
A Nonlinear History of Time Travel - dnetesn
http://nautil.us/issue/40/learning/a-nonlinear-history-of-time-travel
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RangerScience
The article is... Definitely longer than it needs to be. Aristotle's "final
cause" \- that a thing could be considered to be caused by the ultimate
purpose for its existence; the beauty of art, as an example - is pretty
interesting.

That said, I really just wanted to link some interesting thinking / writing on
time travel, that treats it pretty well:

\- Primer
([http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0390384/](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0390384/))

Probably the most popular. Engineers accidentally invent time travel, and then
VERY CAUTIOUSLY begin to experiment. Takes more than one viewing to follow.
Something resembling multiversal-style TT.

\- Time is Like a River ([https://www.fictionpress.com/s/3138462/1/Time-is-
Like-a-Rive...](https://www.fictionpress.com/s/3138462/1/Time-is-Like-a-
River))

A little girl discovers she can time travel, but cannot make paradoxes, but
can still make choices... Although the writing itself is not the best, the
gradual exploration of the ability - how to use it, what is possible - is
incredible. Single timeline, zero paradoxes, uses something like self-
reinforcing probability as the underlying "rule"

\- Continuum RPG
[http://www.aetherco.com/continuum/](http://www.aetherco.com/continuum/)

"The universe doesn't prevent paradoxes, people do". An attempt to make a
playable single timeline, zero paradox, time travel RPG. The underlying
reality is extremely well thought out, presenting reasonable ways for such a
universe to function, although sacrifices are made so that humans can actually
successfully play the game.

~~~
roywiggins
There's also Achron, an RTS game that uses time travel as a key mechanic.
There's a single timeline, but it's malleable.

[http://www.achrongame.com/](http://www.achrongame.com/)

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k__
I always think of the universe as multiverse, so time travel doesn't seem
paradoxical to me.

~~~
bryanlarsen
I've been planning on writing a novel based on that for about twenty years
now. I've even started it a couple of times. I certainly hope someone "steals"
our idea and runs with it.

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maxerickson
Michael Crichton did it.

It's how the time machine worked in _Timeline_.

If I remember correctly, the company sending people back through time (really
to a parallel universe) didn't even know how/why the receiving machines were
appearing.

It also happened on _Sliders_ , they visited worlds that were ahead or behind
Earth Prime.

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tunesmith
One fun way to almost-disprove time travel (so far) is that there is no
evidence that anyone is doing google searches for things they could not have
known beforehand:
[https://arxiv.org/abs/1312.7128](https://arxiv.org/abs/1312.7128)

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idlewords
Infinitely more fun than this article is the taxonomy of time travel plots at
SF Chronophysics. The whole site is worth a look around:

[http://jbr.me.uk/chrono.html](http://jbr.me.uk/chrono.html)

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f_allwein
hmm... tl;dr anyone? I wanted to like this, but am finding it rather confusing
and unstructured so far.

~~~
BrandonBradley
I'm feeling the same way.

~~~
DiabloD3
Welcome to non-linear history during time travel.

Edit: for those downvoting, the article linked is actually a pretty good
introduction on why time travel may be self evidently impossible through
simple logic (we already know the event didn't happen, so it can't go back and
happen), but also may be self-evidently possible _if_ certain criteria is met
first (specific fuckery involving time-like closed loops and multiverse
theory, which means, essentially, history can't be trusted or multiple
concurrent histories can't be trusted, respectively).

So, yes, it is confusing to need to think about logic in the terms presented
by the article.

~~~
BrandonBradley
I believe we just don't like the way the article is written and not the ideas
within.

