From: Hal Finney (hal@rain.org)
Date: Fri Oct 23 1998 - 11:47:48 MDT
Brian D Williams, <talon57@well.com>, writes:
> You are arguing that because no one has come back from the future
> that it proves time travel (backward) is impossible. I merely
> stated the obvious, the reason no one has come back from the future
> isn't that time travel (backward) is impossible (although I believe
> it is.) it's that the future hasn't happened yet.
I don't quite understand how this argument works.
Suppose we wait until the future happens (so to speak!), and someone
invents a time machine that allows travel into the past. I gather that
you think that is at least logically possible.
Now we travel into the past, back to good old 1998, and here we meet
Brian D Williams. We introduce ourselves to him and say that we are
from the future and that we've come back in a time machine to visit him.
He says that is impossible, because the future hasn't happened yet, and
shows us his message which he had just sent off to the extropians list.
Obviously he is wrong in some sense, because he concluded that time
travel was impossible, yet it was possible, and we are there. What is
wrong with his argument?
Hal
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Fri Nov 01 2002 - 14:49:41 MST