October 14, 2006

• I have long pondered such things.
• I've never even considered such things, but if these experiments work out maybe I can fix that!
• "You wouldn't be able to talk about altering, but you could talk about causing or affecting," Any "causing" or "affecting" the past would necessarily be "altering". Your act of affecting the past has to have some affect, obviously. An effect is dependant on its cause. If the effect is there independant of your cause, then it wasn't a cause. If your retro-effect is there independant of your cause, then it wasn't a cause. Your cause has to alter something.
• Pure sophistry!
• Retronauts are spotted by an artist in 1350 & painted into a fresco. Retromedia news teams film Christ's baptism.
• Let's ask John Titor.
• Nah, he's too commie for my liking.
• I know from my own experiments that changing the past fills up the sidebar and annoys other monkeys.
• Hnf!
• I personally believe that time travel & retrocausality are possible, have happened, & that the evidence is replete in history. Then again, I am rather a loon.
• If you could send a message to the past, what would it be? In my case: "Marriage? Let me get back to you on that." Just the first time, tho.
• Mine would be: "The second season of Twin Peaks starts out well, but is not worth watching past the fourth episode."
• Non, je ne regrette rien
• Cassandra complex. If you sent a message to the past, it would already have been received, and nobody would take notice of it, or it would be ignored, or misinterpreted. From our perspective, it would already be there. You have only to look to history & mythology to find things that fit this scenario. This is where Mr. Knickerbocker loses his way, above. If you successfully create an alteration to the past, from our perspective, it has already happened & we have no way of discerning a difference. A successful retrotemporal alteration would be indetectable to us, since it would be already part of our known history, seamlessly integrated into the past. Only an objective observer outside of our timestream or worldline would be able to see the effects. There may be billions of retromanipulations in our history, but since we are part of that history, we would never be able to detect them. We would simply misinterpret them. The Star of Bethlehem, not a spiritual marker, but a retronautical media robot attempting to get a photo of Christ's birth, making a slow re-entry into Earth's atmosphere. Extinction of the dinosaurs? Caused by a binary-pair microsingularity power source for a retronaut observation satellite going nova. Oannes the fish-human that taught the Sumerians everything that led to modern civilization? A retronaut in a wetsuit. The Tunguska Event? A retrocapsule exploding as it entered the atmosphere. Etc.
• So, if you cause a tree to have fallen in the forest in the past, you won't know if it made a sound or not?
• So, if you cause your watch to have been set back by an hour yesterday, will it show the correct time today?
• I've read about doing that... instead of getting a temporal anomaly and mucking up spacetime, the book claimed you'd branch off into a similar (but different in that way) parallel universe, like with any other event. The evidence for this is in quantum effects. Artifacts from other timelines would be possible. *toke*
• Every single migraine headache is caused by an retro-alteration in your timeline. Dejavu is one event being retro-preempted by another due to declining ratings. The "J.R.'s shooting was just a dream" copout was a manipulation by retronauts who had to live in the nightmare world where a Larry Hagman-less Dallas ruled the airwaves.
• Those were not retronauts, were they? Why, I thought they were advertizers!
• If I could change the past, I'd revise some of my early comments on MonkeyFilter. I'd still try to get Chy to tell me to fuck off, though.
• I agree with Chy, I think. One can and cannot alter the past. If you were to travel back in time, you would inevitably disrupt that particular chronological sequence: however, if your intervention was non-trivial, you would disrupt your own intervention in a way which would cause a different disruption, which would then affect your intervention differently: and the whole process would cascade laterally across meta-time until it hit a stable configuration in which your intervention preserved the existing chronological sequence. It would appear as if events had conspired to prevent your changing the past even though you had changed it. Please don't ask me to elucidate the ontology. I hate it when people do that.
• You know what I'd do? I'd go back and punch that Hitler right in the mouth.
• And that is the reason that I doubt that this is possible. If it were, then someone WOULD have gone back and "hit that Hitler right in the mouth" and done a LOT of other things that would have led to a much nicer world than the one we currently inhabit. I think that it be possible to do this, but maybe there are certain limits on how far back we could go to affect something based on energy expenditures or something. If that's the case, then at some point we'll be visited by futurites saying, "We're Number One!" And soon after that our world will just seem to exploded with wierdness as futurites in control of the technology mold our world to be their idea of a utopia. Or at least a world that will LEAD to their vision of a utopia. I can't imagine that this world is that one. Yet.
• Hey Pleg, couldja elucidate a skosh of that there ontology for me, hun?
• The thing with the past is that its kinda like religion. Everyone sees it differently. Or is there a "true" past?... a past we can all agree upon, and even then it may not be really things as they were, so to speak. Did Galileo really drop a feather and the Encyclopedia from that tower that we know as "Pizza"? Did Newton really get bopped on the head by a grapefruit? Did Jesus really multiply when it came to bagguets and trout? So then maybe if you change your past it wouldn't change mine...or vicey versy. Color me pastiche.
• You speak of going to the past as a way of providing a proof of what happened. Instead you may find a proof of what never was.
• aaaaaargh!
• There are many pasts, many presents and many futures. You can go back and change a past, thus changing an infinitude of presents, but not the one you're in.
• The AShfar Experiment seems to have shown that both the Copenhagan interpretation and the Many-worlds interpretation are wrong. If correct, there is nothing special about measurement or consciousness that collapse wavefunctions (and to that so-called "lemurian" pseudo-scientific fraudulent bitch, that shows just what the #$*! she knows is nothing) nor are there innumerable alternate universe histories branching off at right angles when alternate paths exist. On the other hand, John Cramer's Transactional interpretation, which posits a kind of handshake signal between future and past events, survives Afshar's experiment. This is the same John Cramer who is, according to New Scientist, attempting to send signals into the past. This could get real interesting.
• done a LOT of other things that would have led to a much nicer world than the one we currently inhabit Jester: I'm all in favor of unvoting Bush MonkeyFilter: Couldja elucidate a skosh of that there ontology for me?
• If you successfully create an alteration to the past, from our perspective, it has already happened & we have no way of discerning a difference. That means you've already changed it, not that there was no change. A successful retrotemporal alteration would be indetectable to us, since it would be already part of our known history, seamlessly integrated into the past. Only an objective observer outside of our timestream or worldline would be able to see the effects. There may be billions of retromanipulations in our history, but since we are part of that history, we would never be able to detect them. We would simply misinterpret them. The Star of Bethlehem, not a spiritual marker, but a retronautical media robot attempting to get a photo of Christ's birth, making a slow re-entry into Earth's atmosphere. Extinction of the dinosaurs? Caused by a binary-pair microsingularity power source for a retronaut observation satellite going nova. Oannes the fish-human that taught the Sumerians everything that led to modern civilization? A retronaut in a wetsuit. The Tunguska Event? A retrocapsule exploding as it entered the atmosphere. Etc. Like your media-retronaut-bot-star-of-Bethleham. That star showing up is a change. Unaltered history wouldn't have that star. You've altered history by putting the star of Bethleham into history. All of your examples of "not" altering history are perfect examples of how history would be altered. Unaltered history wouldn't have any of those events.
• A successful retrotemporal alteration would be indetectable to us, since it would be already part of our known history, seamlessly integrated into the past. I'm reminded of M. Swanwick's short story Don't Look to the Skies! (Iridium) for the scifi.com feature Michael Swanwick's Periodic Table of Science Fiction.
• *gnashes teeth*
• From what I gather, Afshar's experiment has lots of problems in interpretation that peers are arguing about. It hasn't been confirmed by other experimenters, only Afshar himself, I think, which is tricky. But as I understand it, it does not contradict wave-particle duality, it just makes the measurement much more sophisticated. It seems to accord with standard predictions. Unless I'm completely missing something. It does seems to prove that there is no such thing as a discrete photon particle, which contradicts Einstein (didn't he get the Nobel for the photon theory?) But then Einstein also said that the idea of discrete particles is based on our monkey-brain prejudice. If Afshar is right, then Einstein's photon theory is wrong! Give back that Nobel Prize, Albert! If the results are accurate, it's bad news for the Copenhagen interpretation & Everett. But I think that is too simplistic. What bothers me is that if Afshar is placing a wire grid in the dark band areas, right, & observing the interference, then this is a measurement: it collapses the wave function, according to Copenhagen, doesn't it? Or, according to Everett, there's a world split at that point. It's a determination. Er, by the observer... If that is so, then his experiment doesn't show anything. The question is what constitutes a measurement. Quantum interpretations are fucking difficult to get the brain around, I'm sure this is not so simple as Afshar falsifying Copenhagen & Many-Worlds. I'll have to do more reading on this. Thanks for that incredibly interesting lead, Nomen Nescio. Very valuable. "All of your examples of "not" altering history are perfect examples of how history would be altered. Unaltered history wouldn't have any of those events." No, the point is there *is* no 'unaltered' history. There is only one stream of history from our vantage point. There are no other tracks where 'something else' took place. IMHO It's not possible to alter history. You cannot alter something that has already been observed. Grandfather paradox: you can go back in time and try to kill your grandfather before your father was born, but something will always prevent that. It's not possible to alter history, you just play a part in it that already happened. You can observe, but not alter, the state vector. In fact, you're preserving it. One might argue this annihilates free will, but in fact it's more like a stream of water running thru a channel. You can move freely within the channel, perhaps even against the current, slowly or faster, but you can't actually move outside of the channel itself. Another analogy would be travelling along a road. You can stop & look at the scenery, backtrack, or just put your foot down & very quickly traverse the distance, but you cannot alter the shape or direction of the road. What I'm actually saying is that I don't accept the many worlds theory. There's something inherently wrong about it that I can't put my finger on. I'm a hidden variable man, myself.
• Free will is overrated anyway. John Cramer's daughter, Kathryn Cramer, posted "Quantum Mechanics: Not Just a Matter of Interpretation" explaining why Afshar's experiment, if true, refutes both Copenhagen and Many-worlds.
• No, the point is there *is* no 'unaltered' history. Well, exactly. History is altered. That's what I've been saying. You've been pointing out that we don't/can't know what they've been changed from. And for some reason, you're taking a stance that since we don't/can't know what they've been changed from, that means there's no change. You think I'm talking about many worlds, but I'm not. I'm just talking about the basics of causation— how causation works. Causes make changes in the world. You can't have a cause without it changing things. if nothing changes from your cause, it's not a cause. That's what it means for it to be a cause. It has to change things. Basic example: Tom dials Jill's phone number. Jill's phone rings. Tom's act of dialing has changed things than they would've been had he not dialed (specifically, making Jill's phone ring). If Jill's phone would've rang whether or not Tom dialed her number, then Tom's dialing wasn't the cause. You don't need many-worlds to under this. You don't need any kind of quantum physics to understand it. These are the very basics of causation. Causes change things from how they would've been without the cause.
• "A proof is a proof. What kind of a proof? It's a proof. A proof is a proof. And when you have a good proof, it's because it's proven." -Jean Chrétien, former PM of Canada.
• Here's a message from the future: Be Excellent to each other. Oh, and Party on, Dude!
• "And for some reason, you're taking a stance that since we don't/can't know what they've been changed from, that means there's no change." No, that's not what I'm saying. I'm saying the changes have already happened. That a handshake has/will occur thru time. When I said you can't alter history, I mean that even if you are using a real, honest to goodness time machine, everything you do back in the 11th century or whatever has already happened. You're not aware of it, so in some sense you are locked into a track of events. What appears to you to be alteration, by your free will, is in fact a predetermined set of events governed by some other mechanism. I'm not invoking many worlds theory, I'm refuting it. I'm saying there is only one world, which is like a moebius strip, in which the future events from our POV have already in some sense happened in that they have intersected the past. In this sense, the word 'change' is the wrong one, because I'm saying you can't alter events in the past, you can only fulfill them. The difference is only one of point of view; the monkey brain POV. "Tom's act of dialing has changed things than they would've been had he not dialed (specifically, making Jill's phone ring). If Jill's phone would've rang whether or not Tom dialed her number, then Tom's dialing wasn't the cause." How's this: Tom dialled Jill, but thru some fluke of physics or because of a pixie (whatever), his call goes back in time 2 weeks. Jill picked up the phone when it rang, 2 weeks earlier, to find Tom on the other end, but this is Tom from the future, dialling back thru time. The event of Jill's phone ringing has already happened, & means that Tom's act of dialling her, 2 weeks later, is predetermined. Even if someone tries to stop him. In fact, he can't be stopped. That's what I'm saying. Causation has been completely turned on its head in this scenario.
• I'm not invoking many worlds theory, I'm refuting it. I know. but I haven't been bringing it up for you to refute. You've been bringing it up then knocking it down. I haven't said anything that requires many worlds, or any other quantum mechanics theory. I disagreed with a quote of the article. You've said I was wrong, then started refuting many worlds, but many worlds is not what the quote is about, nor is anything I said. It's not necessary to bring up many worlds. If that's what you want to talk about, that's cool. I'd love to join you in a conversation about many worlds, as I'm especially interested in what you said about there being "something inherently wrong about it that I can't put my finger on". But first I'd like to finish talking about causation. No, that's not what I'm saying. I'm saying the changes have already happened. Well, then those changes exist. But you then talk about how you can't change history, which neccessitates that changes can't exist. You can't have it both ways. Changes exist, or don't. The event of Jill's phone ringing has already happened, & means that Tom's act of dialling her, 2 weeks later, is predetermined. Even if someone tries to stop him. In fact, he can't be stopped. See, the guy in the article is claiming that Jill's phone will ring even Tom does not call. He's making the claim that Tom's dialling doesn't change the status of Jill's phone, which neccessitates that the phone would be ringing even if Tom doesn't call. I'm arguing against that. Notice that I didn't need to bring up time's direction? Because it doesn't matter what the direction of time is. Causation doesn't care about the direction of time, that's pretty much the point of the whole article.
• Maybe if any of us were capable of an understanding of time, we could have a serious discussion about this topic.
• I just posted this from the future. posted by nunia at 05:57PM UTC on October 15, 2026 Whew. Just got back. By the way: Walmart buys Microsoft in 2021. Get your stock today!
• Yeah, I hear ya. But when you said this: "If your retro-effect is there independant of your cause, then it wasn't a cause. Your cause has to alter something." That made me conclude that you are saying there are two separate sets of history, one in which there is an alteration, and one in which there isn't. You also said: "All of your examples of "not" altering history are perfect examples of how history would be altered. Unaltered history wouldn't have any of those events." which again sounds like you're implying there are two sets of time vectors, because you invoke this 'unaltered' history. I get what you're saying about causality, but what I am trying to put across (& I suspect it's just because I am inept at conveying my ideas) is that the ordinary concept of causality is deformed or violated by this retrocausal manipulation. It becomes a paradox. It completely breaks down. The causation guy in the article from Australia talks about not being able to alter, but being able to cause & affect. This is gibberish, because alteration *is* an effect. The article writer concludes you wouldn't be able to change the past, or the future. He's right about the past, but (I think) not the future. Only the entangled events in the future are unchangeable. Everything else is (from our POV). "Your act of affecting the past has to have some affect, obviously. An effect is dependant on its cause... If your retro-effect is there independant of your cause, then it wasn't a cause. Your cause has to alter something." That's true from our one-track, cause & effect monkey brains. When you bend time around like the moebius strip I mentioned then ordinarily understood causality gets thrown out the window. At least from our point of view. It is difficult for us to comprehend that, in this scenario, we are not causing anything, we are just participating. Is the fact that a retro-launched satellite over Bethlehem burned up on re-entry in 4 BC the cause of the future program to film the birth of Christ, or did the future program cause the star of Bethlehem? The star already happened, so it can't be an effect... At this point our language fails us. The problem we have here is terminology, not our inability to understand the concepts. The terms 'cause', 'effect', 'change' & 'alter' are all misleading. The events we're hypothesising are linked, but not in an ordinarily understood linear manner. These events are entangled in a loop that violates causality. "Causation doesn't care about the direction of time.." I disagree with that. At least with those terms. When they are using those terms then they *have* to invoke many worlds interpretation, because the terminology demands that there must be two states, one in which a 'change' occured & another in which it didn't. Describing causality going in both directions is imprecise. In this case, whether one determines an event to be a cause or effect actually depends on the relative location of the observer. The writer of this article is wrong when he suggests that you might be able to "change the circumstances by which your parents met, derailing the key event that led to your birth" - this is not possible. It can not happen, because you already exist. You are already a real object in space time, & you can't just wink out. Neither can your parents, or the events they participated in. Those events & your existance are landmarks in space-time that cannot be erased any more than the moon can be erased. Retrocausality both will & will not 'change' things, depending on an observer's location.
• That actually seems to be at the heart of the matter - things both can and can't exist. Yes, at the same time. Which is a manner in which most of us are unaccustomed to thinking, but there - that's quantum mechanics and physicists for ye.
• Walmart buys Microsoft in 2021. In the future I just got back from, there's been a nucular holocaust. I'm here to track down and destroy the cyborg sent here to kill Sarah Conner.
• Mr. Knickerbocker, here's hoping you came through those earthquakes unscathed.
• *gnashes teeth* One finds oneself querying whether one can gnash anything else. Perhaps just "gnashes" would suffice?
• gnashing comes with drops of spittle and fangs that mash my every vittle
• (I would have said sputle but it all seems futile)
• Perhaps just "gnashes" would suffice?" An interesting point. The dictionary does say that the action has to be done with teeth to qualify. "Gnash" is probably a variation on "gnast", ultimately echoic or onomatopoeic. Milton provides a solid authority for use of the verb alone: ...there they him laid, Gnashing for anguish and despite and shame... However, the Bible keeps its teeth in: ...But the children of the kingdom shall be cast out into outer darkness: there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth... Byron, however, seems to take the view that he'll gnash whatever he wants to gnash, and be damned to lexicographers: ...to rend and gnash my bonds in vain... You might argue that we should allow some poetic licence and read this as gnashing at his bonds, with his teeth, but I think he is merely striking and grinding his bonds together. Myself I fear that "gnashes" alone might be read as a plural noun denoting a sound effect, sort of like 'Gnashes, off' as a stage direction.
• well, I suspect Byron's chewing his bonds, doubtless a few old stock certificates along with the bonds can be found in the gniches betwixt his gnashing tushes. I mean, in such a fix, who wouldn't gnash? *admires the way Ogden Gnashes*
• And the onomatopoeia was in the trees.
• I prefer to ganache my teeth. Mmm, tasty!
• They'll develop workable timetravel right when humanity selfdestructs. There. Problem solved.
• Mr. Knickerbocker, here's hoping you came through those earthquakes unscathed. Thanks bees. I'm alright. Only just got power back just now. It was kind of a surreal experience. Take away power from a million people isolated on an island, and it's pretty amazing how fast people change. I gained some useful insights for my zombie scripts I'm trying to write. Perhaps just "gnashes" would suffice? Every now and then I try to tell people about words like this. The word "gnashes" kindof only a half word, because it's never used independantly. You always have to include "teeth" with it, even though there isn't anything else you could possibly gnash. There's other words that operate this way to. I can never think of them when it's relevant though. This is gibberish, because alteration *is* an effect. Yeah, that's pretty much the point I've been after. When they are using those terms then they *have* to invoke many worlds interpretation, because the terminology demands that there must be two states, one in which a 'change' occured & another in which it didn't. Using that logic, that means you are invoking many worlds when you say that you can change the future. But you know you don't need many worlds when you say that you can change the future. Because when you use the term "change" you aren't talking about changing from one stream to another, you are talking about altering the state of what would've been without your change. When you say "I changed my future by punching that cop", you aren't saying you created two seperate timestreams, you are saying you altered what would've been. The same goes for your retronautbot. He's altered what would've been. You don't need many worlds to say what would've been. People have been saying what would've been for much longer than the many worlds concept has been around.
• There's other words... Mmh. There's 'wreak', where you've got a choice of havoc or vengeance, though if it's 'wrought' you can also have a change/transformation, somebody's deliverance, a miracle, or iron. Or monging? You can't actually mong at all, but you can be a monger of fish, war, or iron again. Oh, or costers, of course.
• Mr. K, glad you're back with us! Hate-monger, fear-monger are perennially popular in some quarters, too, Plegmund. Old words can be fun to play with, though sometimes overwrought with mackles, in a manner of maundering.
• coster-monger?
• costermonger
• Can you brandish anything other than a weapon? "Suddenly, the dark stanger brandished a cat." I don't think that works.
• I disagree. You can brandish anything you can grab hold of, & in some cases brandish something rhetorically. But you look stupid with most of it. You can brandish a radish. You could put pickle on it & brandish your radish in relish, with a flourish. You could grab a guy called Fred Standish & brandish Standish, if you were strong enough. You can brandish a blowfish, a catfish, shellfish or even a bluefish. Brandish some licorice. You could brandish your Yiddish in conversation. It would be difficult to brandish a dervish, particularly at the moment, with world politics being the way they are... Same with the Amish, I think they've been thru enough recently. Sean Connery can probably brandish his penish.
• Great. Now I've heard the word brandish enough that it doesn't sound like a word anymore.
• You're hearing voices in your fucking head!
• Well, at least I'm not hearing them in your head.
• :P
• You got me there. I like that. I'm gonna use that line. :)
• Table legs, wine bottles, broken bottles, brollies, religious tracts, canes, swordsticks, pistols, etc (or & c, as the Victorians were so fond of putting it).
• All these, and more, have been brandished.
• I stopped eating meat when I attended a brandishing.
• But resumed again once the smoke had cleared.
• *gnashes tofu* *brandishes broccoli*
• Brandish Fred Standish? Outlandish.
• We wouldn't need to change the past if we had a damn preview button.
• We have one now.
• We do? *suspects the Werzog may have eaten it*
• Oh, look! Post-earthquake islanders have been left with a total inability to grasp obvious irony! What shall we do???
• Send them to a fucking desert island! That'll show 'em!
• Alright, which one of you is planning on causing an earthquake in my past? You won't get away with it.
• What the hell's going on in here? Lousy missed threads. I don't know a "many worlds theory" but I do espouse the probable / possible realities thing. Going back in time to kill one's grandfather is a misnomer. Which time? (Which grandfather)? With infinite possibilities, the odds of killing one's grandfather to prevent oneself from being born is googolplicitous and effectively cromulent. Maybe if any of us were capable of an understanding of time, we could have a serious discussion about this topic. We inherently understand time, but just a little bit. The rest is conjecture and waffling.
• petebest, are you talking about this? It kinda sounds like it. The way you talk sounds like you believe all possible worlds exist.
• Hey, I've got an ism! Thanks Mr. Knick (note to self: read that whole article). Yeah, all possible worlds exist. We travel between them in an "uninterrupted" flow we experience as time. The most likely events are "probable" worlds. Beyond that it gets a bit dodgy. /standard_disclaimer
• Well, a modal realist wouldn't have "probable" worlds. All worlds have the same probability— %100. All possible worlds exist fully. The difference between our world and the rest isn't existence or probability, it's just that we are here, not there.
• Speak for yourself. I'm over there.
• That's a model of human consciousness, pete. Not physical reality. Easy to get confused.
• Yeah then maybe that's where I differ. I don't agree that "one" expereinces an infinite number of worlds at all "times". So for me the possible and probable are both valid and unique. Possibly. Perhaps it's a different ontological opinion. My typing this comment without a hyphen - here - (and there) only happens along with everything else one experiences in this reality. There's another reality that's exactly the same but with no hyphen in this comment. I maintain that one moves "between worlds" as one makes choices.
• Crap, missed that on preview Chy. Agreed, but again with the ontology bit. I think physical reality is based subtly, but truly, on our (conscious and unconscious) understanding of it. Schroedinger's kitty, et. al.
• Shoot meant to add: [*Alert: caffienation achieved. Have a nice day.*] As regards our understanding of history (or "the past"), the topic of the FPP, human consciousness and not physical reality plays the dominant role. Or so my human consciousness so deems.
• That's true. & it is the essential difficulty in interpreting QM.
• A modal realist does believe all possible worlds physically exist. I don't know why Chy is saying otherwise, but modal realism is a belief about the physical properties and nature of the universe (or multiverse, or whatever term you want to put in there. Language gets kind of thick at this point, which is why they usually just stick with "world"). Yeah then maybe that's where I differ. I don't agree that "one" expereinces an infinite number of worlds at all "times". Um, neither does the modal realist. I don't see how you got to that conclusion. That's far from their beliefs. Perhaps the term "possible" is misleading. A possible world is a world that exists for sure, garens-ball-barens. It's not a world that might be, it's a world that is. Every possible world is exactly as real as this world. I maintain that one moves "between worlds" as one makes choices. The does make your beliefs different, then. Those two worlds you described both exist entirely, not with an empty space waiting for you (and every other person), but entirely and whole. They are real, and they are complete. So if you moved to another world, there'd be two of you there, and none of you here. Unless that one moved here, but then what would be the sense in that? And this is where you sounded like them. You were talking about locating a complete, real world with your grandfather, out of a near infinite set of other complete, real worlds that each also contain your grandfather. That set being a tiny fraction of complete, real worlds that do not contain your grandfather.
• I think the catch may be in my contention that one can exist in "one world" and then "another" when what I am trying to express is that as our experience of time moves forward (resulting in the creation of the past as we know it or the topic at hand) the "world" changes. So if the modal realist is saying, there are infinite actual physical worlds, I agree. But if they would say those worlds are all static, then how does time operate in them? If these infinite physical worlds are like acquariums, where life happens and time moves inside (and, presumably, changes occur) then that sounds tautological to me. I see it as; as soon as there is one change, it's a different "world". In the example: I flip a coin. The world in which the coin lands "heads" and in which the coin lands "tails" are two different worlds. Inhabited by two different petebests. One of which is me. (depending on which way the coin landed.) The other of which is me too (or 2), just not the me here. (So far I think that's modal realism, I could be wrong.) The future and the past are all completely laid out in a web of realities. I choose future ones, past history are trails that I have chosen through those worlds. So this FPP is about changing the past. But it would seem that going back to a past would require everything that had ever changed to be in concert to arrive at the "right" reality (or world). It doesn't seem physically possible. If it was, going to the future would also be physically possible, but which future? Which past?
• I see it as; as soon as there is one change, it's a different "world". Under that definition of change, all worlds have to be static. motionless, timeless, just a freeze frame. No events are possible in any world. It's avery un-useful definition of change. (So far I think that's modal realism, I could be wrong.) The future and the past are all completely laid out in a web of realities. I choose future ones, past history are trails that I have chosen through those worlds. Most of your comment I can't tell if you are describing your own beliefs and when you are describing your own understanding of their beliefs. But if this is a description of your own beliefs, it matches up more with many worlds, not modal realism. The MR worlds are seperate, whole and complete. They don't show up when needed and then fade away afterwards. Everyone of them has existed as long as this one, and will continue as long as this one. Many worlds has that trail between worlds you've described, linking them and making them dependant on eachother. This trail eliminates the searching problem, but the dependacy they have on each other creates the grandfather problem.
• Okay then, many worlds for 500. dependacy they have on each other creates the grandfather problem. Can you state the grandfather problem for the sake of argument? I have a feeling it may be . . um . . a straw man of sorts. "Many Worlds" (as I see them, again apologies if it doesn't fit the existing theory) should necessarily exist outside of time since all pasts and all futures are there. They should exist outside of time even though time is a part of their makeup. Going "back" or "forward" between them makes some sense, but not complete sense. If that makes sense.
• There are many variations on the many worlds theory. You seem to be implying that time is a function of human consciousness, & that each world is a 'frame' like that in a film, thru which consciousness passes.
• Grandfather problem: you kill your grandfather before he has kids. Without parents, you can't be born. So then you can't kill your grandfather. He lives, you have parents and can be born, and which means you can kill him. Repeat. "Many Worlds" (as I see them, again apologies if it doesn't fit the existing theory) should necessarily exist outside of time since all pasts and all futures are there. As I pointed out earlier, Under this view, these are worlds in only the most non-useful sense. You can't have a world with any kind of change or dynamics, you just have two static worlds instead. Describing worlds this way insists that no world has any action, event, time, etc... Every world is just a frozen image.
• Can I just go back and make my grandfather miserable?
• Or what Chy said so bluntly and I missed so blantantly.
• "Can I just go back and make my grandfather miserable?" Yes.
• I am your grandfather, I have always been miserable, but now I am miserbale and eaten by worms. Satisfied?
• And Mrs. Bale is miserable, too.
• . . . time is a function of human consciousness, & that each world is a 'frame' like that in a film, thru which consciousness passes. That's it. What that guy said. you kill your grandfather before he has kids Unless you've "gone back" to that time anyway, I don't feel it illustrates anything very much that makes sense. My objection being: To physically "go back" to that time would require navigating every relevant change between when the grandfather had kids, and those kids had you. Like rewinding just the exact videotaped story of three generations in an infinite sea of video. Even if that were possible, then the reality where time travel exists would allow for you could in fact exist and kill the grandfather. Would the gun cease to exist in grandpa's time because it hadn't been made yet? Would you be naked after the "time jump"? Nah. Besides, grandfather would be in a world where grandson shows up, which is apparently a different world than the one in which he had kids which had you. Possible? Sure, why not. Probable? Not bloody likely.