You find yourself in the cretaceous

[untermensche]

You, on the other hand, are like the seagull that insists that those colorful plastic eggs really are their own eggs more so than the inferior pale ones next to it only some evil spirit killed the embryos inside, or the fish that accuses the stick to be a mean teaser.

Because I don't believe in miracles?

Please!

Humans are not born rational but can learn to think rationally.

Because you insist that where the models of modern physics and your intuitive ideas of what sounds plausible diverge, it's modern physics that is wrong.

Some humans never learn to think rationally.

This is not about intuition.

Saying that a person from today visiting Lincoln would change the past is not intuition. It is a logical observation.

If the past at one time dos not contain some person observing Lincoln as he lived then suddenly does have some person observing Lincoln the past has changed.

Not just the past. All of Lincoln's life and all the lives of all humans changes because of that.

No guarantee the same people will be born in a new future in a different universe.

Somebody goes to the past and suddenly people in the present start disappearing.

 

[untermensche]

I do not lack understanding.

I lack evidence for an extraordinary claim.

The claim that an observer can be sent to some past moment in time they did not exist within or even a past moment in time they already existed in.

No evidence. No method to do it.

Miracle.



They made claims in the absence of evidence.

Yes.

Those who can not grasp spacetime and relativity are in the same position.

It is not about grasping spacetime. That is reduced to equations that can be used to predict the future so we say it is accurate.

This is about believing a miraculous claim about the universe made by humans without any evidence to believe it.

There is tons of evidence. The fact that relativity is a damn good description of reality is necessary or much of our modern scientific equipment wouldn't work as designed.

There is evidence that the equations of Relativity can be used to predict the future.

That is all any model of the universe can do.

As far as implications humans make from equations?

They all need to be tested before any should be believed.

They tested Einsteins ideas.

The one's they could test and proved to be true we believe.

What people believe in the absence of evidence is always another matter.

That is religion, not science.

 

[skepticalbip]

Because you insist that where the models of modern physics and your intuitive ideas of what sounds plausible diverge, it's modern physics that is wrong.

Some humans never learn to think rationally.

This is not about intuition.

Saying that a person from today visiting Lincoln would change the past is not intuition. It is a logical observation.

If the past at one time dos not contain some person observing Lincoln as he lived then suddenly does have some person observing Lincoln the past has changed.

Not just the past. All of Lincoln's life and all the lives of all humans changes because of that.

No guarantee the same people will be born in a new future in a different universe.

Somebody goes to the past and suddenly people in the present start disappearing.

Those are all strawman versions of reality based on your idea of what time travel would entail not what it would be. Sorta like the geocentrists who 'knew' the results of the Earth spinning would be people being thrown off the planet.

 

[untermensche]

Because you insist that where the models of modern physics and your intuitive ideas of what sounds plausible diverge, it's modern physics that is wrong.

Some humans never learn to think rationally.

This is not about intuition.

Saying that a person from today visiting Lincoln would change the past is not intuition. It is a logical observation.

If the past at one time dos not contain some person observing Lincoln as he lived then suddenly does have some person observing Lincoln the past has changed.

Not just the past. All of Lincoln's life and all the lives of all humans changes because of that.

No guarantee the same people will be born in a new future in a different universe.

Somebody goes to the past and suddenly people in the present start disappearing.

Those are all strawman versions of reality based on your idea of what time travel would entail not what it would be. Sorta like the geocentrists who 'knew' the results of the Earth spinning would be people being thrown off the planet.

It is logic.

You merely want to claim change is not really change. Relativity and all that you know.

 

[skepticalbip]

Those are all strawman versions of reality based on your idea of what time travel would entail not what it would be. Sorta like the geocentrists who 'knew' the results of the Earth spinning would be people being thrown off the planet.

It is logic.

You merely want to claim change is not really change. Relativity and all that you know.

One of the primary rules of logic is that a true conclusion is dependent on the premises being true. Your premises so far have been false.

 

[untermensche]

Those are all strawman versions of reality based on your idea of what time travel would entail not what it would be. Sorta like the geocentrists who 'knew' the results of the Earth spinning would be people being thrown off the planet.

It is logic.

You merely want to claim change is not really change. Relativity and all that you know.

One of the primary rules of logic is that a true conclusion is dependent on the premises being true. Your premises so far have been false.

Nonsense.

You are now saying nothing.

My premise is that the past is changed if some new observer pops into it from the future.

I know. I am wrong because of Relativity and all that you know.

 

[skepticalbip]

One of the primary rules of logic is that a true conclusion is dependent on the premises being true. Your premises so far have been false.

My premise is that the past is changed if some new observer pops into it from the future.
.

That was your conclusion based on a false premise of what time travel would entail.

You apparently base your understanding of reality on Hollywood movies rather than on modern science.

 

[untermensche]

One of the primary rules of logic is that a true conclusion is dependent on the premises being true. Your premises so far have been false.

My premise is that the past is changed if some new observer pops into it from the future.
.

That was your conclusion based on a false premise of what time travel would entail.

It is a logical conclusion if we know what the word change means.

If the universe is existing without some observer in it before that observer was born then it is purely a rational conclusion that this prior universe is changed if this later observer is now somehow in it.

I know. I am wrong because of Relativity and all that you know.

I don't understand how your miracle works.

 

[bilby]

That was your conclusion based on a false premise of what time travel would entail.

It is a logical conclusion if we know what the word change means.

If the universe is existing without some observer in it before that observer was born then it is purely a rational conclusion that this prior universe is changed if this later observer is now somehow in it.

I know. I am wrong because of Relativity and that you know.

I don't understand how your miracle works.

In a block universe, nothing changes.

A person travelling back in time doesn't change the present, because the time travel was always part of reality.

If I travel back in time and have a conversation with Abraham Lincoln, then I always did, and I couldn't NOT do so, because that would require a change. How would you prove that nobody from the future ever met Lincoln?

 

[untermensche]

That was your conclusion based on a false premise of what time travel would entail.

It is a logical conclusion if we know what the word change means.

If the universe is existing without some observer in it before that observer was born then it is purely a rational conclusion that this prior universe is changed if this later observer is now somehow in it.

I know. I am wrong because of Relativity and that you know.

I don't understand how your miracle works.

In a block universe, nothing changes.

A person travelling back in time doesn't change the present, because the time travel was always part of reality.

If I travel back in time and have a conversation with Abraham Lincoln, then I always did, and I couldn't NOT do so, because that would require a change. How would you prove that nobody from the future ever met Lincoln?

Having a new observer of Lincoln suddenly, that was not there as Lincoln lived and died once, observing Lincoln is a change of the entire universe. A change of the past.

In a block universe, nothing changes.

So nothing gets old? Nothing falls and changes position?

 

[SLD]

 

[bilby]

In a block universe, nothing changes.

A person travelling back in time doesn't change the present, because the time travel was always part of reality.

If I travel back in time and have a conversation with Abraham Lincoln, then I always did, and I couldn't NOT do so, because that would require a change. How would you prove that nobody from the future ever met Lincoln?

Having a new observer of Lincoln suddenly, that was not there as Lincoln lived and died once, observing Lincoln is a change of the entire universe. A change of the past.

Not if it always happened that way.

In a block universe, nothing changes.

So nothing gets old? Nothing falls and changes position?

No, everything gets old. Because it was always going to.

In a block universe, the past, present, and future are immutable. Time, like space, is a dimension along which things change. But they only change compared to other times.

It's a big block of unchanging spacetime, that we see as changing because our awareness is (or at least fells as if it is) in constant motion along the t-axis. Viewed from a three dimensional perspective, the block universe looks exactly like what we see. From a higher dimensional perspective though, it is just an inert block of four dimensional spacetime in which there are strands that call themselves individuals. And strands that represent every other object, for that matter.

Nothing about this model prohibits strands from looping back in the t-dimension - but any such loops were always a part of the block. They can't change anything.

For someone who is so aggressively confident in his assertions about time travel's impossibility, you seem remarkably ill informed about some of the more well known hypotheses on the nature of spacetime.

 

[Bomb#20]

... snip ....

That's just another way to say each observer can calculate how it will seem to the other. It won't tell them whose perspective is real and whose is an illusion.

My understanding is that both perspectives are real and neither is an illusion for the person making the observation.

Exactly; or I should say, that is what Relativity implies. Conversely, the assumption that the past doesn't still exist implies that at most one of the perspectives can be real and that at least one* must be an illusion. That's why evidence for Relativity is evidence for the past still existing.

(* More likely, that both are illusions -- presumably, some unidentifiable third perspective would be the real one.)

 

[untermensche]

Not if it always happened that way.

It can't always have happened.

We have no ability to go back in time presently.

The only possible observer to visit a living Lincoln would have to be born in the future.

If a person not even born yet at the time of Lincoln is suddenly and miraculously observing Lincoln then the past has changed.

You can't escape this with new age lunacy like; It was always like that, maaaannnnnn.

No, everything gets old. Because it was always going to.

So everything changes in this block universe that never changes.

In a block universe, the past, present, and future are immutable.

Immutable means can't be changed.

An observer living in one part of time can't miraculously move to another part they are not in without changing the whole thing.

Immutable means we are stuck in time. Trapped.

I agree.

It is lunacy to think the past can be changed.

And irrational to think a person not born yet observing the past is not changing it.

 

[Jokodo]

It can't always have happened.

We have no ability to go back in time presently.

The only possible observer to visit a living Lincoln would have to be born in the future.

If a person not even born yet at the time of Lincoln is suddenly and miraculously observing Lincoln then the past has changed.

You can't escape this with new age lunacy like; It was always like that, maaaannnnnn.



So everything changes in this block universe that never changes.

In a block universe, the past, present, and future are immutable.

Immutable means can't be changed.

An observer living in one part of time can't miraculously move to another part they are not in without changing the whole thing.

But they can move to another part where they also are. They're, so to say, trapped into doing so.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Faith: The belief in things without evidence.

Yup--what you're guilty of here.

We have no evidence as to whether time travel is possible or not, and what happens if it is possible.

You have faith that it's impossible.

 

[Treedbear]

...
Nothing about this model prohibits strands from looping back in the t-dimension - but any such loops were always a part of the block. They can't change anything.

For someone who is so aggressively confident in his assertions about time travel's impossibility, you seem remarkably ill informed about some of the more well known hypotheses on the nature of spacetime.

How do you get around the Grandfather Paradox? Seems like you'd need to do a lot of debugging to keep it from crashing the OS. Of course maybe the multiverse is littered with crashed block-time programs and we live in one that just happened to work. Or to have worked so far (*). Or maybe there's some self-limiting factor on how frequently time travel gets employed. But that would be pretty damn lucky.

*ETA - On second thought that's a cheap excuse because it requires the block-time operates in a time-dependent sequence detached from the future.

 

[Elixir]

We have no ability to go back in time presently

There’s yer problem.
Our inability AND “presently” have nothing to do with what is possibly already the case.

 

[skepticalbip]

We have no ability to go back in time presently

There’s yer problem.
Our inability AND “presently” have nothing to do with what is possibly already the case.

His problem is that he can't accept that we are in a 4D universe of spacetime. His worldview is of a 3D universe so can't imagine anything in that fourth dimension (that doesn't exist in his worldview)... a worldview that was superseded by general relativity over a hundred years ago.

It is like a 3D critter trying to explain that there is an up and down to a 2D critter that can only accept the idea of movement in its 2D plane.

 

[Elixir]

We have no ability to go back in time presently

There’s yer problem.
Our inability AND “presently” have nothing to do with what is possibly already the case.

It is like a 3D critter trying to explain that there is an up and down to a 2D critter that can only accept the idea of movement in its 2D plane.

That.
Here in the mountains we call ‘em flatlanders.