Serious/Literal Time Travel Stories are Fundamentally Flawed

I am glad that you have come to the realization that time travel is fictional such that you know (all caps) it is fiction. The problem, however, doesn't have anything to do with believing it is really "real" but the extent to which it introduces a flaw in terms of logic and narrative. The Easter Bunny and Loch Ness Monster do not violate the law of the excluded middle or deprive us of stakes. Indeed, we don't have a lot of films about either, so neither is particularly exhausted as a premise, either.

What do you think about Primer in this light? Have you seen it?

I think the script to Primer IS the dissertation that skizzerflake says does not exist.



I have seen it. I think it is good. I think is complicated.



People talk about it like this,








but to me it is more like this...









That something is incredibly complicated does not necessarily mean that is incredibly clever.



Overall, I think it's a good flick that attempts to seriously explore the ramifications of time travel in a serious manner. The grandfather paradox and bootstrap paradox, however, are still waiting for us a logic problems. Also, the complexity gets to a point where one is forced to concede that they're not sure what happened when.

Yes, I agree that it’s moderately clever but very complicated. And your diagram is spot-on as we’re explicitly told they’ve all gone back plenty of times.

Still, I love it.

Re: grandfather paradox, why should one kill one’s grandfather, after all? *shrug*

I know, I know.

Obviously, you do it so that you can make time with your grandma and get two paradoxes for the price of one.

As Fry would say, do the Nasty in the Pasty.

Right, should have known that. Silly me.

Well, suppose it's all true and somebody can time-travel. My first thought is to go back to 1917, and shoot Corporal Adolph Hitler, a nobody in the German army at that time. At least some of those post-WW I horrors would have not happened.

The problem is that we would never know, because we didn't know anything about who Hitler was and what he did because it never happened. Instead, something else would have happened and we just don't know what, just that an investigation happened and the crime was unsolved (because I travelled away in time). So, living in the No-Hitler world would have its own list of horrors.

Maybe time travel happens all the time by just doing something like turning on 3 devices all at once, but we will never know. It sounds like another movie script.

I recall seeing an episode of the old Outer Limits sci-fi series in which the omniscient narrator closes by remarking that if you move a grain of sand on the beach, world history is changed. The narrator, however, didn't know what would change.

I can't. No matter how much I want to, I just can't. I mean, I can squint at a story and shrug at its contradictions and enjoy time travel as light entertainment. I cannot, however, suppose it is all true. If I suppose it's all true, then contradictions are true. If contradictions are true, then nothing is false.
The weird thing about this is that no one thinks to go back in time and rescue baby Hitler and have him raised in a good family (he was massively abused as a child). We tend to think of him as essentially evil, which in itself seems to express doubt at the idea that we could really change the past.
As a pure counter-factual (sans time travel) I shudder at the thought of the National Socialists being led by a more competent leader.
There are some rules for counter-factuals that can help make such conjectures more grounded in a few rules.

1. So what? Rule - The proposed change must have direct and provable ramification for history (e.g., if Napoleon had an extra freckle on the sole of his foot, history would not likely be different).
2. Minimal Re-Write Rule - On the other hand, a fanciful change, while certain to produce significant results, is pointless (e.g., if Napoleon had had and extra 3,000,000 troops at Waterloo, would he have won?). Thus, we have to do the max for the minimum. The bare minimum needed to change the historical track.
3. Anachronism Rule - Anything impossible at the time is ruled out as being strictly fanciful (e.g., if Napoleon had B-52 bombers, could he have won the Battle of Waterloo?). Time travel, by definition, is anachronism, so we would have to lighten this rule a bit to enhance the plausibility of a time-travel fiction.
4. Immediate Horizon Rule - We limit ourselves to an immediate horizon. That is, what would have happened in the next five months if Napoleon had won at Waterloo. It is rather pointless to ask what would have happened 200 years later as cause and effect are chaotic/noisy.
5. A Modest Can - And bringing up the caboose, we should look for a modest "can."

Can we break the laws of logic? No. Thus, actual time-travel is out of it.

Can we break the laws of physics? For a work of soft-fiction yes. For counter-factual analysis or "hard" speculative fiction, no. And if, for a work of fiction, we must, the writer should only have one conceit to make the story possible (e.g., allowing for light speed travel).

Can we break laws of biology? Not flagrantly or casually, no. However, what we can engineer biologically and what we discover does change over time, so we might suppose a future with Replicants, for example.

Can we break the laws of sociology/folk-psychology? Only at our peril. We would need a device which explains why such laws not obtain in our scenario. That is, if you try to imagine a human utopia, it will be hollow if you do not account for human greed and short-sightedness.

Can we change the contingent state of affairs of the world as we know it? That is, can we move stuff around? May we add more or less of that stuff? Yes. Absolutely. This is the modest can, but we should do so in accordance with the first four rules of thumb.

If we follow these rules, we can have some interesting, but also sober conversations about what "might have been."
Maybe. If physics of the 20th century taught us anything, it is that the world is much weirder than we ever imagined. That stated, I don't think it is possible, given the law of the excluded middle. And if it is possible, I cannot speak coherently about it, because I would have to give up the laws of the excluded middle (which is foundational to reason) to so. Either way, its a mess.
In that case, our narrator was not omniscient, I guess. Moreover, I suspect that if some grain of sand on some beach on some island in 1981 had happened to have just disappear or move, that the world, as we know it, would not have been appreciably different.

I'd say that the nature of the film does play a big part in how such "plot holes" might be viewed, something like Tenet were the mechanics of the plot are a major focus I can see more of a case but really I would say the majority of time travel films its a device to create drama and entertainment outside of itself and most of the audience are prepared to suspend disbelief.

Really it does seem to me that there has been a fairly vast school of film criticism thats grown up focusing almost entirely on plotholes that seems to assume that audiences are too dumb to be aware of them when in reality there just willing to suspend disbelief with them and judge the films much on what their actually trying to achieve, effective drama, entertainment, etc.

If Einstein is right, FTL is nixed too. If, however, there is such a thing as a preferred frame of reference (hidden away), then differences between observers might not be so gobsmacking a thing.

That's the great thing about a movie plot. You don't need much in the way of erudite physics, which would be lost on an audience that barely understands the boiling point of water. You just do something, like tell the guy at the controls to go into warp drive.

I recall The Forbidden Planet, where, when you passed light speed or slowed down through the "barrier", it seemed to make the crew members got a sore neck since they all grabbed the back of their neck and acted groggy for a minute. Why? No idea, but a sore neck seems as plausible as anything else you put in the script about light speed.

I recall the narrator just telling us that they could go super-luminal...no explanations other than warp drive, whatever that is.

But we did get Snake Jazz out of it, which is pretty sweet.


Primer has been mentioned.
Predestination has been mentioned.
I guess I'll mention Time Crimes.


For the sake of narrative tension -
I guess in all of them there's an aspect of, just because you can go back in time, it doesn't mean you're going to get it right.


Oh, and Don Hertzfeldt's World of Tomorrow. (Though time travel is necessary for the story, I don't think it might necessarily fall under the criteria of being concerned about the literal implications of time travel).



Or thinking about it, 12 Monkeys and La Jetee, time travel might not have been the most reliable (also true for World of Tomorrow).


I think a lot of them are fine with the bootstrap paradox (if I'm understanding it correctly). Since a lot of them go with the, "every that is going to happen had already happened," mentality probably because our notion of cause and effect are heavily associated with the one dimension out existence and consciousness is rooted in, I guess time travel presupposes maybe that way of looking at time is limited. But really, I think it's narratively treading in the same waters as prophecies and fates have done since at least Oedipus Rex.

Little Ash. Now that's a name I've not read in a long time. Or maybe time travel is real and I am back on some old forum...


With regard to prophecy I agree. You're on the money. It's the same problem. If the oracle were to give complete information (i.e., the full picture that Oedipus really wants, you know, before bangin' mom and killin' dad), then the prophecy would not be completed. The oracle, therefore, is always a cheat, giving our hero just enough information to screw them to the wall.



To the extent that a prophecy is unfalsifiable it cannot be complete (because if it were, it could be undone). To the extent that it's not complete, it's a cheat. And to the extent that the prophecy is falsifiable, on the other hand, is the same extent to which we're freed from the hands of fate. TLDR: Skip the Oracle and don't pay the ferryman.

It seems as though, script-wise, at its simplest, there's two outcomes in time travel. It depends on whether you do or do not couple time travel with Fate. Practically, if Fate is in operation, you can go back to high school, change the past but you still don't end up with the "true love" of your senior year, no matter how many iterations you try. It Fate is malleable however, subject to being altered by a reordering of the past, then you can buy those roses before the big dance and you will end up with the girl of your dreams.

The other element in the plot, however, is...assuming that fate is malleable, and you do get the roses and the girl, you still have imperfect knowledge of the future. Yeah, you do buy the flowers, and the girl of your dreams does fall head-over-heels for you, but on your second date, the one that would NOT have happened if you didn't do the rose corsage do-over, you and your new true love are getting some ice cream and being smitten, you cross the street right in front of the runaway dump truck. You are both crushed to death, splattered on the pavement along with the roses. Both of you would have been better off without that second date.

It has been a couple of months.

I guess I need to go back to the first post to refresh my mind as to the main issue, because my brain mentally focused on how it causes there to be a lack of stakes. And yet, it seems like there's a number of time travel movies out there (a reasonable number) were presented in this thread that I would still have stakes. And if I were to go off of what I remember the original take-away was, the argument would be, the movie might appear to have stakes, but if you think about it, either the timeline could be changed and they could ultimately just keep using time travel to remove those stakes or the predestination (hey, that's a title that's been mentioned in this thread) of it all removes those stakes. (or maybe the bigger issue was just the logical inconsistencies of time travel - personally, I think the real issue was the last one of it being done in a lazy manner. Which, well, lazy story telling will manifest itself some overdone way or another).

And my inclination is to go, "and yet, a number of those movies still have stakes."
So, I guess it would make sense to start breaking some of them down. It's somewhat late here, so that's not happening right now, but shooting from the hip, a common device in the ones that work is, there is some type of restriction on the time travel tech. I think the best ones is, the tech isn't... foolproof. I'm thinking of 12 Monkeys being a good example there. And it's also unclear how long the people in the future would have opportunities to send people back. Combined with a lack of knowledge of what the original cause actually was.

The prophecy comparison came to mind because of the intermediary example of Arrival, which could be considered time travel, or more-though-not-completely accurately as prophecy. And relatedly, in Slaughterhouse V, Billy Pillgrimz becoming unstuck in time (but it's been a while, and that one is primarily more interesting when read as someone experiencing psychosis and PTSD). Which in terms, for the viewer, I'm not sure if getting a prophecy is anymore narrative deflating than starting with a teaser of the ending at the beginning of a story (which is also now being overdone). And yet, in those stories, there can still be stakes (though less so when it feels like it's being lazy). Admittedly those would be analogous to the incomplete prophecy for the viewer, and the lazy version is often a teaser for the plot to progress further later on in the movie. Though (also admittedly, it's been a few decades), I remember it working in Memento.