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why it's impossible to see in the future. +help me ples

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Ashton
Topic Starter
Ashton
I hold a penny in my hand, high above my head. If it lands on tails I win 1 million dollars. If heads, I owe my body to the sex demon that stand before me. I can read the future. I see that the penny will fall and hit the cement ground in 3.06 seconds, and will land on heads. I then decide to not let go of the penny, and place it in my pocket. Now the previous future I saw (where the penny hit the ground after 3.06 seconds and land on heads) is non-existent, as I've decided to not drop the penny at all. But then we have to ask, "Couldn't you see into the future and see yourself not dropping the penny?". Well in fact we've run into a paradox, lets say the future is like a pick-your-own adventure book. The choices you make in the present time will alter the future, so even if we did see that the penny would fall onto heads and we'd lose the bet, that is not the definite future but rather a possibility of one. Why this is a pradox is, if I did see the future I wouldn't see the penny dropping to the ground, but rather me not choosing to drop the penny at all because I knew i'd lose the bet because I'd had previous looked into the future to see the penny drop on heads, but as I've said before if I did see the future I wouldn't see the penny drop on heads but rather me deciding to not drop the penny because I'd had previously seen that I'd lose. This goes on and on.


I'm currently writing a story about a girl who has the gift of seeing into the future, allowing her to make perfect decisions to carve out a flawless life, however she has one drawback, and that is her anger issues. What other people may find a small nuisance, she finds incredibly rage inducing. Her anger prevents her from making rational decisions, which ends up in her seeking out to go on a massive killing spree. However because she can see into the future, she knows when it is safe for her to kill people without being caught. This story idea has many challenges that need to be overcomed. Specifically, what I pointed out above, and, if she's able to make the proper decisions in the first place, it seems unrealistic to have her ever have to worry about her anger issues as she could easily avoid them, so I have to find a balance between a powerful and scary power, as well as a weak and easily countered one. The book idea is an extreme wip and until I can figure things out, I cant continue with the story, if any of you have ideas please share them.
johnmedina999
296 posts
Joined October 2016
johnmedina999
How does it end? Does she just kill people and never get caught?
Ashton
Topic Starter
Ashton

johnmedina999 wrote:

How does it end? Does she just kill people and never get caught?
Well there would be someone who has to use her drawbacks against her to stop her murders. They'd have to setup scenarios where she would lose her composure and make wrong decisions
abraker
Global Moderator
8,295 posts
Joined July 2014
abraker
Lucky you I came up with a solution to the time paradoxes a bit while ago. Let's first go over the traditional methods of approaching time and see why they fail:

1. There is only one timeline, and therefore is static and predetermined. We basically get the "you never changed the future, and instead, made it happen by toying with time" type of thing. That is alright until you decide to go into the past and kill you grandfather - yea the grandfather paradox. Timeline gets applied instantly, you don't exist. But how did you then kill your grandfather? So we can't have this type of time.

2. There are many timelines, where a new one gets created each time you go to the past. This basically allows you to go into the past and kill your own grandfather, and you can remain in the timeline as an "anomaly". Where it does crumble is the situation you have in your story. Say you view into the future. Well then you will be viewing the future of a different timeline. But how does looking at a specific timeline even work if there a infinite number? This gets even more indeterminate since you expect to see that future change as you are observing, affecting which timeline the method you are using presents to you.

To solve the ambiguity caused my the many timelines, have many timelines but on one timeline. This is essentially 2D time, two temporal dimensions. Here is how that would work: Imagine a stream of time in which events flow. This would be called the overtime, or supertime or whatever term you want to use for the grander time. In this grander time flows are the events, the time we perceive. So if we assume as a stationary perspective in grander time, then we will see that our time flows:



If you view the events of 2020 in 2018, then 2018 would be constantly effected by 2020. The events flow, and 2018 and continuously being overwritten. In the following diagram, you are represented by the blue dot. In the year 2018 you viewed events from 2020, and as a result, affected the future from original. As the grander time flows, this change is shaded in red.



What happens when you hit 2020, the time period in which you were looking at in 2018? That is the interesting bit. The you of the past will now be looking at the future that you set a path for 2 years. So now the future from that point will start to be different, shaded in green. Here is the kicker: If you in 2021 decide to look at the past of 2019, it will NOT be your past, because a year since the other past you have seen 2020, the grander time has caught up with it and overwritten that future!

levesterz
188 posts
Joined September 2010
levesterz

abraker wrote:

Lucky you I came up with a solution to the time paradoxes a bit while ago. Let's first go over the traditional methods of approaching time and see why they fail:

1. There is only one timeline, and therefore is static and predetermined. We basically get the "you never changed the future, and instead, made it happen by toying with time" type of thing. That is alright until you decide to go into the past and kill you grandfather - yea the grandfather paradox. Timeline gets applied instantly, you don't exist. But how did you then kill your grandfather? So we can't have this type of time.

2. There are many timelines, where a new one gets created each time you go to the past. This basically allows you to go into the past and kill your own grandfather, and you can remain in the timeline as an "anomaly". Where it does crumble is the situation you have in your story. Say you view into the future. Well then you will be viewing the future of a different timeline. But how does looking at a specific timeline even work if there a infinite number? This gets even more indeterminate since you expect to see that future change as you are observing, affecting which timeline the method you are using presents to you.

To solve the ambiguity caused my the many timelines, have many timelines but on one timeline. This is essentially 2D time, two temporal dimensions. Here is how that would work: Imagine a stream of time in which events flow. This would be called the overtime, or supertime or whatever term you want to use for the grander time. In this grander time flows are the events, the time we perceive. So if we assume as a stationary perspective in grander time, then we will see that our time flows:



If you view the events of 2020 in 2018, then 2018 would be constantly effected by 2020. The events flow, and 2018 and continuously being overwritten. In the following diagram, you are represented by the blue dot. In the year 2018 you viewed events from 2020, and as a result, affected the future from original. As the grander time flows, this change is shaded in red.



What happens when you hit 2020, the time period in which you were looking at in 2018? That is the interesting bit. The you of the past will now be looking at the future that you set a path for 2 years. So now the future from that point will start to be different, shaded in green. Here is the kicker: If you in 2021 decide to look at the past of 2019, it will NOT be your past, because a year since the other past you have seen 2020, the grander time has caught up with it and overwritten that future!

johnmedina999
296 posts
Joined October 2016
johnmedina999

abraker wrote:

If you view the events of 2020 in 2018, then 2018 would be constantly effected by 2020.
Please explain.
abraker
Global Moderator
8,295 posts
Joined July 2014
abraker

johnmedina999 wrote:

abraker wrote:

If you view the events of 2020 in 2018, then 2018 would be constantly effected by 2020.

Please explain.
Look at the second diagram. The retrieval of information in 2018 from a future time in 2020 is represented by the red arrow going left. So long as the "you" who looks into 2020 exists, the retrieval of information will persist. As a result, that block of the timeline will be overwritten with the events the "you" will or have lived through, represented by the red shading. This is what I mean by constantly affected (typo on 'e', in original, oops). It is not instantanious, so the timeline does not get not affected all at once, and instead, gets continuously overwritten as grander time ticks.
Last edited by abraker , edited 4 times in total.
ColdTooth
1,100 posts
Joined June 2012
ColdTooth
what the FUCK abraker?
Comfy Slippers
194 posts
Joined April 2015
Comfy Slippers

ColdTooth wrote:

what the FUCK abraker?
johnmedina999
296 posts
Joined October 2016
johnmedina999

abraker wrote:

Look at the second diagram. The retrieval of information in 2018 from a future time in 2020 is represented by the red arrow going left. So long as the "you" who looks into 2020 exists, the retrieval of information will persist. As a result, that block of the timeline will be overwritten with the events the "you" will or have lived through, represented by the red shading. This is what I mean by constantly affected (typo on 'e', in original, oops). It is not instantanious, so the timeline does not get not affected all at once, and instead, gets continuously overwritten as grander time ticks.
OK. I have another question about this. Why doesn't the retrieval of information end when you stop looking into the future? It's not like the person is constantly looking into 2020 for two grander years. The string of information should stop flowing when you stop looking into the future, right.

Also, how come there's a different past when you look back? Shouldn't you see the past that you lived through those two grander years?

Sorry for the questions, I just want to fully understand your theory before I argue against it.
abraker
Global Moderator
8,295 posts
Joined July 2014
abraker

johnmedina999 wrote:

Why doesn't the retrieval of information end when you stop looking into the future? It's not like the person is constantly looking into 2020 for two grander years. The string of information should stop flowing when you stop looking into the future, right.
Say you decided to look into 2020 for 10 seconds and then stop. If the present you stops looking, the you from 1 second ago is still looking, and so does the you from 2 seconds ago, and 3 seconds ago, and so on for 10 seconds back.

ok,ok so let's wait some more. Let the present you wait for one minute. Then the past you from 1 minute ago is looking a the future, and the one from 1 minute 1 sec before that, and so on until 1 minute 10 sec ago. You see why the retrieval of information doesn't end? The different instances of you of the past keep on looking into the future. They never stop looking into the future unless you go back to the past to prevent them... well then same happens with you go to the past to stop your self from looking now, only instead of information traveling back in time, you are traveling back in time. The more you mess with time the more you would pollute it.

johnmedina999 wrote:

Also, how come there's a different past when you look back? Shouldn't you see the past that you lived through those two grander years?
When you look two years forward, you are seeing whatever the future becomes. By doing so you are changing your present. Your present does not get applied to the future the moment you see it, it travels with you. When you get to 2020, your present has finally overwritten that future you were looking at 2 years prior. However, as I said in the answer to your previous question, the past you never stops looking into the future, so the past you now sees the new future the present you is in. The past you will react differently to this new future, and so this causes a new change to propagate at pace of the past you's present. Because of this, if you look into the past, the past you will not be reenacting the same things the present you have.

To be super clear, because it takes 2 grander years for the present to catch up to the future from 2018 to 2020, there is a point in the timeline where if you look less than 2 years back, you will see your past. However, if you attempt to look more than 2 years back, it will be different. If you have a way of viewing different points in time to scan the timeline linearly, you would notice that there is a discontinuity within causal events, and that discontinuity is the only proof you would get that something from the future affected the past. It's sorta acts like that traffic jam wave, where the original cause has long since disappeared, but the effects still propagate throughout time.
Naimae
66 posts
Joined September 2011
Naimae

abraker wrote:

So if we assume as a stationary perspective in grander time, then we will see that our time flows:

I don't get this. Can you expand on what this diagram means? I don't really get it. What do the arrows mean? What do you mean by "then we will see that our time flows:"? I can only see that each arrow covers a span of two years, with the arrow getting shifted to the right one year with every grander year. If a grander year is just the time passed (2018, 2019, 2020, etc.) then what's with the arrows?

abraker wrote:

As the grander time flows, this change is shaded in red.

I get this graph, but in my opinion, it'd help if you could keep things consistent between figures. For example, keep the timeline in the same place and just move the red - from a first glance, it looks like the change in red is going to the left, not to the right. Please fix.

abraker wrote:

If you in 2021 decide to look at the past of 2019, it will NOT be your past, because a year since the other past you have seen 2020, the grander time has caught up with it and overwritten that future!

abraker wrote:

Say you decided to look into 2020 for 10 seconds and then stop. If the present you stops looking, the you from 1 second ago is still looking, and so does the you from 2 seconds ago, and 3 seconds ago, and so on for 10 seconds back.

abraker wrote:

They never stop looking into the future unless you go back to the past to prevent them...

Except those moments of you looking forward in time are frozen moments of time, not a continuous stream of information. If I understand what you're saying, then you're implying that you looking forward into time opens a tunnel of information from 1) you in 2020 to you in 2018 and 2) from you in 2018 to yourself as you live on after coming back from living forward in time.
Time is like a movie, where each moment in time is a frozen frame that only make sense when you put them together. Data from one moment can not be transferred to data in another moment. What you're saying about your past not being the past you remember after you reach the point in time that you looked at would be true if you went back in time to stop them, but not only if.

Let's say that I am playing a game. In this game, if I can guess the coin toss, I win one million dollars. So, I'll go forward in time to see the result of the coin flip, then go back to my proper time to announce my "guess". The coin is flipped, I win, and I reach the point in time that I traveled to before the coin toss.

In this graph, t_1 is the moment of the coin flip, t_2_1 is the time immediately after the coin flip AND the time that I traveled forward to to check the result, and t_2_2 is the point in time at which I traveled back in time to t_1 with the information. The light blue line represents my time before the coin flip (without the information) and the dark blue line represents the time immediately after the coin flip (with the information). The green arrows and lines will explained as I go along.

If I understand what you are saying, then when you reach t_2_1, your past between t_1 and t_2_1 will begin being overwritten by some other memories from some alternate timeline*. I don't understand this. If some time had passed between our time leap forward and leap back, then I would've understood you saying that you would not have memories between the leap forward and back because you weren't there. But, I am writing this under the assumption that the time leap is "instantaneous" - that is to say, time stops at the moment you leap forward from t_1 and resumes as soon as you return to t_1. At this point, it should be obvious that curved green arrows above the horizontal lines represent time leaps.

I require time to gather and process the information (the coin flip result) once I have made the leap forward. This interval of time is represented by the horizontal green line. This bit of time is weird since you'd be checking the information, then once you've returned to t_1 and got to t_2_1 normally, your actions would maybe would be different, causing some kind of anomaly. Maybe your body is forced into particular movements to keep consistent with the actions written into that interval of time? Perhaps some alternate timeline is birthed here?

But that is not what you said, either. To my understanding, there is nothing that would cause the time after t_1 to start being different once you reached t_2_1 becuase, if we're going along Grander Time (and if I'm understanding Grander Time correctly**), then that moment hasn't been written yet. Kind of like working through an exam question by question (sequentially), then deciding to skip ahead a question, then going back to the questions you missed, then reaching the question you had already done (the interval that has already been written). There's no kaleidoscope sitting on top of the skipped question that would even suggest some kind of alternate timeline.

Maybe you're saying that Grander Time would continue even as you're gathering information between t_2_1 and t_2_2? Then that would mean your memories after t_1 might only be different for as long as you were between t_2_1 and t_2_2, not necessarily the entire period between t_1 and t_2_1. But even that wouldn't make too much sense because either you would have never had had direct memories of that period of time in the first place since you never lived it. But this hypothetical is trumped by presuming that, to an outside observer at t_1 the leap forward and leap back happen simultaneously. Again, that time at t_1 basically stopped while you leaped ahead.

So what is it that you're suggesting is changing the time after t_1 once you've reached t_2_1?

*I know that you said that your theory was not timelines (gathering this from how you said one timeline/alternate timelines are wrong), but if you're talking about multiple versions of yourself along a "grander time", then that's basically alternate timelines. Parellel, alternate timelines. I think so, anyway.

**My understanding of Grander Time is that it is the point at which all time has advanced so far.
abraker
Global Moderator
8,295 posts
Joined July 2014
abraker

citremi wrote:

I don't get this. Can you expand on what this diagram means? I don't really get it. What do the arrows mean? What do you mean by "then we will see that our time flows:"? I can only see that each arrow covers a span of two years, with the arrow getting shifted to the right one year with every grander year. If a grander year is just the time passed (2018, 2019, 2020, etc.) then what's with the arrows?
Arrows mean flow of information from one point in time to another. When I said, "then we will see that our time flows", I meant that if you take a fixed point outside the time we are subject to, you will see the timeline moving in a direction. If one assumes the perspective of outside our time, they no longer become subject by time, so it becomes pointless to talk about "2 seconds passed". Outside of time, time as we know would become more spatial than temporal. "2 seconds passed" would refer to 2 seconds distance equivalent from point a to point b on the timeline. Now for my concept to work, the timeline needs to be subject to continuous change. Therefore, there must be time to allow the concept of "change over time". So you get grander time, as a second temporal dimension. So if our time describes how objects in space change from one frame to the next, then grander time describes how the entire timeline changes from one frame to the next.

citremi wrote:

I get this graph, but in my opinion, it'd help if you could keep things consistent between figures. For example, keep the timeline in the same place and just move the red - from a first glance, it looks like the change in red is going to the left, not to the right. Please fix.
I just assumed a perspective which moved along present day instead of fixed at some year. I could have just kept it centered on 2018, but I want to remain in the perspective we would be subject to. I'll redraw the diagram fixed on year when I get the chance.

citremi wrote:

Except those moments of you looking forward in time are frozen moments of time, not a continuous stream of information.
Nope, not frozen. Present becomes the future, past becomes the present. Like a conveyor belt. There is an infinite past that flows forward to become the present and then the future. That past would contains the chain of events that lead up to the viewing of the future which then eventually pass a point in the timeline.

citremi wrote:

If I understand what you're saying, then you're implying that you looking forward into time opens a tunnel of information from 1) you in 2020 to you in 2018 and 2) from you in 2018 to yourself as you live on after coming back from living forward in time.
Not exactly. It would not be your timeline you would see in the future. So you wouldn't see *yourself*, but a different yourself. It is not your timeline because your present will overwrite that point within the grander time equivalent to the how far into the future you are looking into. Also don't think that the different you is overwritten. Only that point in time is overwritten, the different you's time flows onward just like yours, and will always be some amount of time ahead of the overwrite (aka your present).

citremi wrote:

In this graph, t_1 is the moment of the coin flip, t_2_1 is the time immediately after the coin flip AND the time that I traveled forward to to check the result, and t_2_2 is the point in time at which I traveled back in time to t_1 with the information. The light blue line represents my time before the coin flip (without the information) and the dark blue line represents the time immediately after the coin flip (with the information). The green arrows and lines will explained as I go along.
Alright, so let's do some time keeping in grander time. Let the grander time in which you jump from t_1 to t_2_1 be gt_0. Let the grander time in which you jump from t_2_2 to t_1 be gt_1. To be be clear, because we will be doing some math, gt_1 = gt_0 + (t_2_2 - t_2_1). What this means is that grander time from when you first arrived into the future and left it is the same as the time it took you to do so: gt_1 - gt_0 = t_2_2 - t_2_1.

citremi wrote:

To my understanding, there is nothing that would cause the time after t_1 to start being different once you reached t_2_1 becuase, if we're going along Grander Time (and if I'm understanding Grander Time correctly**), then that moment hasn't been written yet.
The only thing that is different is you not being there at t_1. So starting from gt_0, and ticking, the timeline from t_1 starts getting filled with your non existence.

citremi wrote:

Maybe you're saying that Grander Time would continue even as you're gathering information between t_2_1 and t_2_2? Then that would mean your memories after t_1 might only be different for as long as you were between t_2_1 and t_2_2, not necessarily the entire period between t_1 and t_2_1.
Oh it continues. And because you have chosen to go back to t_1 instead of t_1 + (t_2_2 - t_2_1), you are trailing behind a block t_2_2 - t_2_1 long in which you do not exist. Let's fast forward to when grander time is gt_0 + (t_2_1 - t_1). That non existence hits the first point in which you went into the future (at t_2_1). Now keep in mind that the present you at this point in grander time is at t_1 + (t_2_1 - t_1) - (t_2_2 - t_2_1). However, guess what the you at t_1 will be looking at when going into the future at this grander time? You don't exist at t_2_1 when grander time is gt_1 + (t_2_1 - t_1). So now the future you is confused and the events play out much differently for that version of you. Luckily that's fixed when grander time is gt_1 + (t_2_1 - t_1) as the present you now reaches t_2_1 to do the coin flip you are so certain will win you a million dollars, and the past you at t_1 can repeat the events you did.

So you make the coin toss, aaaaaand... well you still have a 50/50 chance. Unless the future you saw flip the coin went forward in time the exact way you did, then you would flip the coin differently. Oh and wait, didn't we just talk about how the past you is undergoing a crisis? Yea, there is no chance the future you went to the future the same way you did because of it. You did a poor job cleaning after yourself, and now the timeline is polluted with events you won't recognize. As a result, the future any version of you observes is never going to be the same one they live out. If only you went back to t_1 + (t_2_2 - t_1_1) to make the events sync.


citremi wrote:

So what is it that you're suggesting is changing the time after t_1 once you've reached t_2_1?
Causality. Here is a tl;dr to peak your interest if you decided to skip to the end without reading the explanation: the future you goes on and lives their life after the coin flip, the past you is now freaking out because you don't exist in the future until the time comes for you to do your 1 million dollar coin flip, and unfortunately your coin flip is still 50/50.

I hope I didn't screw up with the arithmetics
Space MAX
10 posts
Joined April 2018
Space MAX
TL;DR all the posts but the first one i did

Here is my AAAAAAA imagination:

1. Girl sees someone
2. Girl sees that """that""" is a guy
3. Guy will die in x days
4. Stops killing peeps
5. Starts talking to someone about her older problems
5. Person is neutral
6. She says whats going to happen in 2 days for him (like lottery or who will die)
7. Guy doesent belive hehhehehehehee
8. Guy sees that (print.action="what_she_said_2_days_ago") = true
9. Guy searches for her
10. She searches for guy 1
11. Something happens
12. Girl shrekts some pepps
13. guy2 is (searching)
14. gurl meet gurl2 while kill stuff
15. gurl runs to tell the police
16. sees that she would get hit by a truck in x mins before police
17. runs after her
18. girl2 is {oops_she_fell.exe}
19. main char catches
20. grabs
21. no one sees
21. Goes sonic speed somewhere
22. Girl2 is sleep_state because of scare_factor
24. Weird stuff happens
23. she in another world
24*2. She G O D
25. wait it was a dream

make some more my head is sleepy from so much circle clicking :D
abraker
Global Moderator
8,295 posts
Joined July 2014
abraker
Oh this thread. I almost forgot I was waiting for John's and citremi's replies
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