Bootstrap Paradox philosophy

[Husky_Embrace]

Say you're an altruistic person, or you're an egoist and just want to have the best world to live in. Nothing is better than hindsight, so you have a plan. You build a time machine, so you can go back in time to change things for the better.

You finish the machine. A one of a kind thing. As you try to figure out where to change something in the timeline you realise the big problem.

You might have done this before.

What would you do? I'll have some of my own ramblings in a comment below.

 

[Carnevil9]

I'd wait to see if my future self comes back to tell me it's a very bad idea.

 

[Husky_Embrace]

As you've now completed the time machine it is a near certainty that you have changed tye timeline before. If you can make it, what are the odds this is the very first timeline you're building it?

That means you've near certainly already changed something. If you do not go to that point to facilitate the change, you'll revert to the timeline where you first build the time machine, making any work undone. However shitty or good your current timeline is, it might be much worse if you don't do anything.

That means you should first figure out what you've done to change the timeline before you can continue any improvement effort.

In a way it runs counter to the idea of changing time. Because to keep change in a timeline they need to keep doing the same thing, which is much like a regular timeline where each event is set in stone. That makes time linear however you slice it. Nothing can be changed, even if you travel back in time.

 

[Husky_Embrace]

I'd wait to see if my future self comes back to tell me it's a very bad idea.

How would your future self know?

 

[LupusDei]

Well, whatever the time travel does back in the time, they can't reverse the fact they did travel back in time, therefore they can't reverse the motivation of the traveling, therefore whatever was the reasons they did it are set in stone and immutable.

You may or not be able to change random things unintentionally, but the moment you set a distinct goal for traveling back in time, that exact fact becomes immutable or else it would break the causality of the expedition. The very intent to change past make past fixed.

 

[Husky_Embrace]

Well, whatever the time travel does back in the time, they can't reverse the fact they did travel back in time, therefore they can't reverse the motivation of the traveling, therefore whatever was the reasons they did it are set in stone and immutable.

You may or not be able to change random things unintentionally, but the moment you set a distinct goal for traveling back in time, that exact fact becomes immutable or else it would break the causality of the expedition. The very intent to change past make past fixed.

I'm of one mind, though maybe we can specify it more. It seems to me that the action is preserved, not the motivation. Say I want to improve the world and start on a tome machine. 80 years later I have the breakthrough and finish it. Too old to do anything I decide to go back and give my younger self the plans. The motivation to return is so my younger self can do something. The motivation of the younger me to travel back is to ensure I get the plans. Same action, different motivations.

 

[anthrodisiac]

The thing is, why would you try to change future events you don't know about? Surely someone would go back in time to change past events they didn't like. The problem them becomes, okay, you fix one issue, but on the next loop, there's something that happens a little earlier, so you start edging back. Occasionally, one of the things you do causes a big problem in the future, and the future version of you goes back to fix that, next loop, return to inching erasure of bad events.

 

[sirhugs]

Will my future self come back to tell me to pull up my bootstraps?

 

[anthrodisiac]

You see a ruggedly handsome stranger step through the door, wizzened by time and wisdom, his hair cascade of white.

"I have a very important message for you. Well..." He chuckles, then coughs, wincing. He wipes a smudge of blood from the corner of his mouth and stares at it a moment before his icy gaze, laced with bitter mirth, settles upon you once more. "For me, I suppose."

You gasp. "You're me?"

Future you nods and claps a sturdy hand on your shoulder. "'Tis true. I have a message of the utmost import. There isn't much time... the radiation, it's chewing through me like a kreptoid."

"What's a kreptoid?"

"Something I hope we can avoid. I just need you to do one thing. Maybe..." He stares at a point in space beyond, tears brimming as memory haunts him. "Maybe we can stop it right here, right now."

"Of course," you say, breathless. "Tell me. Anything!"

Future you glances down at your feet, a flicker of rage bubbling up before he quashes it and gazes deep into your eyes. "Pull up your damn bootstraps."

 

[TheOtherTeacher]

While working on the time machine, you have a lot of history documentaries in the background.

You've had to learn lots of new skills while making this machine. You even started smelting your own metal in your back yard.

Just as you finish the machine, the documentary is talking about the change from the stone age to the bronze age.
How the skill of bronze creation started in a single location in Europe, and the skill soon spread from there.
Coincidentally, they say, that this was one of the first places human adults developed the gene for processing lactose. Before that, no adult could eat cheese. That one single male must have developed the gene and spread it, because the gene is connected to the y chromosome.

As you look at your finished time machine, your metal working tools and the plate that used to contain a large quantity of cheese, you realise exactly where you need to go.