Time travel and paradoxs

There are many examples of time travel paradoxes. I implore you to read up on Hawking's Chronological Protection Conjecture. I think his conjecture is closest to the truth of time travel.

 

The Granfather Paradox. This one is AGAINST time travel. Suppose you travel back in time and kill your grandfather BEFORE your father is CONCIEVED. Where does that leave you? If your father was never here how can you be here able to go back etc...Now heres a different idea...Time travel should be possible so that your grandfather can travel FORWARD in time and kill you just BEFORE you go back in time to kill him. This one is in favor of time travel. This can be called THE GRANDFATHERS REVENGE THEORY. This theory is in reply to Steven Hawkins theory that the past must be made safe for historians (chronology protection conjecture). This alternate view makes the future safe for grandfathers.

 

Yes, but do these alternate histories exist as physical realities? If they do I would agree with you that they are full of paradoxes. The simplest example I can think of is an alternate physically real history with a law for existence that postulates the impossibility of alternate histories. That would make this future impossible because we postulate that alternate histories exist...unless we are the physical evolution of that history (the one that prohibits alternate histories)

If these alternate histories are merely 'thought experiments' meaning they don't physically exist then what is the point of the underlying philosophy of Quantum Mechanics? You don't need Q.M. to explain that an experiment can have many outcomes. In my opinion, what Q.M. contributes is the idea that an experiment can have ANY outcome and all those outcomes EXIST untill you collapse the wave function by actually performing the experiment. In my opinion this is an absurd idea filled with paradoxes.

One more thing. Popularizers of Q.M. always mention the POSITIVE aspects of multiple realities. You are rich, beautiful, healthy, smart, safe, etc. They never mention the negative. You're missing a leg, an eye, you're constantly tortured, murdered, etc.

If you made a list of the positive and negative aspects of multiple realities, the NEGATIVE would far outweigh the positive simply because there are more ways to cause chaos than there are ways to cause order.

Personally I wouldn't like to be a rock. I like the fact that billions of years of evolution have 'steered' me to complexification and greater order as a concious being able to think my own thoughts.

These multiple realities Q.M. is allowing... most of them would be quark soup...if you follow the logical consequences of the reasoning of popularizers beyond their first few sentences.

 

By the way have you ever heard of the delayed choice quantum eraser? I first learned about it in a book by Paul Davies.

Here is a wiki link about quantum eraser and delayed quantum eraser.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_eraser_experiment

 

Wait a minute, I think I just got your point which I find very interesting. You are saying it is not a paradox if you move into an alternate history that allows paradoxes?

Hmm... then so called 'paradoxes' may be allowed in this reality. I am not against this idea, but clearly paradoxical situations are not 'easy' to create, on the other hand there are examples such as quantum eraser, quantum tunnelling, quantum entanglement, EPR. etc. (Please add to the list)

Thank you for the post, but i am still in favor of making Q.M. a bit more logical. For instance you can have an infinite number of realities as long as some of them are missing (The absurd ones) The same way you can have an infinite amount of numbers between zero and 1 but 2 is absent.

This way the absurd reality where I am a conscious bowling ball DNE

 

I like how you mention 'tight' laws that allow for our existence. I take it then you would agree that most of these other universes would not have these laws 'tight' enough to allow conscious beings capable of asking these questions? Those are the ones i would call ABSOLUTELY negative. I tried to use an example that anyone could relate but i like your idea better, it is less subjective.

Be very careful!! I am not saying other universes don't exist, i'm not saying they do. i can't prove either. What i am saying is that if other universes exist it is a bad thing (in my subjective opinion) Popularizers of Q.M. say it is a good thing (in their subjective opinion)

They make their argument for positive aspects of infinite realities, i make my argument for negative aspects of infinite realities.

I would like to adress your last remark. Perhaps i should have used dis-order instead of chaos? i am not using some 'fancy' chaos theory here, i am saying dis-order is an enemy of greater complexity, greater complexity is needed for consciousness, therefore dis-order is an enemy of consciousness.

 

I certainly do not want to give chaos credit for consciousness even though i think there are thinkers out there that do

 

[I can't accept quantum mechanics because] "I like to think the moon is there even if I am not looking at it."- Albert Einstein

I think Einstein made this negative quote about Q.M. as it was understood in his day. Has this consequence of quantum mechanical philosophy changed since then?

"As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain, and as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality." (A. Einstein)

I think this is an interesting warning by Dr, Einstein.

"Had I known that we were not going to get rid of this damned quantum jumping, I never would have involved myself in this business!"- Erwin Schrödinger

Again, very interesting insight from one of the founders of Q.M.

http://www.integrated-magic.com/faqs/famous-physcists [Broken]

 

Yes, it is generally considered - with all due respect to this great man - wrong. Read up on the related papers EPR (Einstein, Podolsky, Rosen), Bell's Theorem (1965) and Aspect (1981).

http://www.drchinese.com/David/EPR_Bell_Aspect.htm

We live in an observer dependent reality (i.e. a contextual world), which goes against the quote above (which argues for observer independence). Although this conclusion is somewhat interpretation dependent.

 

And the intriguing reply from Niels Bohr was:

Can you prove that the moon is there if nobody is looking at it?​

Personally I love Einstein; he was a great genius, but to make him a scientific "God", which never made any mistakes, doesn’t benefit anyone...

 

If nobody is looking at it then everyone Must look somewhere ELSE. This requires a systematic search of the entire universe to complete the proof Bohr wants.

His rquest is equivalent to asking 'prove unicorns do not exist'

I do not make him a "God" His superiors made him a Dr. and his peers made him famous.

 

Thanks for the links. I am aware of these and mention them in post #7. Still, it benefits everyone to learn more.

If the observed effect is not a consequence of experimental apparatus interference, then what is the conclusion? Space and particles have mystical properties?

Should we trust Q.M. to make predictions about large objects, like THE MOON!!?? Or should we confine it to the sub-atomic level where things behave in counterintuitive ways because of imperfections in the experimental apparatus and lack of understanding by us.

Einstein was right-with all respect to great thinkers against him-Q.M. does NOT describe the behavior of the moon, Relativity does.

 

I thought CONSCIOUSNESS collapses the wave function. Is a mechanical detector conscious if your eye is not on it?

I thought that any conscious sensory perception is needed in order to collapse the wave function. This perception can happen now, in the past, or in the future long after the experiment itself is over.

This is what 'delayed quantum eraser' shows.

Look at post # 7 for lnk

 

Nope. You're perfectly correct.


The Moon thing is not a practical thought experiment, but it is one about principle.

In principle there is a possibility that the Moon mgiht not be interacting with anything for some brief moment in time. In that time, we cannot be certain it is not there.

No. It is simply a measurement. Consciousness is not part of it.