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magg0t · #33 (**permalink**) 12-07-2007, 03:16 PM

When Scotty blasts the Enterprise at fantastic warp speed through some "time portal" or whatever back to Earth in the year 1860 something so the crew can visit with Abraham Lincoln or HG Wells' lead character in The Time Machine sits in his time travel machine and goes forward in time thousands of years, and it all happens in a matter of "seconds", that's time travel.

Certainly, like most everyone, you've seen the shows and or read the books to know what I've been talking about.

You simply have no indication or proof that time travel is a real possibilty.

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Originally Posted by SCraps

so I'll tell you the "time-travel-like" situation

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Which, of course, won't be time travel.

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and you can tell me if it has anything to do with what you're talking about.

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Of that, you can make bet.

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I'm saying that if I board a really fast accelerating ship, leave earth and come back in fifty years, my ship and I will be aged virtually not at all relative to how we would have aged if we had never boarded the ship. I will leave 21 years old in 2006 and come back in 2056 without having undergone any physical process of aging. Nor will my ship or my belongings have aged or deteriorated in any way (assuming the journey went well).

Now there won't be any 'leaping' involved in this -- I will still exist continuously in some place at all times measured on earth and in my own ship. It won't be anything like, say, a point representing me on a timeline leaping off the line from the 2006 point to the 2056 point.

But a person wishing to 'travel to the future' can do what I've described and essentially accomplish his goal. If you want to live to see what happens 10,000 years from now it is physically possible in principle to do so.

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You present what to-date stands as a theory, about which there has been no proof, and is likely another example of unintended fiction fantasy presented by a wrong-turning physicist(s).

Regardless, all you've presented is a form of cryogenic-like suspension, and that is not time travel.

Whether you freeze someone or accelerate them into tininess suspension and wait for their "journey" forward in time to finish, you simply have not time travelled in the common meaning of the term that was presented in the inital post of this thread.

Even if in your quite fantastic example the person doesn't die either from the process or from old aging while in the speed of light itself or whatever, the fact that the process to the "traveller" will take just as long as the time that passed on Earth, regardless if in fantastic comparison he doesn't "seem" to have aged any when he "returns", that simply isn't time travel.

Indeed, time travel swings both ways, forward and backward. Where in your example could anyone travel backward in time?

Using a fantasy to try to prove a fantasy true is rather fantastic of you, and not in a good way.

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In addition I would submit that time travel to the past or future even in the sense of "leaping" on a time line is not impossible (although it probably is a fantasy,

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Agnosticism is so wafflingly indecisive.

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but not all fantasies are bad right

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Irrelevant.

But all of the time that fantasies are deluded to be reality is pretty bad for the deluder.

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For anything that we can imagine is possible,

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Absolutely false.

You can imagine that a cat is a dog, but that is not possible in reality with respect to the cat you are staring at.

People imagined that the Earth was flat, but that was not possible in reality with respect to the Earth they were standing on.

Imaginination is a good thing, for a number of reasons, providing there is no such delusion operating to create the obvious fantasy.

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and we have very compellingly imagined time travel to the future and past -- just look at the third Harry Potter movie. .

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Immaterial and irrational.

As much as I have enjoyed the Harry Potter series, presenting fictional accounts of events in an attempt to prove/suggest a fantasy is real is simply irrational.

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Time travel only becomes 'impossible' if one dogmatically assumes a certain worldview that precludes it..

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Irrelevant, irrational and divertive.

Now you're trying to prove-suggest time travel isn't a fantasy by fantasizing that those who recognize that time travel is most certainly a fantasy are operating erroneously under the influence of a (dogmatic) ideology.

You would, hereby steming from introducing your own ideology of agnostic relative moralism into the discussion, be the pot calling the kettle black, except I don't qualify as a kettle.

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Now there's nothing wrong with dogmatic assumptions in my opinion, but I do think that one should explain why the assumption is not only correct but should be held dogmatically.

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Your ideological aversion to what you imagine is dogmatism, is quite obvious.

And the more you projectively add ideology to your argument, the less it resembles anything that has to do with scientific fact.

I have stated the truth that time travel is an obvious fantasy, which has nothing to do with ideology, but is essentially a scientific fact-based knowledgable observation of reality with respect to ontology.

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Your assumption, I think, is that there is one universe which is changing but does not "record" how it has changed in the past (only human brains make such recordings), so time means *only* change and thus it is impossible for someone to go back and mess with this record of universe-change which does not exist.

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We'll say yes to that, for argument's sake.

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I think this assumption is reasonable but I see no reason to hold it dogmatically.

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A cat is not a dog. Do you think that "assumption" is reasonable? If so, however, are you opposed to thinking such reasonableness is always true, that a cat could be a dog?

Typical moral relativist -- you appear to have a difficult time accepting the reality of limitations.

Fantasy will simply not change those limitations with respect to reality, limitations such as the limitation on the span of your very life time.

Acceptance is really for the best, with respect to maturity.

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It is imaginatively possible that the universe records its previous states and that those states are subject to change which may revise the states after the changed state (again see Harry Potter 3

). So on what basis should we preclude this possibility from our thinking? We can say it is probably a fantasy, but not *conclusively* a fantasy without some argument.

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Again, you reference fantasy to prove-suggest that an obvious fantasy is real.

Next thing I know you'll be stating that it is possible for Santa Claus to be real or that Jesus died and rose again and ascended into Heaven and is alive, etc.

Think whatever you wish.

But for it to be classed as reflective of reality your thoughts must translate into actual real occurrences that can be recognized as such, not only from knowledge, not only from shared objective virtual unanimity, but from the very ontological roots of our being.

The Santa and Jesus fantasies, like the Easter Bunny, Tooth Fairy, and time travel, are, thereby, obvious fantasies.

We would all do well to accept the reality of these being fantasies, even while imaginatively theorizing.

Being able to accurately distinguish between fantasy and reality is a great part of the definition of sanity.