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If time travel were to exist, which theory would you subscribe to? (lemm.ee)

submitted 4 days ago by ramble81@lemm.ee to c/asklemmy@lemmy.world

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Some ideas are:

You branch off into another timeline and your actions make no difference to the previous timeline
You’ve already taken said actions but just didn’t know about it so nothing changes
Actions taken can have an effect (so you could suddenly erase yourself if you killed your parents)
Only “nexus” or fixed events really matter, the timeline will sort itself out for minor changes
something else entirely

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[-] SwingingTheLamp@midwest.social 1 points 3 days ago

Why does it need to remain? Because that timeline was populated by 8 billion human, and who knows how many non-human minds. I think it would be solipsism to think that only your own mind was the "real" one keeping the timeline in existence, and it collapsed because you leave it.

If the time travel power does overwrite everything, all of those minds and all of their subjective experiences are just, nothing? That's where the existential horror comes in for me.

[-] dukeofdummies@lemmy.world 2 points 3 days ago

Oh I agree, it's horrifying. And I have noooo guarantee that it's me doing the jump. Don't misunderstand I am NOT the only real mind in this example. I'm curently just hitching a ride on said laser beam. No guarantees that I will be the same or even exist if somebody so much as moves a pebble into the past from the future.

Existential dread all the way. If we get time travel I think it's as horrifying a prospect as teleportation on a universal scale with only the traveller maintaining continuity.

this post was submitted on 02 Jan 2025

153 points (95.3% liked)

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