Events in time: everlasting or temporary ?

BlueSovereign

Project QL Intern
Oct 30, 2005
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UK
Some say that when events are no longer in the present and are consigned to the past they are remembered but no longer exist. The history exists but the events are no longer happening in the past. I disagree with this because it would cause a paradox as we need those events of the past to keep playing otherwise we never reach the present we are in now. Its a bit like saying if the big-bang is no longer happening, how can the universe exist now. So you are still eating that burger at McDonald's last Friday night in the past even though you are now in the present about to have tea on Wednesday evening. QL is possible if you take this view because you can travel back to the past (where events are still playing out), change them and maybe because you no longer had that burger on Friday night, you go to McDonald's tonight instead. Time is like a movie on a video tape if you will.

When I think of paradoxes and things, my head feels like it wants to go super nova :).
 
This is one of those things I can't wait to have explained to me when I get to Heaven! :)
 
We're leapers after all:

I guess if you have an interest in QL you develop an interest in time-travel.
I guess if you have an interest in time-travel you develop an interest in QL.

Time-travel is a great convesation subject in the pub if you meet the right people. Some have their own take on it, others are familiar with all things time-travel. Its also a subject that never bores me and if I had the chance to do something in life it would be to experience time-travel. Although it may get depressing if you changed something in your past and you never meet your future wife etc - would not want to experience that, it would be a nightmare and would probably stress me out trying to go back and correct it.
 
McDuck said:
This is one of those things I can't wait to have explained to me when I get to Heaven! :)

Amen to that! :D

BlueSovereign--what you said is so true. I was telling the girl I work with (I am one of three ppl who work there) that QL was my favorite show and what it was about (since she had never heard of the show *gasp*), and nearly the instant I said "A scientist named Sam Beckett travels back in time..." she immediately asks me "if you could, would you go back in time to change something in your life?" I knew this girl for maybe 48 hours at the time, and we instantly got involved in the deep conversation about the show, about time travel, and what we would do if we could. It was very cool. I said almost instantly that I would because there was some crap in my life that I would definitely not want to have happen to me. But, of course, I got to thinking that (as it was said earlier) these experiences...no matter how crappy...have molded me into the person that I am now, and who knows? If those crappy experiences hadn't of happened, I might not be the same person I am today, having met the same good people, and had a relatively good life. It's a really interesting notion to think about. If it were possible, would you really go back to change your life? Hmmm...

Samantha Beckett
 
Samantha_Beckett said:
I said almost instantly that I would because there was some crap in my life that I would definitely not want to have happen to me. But, of course, I got to thinking that (as it was said earlier) these experiences...no matter how crappy...have molded me into the person that I am now, and who knows? If those crappy experiences hadn't of happened, I might not be the same person I am today, having met the same good people, and had a relatively good life. It's a really interesting notion to think about. If it were possible, would you really go back to change your life? Hmmm...

Samantha Beckett

To be honest I really would like to change one or two things in my life if I could time-travel because I still feel pain from these events that happened over 5 years ago and my life would be totally different for the better if they had worked out right. I could really sympathise how Al felt in MIA because of his situation with Beth and how he wanted to change it, although I was not an MIA, I felt very strongly about someone in my past and I felt like I did not handle the opportunities right and not do enough to end up with that person. Every time I was near her my heart would race and I would dream of her very often. You see back then I was very shy and somewhat reserved so you can understand the situation I was in. Right now, I'm not so shy and reserved in-fact I'm more confident and outgoing and I realise that if I was the person I am now it would have been different. It hurts like hell just realising that at times and when I've found out that she was seeing someone a few years ago I did feel bad and even jealous of whoever he was, lucky dog :). Not only that, but another situation got me depressed 8 years ago and I know that if I had done a few things differently it would never have happened.

Like its said, life and time move on and have to move on with it and put it all behind me since that is part of life's experience, learning from those mistakes. Hopefully I will meet someone soon enough who I'll develop strong feelings for and I'll think a lot less about that young women I used to know. The reality is, I'll never be able to build a time-machine and have thought about how to actually build one - but did not get very far at all and as a side note I would not like to risk it ending up in the wrong hands if I could build one simple as that.
 
As for the Time-travel...

... it's just something fascinating. It's subject of study. There are lots of science books about it. Theories. Einsten's relativity. Stephen Hawking books. Time-travel might be possible, after all, but how? Scientifics are working on it. It's just not something simple. There are Quantum Physicist too... What theory is the correct one? God knows!
 
Have you ever watched the original "Wild Wild West"? Every commercial break, they would "freeze the frame" and place it into a picture frame, and when the show was finished, all four frames were filled. History is like that, every moment another thread of a much larger tapestry. Change one thread far enough back in time, and the entire tapestry might unravel (think "anti-time vortex" from Star Trek TNG's "All Good Things...").
The lives we live are the result of the many threads in the tapestry. A good example is three things you would never imagine being linked through time by history: Roman chariot wheels were approximately four feet, eight inches across. Pathways and roads throughout the Empire were built to accomodate them. When railroads were developed, they used this wheel spacing because it was convenient and inexpensive. The solid rocket boosters used on the Space Shuttle cannot be manufactured any wider than they are. Why? The only facility which manufactures and refurbishes them is located in Utah, and the boosters are shipped by rail...through a tunnel!
The width of Roman chariot wheels is a factor in our space program, over 2000 years later.
But who determined that width, and why?
 
BlueSovereign said:
To be honest I really would like to change one or two things in my life if I could time-travel because I still feel pain from these events that happened over 5 years ago and my life would be totally different for the better if they had worked out right. I could really sympathise how Al felt in MIA because of his situation with Beth and how he wanted to change it, although I was not an MIA, I felt very strongly about someone in my past and I felt like I did not handle the opportunities right and not do enough to end up with that person. Every time I was near her my heart would race and I would dream of her very often. You see back then I was very shy and somewhat reserved so you can understand the situation I was in. Right now, I'm not so shy and reserved in-fact I'm more confident and outgoing and I realise that if I was the person I am now it would have been different. It hurts like hell just realising that at times and when I've found out that she was seeing someone a few years ago I did feel bad and even jealous of whoever he was, lucky dog :). Not only that, but another situation got me depressed 8 years ago and I know that if I had done a few things differently it would never have happened.

Like its said, life and time move on and have to move on with it and put it all behind me since that is part of life's experience, learning from those mistakes. Hopefully I will meet someone soon enough who I'll develop strong feelings for and I'll think a lot less about that young women I used to know. The reality is, I'll never be able to build a time-machine and have thought about how to actually build one - but did not get very far at all and as a side note I would not like to risk it ending up in the wrong hands if I could build one simple as that.

Dear BlueSovereign;
I read your wishes with much interest. 33 years ago, in high school, I had exactly the same "problem" you had. Between then and 1995, I would dream of her, but my life went in a different direction. In 1995 I decided that I would "put right that which once went wrong", and, at a weak point in my marriage, walked away and into her life.
It was heaven! I felt reborn, and ignored the warnings from her mother and siblings. We conceived a child. She began to show more and more of her true self until she threw me out in early March 1996. It didn't last a year.
Now, I pay child support, while the father of her oldest does not, and has never been asked nor forced to support his child. My wife and I reconciled in 1997, and celebrated our 25th last year.
I carry this unbelievable guilt for being stupid enough to have done what I've done. I will die not having forgiven myself.
Expensive? From many viewpoints. The only good is that I can finish my life having answered the biggest "what if" in my life.
I can only tell you of my experience. You have to make your own decisions.
 
spaceflight101 said:
Dear BlueSovereign;
I carry this unbelievable guilt for being stupid enough to have done what I've done. I will die not having forgiven myself.
Expensive? From many viewpoints. The only good is that I can finish my life having answered the biggest "what if" in my life.
I can only tell you of my experience. You have to make your own decisions.

spaceflight101- If you want me to be 100% honest, I would have to say that I have had negative thoughts about ending up with this woman. I think one of the worst things to experience in life is when someone does not meet up to your expectations of them. I've thought about it not working out and being disappointed as well as her friends (she had many) not taking to me too well - its a shame how many relationships fail because friends can influence people far too much. If they don't like you or are jealous of the affection you share between the two of you they will try to split you up and may lie and set you up to do so. I was afraid of that and back then I knew I would not handle that well. But on the other side of the story I can't say how many times I have come close to picking up that phone and telling her how I felt in the past. Now I just think, "well yeah, it was a long time ago and mostly a huge crush" which it really was. You can't really love someone until you are together and get to know them, but attraction can be intense enough that it is mistaken for love.

But like they say its better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all. Its what makes me want to experience it every time rather than not experiencing it.

Your experience sounds horrible really and I don't know how I would handle that if mine had worked out the same way. But having to pay child support when the other father does not is so unfair and its like making you suffer just because you wanted to be with that person and then didn't.