Time Travel, Infinite Loops and Destiny

"Do you believe in fate, Neo?"
"No."
"Why not?"
"Because I don't like the idea that I'm not in control of my life."

First of all, a little homework before you continue on--All You Zombies-- by Robert A. Heinlein. It's a fairly short story, so it shouldn't take long.

Read it? Good. Now, I've decided to post an entry about it because of a number of things: 1) someone else brought up time travel in another post and it got me into a rather heated debate with Lancekates about infinite loops; 2) ironically enough, this story and the topic of time travel was part of this week's lecture for my Science Fiction class; 3) doing my homework on it really got my mind going about infinite loops and why I don't think time travel will be possible until the far distant future.

Let me first say that I feel that time travel, in some way, is completely possible. If it's possible in the way that Science Fiction portrays it, though, I don't think the general populace really wants to develop it. Why? Because it would indicate a very strong chance that we're not in as much control over our destiny as we like to believe.

Here's what I wrote for my assignment:

Robert Heinlein's "All You Zombies--" provides quite an interesting paradox that often comes with the idea of time travel - the infinite loop. Normally, when I think of time travel and infinite loops caused by it, I generally think of the person that goes back and keeps himself from being born. Heinlein takes a different look at it from the opposite perspective--the main character is his own son/daughter, mother and father.

What would people think if this was proven true? I think people don't want to know, and that's why time travel won't come into our reach any time soon (we don't want it to).

So, here's a question: do we really have control over our own destinies? Or are we bound to follow certain paths not because of what has happened, but because of what will happen?

But Dragonwolf, we have a choice. I didn't have to choose to go to college or eat bacon this morning.

Did you really have that choice, or did you just think you had that choice?

Some people believe that some things are just "meant to be." Well, why can't that apply to everything? Probably because we don't want it to, so we have essentially brainwashed ourselves into thinking that, while some things are just meant to be, we ultimately have a choice in most cases.

During my debate with Lance, I brought up quantum physics and relativity. It seems he didn't understand where I was going with that and how it had to do with time travel. Well, I've got something that can explain it better than I probably could, thanks to this week's lecture in my Science Fiction class:

Quantum physics speculates that new worlds could be created with every quantum event. This theory, along with string theory, provides the "hard" science basis for cross-time stories. Whether these parallel worlds were created through some "point of divergence" is not always clear, so the lines between cross-time and time-splitting literature is often fuzzy. Recently these stories have become more sophisticated. In earlier literature, the alternate histories, or parallel universes, diverged more and more from each other the further one went from the point zero, the point of divergence. But recent literature postulates that time may be constantly shifting and the parallel universes might actually be similar in many ways. The television series Sliders explored this theme, as the time travelers discovered alternate versions of their world and themselves.

So what does quantum physics have to do with time travel? Everything. Or nearly everything, at least, since time travel as a whole is based on real concepts of quantum physics (and astrophysics when you get into the ideas of black holes and wormholes serving as time travel catalysts).

If time travel is possible, then why did the World Wars happen? Why did the Holocaust happen?

I also believe in balance in the world, as well as the butterfly effect (not the movie, the actual concept as it relates to time and time travel). The World Wars and Holocaust were earth-changing events. There are far too many variables in them.

What if Hitler lived and Germany was among the victorious after WWII? Phillip K. Dick takes a view on that in The Man in the High Castle, where Nazi Germany has become more of Nazi Europe (unfortunately, the book isn't public domain yet, so I can't link the story itself like I did with Heinlein's short story), and there is an assassination attempt on FDR (Lance, this story nearly mirrors the ideas you had, if I remember right, at least pertaining to FDR, I would be surprised if you didn't find this book interesting).

It's entirely possible that what has already happened had to happen to avoid something far worse. Perhaps if Hitler didn't rise to power, someone else would have that wasn't afraid to develop nuclear warheads and use them on their enemies. Perhaps something will happen a century or two from now that would require the Holocaust to have happened.

This also lends to the idea of an unalterable history, which again forces one to ponder how much control we actually have. If the future is unalterable, who's to say the present and future are alterable?

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