fom: Hal Finney <hal@rain.org>
Brian D Williams, <talon57@well.com>, writes:
>> You are arguing that because no one has come back from the
>>future that it proves time travel (backward) is impossible. I
>>merely stated the obvious, the reason no one has come back from
>>the future isn't that time travel (backward) is impossible
>>(although I believe it is.) it's that the future hasn't happened
>>yet.
>I don't quite understand how this argument works.
>Suppose we wait until the future happens (so to speak!), and
>someone invents a time machine that allows travel into the past.
>I gather that you think that is at least logically possible.
I do not think it is, or will be possible, to travel backwards in time. You can be logically correct, but dead wrong. but lets play this out anyway.
>Now we travel into the past, back to good old 1998, and here we
>meet Brian D Williams. We introduce ourselves to him and say that
>we are from the future and that we've come back in a time machine
>to visit him.
>He says that is impossible, because the future hasn't happened
>yet, and shows us his message which he had just sent off to the
>extropians list.
>Obviously he is wrong in some sense, because he concluded that
>time travel was impossible, yet it was possible, and we are there.
>What is wrong with his argument?
Now to answer your question, If our future visitor arrived and was successful in convincing me (I'd need a ride to prove it, well two rides) then I would be flat out wrong, and we would not be living in the present except from our perspective.
We would literally be history.
But as I stated I do not believe this is possible.
But it is fun to think about (another Lewis Carroll reference ;) )
Brian
Member,Extropy Institute