Army of the 12 Monkeys
 

I just got finished watching "12 Monkeys" with Bruce Willis and Brad Pitt... Good sci-fi movie about time-travel, saving a futuristic world and preventing a past world disaster....

My initial thought about time travel was a problem... If you were sent back in time, any event, anything at all that you did that affected anything, would inevitable change the series of events that led the future where you were from. However slight or significant the change may be, it would no doubt have a drastic affect on the future, and ultimately the future would be completely different... Even the idea that since you changed the past, you might not be in the future where you came from, and thus you might never of been sent into the past to begin with....

The only things that would make time travel plausible, would be if when you travel back in time, u are traveling into a pararell world, and what you do, has no affect on the future. Therefore, you could go back and forth all you want. But would there only be one pararell world to go to, or an infinite amount??

The other explanation would be that everything is just one big circle.... You were meant to go back in time to change the future in a specific way, so that the future you go back to is the way it was when you originially left....

I know this is just a thought experiment, not reality, but was wondering what others' thoughts were anyway??

Re: Army of the 12 Monkeys
 

Going backwards in time poses a lot of problems/paradoxes that we have no reason to waste our time on, because we have no reason to think it's possible to go back in time. A lot of things that are impossible would make us very confused if they suddenly turned out to be possible afterall.

Re: Army of the 12 Monkeys
 

I think you're exactly right. Either there are many universes (the many worlds interpretation), or it's impossible to change the past, or backwards time travel is impossible. Other possibilities may exist, but I've never seen one presented that takes these problems into account. Most concepts of time travel used in fiction don't even bother to tackle the grandfather paradox.

Re: Army of the 12 Monkeys
 

[ QUOTE ]
The other explanation would be that everything is just one big circle.... You were meant to go back in time to change the future in a specific way, so that the future you go back to is the way it was when you originially left....

[/ QUOTE ]

You mean like in that movie, 12 Monkeys, with Bruce Willis and Brad Pitt?

Re: Army of the 12 Monkeys
 

Also, I still say the best reason to disbelieve in the possibility of time travel is the lack of hordes of time traveling time tourists buying kitchy local knick-knacks from us.

Re: Army of the 12 Monkeys
 

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Also, I still say the best reason to disbelieve in the possibility of time travel is the lack of hordes of time traveling time tourists buying kitchy local knick-knacks from us.

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or taking our jobs.

Re: Army of the 12 Monkeys
 

[ QUOTE ]
Also, I still say the best reason to disbelieve in the possibility of time travel is the lack of hordes of time traveling time tourists buying kitchy local knick-knacks from us.

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Its sort of a spin on the reason to disbelieve in vast government conspiracies. Even if we wanted to pass some laws or regulations preventing interfering, its so improbable to think there wouldn't be some screwups.

Re: Army of the 12 Monkeys
 

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
The other explanation would be that everything is just one big circle.... You were meant to go back in time to change the future in a specific way, so that the future you go back to is the way it was when you originially left....

[/ QUOTE ]

You mean like in that movie, 12 Monkeys, with Bruce Willis and Brad Pitt?

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Well, I thought it was a little different than that since there were more people from the future that showed up in the airport in the past, that weren't there originally, because of the message Cole leaves in the airport that they reconstructed.... Hence, I think "12 monkeys" goes on the multiverse theme....

What also brings me to that conclusion was at the very end, when the female scientist from the future is sitting next to the man whom releases the virus and starts chatting with him.... He then asks here what she does, and she says "insurance," meaning she's not going to let him spread the virus across the world.... But, that's just my take.....

Re: Army of the 12 Monkeys
 

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Also, I still say the best reason to disbelieve in the possibility of time travel is the lack of hordes of time traveling time tourists buying kitchy local knick-knacks from us.

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All based on a half-remembered public lecture on time travel by Paul Davies who purported to be summarising "the latest" theoretical ponderings in the early 90s...

If I recall correctly, the gist was that although it may be theoretically possible using wormholes, there was a limit in when exactly the travel was possible. The claim was that using one of these hypothesised time machines, it was only possible to travel "back" to a time after the machine was built. Hence, we have no time tourists as we havent built a time machine yet - if we did, it would be possible to go back and visit but not back to 2007.

Re: Army of the 12 Monkeys
 

you're just now seeing 12 monkeys?