Time Travel

[AndyC]

Grumpy Guy wrote:
> It's silly, really.  Observation affects everything.  I read
> that somewhere in a book on Quantuum Mechanics...

Ah, that relates to my reference to the uncertainty principle, which seems to have been questioned in half a dozen redundant posts. In fact, it was intended more as a parallel than a direct application. I do understand that it doesn't apply directly. The point was that one cannot really know the future, because seeing the future affects its course, just as the position and velocity of a particle cannot be measured without affecting it. I thought that was fairly obvious. The trick here is not to think so literally, and look for the similarity in the basic concepts. That's the difference between being able to memorize a definition out of a book and really understanding what it means.

In Paycheck, the mere existence of the machine was enough to drastically change the future. This presents the idea that it might not really be possible to see the future, and that the machine merely creates self-fulfilling prophesies. None of this was in Dick's original story, by the way.



Post Edited (01-08-04 14:51)

[raj]

Is that the one you're thinking of?  I didn't think much of the book, it read too much like a movie script.

[JohnL]

>What was the recent time travel movie with dennis quaid?

I forgot to answer this before; I believe the movie you're thinking of is Frequency.

[28dayslaterfan]

I personally like a modification of the parrelel universe method. in this method, every change you make reasults in a new alternate universe. Kill your father, and there is now a universe where a time traveler killled a man (the father) and another one without all ths messed up time twisting. You are now stuck in an alternate universe  where you do ot exist, but rather poped out of a time machine from a parralel unverse. It would be like in "I'ts a wonderful life", that funkey cristmas movie. And in the universe from witch you came, everyone would be wondering just where the hell you were. And anouther thing-if you changed time in a way that did not kill you, there would be a alternate you, that you would have to kill.

[FearlessFreep]

Anyone see the movie "Tomorrow Man" with Corbin Bernson?  Took Time Travel for granted and dealt pretty will with the ramifications..

[butt monkey]

time travel cannot exist.  we would have seen people from the future in our time. therefore visa vi it's not possible.

[ulthar]

butt monkey wrote:

> time travel cannot exist.  we would have seen people from the
> future in our time. therefore visa vi it's not possible.

That on it's face is illogical.  The absence of evidence of something happening does not mean it is impossible.  For example, in the year 1800 AD, they did not see internal combustion engines, but they were certainly possible.  They did not see nuclear fission reactions, but they were certainly possible (and happening, they just were not observed and recognized as such).

And the phrase is "vis-a-vis."

[FearlessFreep]

And the phrase is "vis-a-vis."

The phrase should really be Q.E.D, I think.  I don't think 'vis-avis' is the right phrase in that sentance, anyway

[ulthar]

FearlessFreep wrote:

> And the phrase is "vis-a-vis."
>
> The phrase should really be Q.E.D, I think.  I don't think
> 'vis-avis' is the right phrase in that sentance, anyway
>


Yeah, I started to mention that, but did not want to get TOO nitpicky...  :)

I HAVED used Q.E.D. before, but I don't use vis-a-vis, so I looked it up.  I found "opposite to" or "in relation to" and I figured "in relation to" was close enough in the context of his post (trying to give BoD).

Q.E.D. is, one of my 'favorites.'  I really dig the way Will Patton's character says it near the end of "No Way Out."