A reader signing himself "Jeff" raised some issues in response to the theory articles on infinity loops concerning variants of replacement theory, which required a longer response than could be addressed in the comments sections. Thus this article will attempt to respond to those.
He begins,
What do you call the 'self-correcting theory'?
He provides this example:
...if I kill Hitler, someone else will still take over in his place and essentially commit the same crimes killing millions of people.
In some cases, this is just the inexorable nature of history: some events are ripe to occur, such as scientific discoveries and political tides; individuals are flashpoints for these events, but the crushing war debt Germany faced after World War I would ultimately have led to another war absent some relief. In some ways, though, this smacks of divine intervention, that certain things were ordained to happen and a power beyond humanity ensures that they do. It is difficult to distinguish the inevitable from the preventable.
It is also important to consider the scope of the correction. If you mean that the same soldiers would die on the same days on the same battlefields, then you are looking at something more than the tides of history; if you mean less than that, then the world will have changed drastically, such that very few of the people who are alive today would have been born.
He then suggests
...the 'made worse theory' where if I kill Hitler, events turn out much worse like Germany rules the world....
This is an even odder view of providence: it suggests that the world we have is the best of all possible, and thus that any tampering will upset the good that has happened. Certainly it is possible to make things worse by tampering, but if they are already bad odds are that they will wind up better rather than worse. If not, then God must have brought about the world that is, declaring it the best possible world, but at the same time must be powerless to prevent us from changing it.
Finally,
...the 'made better theory' where the changes all lead to some sickly sweet, everything is perfect theory, like McFly and Lake House, Kate and Leopold....
These films are ultimately rather varied in their approaches to time, but they do all have Hollywood endings. It is certainly possible to make things better accidentally; we can forgive a good story for its happy ending as long as it does not suggest that happy endings are inevitable. After all, people do like stories with happy endings. Not all happy endings are plausible, of course, but that's an individual question: could it have happened that way? So the happy ending in and of itself is not at issue, but how it is achieved.
In all these cases, the issues remain the same to this degree: if what the time traveler did would prevent the same time traveler from making the same trip for the same reason, then history fails (barring reliance on some form of Niven's Law). Thus if killing Hitler changed the world, for better, for worse, or simply by putting someone else in command, it is almost impossible for a time traveler to decide to kill Hitler (who now never mattered to history) and thus he will not be killed. That is the classic form of the infinity loop and of the classic grandfather paradox: the time traveler undoes his own actions, creating a causal loop that cycles between two histories, one which leads him to take action in the other, the other which prevents him from taking action in the one.
As always, your questions about time travel in movies are welcome in the comments or by e-mail.
Comments
What are the odds that I just happened to check out what is going on today? Hmm Terminator and Mimzy, huh? I didn't even remember what I had said. The pizza thing was funny. I still disagree that in the altered/new timeline where Hitler is killed, before his fame or during, that I somehow must travel back again. Why do you always add this part of retravel? Must I also reinvent time travel? I remember not agreeing that if I don't everything will 'snap back' to the original timeline. Doesn't make sense to me. What does the universe care whether one person is dead or not?
Second of two comments:
Since time is "static" in that it all exists "now", the sequence of cause and effect is irrelevant. Just as killing Hitler would prevent him from leading Germany into war, killing the time traveler "before" he kills Hitler would prevent him from killing Hitler--and it does not matter whether that "before" is temporal as long as it is sequential. Kill the traveler before he leaves for the past, and you prevent him from killing Hitler.
You want the second answer to apply to temporal order but the third to apply to sequential order, that is, undoing causes will undo effects that follow in time but not those that follow causally out of time. You can't have it both ways: either undoing causes undoes their effects, or it doesn't. If it does, then preventing the time traveler from traveling to the past restores the original history; if it doesn't, then you can't change the past by killing Hitler.
Is that clear?
Thanks again.
--M. J. Young
First of two comments:
What are the odds? Perhaps providence is involved.
On the more serious question, it has to do with causal chains; it may be more than I can explain in a comment post.
Time travel implies that all time exists "at once", so that you can go "to" it. Effects follow from causes, and we attempt to change history by changing the causes--killing Hitler "undoes" all that he did by eliminating the cause. There are three possible resolutions for time.
1) You cannot undo the cause; if you attempt to kill Hitler you will fail. This is fixed time theory, all of history is already in place.
2) You can undo the cause, and this will undo the effect. This is replacement theory, that if kill Hitler his acts will be undone.
3) You can undo the cause without undoing the effect. You can kill Hitler, but that will not prevent Hitler from leading Germany to war.
More in the next comment....
After rewading your articles and JUST watching your movie I see you have a SERIOUS obsession with pizza! So, I checked out Tooth & Nail and was wondering if you had a follow-up coming out? What was it like working with Rider Strong? Do you mainly do sci-fi and fantasy? Any chance of a hip-hop documentary?
McGravy apparently has me confused with someone else, probably his alternate personality Flibbage the Dwarf Troll.
--M. J. Young
Mark? Holmes! I don't even know what any of that means! I'm guessing someone is logging in as your name? Anyway, I was asking about the follow up to the movie Tooth & Nail, if it is you and has struck a nerve I am sorry, I thought you were proud of that movie.
Mr. McGravy, thank you for your thoughts, confused though they apparently be. I have not been involved in the production of any movie thus far. That suggests either that you have me confused with someone else or that you are a troll harassing me because you find it in some perverse way fun. The odds of there being another "Mark Joseph Young" in the industry are slim (although there might be another "Mark Young" with less improbability), so the evidence points to the latter.
You make yourself look bad; but then, you perhaps enjoy doing so behind the veil of anonymity, as you can act like a jerk and people won't know it's you.
I avoid deleting comments; I think it almost as rude as posting impertinent ones. If you wish to look like a moron, by all means continue posting such nonsense. I would rather, though, that you did not bother those readers who are genuinely interested in the topic who might not be as patient with nonsense as I.
--M. J. Young
Look, Holmes, I came here asking questions about your film projects and you start on this hostility tip. I don't know why you have some bug up your butt and start attacking me but to say it is bizarre would be an understatement!
Also, trolls? Why are trolls being summoned into this?
McGravy, I apologize for my rudeness if I was rude, and to the audience for yours if you were. I have already stated clearly that I do not now have and have never had any involvement in any film project. If you did not know that, you have mistaken me for someone else. If you did know that, then you are posting simply to make trouble. The former possibility is unfortunate but now corrected; the latter is simply rude.
Thank you for your interest in the articles. Please permit me to dispel your erroneous belief that I have to this point ever been involved in the making of a movie.
Thank you.
--M. J. Young
First, my dad is Mr. McGravy so please drop the formalities.
Second, you ignored my troll question.
Third, photos don't lie,after I watched the behind-the-scenes doc on the DVD I would think there isn't another Mark Young that looks just like the photo on your examiner page.
3rd: Photos do lie, that's what Photoshop is for; there are a lot of Mark Youngs, even a few with Joseph in the middle, in the world, and a lot of people who resemble me, so that's not impossible; this and some consulting on works never produced are as close as I have gotten to the film industry.
2nd: A troll is someone who posts specifically to be a nuisance and pick fights.
1st: I'll risk offending you with the guess that you're using a false name, so it doesn't matter what I call you as long as we all know it's you.
Either I am honestly telling you that I have no connection to any movie, or I am intent enough to keep such a connection secret that I am lying about it in print; why would you push the issue other than to create trouble and be a jerk? There is a Mark Joseph Young listed on IMDB.com; he is not I, I am not he.
--M. J. Young
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