Reading: Luck, Morgan. "Five Features of Multiverse Time Travel: How Past Paradoxes Can Be Avoided in the Future". Journal of Science Fiction, Vol. 2, No.1 (September 2017): 54-65

 

The third meeting discussed the above readings, which were presented by Thorina.

The article discussed five Time Travel paradoxes, and addressed two possibilities for each – within a Fixed Universe and within a Multiverse.

Those were:

• The Grandfather Paradox – Can you murder your own grandfather?
• Pulling Yourself by Your Bootstraps – A future version of you gives you plans to build a Time Machine, which allows you to travel to the past to give your past self the plans to build a Time Machine.
• Two Time Machines and the Beatles Concert – You and your wife travel separately to a past event, and you travel a week apart. Can you two meet each other in the past?
• Meeting the Time Traveler in the Past – Your father meets a time traveler, and later tells you about it. You travel back in time in order to meet said time traveler.
• Spying on Yourself – you time travel back three separate times; each time you travel back a relatively short period of time (around an hour), and place yourself in different locations at the general vicinity within your range of sight. How many versions of you would you end up seeing?

 

It was simplified, that in a Fixed Universe, those paradoxes wouldn't be possible, since the past is already written and cannot be changed. In the Multiverse option, there are several options discussed, such as the option of the branching-out of the universes, that was discussed in previous meetings.

Since we already discussed the first paradox in the previous meeting, we approached the second paradox of the "bootstraps" time loop. Underlying the paradox is an assumption that is has a certain "cost", but as such that we cannot fathom it in the universe as we know it. Questioning when does a time loop start is like trying to find the source of perpetual movement.

For the fourth paradox, of meeting the first time traveler, the paper suggests that you can never actually meet them; we compared it to the mathematical concept of your action being "infinitesimal". You can never truly reach it, even when you strive for it. The paper suggests that since you were never there to begin with, you would meet a version of the time traveler when you travel back yourself, but it would not be the original time traveler, but a "Doppelganger". The paper defined it as them being the same as the original in a "qualitative" manner, but not in a "numerical" manner.

This then begs the question – would that really matter? If the time traveler you would meet is, for all intents and purposes, nearly the same person – would you not glean what you wished for in the experience?

The discussion then shifted to Time Travel in literature as a whole. It was suggested that the paper is perhaps a bit too rigid in its approach to the subject. In a literary piece, it is important to set consistent rules for time travel within the set universe of the literary piece itself; it needs internal consistency. With the suspension of disbelief people experience when they consume fictional work, the audience would accept the events, as long as they would make internal sense, within the context of the work. If time travel stories would not include an element which allows the possibility of change within them, then there is little point to them. They would feel futile and frustrating. We also agreed that there are different expectations in regard to the fleshing out of the rules in the consumption of books, movies or television shows.

As an example, we discussed Time Travel in the context of the Harry Potter universe. An example for consistent Time Travel was the third book of Harry Potter, "Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban"; an example for an inconsistent Time Travel rules was "Harry Potter and the Cursed Child". In the case of the latter, all the established time-traveling lore of the universe was dispensed with; this shook part of the audience out of their suspension of disbelief, which in turn hurt the story itself.
In the case of the former, time travel is set with clear rules. You need to have a special device (a Time Turner) and to wear it; each turn of the device equals a fixed amount of time; you are not allowed to interact with your past self, since the consequences could be devastating. The irregularity created by Time Travel is hinted at in relation to Hermione in several instances throughout the book, which only makes sense in hindsight.

The "Time Loop" motif is interlinked with the motifs of Confidence, Courage and overcoming your own inner doubts. Harry lives in the shadow of his father, who everyone compares him to; he struggles to accomplish a magic spell (Patronus) that would protect him against Dementors (who are, to all intents and purposes, shadow demons). When he travels back in time and witnesses himself about to die, surrounded by demons, he keeps waiting for his father to come and save him; but the more he waits, the more it becomes apparent no one is coming to save him from his plight. Only he can save himself, by casting the Patronus charm, which he hadn't been able to do. But the fact that Harry already seen himself doing it, gives him complete confidence in his ability to do so, and leads to him successfully casting a Patronus charm, as well as saving himself. Harry could do it (in the future) because he saw himself doing it (in the past) – he realized his potential.

We then discussed the mental affects time travel can have on the time traveler, which is considered in the television show "Seven Days" (1998); in which one of the criteria of picking candidates to function as time travelers (Chrononauts) is for them not to be mentally stable; as mentally stable people cannot cope with the mental strain of being time travelers.

We pondered over the terminology surrounding Time Travel and the worlds it creates. One option is alphabetical (Universe A, Universe B etc.); the second is of genealogy (Parent Universe, Child Universe etc.); the third of botany (Universes "branching out"; the "Root" of the current Universe).

Regarding paradoxes, we wondered what makes it so difficult for people to accept that paradoxes might just exist; perhaps even as the glue of the fabric of the universe. The fact that we cannot make sense of them does not discredit their existence or their necessity. Perhaps they are theoretically possible, but we have not managed to grasp, in our limited human capacity, what explains their existence – perhaps we just cannot fathom it.

An interesting point was made about a concept presented in the television show "The Big Bang Theory", in the context of "The Roommate Agreement". According to the agreement, signed by the different participants (all of which are inclined towards physics and mathematics) the parties agree that "if one of the roommates ever invents Time Travel, the first stop has to aim exactly five seconds after this clause of the Roommate Agreement was signed." Therefore, by signing this agreement (and assuming all parties involved were genuine), all parties prove to themselves they have never invented Time Travel, six seconds after the last signature was made.

Finally, we considered the human element as the main component in a Time Travel story. The sentiment and empathy the audience experiences are not in relation to a piece of technology – the time machine – but to the time traveler.

It allows us to ask questions about ourselves in relation to the world; would the entire world continue to exist, if we traveled even five minutes into the future? Did it move on in these five minutes, when we ceased to be? What happens when we magnify the amount of time we travel ahead, into the future? Which change is more significant – the one to the environment, or the one to yourself?