Creating Destiny: Free Choice or Fixed Fate?

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Discussion Overview

The discussion revolves around the concepts of free choice and fixed fate in the context of time travel, particularly the implications of teleporting into the future. Participants explore theoretical scenarios and the philosophical ramifications of such travel, debating whether it creates destiny or merely reveals what has already occurred.

Discussion Character

  • Debate/contested
  • Conceptual clarification
  • Exploratory

Main Points Raised

  • One participant argues that traveling into the future creates destiny for events leading up to that moment, suggesting that free choice exists only until the point of travel.
  • Another participant contends that traveling into the future only allows one to observe past events, asserting that this does not imply destiny was created.
  • Some participants question the very possibility of time travel, indicating that the discussion is hypothetical and not about the feasibility of such travel.
  • A participant introduces the idea of suspended animation as a means of "leapfrogging" into the future, challenging the assumptions about time travel.
  • Another participant points out that everyone is constantly moving into the future at a normal rate, suggesting that time travel might be a matter of perspective rather than a physical leap.
  • One participant discusses the effects of relativistic travel, where someone traveling at near-light speed would age more slowly than those remaining on Earth, framing this as a form of time travel into the future.
  • Concerns are raised about knowing the future in advance and the one-way nature of time travel, emphasizing the distinction between moving forward in time and the impossibility of returning to the past.

Areas of Agreement / Disagreement

Participants express multiple competing views regarding the implications of time travel on free will and destiny. There is no consensus on whether time travel creates destiny or merely reveals past events, and the feasibility of time travel itself is also debated.

Contextual Notes

Participants acknowledge the hypothetical nature of the discussion, with some emphasizing that the argument is not about the actual possibility of time travel but rather its theoretical implications. There are also unresolved questions regarding the definitions of time travel and the nature of time itself.

ChongFire
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Alright so my roomate and I are having an argument and we need some help. My roomates argument is, if you were to teleport into the future, the moment you step into the future you would create destiny up until the moment you stepped into the future. In order to see everything that is in the future that you step into then nobody had a choice but to do what they did. His argument is that as long as you don't travel into the future then you have free choice, but the instant you travel into the future then and only then is everything up until that point destined to happen. By traveling into the future you create destiny. You have the free choice of wether or not you travel into the future, but as soon as you travel into the future then everything that happened had to have happened that way, thus creating destiny. In essence the future is not set till someone sees it.

My argument is that if you can travel into the future then all you are seeing is everything that happened the way it happened. Not that it has to happen as it will, but it merely means that everything in the past at that point has to have happened. This is not creating destiny. This is merely seeing what happened in the past.

An example. If someone traveled from one minute before you read this to one minute after you read this. Relative to the one minute after you read this, my roomate would say that you were destined to read this the moment the guy arrived in the future. He is saying that because this guy traveled into the future then and only then you can't change the past. I would say that the guy only saw what happened up until that point, because you can never change the past wether you went into the future or not.
 
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Of course, all of that is assuming that you CAN travel into the future. Many people accept this as a valid argument that you CAN'T travel into the future!
 
I don't believe that you can travel into the future but its a matter of "If". We aren't arguing about the possibility of traveling into the future but the results of "If" you could.
 
Now, if for the sake of argument we accept that a bird isn't a bird as our hypothesis, how would a bird look like?
 
Sorry for butting in.. what do you mean by traveling into the future? Most people live under the assumption that they are traveling into the future all the time, and if you wanted to leapfrog ahead, all you need is a form of suspended animation.

(I suspect that common assumption is flawed.. if time were passing you at a constant rate, what are the units of that rate?)

(also, I cannot get this image out of my head: someone standing next to where the futureman is destined to materialise, holding a cream pie and looking at their watch..)
 
Last edited:
B.E.M said:
Sorry for butting in.. what do you mean by traveling into the future? Most people live under the assumption that they are traveling into the future all the time, and if you wanted to leapfrog ahead, all you need is a form of suspended animation.

(I suspect that common assumption is flawed.. if time were passing you at a constant rate, what are the units of that rate?)
you got a good point..for instance, right now I am am in the future from when i was reading this post...and now I am in the future from the time i started writing this sentence =]
 
HallsofIvy said:
Of course, all of that is assuming that you CAN travel into the future. Many people accept this as a valid argument that you CAN'T travel into the future!
Sure one can travel into the future. We are all doing it all the time.

Someone who accelerates away from Earth at to close to the speed of light and then returns some years later (in our timeframe) would have aged much more slowly compared to the ones who stayed on Earth - what is this if it is not "travelling into the future" at a different rate compared to the rest of us?

What IS questionable is (a) whether one can know the future in advance; and (b) whether one can travel into the past (ie time travel is a one-way trip - we are always going from past to future and never the reverse)

Best Regards

Moving Finger
 

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