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You find yourself in the cretaceous

Some kind of evidence that the universe is not in not in fact stranger than we can imagine and that human intuition is a sound method to discern facts about its nature.

An observer still needs to be born.

And a birth is a singular event in time.

A person can only go to the past after they have been born.

And in so doing they will change that past.

Time travel is only possible if changing the past is possible.

Or if our intuitions about the flow of time are applicable only within particular regions of spacetime but not universally so.

Being born at a specific time is not an intuition.

It is a hard fact that can't just be ignored because it is inconvenient.

All observers have a beginning.

If they by some miracle travel to a time before they existed they must change that time.
 
Like the magic that makes someone who only ever went east come back home from the west?

I don't believe this fantasy that humans comprehend what a 4D universe would be like or that such a thing is possible.

If all you can do is invoke some fanciful untested notions about 4Dness that have no evidence to support them then you have no rational objection.

Prove a 4D existence is possible for any observer before invoking such an absurd notion that you can't possibly begin to understand.
 
Like the magic that makes someone who only ever went east come back home from the west?

I don't believe this fantasy that humans comprehend what a 4D universe would be like or that such a thing is possible.

If all you can do is invoke some fanciful untested notions about 4Dness that have no evidence to support them then you have no rational objection.

Prove a 4D existence is possible for any observer before invoking such an absurd notion that you can't possibly begin to understand.

The fourth dimension is time. Three dimensions of space, one of time.
 
Sure.

And smugness that conjectures in physics that have no evidence to support them are true or understood is a downfall too.

If you have never been to Sweden, going there as a tourist doesn't significantly alter Swedish history or the course of World events. The presence of a time traveler in the Cretaceous would most probably not even register.

You don't know Quantum Theory.

To merely observe reality changes it.

I wasn't talking about QM, what constitutes an observer, or your interpretation of it, just that as a single tourist, one's impact on the world at large. Do you think the brief presence of a time traveller in the cretateous would leave a trace millions of years later?
 
Like the magic that makes someone who only ever went east come back home from the west?

I don't believe this fantasy that humans comprehend what a 4D universe would be like or that such a thing is possible.

If all you can do is invoke some fanciful untested notions about 4Dness that have no evidence to support them then you have no rational objection.

Prove a 4D existence is possible for any observer before invoking such an absurd notion that you can't possibly begin to understand.

The fourth dimension is time. Three dimensions of space, one of time.

I know.

It is a fantasy some people have.

They simply take the freedoms we have to move through space in a 3D world and apply them to a single dimension, time.

They imagine some creature slithering back and forth somehow on something and able to go to the present and the past and east and west and up and down.

It is pure fantasy and has no connection to anything real.
 
You don't know Quantum Theory.

To merely observe reality changes it.

I wasn't talking about QM, what constitutes an observer, or your interpretation of it, just that as a single tourist, one's impact on the world at large. Do you think the brief presence of a time traveller in the cretateous would leave a trace millions of years later?

Have you read about The Theory of Relativity?

The observer and their frame of reference is an important topic.

All entities that exist in the universe have a beginning.

They are all a temporary configuration of changing matter and energy.

No matter how you defined an observer it would first need to be able to observe and second have a beginning.
 
You don't know Quantum Theory.

To merely observe reality changes it.

I wasn't talking about QM, what constitutes an observer, or your interpretation of it, just that as a single tourist, one's impact on the world at large. Do you think the brief presence of a time traveller in the cretateous would leave a trace millions of years later?

Have you read about The Theory of Relativity?

The observer and their frame of reference is an important topic.

All entities that exist in the universe have a beginning.

They are all a temporary configuration of changing matter and energy.

No matter how you defined an observer it would first need to be able to observe and second have a beginning.

Irrelevant. You are wandering off into entirely different territory. Physics, as pointed out numerous times by several posters, does not necessarily exclude the possibility of time travel. The nature of time, etc.
 
Have you read about The Theory of Relativity?

The observer and their frame of reference is an important topic.

All entities that exist in the universe have a beginning.

They are all a temporary configuration of changing matter and energy.

No matter how you defined an observer it would first need to be able to observe and second have a beginning.

Irrelevant. You are wandering off into entirely different territory.

No.

This thread is about an observer going to the past.

You want to ignore what an observer is so you can pretend it is possible somehow.

You want to pretend an observer with only one beginning can somehow already be in their past at birth.

That is not possible with observers that have a specific starting point.
 
Have you read about The Theory of Relativity?

The observer and their frame of reference is an important topic.

All entities that exist in the universe have a beginning.

They are all a temporary configuration of changing matter and energy.

No matter how you defined an observer it would first need to be able to observe and second have a beginning.

Irrelevant. You are wandering off into entirely different territory.

No.

This thread is about an observer going to the past.

You want to ignore what an observer is so you can pretend it is possible somehow.

You want to pretend an observer with only one beginning can somehow already be in their past at birth.

That is not possible with observers that have a specific starting point.

Nobody is pretending except you. You do that when you say that it is impossible. Science doesn't categorically exclude the possibility, it may be possible, it may not be possible. No conclusions have been drawn. Yet you have made a conclusion. You, with great certainty, claim that time travel is in fact impossible.
 
I can go back and find people telling me that the reason a time traveler doesn't change the past is because they somehow were already in the past at birth.

I think you were one of them.

I pay very little attention to who is saying things.
 
The fourth dimension is time. Three dimensions of space, one of time.

I know.

It is a fantasy some people have.

They simply take the freedoms we have to move through space in a 3D world and apply them to a single dimension, time.

They imagine some creature slithering back and forth somehow on something and able to go to the present and the past and east and west and up and down.

It is pure fantasy and has no connection to anything real.

Who is talking about arbitrarily "slithering back and forth"?

We seem to be in free fall through time. The object in orbit is also in free fall, yet in reverses its direction as seen from outside, e.g. at one point the Earth moves towards Aldeberan at nearly 30km/s, and half a year later it moves in the opposite direction.

If time can be similarly distorted, it stands to reason that we could move to a different time without "leaving the flow of time", while continuing our free fall through (local) time.

I hope I don't have to remind you that you're the one making positive claims?
 
The fourth dimension is time. Three dimensions of space, one of time.

I know.

It is a fantasy some people have.

They simply take the freedoms we have to move through space in a 3D world and apply them to a single dimension, time.

They imagine some creature slithering back and forth somehow on something and able to go to the present and the past and east and west and up and down.

It is pure fantasy and has no connection to anything real.

Who is talking about arbitrarily "slithering back and forth"?

I don't know who says things. I respond to the ideas. I rarely even look to see who is making them.

I know about this magic place comic book physicists talk about.

This magic world where creatures somehow can slither around through time.

It is magic invented to allow people to believe in silly things like time travel.

That is the only possible way to have time travel. You have to leave this universe and enter some fictional creation that nobody could possibly understand.

We seem to be in free fall through time.

We see change in one direction only. Once the paper burns it never unburns. Our experience is of unidirectional time.

The object in orbit is also in free fall, yet in reverses its direction as seen from outside, e.g. at one point the Earth moves towards Aldeberan at nearly 30km/s, and half a year later it moves in the opposite direction.

That is not a distortion of space.

It is the consequence of separate entities moving though space. Space has 3 dimensions. That is what allows freedom.

Time is one dimension. You are stuck in it.

I hope I don't have to remind you that you're the one making positive claims?

My claim is that all observers have a start.

They all have many events that already occurred before they existed.

My claim is no observer can become part of events they were not in before they existed without changing them.

My claim is time travel is only possible, due to the nature of observers, not the nature of the universe, if changing the past is possible.

And I and many have claimed it is not possible to change the past.
 
Who is talking about arbitrarily "slithering back and forth"?

I don't know who says things. I respond to the ideas. I rarely even look to see who is making them.

And half of the time, you end up arguing against things nobody said.

I know about this magic place comic book physicists talk about.

This magic world where creatures somehow can slither around through time.

It is magic invented to allow people to believe in silly things like time travel.

That is the only possible way to have time travel. You have to leave this universe and enter some fictional creation that nobody could possibly understand.

The universe is under no obligation to be humanly understandable.

We seem to be in free fall through time.

We see change in one direction only. Once the paper burns it never unburns. Our experience is of unidirectional time.

Our experience is also one where down is always the same way, and east is the opposite of west. Our experience does not cover the full strangeness of the universe.

The object in orbit is also in free fall, yet in reverses its direction as seen from outside, e.g. at one point the Earth moves towards Aldeberan at nearly 30km/s, and half a year later it moves in the opposite direction.

That is not a distortion of space.

It is the consequence of separate entities moving though space. Space has 3 dimensions. That is what allows freedom.

Time is one dimension. You are stuck in it.

I hope I don't have to remind you that you're the one making positive claims?

My claim is that all observers have a start.

They all have many events that already occurred before they existed.

My claim is no observer can become part of events they were not in before they existed without changing them.

Those are very sensible claims if time only ever has one direction.

My claim is time travel is only possible, due to the nature of observers, not the nature of the universe, if changing the past is possible.

Discussing the nature of observers while ignoring the nature of the universe is magic. It amounts to claiming that sentient observers, by virtue of being sentient observers, are subject to a different set of natural laws.

And I and many have claimed it is not possible to change the past.

I'm one of those.
 
I can go back and find people telling me that the reason a time traveler doesn't change the past is because they somehow were already in the past at birth.

I think you were one of them.

I pay very little attention to who is saying things.

Time travel has not been ruled out by science. You rule it out. It is you who claims that it impossible, not science.

I don't know whether it is possible or not, but if it is, the traveller is a part of history at every point of their journey.
 
I can go back and find people telling me that the reason a time traveler doesn't change the past is because they somehow were already in the past at birth.

I think you were one of them.

I pay very little attention to who is saying things.

Time travel has not been ruled out by science. You rule it out. It is you who claims that it impossible, not science.

I don't know whether it is possible or not, but if it is, the traveller is a part of history at every point of their journey.

Science says nothing about things that have no evidence supporting them.

You don't know if an observer has a beginning?

What a mystic. What woo.
 
The universe is under no obligation to be humanly understandable.

Something merely invented by humans, like time travel, is not a mystery of the universe waiting to be found.

It is wild human speculation and pulling things from human butts.

Our experience is also one where down is always the same way, and east is the opposite of west. Our experience does not cover the full strangeness of the universe.

If you understand it then it is not any mystery.

Making wild speculations, like time travel is possible, without any evidence to make them is a problem. Yes.

My claim is no observer can become part of events they were not in before they existed without changing them.

Those are very sensible claims if time only ever has one direction.

No.

They are sensible claims if an observer has only one beginning. One set of parents.

Discussing the nature of observers while ignoring the nature of the universe is magic.

Talking about human observers is based on observations of humans.

They are all born. They all have one beginning.

And I and many have claimed it is not possible to change the past.

I'm one of those.

Then you understand it is impossible for an observer that does not exist until after events exist to be part of those events.

And if that observer intrudes into those events they must change them.
 
I can go back and find people telling me that the reason a time traveler doesn't change the past is because they somehow were already in the past at birth.

I think you were one of them.

I pay very little attention to who is saying things.

Time travel has not been ruled out by science. You rule it out. It is you who claims that it impossible, not science.

I don't know whether it is possible or not, but if it is, the traveller is a part of history at every point of their journey.

Science says nothing about things that have no evidence supporting them.

You don't know if an observer has a beginning?

What a mystic. What woo.

The point being, physics doesn't rule out time travel, you do. You claim knowledge. You claim that time travel is impossible. I don't know whether it is possible or not.

If for instance a super civilization exists and is running simulated worlds and ours is one, traveling back time, a previous state, is possible if information is retained within the system.
 
Physics never heard of human time travel.

Time travel is just something humans invented, like religion.

Physics has not ruled out Jesus watching you and caring about you.
 
Physics never heard of human time travel.

Time travel is just something humans invented, like religion.

Physics has not ruled out Jesus watching you and caring about you.

Faith has nothing to do with physics. The nature of time is the issue, block time, etc.

Nobody is saying that can be done, just that the possibility remains. It has not been concluded.

You on the other hand pretend to know, you state with absolute certainty that time travel is impossible. You have presumed to conclude that which has not been concluded by science.
 
Physics never heard of human time travel.

Time travel is just something humans invented, like religion.

Physics has not ruled out Jesus watching you and caring about you.

Faith has nothing to do with physics. The nature of time is the issue, block time, etc.

Nobody is saying that can be done, just that the possibility remains. It has not been concluded.

You on the other hand pretend to know, you state with absolute certainty that time travel is impossible. You have presumed to conclude that which has not been concluded by science.

My opinions are based on the nature of observers. Not the nature or time or the nature of the universe.

Observers all have specific beginnings. None are immortal.

Physics says absolutely nothing about human time travel.

It is not a topic in physics.

It is a topic in science fiction novels.
 
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