Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!cbosgd!cbdkc1!desoto!cord!bentley!hoxna!houxm!vax135!cornell!uw-beaver!tektronix!decvax!cca!ima!haddock!jimc 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.