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Resolution to the Grandfather Paradox

🕑 Added 2016-05-13 15:30:30 +0000 UTC

Comments

Jesse Thompson

Hmm, it won't allow me to reply to your reply. But a superposition of histories unable to recollapse is the exact foundation of the Many World's theory that Hugh Everett initially proposed. The cat is both alive and dead, an eigenstate which expands in complexity to include an observer who both saw the cat alive and who saw the cat dead, and finally expands to include a local universe in a superposition of "cat died" and "cat survived" states.

Henry Reich

Actually, you've got a superposition of histories extending forward :). But my main point (based on work by Scott Aaronson and others) is you can easily envision consistent histories for closed timelike curves if you're willing to think probabilistically. What's really interesting is the implications of CTC's on computability, which I only briefly alluded to here.

Jesse Thompson

Nah, that's a non-answer. What happens in the future beyond the trip into the past? You've got one history extending forward with you in it and one without. EG: we're back to Hugh Everett's Many World's Theorem all over again.. which you've already described as boooooring. :P