Is Time Travel the Key to Understanding Determinism and the Future?

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Discussion Overview

The discussion revolves around the relationship between time travel and determinism, exploring whether the ability to travel to the future suggests that all actions and outcomes are predetermined. Participants engage with theoretical implications of time travel in relation to concepts of time and causality.

Discussion Character

  • Debate/contested

Main Points Raised

  • One participant suggests that traveling to the future indicates that all actions and reactions are predetermined, as it implies a fixed outcome.
  • Another participant argues that time travel to the future does not influence the future, positing that it occurs outside of the normal flow of time, thus maintaining a deterministic view.
  • Some participants question the link between time travel and determinism, expressing skepticism about whether time travel necessarily implies that all events are predetermined.

Areas of Agreement / Disagreement

Participants express differing views on the implications of time travel for determinism, with no consensus reached on whether time travel inherently suggests a predetermined future.

Contextual Notes

Participants have not fully explored the definitions of determinism or time travel, and assumptions about the nature of time and causality remain implicit.

Solar Eclipse
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If you could travel to the future wouldn't that mean that the outcome of every action and the resulting reaction were already determined? I know that we are constantly moving to the future, but I am talking about a situation similar to back to the future except he doesn't go back in time again.
please be nice.
 
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Yes it would definitely mean that.
The future is an accumulation of the past, and time travel to the future implies that the traveler travels outside of time space, where he is not influencing the future just by merely traveling there.

Otherwise it would mean that he is not traveling into the future, but rather traveling elsewhere, where he has influenced time in such a way that the travel accumulated into the future, which is no different from just normally living your life into the future like everyone is doing.
 
I don't see why time travel would imply determinism.
 
russ_watters said:
I don't see why time travel would imply determinism.

OK.. Maybe you can expand on that?
 

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