The spaghetti model
Our protagonists had the idea for a time traveler’s scheduler locked in so we could remove some of the scaffolding used to get there. Since the brain had a strong interest in cinema, this presented an excellent opportunity to distill decades of wild fiction into stuff which actually tracks.
My BrainI don’t hate this as much as I thought. Only somewhat.
Okay, let’s play along (only so I can shoot it down later). Why would a time traveller need a scheduler? Isn’t it irrelevant? Or why wouldn’t it have been invented already, or maybe it will have been (hehe)? Since we’re in a loop anyway…
What if we’re not in a loop? What if we’re on a straight and infinite vector.✓✓
Where does SciFi stand on this?✓✓
You know – the best explanation for time travel I’ve ever heard used pasta. It was the scene with Bruce Wayne playing with spaghetti in The Flash. It boiled (no pun intended) down to going back in time and changing something which results in not actually changing the timeline you started on.
Instead you, the time traveler, get seamlessly shifted onto another alternative timeline which intersected the original one at the point of that event you changed.
And our actions cause us to jump onto different vectors at any moment. Like a bowl of spaghetti.
Thus began the famous association of time travel and pasta in our fictional world. This is a stereotype, you know? Pasta is not universally craved among the diverse time travel community, carbs are.
At the same time it was realized that you could represent time as a simple vector of sequential events and their outcomes – a log if you will.
All logs can be changed.
Why fix when you can replace?
There remained a little issue. Why bother tending to your timeline, and needing a scheduler by extension, when you could just bounce?
My BrainThat’s it? You can’t change time, only which time you’re in?✓✓
Seems like it. Everything else creates multiple paradoxes. No wonder why the universe seems to be against it.
And even if there is time travel, there’s nothing to plan nor schedule. Just jump back with the lottery results and bada-bim-bada-
As much as I like your pasta example, there is something missing there. It feels right and somehow wrong at the same time. There is a strong implication that timelines are pre-determined and it’s only the time traveller that jumps around. Almost akin to a solver navigating the solution space in search for a self-serving optimum.✓✓
This could be a problem for internal consistency…
Hey, you wanted optimization, right? I for one would love time travel if it would allow me to live like a king. Who cares about the burning world I leave behind? If it makes you feel any better – maybe there was nothing you could’ve done for it. Plus, you may even use a scheduler to find yourself a new sweet spot!
Was Bruce Wayne right? You couldn’t change time, only move through it?
This was definitely a problem but it didn’t abolish the need for a scheduler, only its application. It seemed that you could indeed optimize for a preferable timeline but you would only be doing this for yourself – the universe would find you a suitable vector to seamlessly transport you to, satisfying your requirements, leaving everyone and everything else behind.
The scheduler would still work exactly the same way from the perspective of the traveller who didn’t even need to know about the selfishness of the whole situation, in case they had moral qualms. Why would they?
The determinism paradox
There was a small problem with this mental model. What if parallel timelines weren’t the promised vacation the brain seemed to believe in?
My BrainI remember this movie. Did you forget that, according to the scene, jumping back to the past changes the entire timeline vector – future AND past. There’s no way to know what would happen and the universe is under no obligation to optimize for your wellbeing despite of you knowing the lottery results.✓✓
All I’m hearing is that there’s still a chance it would work.
What if there’s no feasible vector where you win the lottery? Your hopping around seems to be mostly due to the belief that you can’t change your timeline. Doesn’t that mean you can’t change others’ timelines, the ones you jump into? Presumably, those already had lottery winners dialed in. You could very much cease to exist as an uncomfortable paradox. Or create some sort of temporal apocalypse to destroy the, potentially boring and predetermined, universe.✓✓
bla bla multiple timelines are possible bla bla
Actually we don’t know for sure. It could be that alternative timelines exist, or maybe they don’t? Do you really want to test how serious is the universe about its constraints? You could end
spaghettified by a black hole. That’s, presuming you could even jump back in time.
✓✓ That was a good point. And yes, we’re doing some mental gymnastics to excuse the use of the cool mechanic of time travel. However, if it were possible, which it must be according to our lore constraint, then something doesn’t add up with the view that everything is predetermined. Don’t you change events just by jumping somewhere? Actually, you don’t change events. Instead, you change the timeline (according to Bruce Wayne). This would mean that the timeline you changed to must’ve been expecting you.
The hedonism incarnate wasn’t ready to give up without a fight.
My Brain…or jumping around was also pre-determined on a multiversal level? Suppose the timeline, lucky enough to receive me, left a spot open just for me. It creates no paradoxes.
That was a solid point, you should be proud of yourself.
Don’t get cheeky with me.
There’s a “but” coming.
Can you see a butt coming tho? Do people walk backwards where you’re from?
“but”, not “butt”
…But that would not really be another timeline then. More of an alternative dimension, since the two “timelines” would be coupled through causality (you).✓✓
Okay, so we’re dimensional hoppers. Works for me.
Wait. Are dimensions coupled in time?
They must be, otherwise they’d be alternative timelines.✓✓
Physicists may disagree with you.
Alternative dimensions imply they share the same physical substrate, or space, even if arising on different orientations, folds, or even topological surfaces of it. Hermann Milkowski called it spacetime in reference to Einstein’s work. Time is literally in the name.✓✓
They will burn you at the stakes for heresy (flagging internal inconsistencies in a determinist’s viewpoint)
For someone who prides themselves in being objective they can certainly be quite ideological.
The word is deterministic. And yes – academia does find its roots in religion. It’s important not to conflate “belief” with “religion”; they have the same relationship as “science” and
“academia”. That is not to crap over academia for it has literally taken us out of the dark ages. It’s meant more to keep it in check.
It won’t be their first time.
This. Is. About. Alternative. Timelines.✓✓
If you can have multiple dimensions why can’t you have multiple timelines?
Time does flow at different rates in various parts of spacetime, but the definition of it lists one dimension for time. Otherwise there’d be parallel times within our universe. So many issues with that.✓✓
Let’s move on from this dimensions stuff. It’s a cheat.
Do I sense an implication that alternative dimensions SciFi is …lazy??
I implied no such things.✓✓
publicly
You being the sole link between two timelines implies that the two timelines are built around you, you have your own timeline..✓✓
I’m literally my own timeline.
Main Character Syndrome.
Yes, you’re the short circuit between two universes. There’s so many unforeseeable ways this can go painfully wrong (for you).✓✓
Determinism may be inconsistent with purist time travel. That’s equivalent to a check in the chess of science, or at least the constraints of our mental model. One may wonder whether determinism received a fair trial considering who did the arguing on its behalf. This needs to be settled.
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