"Time Travel"

[devonin]

I cannot conceive of a group of people "Noble enough to want to help humanity" via time travel who woudln't also be noble enough and intelligent enough to know that the potential risks are not worth it.

Again, since time travel does not currently exist, we really have no basis to assume that were it to be developed at some point in the future, that it would be in any way shape or form commonly accessible to whoever happens to want to use it.

I can't think of a thing which would be -more- prone to being regulated, controlled and monitored than the potentiality of backwards time travel. You're assuming just as many things about how time travel would work as you negatively accuse me of doing.

What's your basis for the assumption that time travel to the past needs to include the addition of matter and energy into the universe? Could time travel not potentially be developed in such a way as to render the traveller bound by "You can look but you cannot touch" not in the sense of "don't" but in the sense of "Is completely unable to"

If we're assuming that the universe has to follow its various laws that seem pretty much objectively true, why couldn't potential travellers be "out of phase" with reality as we understand it, able to move about and observe, but not actually able to effect anything by their presence? There's a potential version of time travel that is paradox free.

The main issue here is that you're saying "If we assume that someone travelling back in time must effect the timeline with consequences cascading" but even with my concept that time travel doesn't also include parallel universe travel, one of the potential explanations for the lack of paradoxes can easily be "Because travellers to the past can't actually interact with anything."

As I said more than once, the individual reasons why time travel in each instance of time travel hasn't led to a paradox don't especially matter, but I don't even mean they don't MATTER, so much as the fact that they are currently UNKNOWABLE so Agnostics ahoy, trying to imagine now whether it's time police, or failed attempts, or whatever doesn't actually DO anything. The lack of paradoxes shows that there is a lack of paradoxes.

Basically you're saying something like "You say that nobody has successfully carried out a paradoxical action while time travelling, but since -I- think that paradoxical actions are inevitable, the only way I can possibly accept your premise is if I assume that your conclusion is 'time travel is impossible'"

But since my conclusion is not "Time travel is impossible" but instead "Whether time travel is possible or not, nobody who has travelled to a time before right now has ever done anything paradoxical FOR WHATEVER REASON" So again, second thoughts, failed attempts, time police, time travel putting you out of phase, whatever the individual reasons happen to be, the evidence seems clear to me (Namely, that the universe hasn't exploded in a puff of logic) that whether you CAN create a paradox or not, no paradox has taken place before january 19th 2009 at whatever time you happen to see this.