A comment posted
Jean-Frederic MonodSeptember 27, 2020This is essentially the theory of narrative causality espoused by Terry Pratchett’s Discworld series. The history monks are in charge of ensuring that the sequence of events follow the timeline in their proper order. What this seems to say is that, while events aren’t necessarily predestined, once they occur, their presence in the timeline is unalterable even though the means by which they occur is. So even if Gavrilo Princip hadn’t shot the archduke, someone else would have. But there would be no way to get the archduke to fall down the stairs that morning and avoid him getting in the car at all. Or if there were, there would be no way to prevent the same sequence of events from occurring at some other equally critical point in time leading to the same chain of results. The dominoes are set up and it doesn’t matter which one you trigger to set the other ones off. This is essentially predestination.Where this is problematic is when you consider the idea of multiverses. This discovery means that time travel is stuck on the rails of whatever universe you are in at the time and that Universe is rigidly predestined.
To avoid the events you would actually have to travel sideways to a different narrative (universe) entirely rather than back and forth on the same rail. But you can’t create your own shunting station by altering events in this universe. You have to exit the universe entirely and go to another one which fits your desired outcome. Less Back to the Future, more Michael Crichton’s Timeline.
To avoid the events you would actually have to travel sideways to a different narrative (universe) entirely rather than back and forth on the same rail. But you can’t create your own shunting station by altering events in this universe. You have to exit the universe entirely and go to another one which fits your desired outcome. Less Back to the Future, more Michael Crichton’s Timeline.
