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From: jimc@haddock.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.movies
Subject: Re: Somewhere in Time
Message-ID: <335@haddock.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 6-Feb-85 00:02:01 EST
Article-I.D.: haddock.335
Posted: Wed Feb  6 00:02:01 1985
Date-Received: Sun, 10-Feb-85 03:31:08 EST
Lines: 33
Nf-ID: #R:loral:-77300:haddock:13900029:000:1767
Nf-From: haddock!jimc    Feb  5 11:41:00 1985

Well, folks, I hate to be a cynic, but I insist that the 
so-called "Grandfather Paradox" is completely contained in the 
human mind, and not real at all.  

History occurs only once.  Therefore, to go back in time means
to go back into the past, and to become part of it.  Was your 
grandfather murdered before he had children?  Obviously not, as 
demonstrated by your living in the present.  Since this did not 
happen, obviously you will never go back in time to kill him.  

Let me present a sample situation that might explain this a 
little further: suppose you have a good friend who died in a car 
accident.  Now suppose you could have stopped it from happening 
if you had known about it in advance.  Now, let's suppose it is 
fifty years in the future, and lo and behold!  someone has 
invented a time machine.  "Great," you think, "Now I can go back 
into time and save my friend." Suddenly, now, we have a problem.  
Your friend obviously was not saved, or you would feel no 
necessity to go back into time and save him.  Yet here you are, 
thinking you are about to go do it.  Do you happen to remember 
any mysterious stranger, appearing to be an elderly version of 
you, appearing out of thin air and saving your friend on that 
terrible day?  Of course not.  Therefore, you will never be 
successful in your attempt to go back and save him.  

History holds many examples of appearing and disappearing, that 
is, being around one day, when they were never seen before, and 
being gone the next day, and never being seen again.  Perhaps 
these are time travelers from the future, visiting the past.  If 
so, the only influence they had was to contribute to the past; 
they made it conform exactly to the state the past had been in 
before they left.