time travel paradox

We tend to hear a lot about totally correct predictions, but less about almost correct ones. I am interested in the latter kind, where one or two details are wrong, because they would provide useful information about the statistical likelihood of the totally correct predictions. For example, if for every fully correct prediction about a car crash there were 10 in which only the colour of the car was wrong, 30 in which the colour of the car and/or its direction of travel were wrong, and so on (and vastly more in which the crash failed to happen at all), we would find nothing odd. If, however, the proportion of incorrect predictions was significantly less, it would be implausible to explain the correct ones as 'pure coincidence'; we would need to look for some other explanation.

Unfortunately, it would be very difficult to obtain an unbiased sample, as incorrect predictions will obviously be under-reported, and many reports of correct ones will be false.

I think the point could be made that even if we dont like the idea the future to a certain degree is written..how much it is , is the question..

I find it easier to believe in the non-linearity of time and in fortune-tellers than to believe that my subconscious has the power to create a blinding snow storm on the highway, to create a green car which slips off the road onto the median, and to create the green car lunging back onto the road right in front of my car, which just happened to be driving in the median-side lane of the divided highway in that particular instance.

mindlink

Well, I think it sounds more likely if you see it this way: Your subscoscient, controlling so many vital functions of your body and probally being able to extract much more information from your senses than you can, had for months been influencing your actions as much as it could in an attempt to make you crash on a green car, until eventually it succeded. How could it do this? Subconsciently influencing you to stick close to green cars while driving and things like that.

The reason for this time moves slower on a massive object than a less massive object. As the spacecraft approached the speed of light it becomes more and more massive, exponentially at that.

If no one mentioned it before: Several philosophers thought that time actually doesn't "exist". McTaggart is one example but also Kant didn't "believe" in the reality of time. Today we have very strong scientific arguments that time is a real factor for physics. But the irreality argument doesn't refer to this quality of time but to its character as an itself progressing flow. The time travel paradox stays interesting anyway.

The spacecraft does not become more massive. To the viewer on earth the spacecraft appears to gain mass by the fact that it needs more and more energy to move it faster and faster. This more and more energy to move it faster and faster makes the spacecraft appear to be resisting acceleration ie it appears to be gaining mass.

The time dilation is a consequence of the physical distance between the earth and the destination actually contracting in length, from the perspective of the occupants of the spacecraft i.e. the distance between two objects is shorter when you are in motion relative to those two objects.

Hey, time travel machines are an incredibly unlikely thing. Given that, 1000 suicidal time travellers is incredibly unlikely. Given that, that they all fail is, yes, incredibly unlikely. It seems to me the odds are converging to zero somewhere along the line, and I just don't think it's at the assassination attempt stage. It is impossible that I exist when in the past my future self tried to kill my grandfather... and succeeded. i.e. statistical likelihood = zero. Thus repeating the experiment 100, 1000, 1000000000000000 times makes no difference. Again, not a paradox. A thousand maniacs jumping out of windows and not one of them manages to levitate? Not really a problem.

It does become more massive and if it did the impossible and got up to the speed of light it would outweigh or become more massive than the entire universe. It is this mass that causes the time dilation effect between the two twins I mentioned in my previous post

I don't get your second statement??

hmm what if you go back in time and kill yourself, but as soon as you do that you are still left there to continue in your past selfs spot you killed yourself... but your still their. Then you can go to the future with your old self after killing yourself in the past and kill him and it would be like nothing happend.

You are forgetting your "future" self is your "past" self. In the moment you killed yourself in the past, it would become impossible for you to have returned to the past just like you just did, because you were killed before that, and here lies the paradox.

Time is not an ilusion, it is just something relative.

Well my thinking is, your future self goes back in time yes. You kill yourself thus making your life no longer here. BUT you are still their, you only killed another you living at the same time, and in the same place as you, you could probably survive by taking his place and role, and then continuing on in your life? but then I would think you would be trapped in an everlasting time loop.

There is a significant difference between the time dilation of moving clocks and the time dilation of a clock in a lower gravitational potential. I think you are mistakingly placing the moving spacecraft into the second category.

In your post you describe "special shrinking". The correct term is length contraction. The time dilation is caused by the physical distance between the origin and destination shortening from the view of the spacecraft but remaining unchanged from the view of the earth. The mass increase of the spacecraft does not cause the time dilation.