Poll of the Day > Does time travel forbid free will?

(+) Yeah! (+)

Topic
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Does history forbid free will?
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GanonsSpirit posted...

Does history forbid free will?

The past already happened and is locked in... so would a future's past disprove free will?
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People look at time travel in the wrong way. It's just energy changing form, going back in time doesn't make any difference, you are just changing the form of energy again, and any actions you take in the past, just changes the energy again.

Time is just us breaking down the changes into increments basically. A large enough machine with enough memory/info could reset the planet/solar system/galaxy/universe to a previous state, basically moving us back in time.

You could make changes or not, it's all just how you set things up. This entire existence could be simply a computer program running, and "time" travel could be as easy as loading a previous save. If you travel through time, it could be simply like loading a character into a previous save (from a later save) etc.

Free will does not exist though, it is an illusion as every decision you make, and every single thing that happens can be predicted with enough information. Even things you think you just decided......if you know a persons history and everything that has happened to them, you can figure out what they would choose.

Therefore, even though time travel itself does not preclude free will, the basic building blocks of the universe, logic and mathmatics does.
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Free will has never existed.

We are all programmed before birth with things like "instincts" and "hormones" and genetic predispositions. And that's without even getting into neurological conditions none of us had any say in.

It's also important to note that NONE of us had any say in who our parents would be, what country we would be born in, what community we would live in, what teachers we would have, what we would look like, etc.

Those are all extremely important things that literally determine almost everything about us.

Free will? HA!
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GreenKnight127 posted...

Free will has never existed.

We are all programmed before birth with things like "instincts" and "hormones" and genetic predispositions. And that's without even getting into neurological conditions none of us had any say in.

It's also important to note that NONE of us had any say in who our parents would be, what country we would be born in, what community we would live in, what teachers we would have, what we would look like, etc.

Those are all extremely important things that literally determine almost everything about us.

Free will? HA!

Eh it depends on your perception of what constitutes freedom. As a self-determinist I would argue we have free will within these known constraints.
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GreenKnight127 posted...

Free will has never existed.

Free will is the only reason we exist.
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Free will doesn't make you unpredictable, it's just harder to predict as you get more complicated.

You only ever do what you want to do the most, whether people want to admit it or not. I use to make incorrect decisions just to prove to myself I had free will, but I only made those decisions because I wanted freedom more than I wanted what I gave up. Free will is about as complicated as a free energy machine, aka as much as you want it to be, and a lie. Maybe the closest thing to free will you'll ever get is a coin flip.
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nope

seeing through someone's bluff in poker doesn't disprove free will either. Just because you know their choice doesn't mean they are forced to do it.
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SunWuKung420 posted...

GreenKnight127 posted...

Free will has never existed.

Free will is the only reason we exist.

No.

The only reason we exist is because two people had unprotected sex and brought us into the world without our consent.

After that we are just kinda rolling with it, because what choice do we really have? Make the best of it, or die from depression.

I don't see "free will" in that equation at all. It's just submitting to life.
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Does time travel move you across infinitely varying timelines, never to return to your own timeline? If so, it has nothing to do with free will. If you go back in time and play the lottery, you moved to a timeline where you appeared from a different timeline to buy lottery tickets. When you return to "the present", you come to a timeline that diverges from your appearance in the relative past via time travel.
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GreenKnight127 posted...

SunWuKung420 posted...

GreenKnight127 posted...

Free will has never existed.

Free will is the only reason we exist.

No.

The only reason we exist is because two people had unprotected sex and brought us into the world without our consent.

After that we are just kinda rolling with it, because what choice do we really have? Make the best of it, or die from depression.

I don't see "free will" in that equation at all. It's just submitting to life.

Choosing to have unprotected sex...no free will involved. Ok dude. That's illogical.
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I remember hearing everything in the past has happened. So, if you went back in time to change something, you were in the past that time, too. Like if you went back in time to make sure you werent late for something you were late to, you were there the time you were late before and failed to make yourself not late. And if it were a tv show or movie, you were probably the reason you were late in the first place.
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Nothing mathematically seems to forbid time travel...but the second law of thermodynamics might have something to say about that. My main argument against time travel being possible is the fact that we have yet to be invaded by time tourists from the future. On the other hand, I find the Mandela Effect concerning since I've personally experienced quite a few examples of it.

That being said, I've always hated time travel as a plot device. Here's why. You've discovered a method for time travel. Congrats. You're invariably going to squander this ability by doing something foolish like killing Hitler. Stop the sackings of the library of Alexandria if you want to be useful for starters. The Hitler thing worked itself out organically already. Go after the thing that set human knowledge back to the last ice age.

That being said...the even bigger issue I have with time travel as a plot device is this. Let's say you want to go witness the signing of the declaration of Independence, or the assassination of JFK or something. Great. Get in your time machine. Set your trmporal coordinates, and...enjoy materializing in the cold, black vacuum of space.

Hell, jump back to like 5 minutes ago when I started this post...enjoy either popping into solid Earth, or black void. In just 5 minutes, the Earth, the solar system, and the entire milky way galaxy has moved thousands of miles in several different directions from the spacetime coordinates you've left. It's a little different if you're already in a space ship when you jump, but you're still going to have a bad time playing catch up to the spot you left. If you're in something like the BttF Delorean, good fucking luck.
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SunWuKung420 posted...

GreenKnight127 posted...

SunWuKung420 posted...

GreenKnight127 posted...

Free will has never existed.

Free will is the only reason we exist.

No.

The only reason we exist is because two people had unprotected sex and brought us into the world without our consent.

After that we are just kinda rolling with it, because what choice do we really have? Make the best of it, or die from depression.

I don't see "free will" in that equation at all. It's just submitting to life.

Choosing to have unprotected sex...no free will involved. Ok dude. That's illogical.

You aren't looking at it the right way. THEY had unprotected sex to unwillingly bring YOU into the world.

None of us have free will because we are byproducts of someone else's actions. We never had any say in any of this. We just accept it. Because we have to.
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GreenKnight127 posted...

SunWuKung420 posted...

GreenKnight127 posted...

SunWuKung420 posted...

GreenKnight127 posted...

Free will has never existed.

Free will is the only reason we exist.

No.

The only reason we exist is because two people had unprotected sex and brought us into the world without our consent.

After that we are just kinda rolling with it, because what choice do we really have? Make the best of it, or die from depression.

I don't see "free will" in that equation at all. It's just submitting to life.

Choosing to have unprotected sex...no free will involved. Ok dude. That's illogical.

You aren't looking at it the right way. THEY had unprotected sex to unwillingly bring YOU into the world.

None of us have free will because we are byproducts of someone else's actions. We never had any say in any of this. We just accept it. Because we have to.

We assume this is true, but we do not know for sure. It takes as much faith to believe that, as to believe in a god that creates all of us and has a plan.

We could, for instance, actually see our whole lives before we are born and choose if we want to accept it (and live) or not. Perhaps all those little sperms, every single one, has such a choice, and only the one (or the one who accepts it first) that accepts the life before them wins the race.

Perhaps you even get points or something for it lol....so short lives (ones where the baby doesn't get born, or where you die as a baby etc) may be the most sought after as you only have to live a short time, and suffer a small amount, before being done.

Probably not, but....it could be.
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Time travel can't exist as it doesn't exist in any physical sense, time is a convenient plotting of continuity. The past doesn't exist once it passes, just as the future doesn't exist until it occurs, everything outside of now isn't real and thus is untraversable.
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Kyuubi4269 posted...

Time travel can't exist as it doesn't exist in any physical sense, time is a convenient plotting of continuity. The past doesn't exist once it passes, just as the future doesn't exist until it occurs, everything outside of now isn't real and thus is untraversable.

And then you have things like the double slit experiment and quantum entanglement...
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Kyuubi4269 posted...

Time travel can't exist as it doesn't exist in any physical sense, time is a convenient plotting of continuity. The past doesn't exist once it passes, just as the future doesn't exist until it occurs, everything outside of now isn't real and thus is untraversable.

Ahh but we have the ability to alter the universe around us already, so who is to say we could not alter it to an extreme, reverting it to a previous state, therefore, in all intents and purposes, travelling through time (to a previous universal configuration).

Time may indeed be an illusion, but, the underlying reality is malleable, an any conscious entity with enough power and knowledge should be able to reshape it.
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WhiskeyDisk posted...

Kyuubi4269 posted...

Time travel can't exist as it doesn't exist in any physical sense, time is a convenient plotting of continuity. The past doesn't exist once it passes, just as the future doesn't exist until it occurs, everything outside of now isn't real and thus is untraversable.

And then you have things like the double slit experiment and quantum entanglement...

Otherwise known as interpreting information with insufficient investigative tools and deriving an illogical result. An awful lot of quantum stuff involves BSing inconclusive results to garner further funding.

wolfy42 posted...

Ahh but we have the ability to alter the universe around us already, so who is to say we could not alter it to an extreme, reverting it to a previous state, therefore, in all intents and purposes, travelling through time (to a previous universal configuration).

Because we can alter what exists, not what doesn't. We can modify existance, we can't touch the intangible.

wolfy42 posted...

Time may indeed be an illusion, but, the underlying reality is malleable, an any conscious entity with enough power and knowledge should be able to reshape it.

Reshaping the universe to look how it did 100 years ago would not be time travel, but physical manipulation. Also, a major issue with your conclusion is that an awful lot of knowledge is lost forever and never recorded and you would never be able to recreate the past.
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Knowledge is lost to us, but that does not mean it is un-retrievable. Meanwhile as mentioned, time is an illusion. The universe is just constantly moving from one state to another in a completely predictable pattern, there is no randomness, and there is no "free will", even if someone did "time travel" but resetting the universe to a previous state (point in time if you want to use the illusion), it would still be predictable in advance and part of the natural development of the universe.

In theory, with enough knowledge of now, you could not only predict the future (all of it) but the past as well. Everything could be figured out with mathmatics, but of course, not by us, perhaps by a sufficiently powerful enough computer though (one that was built to self replicate and expand, using resources, planets, solar systems etc to keep building itself and expanding it's potential and awareness). After a few million years of expansion this computer might be able to decipher the universe completely, and use the information to eventually control everything that happens from that point on.

Of course at that point, you need not even consider it a computer anymore, but could call it a god.
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wolfy42 posted...

Knowledge is lost to us, but that does not mean it is un-retrievable.

A memory is irretrievably lost when the host brain decays.

wolfy42 posted...

The universe is just constantly moving from one state to another in a completely predictable pattern, there is no randomness, and there is no "free will", even if someone did "time travel" but resetting the universe to a previous state (point in time if you want to use the illusion), it would still be predictable in advance and part of the natural development of the universe.

Yup.

wolfy42 posted...

In theory, with enough knowledge of now, you could not only predict the future (all of it)

Yes.

wolfy42 posted...

but the past as well.

No. Having 4 does not tell you if it was made by 3+1 or 2+2.

wolfy42 posted...

Everything could be figured out with mathmatics, but of course, not by us, perhaps by a sufficiently powerful enough computer though (one that was built to self replicate and expand, using resources, planets, solar systems etc to keep building itself and expanding it's potential and awareness). After a few million years of expansion this computer might be able to decipher the universe completely, and use the information to eventually control everything that happens from that point on.

Of course at that point, you need not even consider it a computer anymore, but could call it a god.

This belongs on r/HighThoughts.
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In theory, right now, a satalite above the earth could be taking pictures of almost anywhere on this planet, and things that people would expect were unknowable, that nobody could discover, could be easily discovered.

Who is to say there is no way to create a device that could read thoughts, or even past thoughts, perhaps there is a record, sort of like rings on a tree, that could be read with the correct technology.

How we perceive the universe does not have to be the only way to do so. What we believe, and what we think the limits and rules are, is just one viewpoint and very likely not even close to the only way to obtain knowledge and information.

There is no way to say for sure that any knowledge is every truely lost, or that you can not discover something (anything) with the correct tools or perception.

I am not saying it's possible, just that we can not prove that it isn't possible. With enough information from enough sources you could work backwords to discover how things evolved to it's current point. More importantly, in theory at least, if you could find a set spot in the "past" you could then work forward from there, and discover how everything progressed up till your current now. This would give you full knowledge of both the future and the past.

Also, if you think about the whole computer setup, it would just really take 1 human to program a computer with set rules. Something like: Keep expanding yourself and looking for new ways to observe the universe. Find a way to alter the universe, and take a snap shot of previous versions (time periods). Alter the universe to be exactly like it was 20 years ago, but with me in this spot with all my current memories.

Set the computer free (shoot it off to a moon etc where it would have plenty of resources) and it doesn't matter how long it took to actually accomplish it's goals, if it did...eventually you would exist in the universe (as it was 20 years ago), floating in space and dying because you didn't specify that the "spot" was a specific location on the planet, so instead you ended up in that location in space.....and died.
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GreenKnight127 posted...

None of us have free will because we are byproducts of someone else's actions. We never had any say in any of this. We just accept it. Because we have to.

It's even worse than how you're simplifying it.

Every single one of us is basically a computer program running on biological hardware and coded by our experiences. We think we have free will, but every single one of our choices in life are essentially the final product of a calculation of millions of previously established variables. We don't make the choices we do because of what we want as much as because of who we are before those choices even present themselves. Every aspect of our personality is built on how other people and their actions have shaped us, and they in turn were shaped by others, and so on, and so on. Ever since the first atom pinged off the second atom in our universe, everything has been directly or indirectly influenced by something else.

In a strong determinist model, free will is literally impossible, because every single choice we make is the inevitable outcome of what has been programmed into us for our entire lives and imposed upon us by our biology. There was never any chance that we would ever have reacted differently to any stimuli - it's like flipping a two-headed coin a million times and having it come up heads every single time. It's never going to come up tails, because it is impossible for it to do so.

In that universe, someone with enough data could theoretically predict every single future event long before they occur, because every future event would simply be the inevitable outcome of an endless string of variables interacting in inevitable ways. But in such a universe, it would also be literally impossible to CHANGE future events anyway, because everything you could ever hope to do is already part of the existing pattern. Whatever choices you make are simply the choices you were always going to make, because they are literally the only choices you CAN make.

Basically, a universe that is 100% free-will and random and a universe that is 100% deterministic would look exactly the same from our perspective, and we'd literally never know the difference.


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What the heck is with all the hard determinists on this board. Compatibalists/self-determinists where you at?
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Clearly, some people have deep seated anger issues stemming from simply existing. I really feel bad for them.
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ParanoidObsessive posted...

Every single one of us is basically a computer program running on biological hardware and coded by our experiences.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ccenFp_3kq8" data-time="
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wolfy42 posted...

I am not saying it's possible, just that we can not prove that it isn't possible.

Oh, so the God argument.

You want to believe it's possible so you choose to view blocks as temporary without evidence.
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SunWuKung420 posted...

ParanoidObsessive posted...

Every single one of us is basically a computer program running on biological hardware and coded by our experiences.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ccenFp_3kq8" data-time="

Reality doesn't require you to accept it, it simply is.

Though if we're going to play dueling memes with song titles from YouTube, YouTube actually recommended me a persuasive counter-argument:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dJe1iUuAW4M" data-time="


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ParanoidObsessive posted...

Reality doesn't require you to accept it, it simply is.

You are definitely free to believe what you want (you know since free will) but at end the day, a physicist is just an atom trying to understand itself.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_BcBfjzM1lQ" data-time="
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wolfy42 posted...

Free will does not exist though, it is an illusion as every decision you make, and every single thing that happens can be predicted with enough information. Even things you think you just decided......if you know a persons history and everything that has happened to them, you can figure out what they would choose.

uh...
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@ParanoidObsessive

Is it so scary to think about that every single thing in existence is an conscious expression of a binary existence?
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Everyone is trapped in the vicious cycle of Birth, Death and Rebirth. The wheel must keep turning. Except for Raziel, for he is the one unbound creature
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@Lokarin
You've time travelled and have forgotten about it and now all your choices are made for you. You're just going to live the same life again, TC, it's determined.
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I just saw this weeks episode of The Good Place and it's all about free will.

Since this post happened before it aired...that is pretty cool lol.
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wolfy42 posted...

I just saw this weeks episode of The Good Place and it's all about free will.

Since this post happened before it aired...that is pretty cool lol.

I love that show so much. Incredibly wholesome.
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What_The_Chris posted...

Everyone is trapped in the vicious cycle of Birth, Death and Rebirth. The wheel must keep turning. Except for Raziel, for he is the one unbound creature

We are fucking past due for another Legacy of Kain game. Or, at the very least, an HD remaster. Such an amazing series that was sadly lost in the tides of time. One of my all time favorites.
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wolfy42 posted...

there is no randomness,

ParanoidObsessive posted...

In that universe, someone with enough data could theoretically predict every single future event long before they occur,

With quantum mechanics and uncertainty principle, how do you argue for determinism? We cant argue that its stoichiastic and out in the long run, because a single event happening as photoelectric over Compton could mean the difference of someone living from a radiation cancer treatment or dying of a recurring cancer that missed a single cancer cell.

No. A person is free to choose whether or not to travel through time.
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gguirao posted...

No. A person is free to choose whether or not to travel through time.

Unless they had already traveled to the past. If they have, then its already set in stone that theyll go...
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blu posted...

wolfy42 posted...

there is no randomness,

ParanoidObsessive posted...

In that universe, someone with enough data could theoretically predict every single future event long before they occur,

With quantum mechanics and uncertainty principle, how do you argue for determinism? We cant argue that its stoichiastic and out in the long run, because a single event happening as photoelectric over Compton could mean the difference of someone living from a radiation cancer treatment or dying of a recurring cancer that missed a single cancer cell.

Just because we can't currently perceive that something isn't random, does not mean it is not random. We thought rolling dice was random forever, people still think flipping a coin is random (even though you could easily control the flips and people did it centuries ago).

There is nothing random, we just do not currently have the ability to gather the information needed to determine the outcome in advance.
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