Something like this happens in Minority Report too, but without the time travel.
Tom Cruise gets pegged for a murder by the precogs. He doesn’t know who or what or why, so he goes to find out. When he does find out, he end up killing the guy that’s there.
Why did the precogs peg him for murder? Cuz he killed the guy.
Why did he kill the guy? Cuz the precogs pegged him for murder.
It’s a closed loop.
Forgot to mention that I enjoyed “Frequency” a great deal too. The transmission of information through time can be just as disruptive as going there yourself. (Read “Timescape” by Benford for more.) But in “Frequency” the whole thing is tied to a phenomena, the Aurora Borealis, that waxes and wanes. So the thing can work in a manner exactly required by plot at any given time without undermining the credibility of the film.
I agree about it being not half bad, but that movie does have the Marty McFly problem, if I am remembering the movie correctly.
If they live in a world where changes to the past are possible, and Van Damme comes back to the changed future, and since everyone in timecopland knows who he is, (they just don’t believe him that things have changed) what happened to the Van Damme who grew up in that changed world, the one that left on the mission? The one who fathered his kids? Where’d he go?
And, why is the house standing in the 2004 present, when it got blown up in 1994? Of course, that’s not a paradox - it’s sloppy filmmaking.
That’s a little different, though. The ‘prediction causes the event’ idea goes all the way back at least to the story of Oedipus or earlier.
So, by your reasoning Einstien and the Delorean should be the only things that exists when he arrives at 10:06 because everything else that exists wouldn’t be able to “catch up” with him? That makes absolutely no sense.
True, but it results in the same problem as with time travel. You still need a start to the events or you get a loop/paradox.
No, in that case, you just get someone talking a lot of bullshit and calling it a prophecy.
It bugs me more when the protagonist travels back in time, accidentally or otherwise, and finds out he’s the central character in the historical event he’s trying not to interfere with.
The movie does a decent job of explaining it by the term “ripple effect.” Time changes for everyone involved EXCEPT the time traveler. As the ripple effect approaches 1985, all of the non time travelers: George, Lorraine, Biff, etc. are transformed by the changes. The time travelers like Marty and Doc retain their previous memories (and their alternate memories never existed and were imagined by the non-travelers).
Of course, any time travel movie must suffer from these problems since time travel is impossible. The only one that has a good theory is something like 12 Monkeys: time travel is possible but you can’t change anything or else you would have already done it.
Unfortunately, the person you’re responding to lives in 2001, and you’re posting in 2014. So they’ll never be able to catch up with your post in order to read it!
Although released in 1958, Johnny B. Goode was written by Chuck Berry in 1955. Marty McFly performs the song on November 12th of that same year, which means the odds favor the song already existing. So when Marvin calls, his cousin Chuck is probably thinking “who the fuck stole my song?”
Anyone read Charles Stross’ Singularity books?
His solution to time travel paradox might be plausible to a degree (but other aspects may be not).
/slight spoilers ahead, obviously
First you have to research and wait until AI gains consciousness and takes over the planet (not unlike in T2) and then the galaxy and beyond. We are talking classical singularity close-to-godlike being here (Stross calls it Eschaton). Then at some point time travel can be researched and used by all. But only Eschaton has the meanings to micromanage all the time travel escapades (other than its own) and to repair the time cone to the point it was able to do that.
Heinlein pretty much rang all the changes on the time paradox in his three stories - By His Bootstraps, All you Zombies (how appropriate!), and Door Into Summer. Any subsequent writer has to at least acknowledge their debt. (In his late career he played again with the concept, but didn’t really add anything new to it.)
The problem isn’t the impossibility; the same is true of FTL travel, but fictional workarounds via hyperspace, collapsar jumps, and whatnot so that your protagonist can roam the galaxy without needing many lifetimes to do it, don’t get particularly problematic.
The problem is that, unlike with getting between points in space more quickly than Uncle Albert allows, being able to jump between different points in time creates problems either with paradox or sheer meaning. Universal predestination, erasure of people’s lives and experiences, spinning off new timelines…none of the potential resolutions allow time travel to be useful without being truly problematic from a moral standpoint.