Post by Padre Romero on May 12, 2007 16:04:55 GMT -5
danr said:
hecscrivener said:
They're not different universes. There's only one universe. That's kind of the point.No. If it's only one universe, the guy wouldn't need to write to himself to do this thing in the past because he would have already done it / would already know how to do it / stuff.
Or at least that's what I suppose
Okay, the problem a lot of you have is that you've read too much of the new science fiction and not enough of the old.
In "The Time Machine" it's pretty obvious that space and time are absolute, and there's probably no universe forking (But since the time traveller doesn't actually change anything, it's tough to say...) I think to discuss HG's powers, we need to keep him within the relm of "The Time Machine", since that's obviously the kind of machine he's drawing his powers from.
As for "chaos theory": You get a lot of this when dealing with time travel. By saying that HG cannot hope to bring about any desired destiny, you've run into a bigger problem: By saying the human mind cannot grasp the infinite causality chains that result from everyday actions, you're denying us something improtant...if the will is unable to select its own fate and bring it about, then free will does not exist (Or at least, it's not useful for anything, since we can never be certain with ANY degree of certainty that what we will will occur).
Now, you may be fine with the time traveller not being the master of his own fate...but if he isn't, neither are we. Course, a lotta folks are fine with that (me included 1/3 of the time)
On grounds of knowledge or power, I think the time traveller is god, or at least as close to god as the human mind can fathom. Ethically speaking though, it's hard to say: It really depends on which ethical system you subscribe to. Some have serious problems with the time traveller/god.