Quote:
Originally Posted by pmulcahy11b
I read a story in my early teens -- can't remember the author or name of it. In that story, it turned out that the "aliens" were us. Those "aliens" were in fact our descendants, tens of thousands of years from now, and they periodically travel back in time to study their ancestors, and to ensure that historical events unfold in such a way to ensure their existence.
Quite frankly, the possible paradoxes that come with time travel boggle my mind. But I think that time travel is the one technology that absolutely, under no circumstances whatsoever, that humans should ever be allowed to develop. Think of the crap we've pulled with technology so far -- the human race isn't responsible enough to possess time travel. The amount of wisdom you'd need to have to not produce any paradoxes with time travel is probably impossible for any race in the universe to possess. And it's virtually certain that time travel would be misused by mankind -- we've pretty much misused every other technology we've come up with in some way or another.
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My own take is that there are no paradoxes in time travel, I see it more like an 8-Track tape than the one string that some believe. If I go back in time and kill my grandfather before he fathered my mother, I would still exist but at that point in time, like hitting the channel button to an 8-Track tape player (jumping from Program 1 to Program 2), I would create a point of divergence where a separate timeline is created. Perhaps I would unleash some "butterflies" and history could be different a little bit or a lot, who knows? I would still exist but I would be like a "man without a country," a person from one timeline who jumped to another.
Now instead of 4 programs on the 8-Track, remember they were stereo, you have an infinite set of programs out there and what you do might create more. I think time travel incorporates some "sliding" (like in the TV show "Sliders") as well.
I think a good illustration is the Christmas movie, "It's a Wonderful Life" where George was taken to a timeline where he wasn't born, yet he existed. Of course, in that case, divine intervention was used instead of science as a vehicle, but it is a good example of my idea.
Chuck