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How do meta-stable loops work for time travelers visiting themselves in the past? How is it that moments before entering the time machine they don’t remember ev
by tshaddox 5y ago
How do meta-stable loops work for time travelers visiting themselves in the past? How is it that moments before entering the time machine they don’t remember ever being visited by a future version of themselves?
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 5y agoBecause that happened in a different timeline. If A0 was not visited and later A1 and decides to travel back to A0 and visit, that splits the timeline. Eventually some actor in that timeline (or another created by time travel from that timeline) will alter events such that they prevent A1 from visiting A0, restoring the original timeline and acting as the final piece of the meta-stable structure.
- tshaddox 5y agoBut if traveling back in time forks that timeline you don't have to worry about the self-consistency or bootstrap paradox at all, right?
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 5y agoWell, in this hypothetical cosmology I'm operating under the assumption that timelines can't just fork and continue on indefinitely as that requires energy (in the form of the time traveler) to come from an outside source with no connection to this timeline. From the perspective of the new timeline that event has no origin. By forming a meta-stable loop the two timelines are actually just different parts of the same meta-timeline. Of course, there's no real reason to believe this is a requirement, it's all just an intellectual exercise.
- BizarroLand 5y agoI think that it would follow you. Past you would have no advance memory of meeting future you until future you went back in time and met past you, at which point you would have memories from both points being produced at the same time.