You can’t go back in time and undo meeting your then-partner, because then your kids wouldn’t exist
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Or, and hear me out, you could go back, meet a better partner and then have even better kids. It’d be at least a 50% upgrade.
This sounds like a good way to end up the final boss of an RPG
A flash of colorful light
Booted feet lightly land on the ground
Standing from the shadowy throne as dramatic music plays
“Ahh it is finally time. Face me, then, forsaken child from the alternate dimension. You are just as snotty now as you were then!”
“Also, no, your mother doesn’t let you stay up past 10 to watch SpongeBob Skibi Pants. I checked.”
Depends on which time travel theory you subscribe to.
I like the BTTF / Terminator model: one timeline which resolves the active tree via messy pull requests leaving a contradictory past log but a somewhat coherent present
Honestly something that always pops in my head as well. Also why I find so many movies, tv shows with alternate dimensions etc… interpretation of time travel so ridiculous.
I mean theoretically the aspect of what makes you… well you, comes down to literally which one of millions of sperm happens to hit an egg etc… Bottom line is, your dad’s schedule is adjusted by .3 seconds, he takes 1 step more on a street than he wouldn’t have, he eats a different breakfast one month before, that’s a whole reroll of the entire genetic dice. Someone being essentially the exact same person in 2000, in an alternate timeline where the nazi’s won WW2, is such an absurd concept it’s completely ridiculous. The idea of timelines or dimensions where, every person is roughly the same people they are, but the world itself is different, is pretty absurd to me. Marty McFly undid his existence the moment he slightly changed his mothers schedule, Making sure she got together with her dad, would not have been nearly enough to fix that.
Honestly I think the very concept of backwards time travel would by definition self correct.
Hypothetically Joe Smith invents the time machine, somewhere down the line, someone slightly alters the past, ripple effects, now Terry Jones invents the time machine instead of Joe Smith (which is it’s own paradox, but assuming the effects of joes actions still are in place), Terry has a different concept, different people go in and use it, a different change is made, someone else invents the time machine. Ad infinium, the universal dice keep on re-rolling, no time line ever is final until, we get a timeline where the time machine isn’t made, most likely due to extinction of the species that could have created it, prior to reaching the technological level that makes it. Or something completely destroys the resource needed to make it or similar.
I used to believe in the butterfly effect, but I’ve started to subscribe more to the videogame effect; as in there are limited stable states for an entity based on past decisions and based on very limited degrees of freedom set by the environment.
Me rolling the dice slightly differently at the casino, might mean I win big or lose out, but either way the casino will make their money by roughing me up on the way out or laughing at me as I leave.
If meet a new partner in the winning timeline, and we go on to make kids, and then it turns out she doesn’t like losers and we seperate and I settle for a more stable partner, I like to believe there’s a high chance I might still meet that stable partner even on the losing timeline and even if I don’t have kids.
The configuration might change, but the intertwining of people’s world lines remains more or less fundamentally the same.
But you are talking the same generation, biggest concept I’m noting, is a human personality. I’m not looking at the lifetime that things were effected in, I’m looking at the proceding generation. 2 kids born to the same parents, are entirely different people, completely different likes, personalities, etc…
I agree if I mess with your individual life… most things aren’t going to change a whole lot. but assuming you have kids, that’s a whole new roll.
Lets look at it this way, if I randomly portalled into a minecraft server, threw a few creepers, maybe killed a guy and took his stuff, the world would roughly build more or less the same… few people would even know the difference.
But lets say those players, then create their own games afterwards. Minecraft generates the seed based on the milliseconds the clock was at. Which means if my actions, even slightly caused any player to leave that world early or stay a little bit longer, the seed of the next games they play… would be ENTIRELY different, which will entirely change how everything else comes together.
So in short, yes in the generation you effected, no one would see the difference most likely. but everyone you interacted with will have completely different children, Those children will effect even more people, also completely changing whatever children those people will have etc…
Time travellers don’t get to have human relationships.
I mean you could just create like a save point. Say you want to travel to 1967. You bring your child and wife, jump back to 1964, drop them off say one second jump to 1967 and then when your done jump back to 1964 a second later and pick them up. Also don’t forget to deposit some money in savings accounts or investments incase when you get back to present if you don’t have your house you’ll have a backup plan lol
Something similar to this is addressed in the movie About Time. Once the time traveller has children, he can’t mess with the time before that or he gets different kids.
does he… keep all the kids and shifts them all to one timeline, or does he have to Sophie’s Choice it?
It’s a surprisingly excellent movie. You should watch it and find out!
Related, watch the movie About Time.
Couldn’t you just go back in time and correct the stuff that wrecked the marriage in the first place? Or surely at least navigate to a more amicable divorce?
Couldn’t you just go back in time and correct the stuff that wrecked the marriage in the first place?
oh yeah, “just fix them” that’s easy.
I read it as correcting their own bad actions.
What if they weren’t the one who made bad actions other than misjudging their partner?
it takes two tango
And yet sometimes it only takes one jerk.
I mean, every single time travel story ever has contradictions like that. One of the most famous is “Back to the Future”, which when you think about the details of how time travel supposedly works, makes no sense at all.
That’s a good point actually, the divorce process is all high emotions and accusations in the heat of it, but doing it with a clear rational head that comes only with time would help with the regrets
Someone should invent a time machine service that transports your future self back in time to the divorce proceedings, whilst present you goes into stasis until the whole thing blows over
Just being divorced with kids in general is such a hard concept. How do you reconcile the regret with the not-regret?
You just live with it. I hate that my kid’s father is who he is, but I can’t change it now. I made the best decision I could with the information I had at the time.
I wouldn’t have left my kid’s dad if I hadn’t become a mother. It took seeing how he treated me through my child’s eyes to realize I couldn’t model a relationship like that without seriously damaging my kid.
So you just live with it shrug
It’s amazing how we grow by considering ourselves through the lens of others. I wish I could have supported my mother more during her divorce with my dad
Just being her kid was enough support, I promise :)
Don’t know. We were very firmly on “team dad” at the time, as he seemed the least emotional about it. Only later we realised what a lying sociopath he actually was…
But we’re all good now, and she got us back, and we’re all the better for it
Depends how you feel about the kids I suspect.
And the ex. I don’t hate my ex wife. I don’t want to be married to her but I don’t hate her. Fortunately we never had kids because I sensed early on that would be a bad idea, and I haven’t seen her in years. But after our divorce I helped her with a car loan (which was stupid as fuck but it worked out fine), and took in her dogs when the city was considering checks and she was behind on rabies shots. I loved her and I wish her happiness. But we brought out the worst in each other and were toxic together.
This is me now. Were currently going through this. Sadly we do have 2 kids. I just see us as toxic and have tried for a few years now to make it work and improve, but ultimately I can’t take her actions. It’s like living with someone with a gambling addiction but for shopping. I don’t get her share of the mortgage money for months and it’s only excuses and somehow my fault. Now that I want this and not backing down it’s also my fault were going through this. All I keep saying is I still love you, but I can’t be with you anymore. House foreclosure, bankruptcy, and you would think she gets it? Nope the final straw was her taking the kids without me to get a dog… a dog when we have no money! And also without my approval! Thankfully I was able to contact the place before pickup and let them know. They even said its mandatory all people in the family be there but she lied and said i had work. They were shocked. I knew right then she will never change and have to save my future.
It’s like living with someone with a gambling addiction but for shopping.
It’s like looking in a mirror.
I like to believe that once you have kids, there’s a narcissism switch with shifts your wants/needs to their wants/needs, but I’ve seen this not happen too many times than I’d like to count, so you’re probably right
Apparently many parents in the US don’t have this happen and most keep on with the single lifestyle long after they have had kids, which really fucks up the kids and then they grow up to be adult narcissist, repeat cycle.
rugged individualism is a bitch
We’ve all got a few broken switches, the question is which ones?
Apparently you don’t believe in an infinitely forking universe.
See also: Rick and Morty
I do, I just find many-worlds to be lazy as hell. It’s for people unwilling to think and reconcile contradictions. It’s a story device where literally nothing matters
Yet Rick still decided not to do a fresh restart every time things went to hell. Something deep inside still masters to him. Consequences may not be very real or tangible, but your decisions are very real to you. What kind of person do you become as a result of your decisions matters to you personally.
Using MWI in a story makes things more complicated and nuanced. Using linear time and paradoxes makes the story more approachable.
Him not doing a fresh restart as a way of character building is great… up until the point that he does do a fresh restart. It’s a Deus Ex level trump card that he can play at any point, and we the audience cannot pretend it doesn’t exist, because it’s already been established. As a result, no matter his growth, we know that he’s never actually up against the wall.
If he actions himself into a corner, he does not need to think a way out. He can just jump. And he does.
