X-Message-Number: 22154
From: "David Pizer" <>
Subject: Is Time Travel Impossible?
Date: Tue, 8 Jul 2003 00:44:49 -0700

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Can we ease off cryonics and bank on time travel to save us?
From:  David Pizer


>From time to time, the subject of time travel comes up on this forum.  After 
all, if time travel were possible some time in the future (if we could go back 
and forth in time - at will), then maybe future people would save us and all 
their ancestors?


When I was taking some philosophy courses at Arizona State University, I had a 
professor who liked to try to find things that were impossible, not only 
statements like "Jones is tall and not tall at the same time,"  but things we 
might try to do that could be proven to be impossible.  There were very few of 
them.


One example this professor used a lot is the impossibility of going back in 
time. The example he gave is that, if two-way time travel were possible, one 
could go back in time and kill his/her mother, at a time before that one was 
conceived.  But if that happened then that one would never have been born.   If 
the one person's mother died before he/she was conceived, then that one person 
did not exist and could not go back in time and kill his mother.   This example 
was his "rock solid" example of why time travel is impossible.


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