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…
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…