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This is fundamentally a variation on the question of a Temporal Paradox, also known as a Grandfather Paradox ("You go back in time and kill your grandfather. What happens?"). Although no killing happens in this variation, the basic idea is the same: Information is transmitted to the past from the future, but results in a situation where it cannot be transmitted in the first place.
Accordingly, there are several hypotheses to cover this. This isn't even all of them:
I'm more of an Emergent Time/Timeline Curve theory guy. The others are cool for sci-fi and stuff but I just can't conceive of that being how it works.
Closed Loop Theory seems like too cheeky of an explanation. It's basically a bait and switch. Like: "What if you did thing? But then DIDN'T do thing!" with the answer being "actually you did but just later". To be fair though isn't the theory really just saying the universe will correct itself somehow?
Also since you seem knowledgeable on this, something I've always wondered about: is their any theory centered around our frame of reference having a past but not a future? As in we're blazing the trail forward like an ice breaker ship for everyone else to follow? There's probably a million fundamental laws of the universe that makes that impossible.
Sorry, I'm not very smart, but I do kinda love this stuff.
I don't get it. Where's the paradox here? He gets to see the future but turns off the machine before getting any information from it so nothing changes. What I'm missing?
His future self showed his past self the lottery numbers through the open window, but he closes the window, so his future self can't show them to his past self.
I've read your message and the OPs like 5 times and I still have no idea what is being described... I might be stupid.
Got it. We're good so far.
This is what I'm stuck on. So he didn't actually? I get the irony of saying a paradox doesn't make sense but I'm not even following the thought experiment. His future self opens a window and says "Hey, get some paper and a pen, I've got some winning lottery numbers for you!" and his past self goes "Oh boy!" and then immediately CLICK (closes the portal) before ever being shown the numbers.
Could it be restated to say he gets the numbers from his future self but then 30 years later just forgets to do the same thing for his past self?
I would assume they sent them after the number was drawn, to before the number was drawn, which means the future self doesn't need their own message to learn the numbers.
I think the idea of parallel universes solves time travel paradoxes in a pretty clean way.
Except for the fact it makes every decision, every moment of tension and every event that occurs irrelevant, because an infinite number of universe exist in which the events occurred and in which they didn't occur.
I don't see that as a problem. Every possibility co-exists, and every reality is equally real. Every moment and decision forks the universe in infinite ways, but you get to choose the one where you go.
You can save a drowning person, or let them die, but in the big picture, it won't matter. That person will drown infinitely many ways anyway, but there are also infinitely many universes where they get saved. Don't worry about the big picture. What matters, is how you act and how the world acts on you in this universe.
Apologies, I copied and pasted the answer below from another reply I made elsewhere in this thread
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I'm not talking about about the possibility of real infinite dimensions. I'm talking about sci fi, and stories, which is the context of the OPs question.
In a "real" scenario, the experience that matters is the one I'm having, not the one other versions of me might be having.
But in a story, there is no "true" timeline, or a more "real" timeline. They're all being retold to us indirectly, and the choice of the version of the person retelling those experiences is arbitrary by the author. It doesn't matter what perspective the author chooses, because every other outcome also happened, the author just didn't tell us those stories.
Even knowing that everything happens every way in some other branch of the wave function (other universes) doesn't really affect our own little section of it. There's no communications or travel, so other universes if they exist have the same meaning to us as if they don't. Except in time travel stories like this.
Besides, the same "irrelevance" of decisions and events comes free with even one single universe given that it's deterministic - as physics seems to be. (Yeah there's quantum randomness, but random doesn't help either)
That said I still believe in free will and the importance of decisions. I just think it has to be defined so weakly that it still works in a deterministic universe. (So I have free will, but so do dice and pocket calculators.)
I'm not talking about about the possibility of real infinite dimensions. I'm talking about sci fi, and stories, which is the context of the OPs question.
In a "real" scenario, the experience that matters is the one I'm having, not the one other versions of me might be having.
But in a story, there is no "true" timeline, or a more "real" timeline. They're all being retold to us indirectly, and the choice of the version of the person retelling those experiences is arbitrary by the author. It doesn't matter what perspective the author chooses, because every other outcome also happened, the author just didn't tell us those stories.
That would be the most boring story ever.
It becomes interesting at that point where one (or some) of the possibilities get a special meaning "above" all the others.
That's exactly my point! In an infinite timelines story, there is nothing that has special meaning over the others, making it boring, because it's all irrelevant!
I get what you mean, but I have to disagree a bit. The slice of the multiverse we're looking at is special because we're looking at it. It only makes it irrelevant if the slices are treated as fully replaceable.
Take for example Invincible. The comics & series focus on a young superhero who could have become incredibly evil, but didn't. The multiverse is used to highlight this: it shows alternative versions of him that did become evil, and it even says that most alternative versions did so. This makes the version of him we focus on that much more special, and allows for interesting character progression through being confronted with his fears.
But it only works because of the restraint of the writers, never showing us another good version of Invincible, only focusing on evil alternatives.
Invincible can't move between the infinite timelines though, and no storyline is hanging off of the important changes he makes those timelines by travelling through time/dimensions. He's not "saving" anyone by jumping through to another universe
I'd say that the one that's written is the 'true' timeline in the story the same way that the reality we experience is the only one that matters.
The reality I experience is the only one that matters to me. To an outside observer, all of them are as equally real and there is no true timeline.
In a story, there is no real, there is only outside observers...
Well, "no objective reality" is a lot more accurate to the truth of the world than any alternative. It might not be as narratively satisfying as a story where objective truths exist, but I suspect the human desire for objective truth is a cultural value that would be in our best interest to shed.