this post was submitted on 16 Jan 2024
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I mean, technically displacing the air with that time machine on such a massive time scale is just as likely to result in returning to a civilization of dolphin people as riding a dinosaur would.
Or you shedding some of your microbiome's bacteria and fungi into the environment and whoops: they outcompeted something "local" and now whole species change.
I honestly don't think there'd be any way to avoid doing something that could possibly change the future in a dramatic way, because that far back incredibly minute changes could possibly lead to huge differences (because chaos theory), to the level of "a butterfly didn't flap its wings because I accidentally squashed it with my time machine, and now humanity never happened. Oops." But any change that means you didn't ever go on your trip means you have some sort of paradox on your hands, and then it becomes a question of how timelines work
Luckily, as far as we understand things, there's no way to go back in time (only less fast to the future, which isn't the same). For one thing, because there's no backup mechanism for reality to jump back to.
Timelines are fiction. They hurt some fundamental principles of how the universe works. Time isn't like a river or a line at all; better start thinking of time like the air around you: it's just there, can be formed, affects things but there can't be less than none.
Oh sure, but it's fun to think about how time travel could maybe work if it was a thing.
My bad. My fun-detector is sleep deprived. Maybe i should work a bit instead of commenting.
Aww, it's ok. And it's good to point out that time travel to the past very likely isn't a thing, people sometimes assume it's something we'll eventually be able to do