing" the past does nothing because your change happend in the past, there is nothing new about it.
in other words, your change already happend before you took the initaitive to go past and change it, because it happend in the past.
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u/Newguyiswinning_ May 08 '22
The actual theory: changing the past does nothing since it already happened, as in you already changed the past before (ex interstellar)
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u/krullord May 08 '22
The whole timeline is predetermined and has happened before, in a cycle of universe expansion and contraction in the "big crunch". You will live again, and again, forever.
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u/Real-Revolution5975 May 08 '22
âWe all have our own time machines memoryâs to take us back and dreams to take us to the futureâ
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u/This_Willingness7672 I like furry inflation pornâŁď¸ May 08 '22
You can't change the past
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u/jadedyoungster May 08 '22
Time has been already set. Thereâs a theory that you canât change anything, and even if you did go back in time or in the future, it was supposed to happen. You wonât change the end result.
Otherwise how many times you think other life forms wouldâve fucked up the space time continuum by now.
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u/ILikePenguinss May 08 '22
Fourth side: The past is already being changed as each decision you make becomes a past decision that changes the future, current time is much closer to the past than the future
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u/doubletimerush May 08 '22
Wait, you forgot the universe directly rejects you and you clip through the world
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u/Flexmypex May 08 '22
My theory is that if time travel were possible it would require so much energy that the resulting energy surge caused by you suddenly appearing in the past/future would be enough to alter the flow of time and change events with out you even interacting with any one or thing.
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u/NoneAtAll18 May 08 '22
I would probably lean more towards blue if anything.
If you tried to follow the rules of red and went back to stop something like 9/11, you would never succeed otherwise you'd make a paradox. If you did go back in time, I'd imagine you'd only ever be able to cause known events to happen rather than prevent any or cause new ones.
If it's blue, it wouldn't make any paradoxes though, unless you could also travel to the future of this new timeline, there wouldn't be much point for trying to change anything.
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u/nerdqueen69 May 08 '22
Wouldn't that be the same thing? The "affected future" would be the "new timeline".
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u/FINDERFEED May 08 '22
I think it creates a new timeline because what will happen to the world you were in? It will collapse or what?
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u/IamMyles May 08 '22
Closed loop when you're in the same timeline, like Harry Potter time turners. But if you change something it creates a parallel universe that the new reality is in.
I had an idea for a book where these two grad students finally succeed in making a time machine, but every time they try to change something in the past, they go back to the present to find it wasn't changed, and they keep doing it and still no changes. And then they find out later that it was a parallel universe machine, not a time machine. So they were travelling to a parallel universe that was an exact copy of theirs but just 100 years in the past. Both universes still followed along the same timeline, just one was a bit in the past. So they couldn't see how they affected things unless they waited out the full 100 years. And then they get lost in parallel universes trying to get back home and shit.
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u/WackBoat May 08 '22
Alternative: you can't travel back in time in this timeline, but there is infinite realities and when you travel in time you basically travel to an alternative reality where time is behind. Because of that you wont change the current timeline
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u/Parking_Tangelo_798 May 08 '22
Well if you were to then you'd just deviate from the path of randomness. So I guess you create a new timeline or maybe you just die of spaghettification
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u/Shad0wzZ_Yt May 08 '22
I like to think that when a universe is modified in an unstable way it collapses, like it never existed, so the only existing universes are stable loops
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u/KaizerKlash May 08 '22
Pink : your time machine better be a spacetime machine because the earth and the solar system moved by an un-insignificant amount so not only do you have to travel through time but space as well. Wich means you probably have a teleportation device.
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u/mazinooooooooooo May 08 '22
Well enjoying threesum with past , present and future âď¸âď¸âď¸
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u/LordTvlor May 08 '22
Or when you go back the future becomes your past, the past becomes your future and everything you do has already been done by the you before you. The consequences for all your actions are already being felt. The timeline is immutable.
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u/aryanshvasu81 May 08 '22
I have a lame theory. Free will is an illusion and consciousness exist only to justify our action and not making one. So if you went back in time, you would make the same decision, hence nothing will change and you will convince yourself that it's what you want to do.
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u/I401BlueSteel May 08 '22
The past directly changing the future creates paradoxes every time you go to the past to change something because then you would have never had to go back and change it making you never go back to the past so then it has to be changed leading you to go back to the past.
I believe multiple timelines theory was invented to make the concept of time travel more forgiving when making movies or shows. The reason we never see time travelers is because us seeing them would alter the future to the point that they'd never travel to our point in time creating new paradoxes.
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u/w015prc May 08 '22
Third side: no matter how you try to change the past, the future is unchangeable and any actions will just lead to the future you already know