….it’s not possible[1].
I had a dream last night that a friend of mine from Church was trying to stump me on some logic questions in order to “prove” whether I had really been a math major in undergrad. He should have known, of course, that one could never “prove” such a thing but could merely induce that the opposite wasn’t true.
But Mr. K (to protect his identity) asks me the following:
“Because of the terrible events of 9/11, the future human race develops: 1) a technology that detects terrorist attacks with 100% precision, 2.) a time machine with which to go back and stop the events of 9/11. Is time travel possible?”
To which I respond:
“Assuming the future humans do develop such anti-terrorism technology and a time machine and in fact successfully travel to the year 2000, then there would have been no need to invent the technology and the time travel device. But clearly they have developed it. And thus backwards time travel is not possible as it must always lead to an inconsistent and conflicting history. QED.”
Mr. K then proceeds to ask me questions about limits and monotonic functions and other Calculus 1 level questions…
This might be the very first dream in which I can’t say, “Hmm…that was wierd!” (which is what follows 99% of dream recountings).
Although I must admit, it was kind of strange…
- backwards time travel at least [↩]
