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Time travel
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dph_of_rules
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PostPosted: Tue Jun 03, 2008 4:30 pm    Post subject: Time travel Reply with quote

If this isn't in the appropriate forum, feel free to move it.

Elaboration in my beliefs in time travel

a)if time travel is relatively 'cheap', history should immutable. If I could things back in forth through time cheaply (common place), basic intellect demands we use this as a means of getting military intelligence. Simply put, send messages to the past to relay coordinates of enemy movement and double agents. Everything turns into a stalement since sneak attacks and double agents became as revelations from the future would give advance warning. Talk a dull universe.

b)if time travel is relatively 'expensive', I can live with history being mutable. What do I mean by expensive is time travel costs the person wishing to travel through time would have to give what he/she cares about most. Yes, that price. Money is cheap, giving up your most valuable position isn't.
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dph_of_rules
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PostPosted: Tue Jun 03, 2008 11:02 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

My biggest complaint is time travel in the Star Trek universe.

Way back in the original series, they discovered a cheap way to travel through time. Sure, it damaged the ship, but it was repeatable. From that point on, a big plot hole was opened. Why didn't Federation start sending probes back in time as a means of intelligence gathering. Probes sent from one day, one week, one month, one year, one decade, one century, and one thousand years in the future would be very useful. That leaves no possibility of sneak attacks, no possibilities of secret double agents, no surprises, etc. . . a very dull universe. It was never mentioned why there wasn't ever implemented. That kind of cheap time travel should be avoided at all cost.

I like the idea of time travel requiring a great sacrifice.
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Selezen
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PostPosted: Wed Jun 04, 2008 4:20 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Yeah, Star Trek's time travel is just too easy and too rubbish. Take the slingshot theory. Fly round the sun and start going so fast that you break the time barrier. Ballcocks.

From there TNG took it and made it so that every spacial anomaly in existence was a time travel possibility. God bless the tachyon. Two things in TNG that gave away the fact there was going to be Time Travel were the mention of tachyons and the name Brannon Braga in the writing credits.

I'm not a believer in the possibility of time travel, I'm afraid. I'd LOVE to be proved wrong though. Out of all the time travel concepts I think the Back to the Future one is my favourite, since it allows dramatic tension, a realistic (hah) resolution to problems and (with a couple of glaring exceptions) it all hangs together pretty well.

I like Jump Leads' method of incuding an element of time travel, with the whole "universes go at different speeds" idea. So much variety and so many possibilities. Now if Ben and co can just write and draw faster...

Yeah, I'm greedy for comics.
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Axonite
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PostPosted: Wed Jun 04, 2008 9:48 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

dph_of_rules wrote:
My biggest complaint is time travel in the Star Trek universe.

Way back in the original series, they discovered a cheap way to travel through time. Sure, it damaged the ship, but it was repeatable. From that point on, a big plot hole was opened. Why didn't Federation start sending probes back in time as a means of intelligence gathering.


Assignment: Earth was the episode where they probably came the closest to doing that:

Kirk wrote:
"Captain's log. Using the light-speed breakaway factor, the Enterprise has moved back through time to the 20th century. We are now in extended orbit around Earth, using our ship's deflector shields to remain unobserved. Our mission – historical research. We are monitoring Earth communications to find out how our planet survived desperate problems in the year ... 1968."


Of course, that episode seems a bit odd, because (as far as I can remember) that's the only time they did the time-travel bit for something that was obviously not an emergency or an accident!

(It probably also seems a bit odd because it was meant as a pilot for an Assignment: Earth TV series...)
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dph_of_rules
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PostPosted: Wed Jun 04, 2008 10:20 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

The kind of intelligence gathering was I referring to was receiving messages from the future, telling enemy ship movements, future knowledge of double agents, etc . the kind of material that would make sneak attacks impossible and would actually save lives.

In fact, letting your enemy know that you receive messages from the future is a good policy: they will realize the futility in making sneak attacks.

Quote:
(It probably also seems a bit odd because it was meant as a pilot for an Assignment: Earth TV series...)


Where is the evidence of that?
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Axonite
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PostPosted: Wed Jun 04, 2008 10:47 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

dph_of_rules wrote:
The kind of intelligence gathering was I referring to was receiving messages from the future, telling enemy ship movements, future knowledge of double agents, etc . the kind of material that would make sneak attacks impossible and would actually save lives.

In fact, letting your enemy know that you receive messages from the future is a good policy: they will realize the futility in making sneak attacks.


So if you get information from the future about a sneak attack, and avoid the sneak attack, would the future still have the information to send you?

dph_of_rules wrote:
Quote:
(It probably also seems a bit odd because it was meant as a pilot for an Assignment: Earth TV series...)


Where is the evidence of that?


Any number of Star Trek books mention that - for example, to pick the one I can find on the shelf at the moment, "The World of Star Trek" by David Gerrold: "This was a very strange episode. It was not only a Star Trek episode, it was also a pilot for a new series. However, it didn't sell."

Some information on earlier versions of the script, including one without any Star Trek connection:
http://www.fastcopyinc.com/orionpress/articles/assignment.htm
http://www.fastcopyinc.com/orionpress/articles/assignmentearth.htm
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dph_of_rules
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PostPosted: Mon Jun 09, 2008 8:35 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Suppose we could consider that there are universes where history is immutable and there are other universes where history can be altered.

Could one travel from an universe where history is immutable to an universe where history can be altered? Could one travel from an universe where history can be altered to one where history is immutable?
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Axonite
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PostPosted: Tue Jun 10, 2008 1:20 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Well, just by arriving in a universe, you'd probably be changing its history - so if you can't change history, you can't go there. Unless your arrival was always part of that universe's history, in which case you'd have no choice! Smile
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dph_of_rules
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PostPosted: Tue Jun 10, 2008 8:43 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I've heard an argument that the ability to alter history negates free will. Any comments?
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Entity325
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PostPosted: Wed Jun 11, 2008 2:04 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I don't actually believe in what most people consider "free will."

I believe that we as humans are given the illusion of free will, and then charged with the consequences of our actions, but those actions were effectively set in stone at the moment the universe started.

We make decisions and act upon them, but those decisions are, ultimately, deterministic. Given an identical set of inputs(including base personality, personal history, memories, etc...), the same result is always going to happen. Even with a random event, such as rolling dice, if you could reproduce the settings exactly every single time, including positioning in the roller's hands, moisture, muscle twitches, air density, and surface roughness, you'll get the same results every time.

As far as time travel goes, I don't believe it will ever be humanly possible, simply because once it becomes possible, there will be no way to perform damage control from idiots who deliberately, say, go back in time to kill their own grandfathers, and from what I've seen of the human race, there would be people who would do exactly that.
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ttallan
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PostPosted: Wed Jun 11, 2008 3:23 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Favourite time travel novels?

I think mine was David Gerrold's The Man Who Folded Himself. The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger was also good, though not traditional science fiction.
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dph_of_rules
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PostPosted: Wed Jun 11, 2008 4:47 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Entity325 wrote:
Even with a random event, such as rolling dice, if you could reproduce the settings exactly every single time, including positioning in the roller's hands, moisture, muscle twitches, air density, and surface roughness, you'll get the same results every time.


I don't believe that. Take the exact same coin, in a vacuum, flip it the exactly same way by mechanical means, you will get different results. Why? It's impossible to duplicate the exact circumstances. I didn't really believe in "random" events.

Entity325 wrote:
As far as time travel goes, I don't believe it will ever be humanly possible, simply because once it becomes possible, there will be no way to perform damage control from idiots who deliberately, say, go back in time to kill their own grandfathers, and from what I've seen of the human race, there would be people who would do exactly that.


The damage control would be impossible unless people were content with what they had. And you're right; they would never be possible.
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Adam_Y
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PostPosted: Wed Jun 11, 2008 7:26 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Axonite wrote:


So if you get information from the future about a sneak attack, and avoid the sneak attack, would the future still have the information to send you?


Depends on the interpretation of time travel you are working on. The Many World's interpretation that Jump Leads is based off of is actually pretty similar to one possible explanation for time travel. The past, present, and future are all alternate realities that are separate. Change the timeline in one and nothing happens in any of the others.
Quote:
Even with a random event, such as rolling dice, if you could reproduce the settings exactly every single time, including positioning in the roller's hands, moisture, muscle twitches, air density, and surface roughness, you'll get the same results every time.

That's really nice and all expect for the fact that vast swatches of science operate of probabilities and are not deterministic. Quantum mechanics is a strange mistress. The atom is the perfect example of this. The electron is not orbiting the nucleus. It's randomly blipping along an area which is why if you were to ever learn about the correct model they usually signify the electron path as a cloud. I
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dph_of_rules
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PostPosted: Wed Jun 11, 2008 11:16 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

In a sealed container that is a vacuum aside from a coin and a flipping mechanism, you couldn't replicate identical results because gravity would keep effecting the coin differently because everything moving around it keeps moving and changing the forces effecting the coin. Forget quantum physics, basic movements around the coin can subtly change how the coin flips.
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Adam_Y
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PostPosted: Thu Jun 12, 2008 7:06 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

dph_of_rules wrote:
In a sealed container that is a vacuum aside from a coin and a flipping mechanism, you couldn't replicate identical results because gravity would keep effecting the coin differently because everything moving around it keeps moving and changing the forces effecting the coin. Forget quantum physics, basic movements around the coin can subtly change how the coin flips.

That is still deterministic though. It's just a chaotic system which means that 20 different variables can have a huge effect of the process. Randomness truly does happen in nature but the only thing I could think of off the top of my head is quantum mechanics.
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