Time wars!?

[Moontanman]

Lots of silly crap is asserted on various platforms online but one of the weirdest is the idea that there is currently a war being fought across time. Of course various bits of "evidence" is asserted but... Let us for a moment participate in a thought experiment. 

Let's say we want to know if a time war is being fought, how would/could we know? If a time traveler went back in time and changed something, no matter his motivation, could we know? Or, in my estimation most likely, would the time changes be completely undetectable by us, the equivalent of non combatants? 

If someone went back in time and changed history, imho, we would never know, no matter how violent or destructive the acts of the time traveler were in the past those acts would be part of our history and be seen by us as simply how history unfolded. Even if time was changed a 1000 times in one day we would simply see those changes as our history... completely undetectable as anything but the way things were and are. IMHO. 

A time war is not just nonsensical from what we know about time travel if it was actually happening it would be something we could never know of... your thoughts?    

[sethoflagos]

2 hours ago, Moontanman said:

Let's say we want to know if a time war is being fought, how would/could we know?

To paraphrase JBS Haldane (albeit in a slightly different context)

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Precambrian Rabbits

 

[MigL]

4 hours ago, Moontanman said:

A time war is not just nonsensical from what we know about time travel

It is, actually, just that.

[swansont]

Once you’ve decided to violate physical law, lots of fictional scenarios become possible.

[Moontanman]

 

14 hours ago, sethoflagos said:

To paraphrase JBS Haldane (albeit in a slightly different context)

 

If there were precambrian rabbits, that would be part of our history and we would not know that time travelers had transported rabbits to the precambrian. My point is that how would we know what is natural and what is the result of intentional time changes?  

12 hours ago, MigL said:

It is, actually, just that.

I agree, I am not trying to justify time travel, I am trying to do a thought experiment to see if we could be aware of time changes. 

11 hours ago, swansont said:

Once you’ve decided to violate physical law, lots of fictional scenarios become possible.

Obviously but that doesn't negate the thought experiment. 

I am not suggesting time travel wars are real I am saying that if they were there would be no way we could know. The idea of a time war taking place in the cambrian ignores the actual idea of war. We would not nuke DC to hurt the Russians, any actions by time warriors would take place in ways that maximized injury to the enemy while limiting any damage to the "home team". 

An episode of ST Enterprise comes to mind. They were in the middle of a Temporal War, without the help of the actual time warriors I can't see how anyone would be aware of changes in the timeline made in the past since they could not be aware of those changes due to the past changing the present. In the episode Aliens had helped NAZI Germany to win WW2, no one who wasn't outside the timeline had a clue any changes had been made.  

If someone went back in time to stop Hitler and succeeded how could we know? Our present would not exist and so no one would have any memory of the original timeline... we, as individuals, would probably not exist at all. 

In all fairness here there does need to be a major assumption here in addition to time travel being possible. The time travelers would have to carry their time machine with them and be immune to the time changes due to this "machine" 

I just remembered the TV show "Timeless" They had this premise, they could change time and avoid those changes themselves. 

So my assertion is that we could not detect any changes in the timeline and we would be blissfully unaware of any "time war" no matter how world shattering the time changes were.      

Edited January 4 by Moontanman
spelling

[TheVat]

 

One might hypothesize (though not perhaps falsifiable in accord with Popper) that the Killer Rabbit of Caerbannog was a surviving Precambrian rabbit.   

You can also deal with time travelers surviving by positing alternate timelines.   When you've stepped on a Jurassic moth or whatever, you start a different timeline but your own remains and can be returned to.  This would make time wars pointless however.

Edited January 4 by TheVat

[sethoflagos]

2 hours ago, Moontanman said:

If there were precambrian rabbits, that would be part of our history and we would not know that time travelers had transported rabbits to the precambrian.

You miss my point entirely.

A precambrian rabbit would predate anything we believe remotely capable of giving birth to the first rabbit by half a billion years. 'Our history' as we understand it supports a pretty clear picture of the growth of the tree of life supported by millions of well-documented data points with not one single notable exception.

If subterfuge and misidentification etc. could be ruled out, we are left having to explain the existence of a genuinely identified item not of its rightful time. For those seeking evidence of time travel, anachronistic artefacts like precambrian rabbits (or 1st Dynasty Tricorders etc) are precisely the sort of hard evidence they would be looking for. 

Edited January 4 by sethoflagos
typo

[swansont]

3 hours ago, Moontanman said:

Obviously but that doesn't negate the thought experiment. 

The thought experiment is underconstrained because it’s fictional. 

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I am not suggesting time travel wars are real I am saying that if they were there would be no way we could know.

How can you be sure that people don’t turn bright plaid when they time travel?

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The idea of a time war taking place in the cambrian ignores the actual idea of war. We would not nuke DC to hurt the Russians, any actions by time warriors would take place in ways that maximized injury to the enemy while limiting any damage to the "home team". 

An episode of ST Enterprise comes to mind. They were in the middle of a Temporal War, without the help of the actual time warriors I can't see how anyone would be aware of changes in the timeline made in the past since they could not be aware of those changes due to the past changing the present. In the episode Aliens had helped NAZI Germany to win WW2, no one who wasn't outside the timeline had a clue any changes had been made.  

Because they chose that to be the story line. It’s fiction.

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If someone went back in time to stop Hitler and succeeded how could we know? Our present would not exist and so no one would have any memory of the original timeline... we, as individuals, would probably not exist at all. 

How do you know the memory wouldn’t exist?

Quote

In all fairness here there does need to be a major assumption here in addition to time travel being possible. The time travelers would have to carry their time machine with them and be immune to the time changes due to this "machine" 

Why does this have to be true?

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I just remembered the TV show "Timeless" They had this premise, they could change time and avoid those changes themselves. 

So my assertion is that we could not detect any changes in the timeline and we would be blissfully unaware of any "time war" no matter how world shattering the time changes were. 

 

It’s just an assertion. There’s no science that backs this up. You could just as easily assert that we would know. We could get temporal headaches and crave chocolate milk.

[Moontanman]

6 hours ago, sethoflagos said:

You miss my point entirely.

A precambrian rabbit would predate anything we believe remotely capable of giving birth to the first rabbit by half a billion years. 'Our history' as we understand it supports a pretty clear picture of the growth of the tree of life supported by millions of well-documented data points with not one single notable exception.

If subterfuge and misidentification etc. could be ruled out, we are left having to explain the existence of a genuinely identified item not of its rightful time. For those seeking evidence of time travel, anachronistic artefacts like precambrian rabbits (or 1st Dynasty Tricorders etc) are precisely the sort of hard evidence they would be looking for. 

You miss my point entirely, if someone was at war with someone else their goal would be to change time to their benefit not plant rabbits in the Cambrian. While not impossible, planting rabbits in the cambrian might just be the ultimate weapon... but killing a key figure in history would, at first blush at least, seem to be the easiest way to change history. No need to lug around high tech objects with you. Simply knowing the where and when of the target would allow you to pretty much eliminate them at your leisure.   

5 hours ago, swansont said:

The thought experiment is underconstrained because it’s fictional. 

How can you be sure that people don’t turn bright plaid when they time travel?

Because they chose that to be the story line. It’s fiction.

How do you know the memory wouldn’t exist?

Why does this have to be true?

It’s just an assertion. There’s no science that backs this up. You could just as easily assert that we would know. We could get temporal headaches and crave chocolate milk.

Any thought experiment will not be useful if nonsensical parameters are injected into the scenario for no reason other than to disrespect the person trying to honestly understand what we can and cannot know... yes this ties into my famous obsession with certain mysteries. i am trying to understand what can and cannot be known under any or all circumstances. Since time travel is as technically possible as warp drive but also just as surely impossible in reality and this fact has never been used to ridicule anyone who comes up with a thought experiment about what the effects of a real warp drive would be on society. I may not have hit the nail on the head with my thought experiment but my effort was honest and in no way deceptive or meant to ridicule anyone.   

I would have expected help to make my question better not ridicule to make me look bad.    

[sethoflagos]

2 minutes ago, Moontanman said:

No need to lug around high tech objects with you.

Except for your tardis. 

[swansont]

2 hours ago, Moontanman said:

Any thought experiment will not be useful if nonsensical parameters are injected into the scenario for no reason other than to disrespect the person trying to honestly understand what we can and cannot know... yes this ties into my famous obsession with certain mysteries. i am trying to understand what can and cannot be known under any or all circumstances. Since time travel is as technically possible as warp drive but also just as surely impossible in reality and this fact has never been used to ridicule anyone who comes up with a thought experiment about what the effects of a real warp drive would be on society. I may not have hit the nail on the head with my thought experiment but my effort was honest and in no way deceptive or meant to ridicule anyone.   

Time travel is theoretically possible under specific conditions, but the kind of arbitrary time travel you describe is not.

Here’s a link from the other time travel thread describing what can and can’t happen with time travel

https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/blog/2009/05/14/rules-for-time-travelers/

2 hours ago, Moontanman said:

I would have expected help to make my question better not ridicule to make me look bad.    

I don’t see where I ridiculed you or suggested that there was deception. I critiqued your conjecture, and you’ve been here long enough to know to expect that. Getting feedback should allow you to improve your question. 

[Moontanman]

11 hours ago, swansont said:

Time travel is theoretically possible under specific conditions, but the kind of arbitrary time travel you describe is not.

I am not proposing that time travel is possible.

11 hours ago, swansont said:

Here’s a link from the other time travel thread describing what can and can’t happen with time travel

https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/blog/2009/05/14/rules-for-time-travelers/

Interesting concepts but I see them as being in no way any more or less rational that any other time travel concepts and no more or less arbitrary than any others I have read about. 

11 hours ago, swansont said:

I don’t see where I ridiculed you or suggested that there was deception. I critiqued your conjecture, and you’ve been here long enough to know to expect that. Getting feedback should allow you to improve your question. 

Ok then, I still say my thought experiment is valid and that my assertion is valid as well. Boiled down to its most basic. The only person who can know the timeline has changed is the time traveler. Everyone else is carried along in the time stream and the original time stream ceases to exist. 

Of course this is fictional, the very premise is fictional, but fictional premises can be used to figure out logical outcomes in even fictional scenarios. the idea of course opens up a huge can of worms but they are fictional worms and only have meaning in the context of the fictional thought experiment. 

 

 

 

[TheVat]

14 hours ago, Moontanman said:

You miss my point entirely, if someone was at war with someone else their goal would be to change time to their benefit not plant rabbits in the Cambrian. While not impossible, planting rabbits in the cambrian might just be the ultimate weapon... but killing a key figure in history would, at first blush at least, seem to be the easiest way to change history.

On second blush, there is the problem of unintended consequences.  Human affairs are complex and chaotic.  Time war would seem prone to backfires - kill Hitler and.... woops.... a more clever and ruthless person filled that historical space, formed an even stronger government that more wisely didn't drive out all the smart Jewish physicists or fight on too many fronts, developed a nuclear-tipped longer range V2 before anyone else, and so on.  

Also, if the time travelers are to remain unchanged, then their original timeline must still exist, right?  Otherwise they would wink out of existence as soon as the change was effected.

[iNow]

1 hour ago, TheVat said:

Otherwise they would wink out of existence as soon as the change was effected.

Thus creating a paradox where they were never there to make the change in the first place. A chronology protection conjecture, as it were. 

[swansont]

3 hours ago, Moontanman said:

I am not proposing that time travel is possible.

Your scenario “If a time traveler went back in time and changed something, no matter his motivation, could we know?” requires that time travel be possible.

 

3 hours ago, Moontanman said:

Interesting concepts but I see them as being in no way any more or less rational that any other time travel concepts and no more or less arbitrary than any others I have read about. 

They are based on what physics has to say.

 

3 hours ago, Moontanman said:

Ok then, I still say my thought experiment is valid and that my assertion is valid as well. Boiled down to its most basic. The only person who can know the timeline has changed is the time traveler. Everyone else is carried along in the time stream and the original time stream ceases to exist. 

But there is no scientific basis for this, because it’s not based on science. You can propose whatever you want, but like most fiction, if you delve too deep Into detail you will find problems. How does a memory get erased? How do things broken in one timeline get repaired if they don’t get broken in the new one? 

 

3 hours ago, Moontanman said:

Of course this is fictional, the very premise is fictional, but fictional premises can be used to figure out logical outcomes in even fictional scenarios. the idea of course opens up a huge can of worms but they are fictional worms and only have meaning in the context of the fictional thought experiment. 

But you can propose a different answer and have the same justification that that would be how it goes. 

An experiment, even a thought experiment, has to have a consistent outcome.

[Moontanman]

7 hours ago, swansont said:

Your scenario “If a time traveler went back in time and changed something, no matter his motivation, could we know?” requires that time travel be possible.

 

They are based on what physics has to say.

 

But there is no scientific basis for this, because it’s not based on science. You can propose whatever you want, but like most fiction, if you delve too deep Into detail you will find problems. How does a memory get erased? How do things broken in one timeline get repaired if they don’t get broken in the new one? 

 

But you can propose a different answer and have the same justification that that would be how it goes. 

An experiment, even a thought experiment, has to have a consistent outcome.

You've convinced me, a thought experiment has to be based in reality as we understand it or it's meaningless, I apologize to everyone for wasting their time.