time travel and free will

[bishnu]

Okay if time travel to the future is possible free will would not exist. Here is why. Imangine that one of your friends went forward in time one day and there he sees you eating ceral at 10:30 then travels back in time to the time he started from. There he tells you that you will eat ceral at 10:30 tommorrow. Now at 10:29 you have a choice to make eat ceral or not to eat ceral and according to free will you could choose either but since it is already known that you will eat ceral at 10:30 you have to eat it therefore violating your free will. I want to know what people think about this. crap i just noticed i posted this in the wrong forum can a moderate move this oh well

[NSX]

heh

 

There's also a similar argument that goes something like this:

 

If you were to go back in time and kill your grandfather, would you exist?

 

hm...

[123rock]

Although this loop is a paradox, it can also be stated in this manner where you do have free will. For example, if you time travel in the past and save your mother as a child from dying, you will most certainly be alive to do it and thus no paradox.

 

Or if you want an example for the future, then you go one year in the future and see a theorem with its proof published somewhere. You go back in time, teach it to a student, and he publishes it the following year.

 

Such examples however do not make sense, because who taught the theorem to the student? The time traveler. And where did the time traveler see the theorem? From the student, thus the theorem virtually came out of nowhere.

 

In your example, you are assuming that you go back in time. With that proposition, you might as well not have free will, but fastforwarding in time doesn't have any limitations.

[Sorcerer]

Thats travelling into the past, not into the future.... The arguement states "if travelling into the future is possible"..... then goes on to say the guy has to travel back into the past, why would u need to travel into the future??

 

I can build a time machine to travel into the future, its a cardboard box, step inside for an hour and come out 1 hour in the future!! what a amazing technological break through.

[Sayonara]

Okay if time travel to the future is possible free will would not exist. Here is why. Imangine that one of your friends went forward in time one day and there he sees you eating ceral at 10:30 then travels back in time to the time he started from. There he tells you that you will eat ceral at 10:30 tommorrow. Now at 10:29 you have a choice to make eat ceral or not to eat ceral and according to free will you could choose either but since it is already known that you will eat ceral at 10:30 you have to eat it therefore violating your free will. I want to know what people think about this. crap i just noticed i posted this in the wrong forum can a moderate move this oh well

That's no guarantee that there is no free will, because your traveller has no way of knowing whether or not he witnessed the only possible future.

[Stevo]

What if your time traveler goes back and explains how to time tavel to his younger self. Would this throw things off? Could you jumble yourself up in time, throwing rondom aged versions of yourself into the wrongs times?

 

What about the theory that something would stop you from affecting free will. Traffic while you are trying to make it to tell your friend that he is about to eat cereal at 10:30. A freak explosion on your time machine. Maybe space and time would not allow you to meddle with something like free will. I know a little far-feached.

 

One last idea. Doesn't the whole thing promote free will? In a sense you are re-enforcing free will by allowing a second chance to decide what to do. You found out that you were going to eat cereal at ten thirty, so you instead decide to have toast. The key word is decide. I think you would still get to decide.

[AL]

There he tells you that you will eat ceral at 10:30 tommorrow. Now at 10:29 you have a choice to make eat ceral or not to eat ceral and according to free will you could choose either but since it is already known that you will eat ceral at 10:30 you have to eat it therefore violating your free will.

You found out that you were going to eat cereal at ten thirty, so you instead decide to have toast. The key word is decide. I think you would still get to decide.

 

If I eat cereal at 10:30, it is because I chose to eat the cereal at 10:30. I really don't see how it violates my will at all if I was destined to eat it and could not do otherwise. If I somehow, by some mysterious force, ended up eating toast instead of cereal, this would not be the result of my will, because my will was to eat cereal. This would in essence violate my free will, not reinforce the idea of my having it as some are suggesting here. My will is to eat cereal and that's that. It seems to me that some of you are arguing that free will only exists if you could potentially violate your own will, which doesn't make any sense to me.

[Stevo]

I'm saying it is a second and independant act. Willfull in its own right.

[iglak]

well, my opinion is posted a bit below this thread, here

 

similar to the "space and time would not allow you to meddle with something like free will." type of theory, but still very different.

 

i assume that the past is indeed the past, and the future is indeed the future.

nothing more, nothing less.

 

and if both of those assumptions are true, then they cannot be changed.

 

 

this does not mean that free will does not exist, however.