Time Paradox: can we change the past present or future

Time paradoxes, by definition, cannot exist.

I believed in the idea of a theoretically infinite (technically finite, but expanding at an exponential rate) series of multiple universes, where more were created by every decision made - anything possible would occur in one of these strands. But that assumes true free will.

Causality teaches us that every cause has an effect - say if I wanted to move my arm, an electrical impulse originates from my brain and causes the muscle movement. But why am I moving my arm? There has to be a cause for that. Therefore, anything done by us is an amalgam of prior experience and brain chemistry, both of which are also a series of effects with their own concordant causes. This serves to eliminate the idea of true free will. But why is this important? Effects cannot precede their causes - this violates the theory of entropy. Any actions one hypothetically takes in their past will inevitably come to a point where, through a series of causes and effects, they will clash with the causes of their own life, apparently voiding the existence of the individual and making time travel unviable. However, as effects cannot follow causes, this rules out travel to the past anyway.

As for time travelling to the future, it's theoretically possible if you travel as fast as or faster than the speed of light. But it will be impossible to travel back because of the reasons stated above.

So my answer is no. We cannot change the past, and we cannot change the future as we have no real free will.

 

your movment is control by your desire, if you want to move your arm, you send a message to your subconscious and it will handle the rest.

subconscious is the manager of the human body, it handle everything from walking to heatbeat, even now when i'm typing this message, my subconscious is doing it, i just need to think of the word i want to be typed and it is done on the spot. however subconscious isnt smart, alot of action needed to be program into it via learning, which why you dont see new born walking. but once the action its program into the subconscious, when a desire that is link to that action, subconscious will take over.

however there is a nerou illness that make your action uncontrolable like alien hand syndrome which make you loss control to your hand because the area handling the musle movement is damaged and your subconscious no longer able to control it.

in short, unlike you said, there is freewill. because we cant move our arm without having a desire to move it, unless you got neuro illness.

if you dont understand, think of it, we the conscious is the GUI and our subconscious is the background process.

 

You missed my point entirely. Why do I want to move my arm (for the record, it was the first thing to come to mind)? Why was it the first thing that came to mind as an example? It's all a chain of events, like a man being hit by a car. Why was the man walking to wherever he was going? Why was the person driving?

See what I mean? There's always a reason. Cause and effect. What I was implying was that there is something in my head that made "moving my arm" the first thing I thought of.

 

yes some stuff are unavoidetable, like eating, why do you eat? becasue you are hungry, why are you hungry? because you need food, why do you need food? because you need energy, why do you need energy? because to stay alive.

but you can choose what to eat or not to eat at all, that is freewill.

 

well if u change something in the past you dont know whats gonna to happen next thats the same with the future if u change something in the future later you will see that it can be good or can be bad. but i think later we can time travel but i hope this is not gonna happen if we do that people always trying to do bad stuff so i hope its nnot gonna happen

 

Ugh, you're missing the point. Why do we pick a particular thing to eat, using your example? Because we might like it. Why do we like it? Brain chemistry tells us we like it. If you knew someone's entire brain setup at a given point in time, you could predict what they would do in any given situation at that instant.

 

its current being research, they are trying to find out \ map out the decision making side of the brain, so far the computer can perdict up to 90% of accuracy what the subject is going to answer before the subject answer the question..

and also i really dont see the point of you are trying to said.....sure brain told us we like that food, but we are the one who pick the food, you wont know what you like until you try it out. Our brain isnt capable of telling us the final result before we put our sensor into the test.

remember the only stuff that our brain can take control is only those which is linked to our ability to survive.

 

I think what Suiseiseki is getting at is the cause and effect relationship that we base all our movements, thoughts, and so on of (ad infinitum)

For example, you want to move from point A to point from B. Why do you want to do that? Because of X. Why X? Because of Y and Z. Why Y? Because of C. Why Z? ... and so on.

At the end we end up with a single causality... something to the tune of existence/ creation. This is why he stated there would be no free will. Because we do not actually "control" what we do: i.e. something else made it happen. We could not change destiny

 

but i just explain that we do have free will. Even when our brain told us we need to eat, we can chose not to eat, that is free will.

 

and you right that? A person who has a "the sex ->" avatar wrote that?

 

Actually...we don't have free will. And I think the term that Suiseiseki is missing is whats called "Emergence". Emergence when applied to behavior becomes the theory of Emergent Behavior that, in a very condensed nutshell, states that a only a set number of outcomes can "emerge" from a given number of parameters. In the case of eating, to eat or starve are two outcomes of the parameters of hunger and choice (though there would likely be many more biological/environmental factors involed--lets keep the example simple). The ability to choose is an expression of "will", however, this "will" is not free because choice is only given within a set of external/internal parameters. For "free will" to exist there would have to be no other factors to have bearing on one's choice.

 

These.

Sure. My avatar isn't me, although it's definitely true that I am indeed "the sex", a sentiment echoed numerous times by various members of this community on IRC.

 

IIRC freewill is define as the ability to choose an option driven by own willingness.

so as long as you choose your own action and you are willing to carry out that action its a freewill.

for the eating example, to eat or not to eat is the given choice which lies on one hand when he or she is hungry, additional to that, one can chose to eat even if he or she isnt hungry. That is the display of freewill.

edit: you know what, lets forget about this.

 

i've watched this theoty before in discovery channel they said things like this
the time is a one huge river, if you travel back and change the past, the river split into 2 or maybe more part, and that's part of river has different version of future, and ours is still same as be

 

Just want to jump in here, I believe we do have free will, but what I take from Suiseiseki's posts is that, unless we know what the outcome our free will, we can't implement our free will to affect the outcome of our choice. For example, let's say Person A's favourite color is red and person B's favourite color is blue. Both are trapped in a room with identical bombs about to explode. These bombs have 2 colored wires; blue and red. Neither people know which wire will disarm the bomb and which one will set it off, only that cutting both will set it off. A will chose red every time and B will chose blue every time. This is because, for whatever reason they like that color better. They were free to chose either, but unless they had knowledge of the future, how could they use their free will to change it?

Hope this made sense.

 

hmm... that's make sense enough...

 

time travel is possible one way (the future) going into the past is impossible, it would take massive amounts of energy to send the whole universe into a rewind. so the future is the way to go, and yes you can change the future. your future, you just have to stand up and try harder

 

The future can change depending upon your own actions in both the present and the past. You cannot change what you have done in your past, but you can do something in the present to make up for your past and thus end up changing your future. The future has an endless amount of possibilities because it is not set in stone, it changes and morphs into whatever is happening in the present due to the actions, interactions, and reactions of mankind and nature itself. Which I believe really sums up the existence of free will. Prove me wrong, please.

 

Don't forget these are your opinions guys, unless you've managed to prove them some how!
@timmy1991: How can you decide to choose a different path unless you know what will happen? If you're on a game show, where you have to pick one of 2 boxes, which one do you pick? I think it's probable that a particular person would always pick, say, the left box. (S)He was free to choose either, but unless (s)he can forsee the consequences, how can (s)he exercise her/his free will?

 

free will is nothing but deciding what is right and what is wrong and acting upon them... there is no fate, there is no predetermined path, all we can do is try are hardest and do what is right (not left)