Proof that Time Travel Harry did not fix Little Chicago?? (CD Spoilers)

[Griffyn612]

@Griffyn--son of a (expletive expletive expletive). You're right. About 2 seconds after I got the reasoning of your argument about the energy at DR being an interaction with its wards I forgot it when replying to Hollorr. Since I do not currently have dementia, my only excuse is that the temporal echoes thing from an altered timeline makes so much intuitive sense to me it creeps back in when it shouldnt. My bad.

Honestly, my comment was more towards of motorade, who I think read the OP and then replied with stuff we'd already covered.  It made my head swim, since we're talking about similar stuff on two threads, and now we're repeating the same stuff within threads. 

I understand your logic, but its circular. Harry doesn't have to fix it because harry fixed it but doesn't have to fix it because he fixed it...

Um...  in reply, mostly what Neuro said.

I see your issue with free will.  You're saying that if Merlin created Demonreach using a temporal bridge that spanned 5 times, the first of which may have occurred prior to his birth, and by reasoning the temporal bridge must occur because it already has occurred, it's taking away Merlin's free will to chose whether or not to do it when he sets out to do it.

But it's fairly easy for free will to be subverted in the Dresdenverse.  All it would take would be a little honesty.

Odin:  Hey, Merl.
Merlin:  I told you, don't call me that.
Odin:  Okay Lin.
Merlin:  <sigh>  What?
Odin:  You have to create a prison.
Merlin:  I have to?
Odin:  Yup.
Merlin:  I don't have to do anything, you cooky Norse cyclops.
Odin:  Okay.
Merlin:  ... okay?
Odin:  Yup.  Okay.
Merlin:  ... that's it?
Odin:  Exactly.
Merlin:  ... what?
Odin:  If you don't want to do it, then that's it.  That the End of it.
Merlin:  End of what?
Odin:  The end of Everything. You. Me. Earth. Time. Reality.
Merlin:  Um... what?
Odin:  Yeah, we needed that prison to be created millennia ago by you, so that bad guys could be imprisoned, so that reality could continue to exist.
Merlin:  Oh.
Odin:  But, since you won't, then you wouldn't have, so you haven't, so I guess everything's over.
Merlin:  <looks around>  ... But we're still here.
Odin:  <looks around>  Huh... I guess you're right.
Merlin:  So what does that mean?
Odin:  It means you're going to make the damn prison, Merl.
Merlin:  <sigh>  This is why I hate my life sometimes.
Odin:  Great.  How do you feel about crystals?

[Cenphx]

Thinking about this some more, I dont think what Griffyn proposes even creates a close time loop or the paradox it causes. If Now Harry does the time folding thing, he joins current time with a specifc moment in PG. Then it becomes one moment, neither past or future. The Harry of that momeng fixes LC. Its not that Harry always fixes LC so therefore he must, but the Harry of that joined moment fixes it. It just so happens that the moment is made up of two ribbons of time. But no time is altered, it is just pulled together. The lcosed time loop paradox happens only if you are considering time as one long unfolded ribbon where Harry moves into the past to fix LC there rather than pulling time to him in the now and fixing it here.  Im not sure if this makes matters any more clear to anyone else, but its definitely more clear to me. Assuming thats what Griffyn meant.

[the neurovore of Zur-En-Aargh]

@Griffyn--son of a (expletive expletive expletive). You're right. About 2 seconds after I got the reasoning of your argument about the energy at DR being an interaction with its wards I forgot it when replying to Hollorr. Since I do not currently have dementia, my only excuse is that the temporal echoes thing from an altered timeline makes so much intuitive sense to me it creeps back in when it shouldnt. My bad.

Are different versions of you posting from different timelines in the same thread ?

[the neurovore of Zur-En-Aargh]

@Neuro- My point is that in a universe where free will does exist, every time you travel back in time it resets the clock- and now people have the options to make all new decisions.

I'm still not seeing why it resets the clock except for the you who has travelled into the past and anyone you directly affect.  That people can make free choices in their present doesn't mean that once that choice has been made it is subsequently fluid, at least by my reading of Odin's comment about temporal inertia.  (Which in a universe with time-travel implies that the broad strokes of the future are not very mutable, save by focused and significant choice, but that's pretty much what Uriel's been implying when talking about most people not exercising free will very often.)

[Cenphx]

@ neurovore - wow. That explanation is waaaaay cooler than I forgot. Using 'Past Cenphx was intruding on the current timeline' will probably only work for me in time travel thread, though.

[Ms Duck]

I'm still not seeing why it resets the clock except for the you who has travelled into the past and anyone you directly affect.  That people can make free choices in their present doesn't mean that once that choice has been made it is subsequently fluid, at least by my reading of Odin's comment about temporal inertia.  (Which in a universe with time-travel implies that the broad strokes of the future are not very mutable, save by focused and significant choice, but that's pretty much what Uriel's been implying when talking about most people not exercising free will very often.)

because it removes the choice of the people in the then now, for lack of a better term. when you get down to it, with enough time travel free will would become asymptotic to zero.

the fact that in the DF zillions of alternate universes exist implies to me that time is not static or deterministic, but fluid. I think that by going back, you create entire logic trees of alternate realities..

If any TTH did change LC, its not ours. its the one from an alternate future that may have been.

Griff- merlin is a whole different kettle of fish. I'm not even convinced that it involved time travel at all, frankly. If you have a near immortal  who calculates he has to cast a spell in six different times to make it work, there's no reason he cant just set his calendar and do it.

[Cenphx]

Right, merlin might live long enough to cast the spell 5 or 6 times, but isnt the problem tha Merlin did it 5 times *simulatenously*? So he couldnt have done it at 5 different points in his timeline.  (im not even gonna try to touch the free will in a time travel world issue-but im reading along)

[Ms Duck]

Right, merlin might live long enough to cast the spell 5 or 6 times, but isnt the problem tha Merlin did it 5 times *simulatenously*? So he couldnt have done it at 5 different points in his timeline.  (im not even gonna try to touch the free will in a time travel world issue-but im reading along)

if he did that he has skills at time travel are above anything Mab has done in the books. were getting back into the 'TTH is a god' theory land there.

[Cenphx]

Im not necessarily disagreeing with you there. I mean, you would have to be so precise as to only pull a tiny piece of the fabric of space-time that related to you and no one else. The gravitational pull of black holes only stretches space-time, right? Imagine what kind of energy it would take to *fold* space-time. Now im getting really interested in whether Jim will explain Merlin's DR spell any more than he has already.   

[the neurovore of Zur-En-Aargh]

because it removes the choice of the people in the then now, for lack of a better term. when you get down to it, with enough time travel free will would become asymptotic to zero.

Why do they have to have choice in the then now ? Is not choice in the now now enough ?

the fact that in the DF zillions of alternate universes exist implies to me that time is not static or deterministic, but fluid. I think that by going back, you create entire logic trees of alternate realities..

I took the recent WoJ as indicating that there's a branching tree of realities arising from every point of exercise of free will anyway.

If any TTH did change LC, its not ours. its the one from an alternate future that may have been.

If that was intended as metahumour at the "this statement floats in a void with no causal connection to anything preceding" level, I salute your subtletly. If not, I'll have to ask you to unpack your reasoning a bit more.

[Ms Duck]

Why do they have to have choice in the then now ? Is not choice in the now noew enough ?

because in a non deterministic reality, there is no 'past' or ;future' there is only the now, and 'possibilities'. When an object travels to Point B, they change that reality, even if only by their presence. At which point all the dice need to be rolled all over again.

I took the recent WoJ as indicating that there's a branching tree of realities arising from every point of exercise of free will anyway.

If that was intended as metahumour at the "this statement floats in a void with no causal connection to anything preceding" level, I salute your subtletly. If not, I'll have to ask you to unpack your reasoning a bit more.

mm ill try to unpack. I don't believe in a non deterministic universe actual time travel is possible; for example when your traveler gets into his machine at point 2013, and travels to 1961, he creates first two alternates futures:

one in which he did travel, and one in which he did not

and then two more alternate pasts...it goes exponential from there

maybe its all my marvel comics leaking thru, but at least here, its impossible to travel to your actual past or your future (because of paradox) you can only travel to your alternate past and or alternate future.

[aShorty21]

The whole point of the loop/bridge time-travel concept proposed here is that there wouldn't be a time where it didn't happen. 

From Uriel's perspective, time is not linear.  Stand back far enough, and it's apparently wibbly wobbly.  By creating a permanent temporal bridge, those 5 times are linked to occur at the same time the first time.  There was no time he didn't make the prison.

Picture a piece of string.  It's linear, as mortals see time.  Now imagine that Merlin got help creating a loop, where two parts of the string overlap, like this:


Where the string overlaps itself is two separate points of time.  Now imagine a pin getting pushed through the string, bonding the two points together.  That makes them permanently bound together.  Only instead of just one loop for two points, there are 4 loops for 5 points of time.

The reason Ms Duck has an issue with it is because messing with time like that would seem to be a very high-level trick.  She thinks that it would take a WG-level talent to do it.

But Merlin clearly did it, presumably with help.  We can either assume that TWG helped, but if so, why did TWG both involving a mortal at all?  Or we can assume that one or multiple lower-tier powers (Mab, Odin, Uriel) worked together to do it. 

We know that the Ladies working together were able to channel their attack across multiple times.  So the idea that there are time-travel capabilities among the powers isn't outrageous.  By nature, Mab should be more powerful than Maeve in that aspect.

Again, the theory breaks down at why do it.  There was clearly a major, reality-level need for Merlin to create the DR prison.  If it's as difficult as Duck suspects, then it would require a reality-level need for Harry to go back.  And I can't think of one.

But if it doesn't take as much power to create a single bridge, and there were a really-really-important-reason for him to go back, then Mab and others might work together to get it done.  I still don't know why, though.

Ok I've been away for a while and I just completed my read of this thread. I wish I was in on the conversation from the begining.

With that being said, I feel like some people are having trouble grasping Griffyn's concept of the time loop/ribbon. So here is my swag at it.

Let's back up a dimension. Think in 3 dimensions. Harry climbs up a ladder. He then goes down a spiral slide. Weeeeee! He then walks away from the slide. Think of the ground as a flat plan defined by X-Y space. Think of up as the Z direction. If you are in the sky looking down at Harry, Harry passes through the same X-Y point every loop of the slide. The only difference was in the Z (up) direction. From Harry's point of view he just went down the slide and then continued on his day. From the 2D point of view he passed through the same point.

Now to step it up a notch. To realize that Harry didn't pass through the same 3D point (only a 2D) one you have to observe the 3D path as it happens. Basically you have to be able to percieve time as linear to understand how the trip down the slide works in 3D vs 2D. So now back to the time loop theory. Same basic principle but in more dimensions. Harry is walking through space and time (4D), does something magical to pass through the same point in time he has already passed through. This is only obvious and understandable if viewed from the 5th dimension. So we can only comprehend how he does it while observing in 5D.

I find the Time Travel Loop theory plausable, but unexplainable because I don't think in 5D. How do you explain height to a 2D being?

[Cenphx]

Ok, I get what you are saying, aShorty21, but if you are correct, then we are never going to get a better description or understanding of what Merlin did to create DR (assuming it was the folding time like a ribbon deal) and if Griffyn is correct that what Time Travel Harry did is the same time folding thing, then we also wont get any real description of how or why it works when Harry does it. At most we would get the kind of information DR gave to Harry through Bob in the Merlin movie. I have suspended my disbelief in other sci-fi settings, but it seems a little weird to do it in a first person narration. I mean, if Harry is able to understand it enough to work the spell or whatever I is, why cant we be brought along with his understanding? 

[the neurovore of Zur-En-Aargh]

because in a non deterministic reality, there is no 'past' or ;future' there is only the now, and 'possibilities'. When an object travels to Point B, they change that reality, even if only by their presence. At which point all the dice need to be rolled all over again.

And we know this is not the case in the DV because of Odin saying that what has happened tends to continue to have happened.

mm ill try to unpack. I don't believe in a non deterministic universe actual time travel is possible; for example when your traveler gets into his machine at point 2013, and travels to 1961, he creates first two alternates futures:
one in which he did travel, and one in which he did not

Granting that much for the sake of argument...

and then two more alternate pasts...it goes exponential from there

How, again, does this differ from what we are told happens with any exercise of free will not involving time travel ?

[the neurovore of Zur-En-Aargh]

I find the Time Travel Loop theory plausable, but unexplainable because I don't think in 5D. How do you explain height to a 2D being?

One of the hardest parts of this sort of discussion is that I can trivially think in four spatial dimensions and do five if I push it; it's very useful for complex database design.  But finding good words for how that looks inside my head has been balking me for decades.