Nothing in the fadom of Harry Potter irks me more then a time travel story were Harry goes back in the past and doesn’t change anything. I mean what the fuck is the point of going back into the past if you don’t plan on changing it,especially if you lived as shitty of a life as Harry has.

Now I understand some people say that you have to make sure you don’t cause a time paradox, but what people don’t seem to get is that the whole idea of a time paradox is flawed. As soon as Harry goes back in the past he is now for all-intense and purposes part of the past. What makes people think that time is some in-changeable thing, that what has happened HAS to happen so you go back into the past? Lets say Harry goes back into the past, saves his parents, the new Harry has a happy go lucky life and the old harry can now just sit around and be Happy watching the new harry grow. Two identical Harrys now exist…maybe… technically they wouldn’t be the same exact person b/c for that to happen James and Lilly would have to have ‘slept’ together at the exact same time and place.

Einstein went on for a long time about how time is only in your mind and that all time is relative. The past could easily be changed and the only person who would know would be the person who changed it. There is no physical law saying that someone who goes back into the past cant change it without having drastic outcomes.

I guess my main point of this little rant was to point out that as far as I can tell a ‘time paradox’ doesn’t exists, that as soon as you go into the past you are now a biological human being of the past which is now the new present, you don’t have to give two shits about going back into the past in the future to make sure it all happens the same way because you are there to make sure that you don’t even WANT to go back into the fucking past in the first place!

Gah it makes me mad!

P.S. I probably butchered some tenses in this rant, and its way to much work to go threw the rant and think about exactly what tense to use on every verb.

P.P.S. No offense to any of you authors out there who write a story like this but it just makes me mad reading pages about Harry sweating bullets over wither or not he accidentally changed the past. So, I decided release some pent up frustration and flame you all lol.

 

Exactly. Everyone wishes they could change the past for the better and when Harry gets a chance, he turns into a pussy. What a letdown....

 

I, in fact, have a story where he actually sets out to change everything he can. It's been a while since I've updated, because I'm concentrating on my primary fic, but I had that exact same rant and figured I would write something for myself, since I like the whole time-travel gimmick so much.

*Shrug*

What can I say? I completely agree; maybe I’ll push on that update I had planned and finish the next chapter.

 

Well, when I look at time traveling I see two basic two possibilities, one being the time paradox the other being kind of what you said. The way I think this is you assume existence of multiple dimensions for every single different action that could have ever occurred. (i.e. tree branches) So say when Harry goes into the past, his orginal dimension is destroyed so that the course of everything happening after him, is going to follow along some other route. (different tree branch)

The problem is that 3rd book in canon infers the idea of the paradox, with Hermione's whole speech about not affecting the past...etc, and many authors probably took that too literally.

Also, I remember, there's the tactical/strategic advantage of not changing too much the little things because presumably the time travel has excellent info on what's to come. If he starts changing everything, his orginally 100% accurate 'intel' would become much less useful.

 

you know i like that stargate episode where teal'c(sp?) and jack are caught in the time loop...that was funny...somebody do a fic with harry and bella/tonks in a time loop...that would be funny as hell..

 

Time paradoxes are an interesting metaphyssical concept... As well as a very interesting actual physics concepts.

I am unsure about whether or not String Theory allows for them or if so, how it does...

 

if you really think about the time thing too hard it fucks with your head and you get confused. It really isn't as simple as all that.

 

Well, that’s why its appropriately called a Paradox, right?

 

Nah not really... It never quite fucked my mind in the way that your describing. It does make for an interesting thought experiment though

Just think about Time as a state of being thing like mass and volume and you'll be fine.

 

ow

 

This is exactly what pissis me off…why do people keep thinking that you have to be born to exist. As soon as you go back in the past that is the new present. You can do what ever the fuck you want to do, even kill your own grandpa and you still wouldn’t just pop out of existence. It is true that you would never be born but yet it doesn’t matter since you are already there, you would just be a person who has the genes of a dead guy who never sired any children.

 

really, not that simple. There are quite a lot of indepth treatise on Time Travel by people who have much more experience and knowledge of the theories of the subject than anyone on this website. I don't think that you can just come up with one over-reaching theory that easily, you have to think of the consequences and how you would have ended up in the past in the first place if you never existed to go back...My heads hurting again, i'm leaving now.

 

I second Sree on this. I don't know exatly what would happen, but if you're not born then the events that led up to you killing your gran-papy would not have happend beacause you were never born.

 

Then how did you get to kill your grandfather in the first place? I mean, you should be unable to do it, since killing your grandfather means that you are not born and thus leaving the murder as impossibility. Because how can someone be murdered by another who doesn’t exist since he killed you. If you can understand all that crap...

 

exactly my point,

 

That’s another pizza topping entirely, my good friend.