this post was submitted on 06 Dec 2023
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If he didn't exist, then he wouldn't be able to tell himself anything, which violates causality.
The only thing you can say to your younger self is the same thing that was previously said to your younger self by your older self. Although then you'd have the issue of where did the information come from.
The information came from the timeline that no longer has a you because you moved to a different timeline.
That's what I think time travel would truly be like. Yes you can travel back and time and change the past but when you go back to your present nothing would have changed.
Because once you change the past you start a separate timeline.
It gets really complex when your time traveling triggers an infinite time loop that you personally never experienced.
Example: You go back in time to warn yourself about a coming war or disaster, but you get interrupted before you can finish, so your other self panics and disaster proofs everything, unwittingly preventing the disaster. When the "war or disaster" never happens, you feel silly and stressed, so you go back in time to tell yourself not to worry so much.
You'd have the original timeline where you experienced the disaster, another one where you were warned by your previous self and didn't experience it, and a third one where you were told by your future self not to worry about it and experienced it. If you kept this up you'd create infinite timelines unless Loki culled them or something.
If you got interrupted while warning about the disaster, what makes you think you wouldn't be interrupted while saying not to worry?
If you remember what interrupted your future self you might be able to prevent it from happening again.
You. The person who interrupted you was yourself.
That only tracks if you don't consider that by giving the information to his younger self he doesn't spawn a new time line.
If he spawned a new time line then he wouldn't have to disappear.
The comic follows Back to the Future time travel rules, which are weird. It's generally pretty consistent, aside from a bit with Biff, but overall it's a big ball of wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey... stuff.
The information comes from the set of lake houses that his grandfather had. I might've partially slept through that lecture.
Which is why the Vulcan Science Directorate has determined time travel is impossible.