this post was submitted on 23 May 2025
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Showerthoughts
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A "Showerthought" is a simple term used to describe the thoughts that pop into your head while you're doing everyday things like taking a shower, driving, or just daydreaming. The most popular seem to be lighthearted clever little truths, hidden in daily life.
Here are some examples to inspire your own showerthoughts:
- Both “200” and “160” are 2 minutes in microwave math
- When you’re a kid, you don’t realize you’re also watching your mom and dad grow up.
- More dreams have been destroyed by alarm clocks than anything else
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It's not like we actually know how time travel would work. Because, you know, it's not currently a thing at all.
I think that it's fairly ~~settled~~ accepted theory that if you perceived it it happened. If you went back to the past and caused it not to happen then it wouldn't have happened and you wouldn't have perceived it. Basically, you can't change what already happened because whatever you did in the past had already happened when you perceived and therefore nothing that you did changed anything.
Not at all. There is many ways to rationalize time, nothing is settled at all. The "settled theory" you talk about would create paradoxes, if time travel is ever made real. And paradoxes don't work well with reality.
There is actually a fairly common way to rationalize time that is the opposite of what you're describing: Time is entirely a construct, there is no past, no future, only the present. Take away all of humanity's memories and the past doesn't exist at all.
There's also an understanding of time that says it only goes forward, making time travelling to the past impossible.
If you don't like something that happened to you today and go back to 2000 to change something that change that you made in 2000 had already occurred in 2000 when the thing that you didn't like happened in 2025. What happened in 2025 happened after the change you made in 2000.
Time travel is a settled theory?
😁
That's not what theory means at all
K
So if I leave my phone in 1929, nothing changes? That's absurd.
If you left your phone in 1929 then you had already done it in the past today. Nothing changed.
I feel like just accepting that as the answer is a philosophically lazy answer that simply doesn't pass the logic test because I didn't have a time machine. Now I do. Things change. And even if it doesn't change for us, it changes the course of time for them. Can you imagine the leap in tech if a modern flagship phone was found in the 70s? You wouldn't be able to go so far back that they're incapable of interpreting the tech, like what would a hunter/gatherer glean from a phone? Nothing. But in the 40s? Certainly we could have learned a lot from it by then.
You can't just wave off something that's pure speculation as if you know anything about it. This is as close to some weird time theology I can think of. Like the "gods plan" of time.
It's called an ontological paradox.
I disagree. If you made a change in 2000 you had already made it when whatever happened in 2025 happened. If you went back and killed Hitler in 1885 that had already happened in 1933 when Hitler was appointed Chancellor. What happened in 1885 didn't change what happened in 1933. Maybe you killed the wrong person. Maybe history got wrong who Hitler was. Maybe Hitler assumed the identity of the dead infant and went on to be appointed Chancellor. The point is that whatever happened in 1935 happened after whatever happened in 1885.
Edit: It's called an ontological paradox.
Yeah and it's made up by man to try to understand a conceptual conundrum that they made up and can't comprehend. You can't comprehend time travel in the same way that you really can't comprehend the size of things like red giant stars, or nebulae. And this theory of some "divine timeline" is unproven and will forever be unproven until man invents faster than light travel which is theoretically possible, but likely outside of our technological limits.
Point is, don't act like you know something that is pure speculation. You're like an "expert" on one of those paranormal shows. "Yep, slenderman always acts that way. Btw, he has anxiety and his favorite food is hungry man turkey dinners. He wishes he wasn't so tall and skinny, which is why anybody that sees him is never seen again. He was body shamed into becoming a monster. Also, he fucking hates people who wear hoodies with shorts, but I think we're all with him on that."
Many worlds theory gives us an alternative - in one world I left my phone in 1929 and that shaped that world tremendously.
But that didn't happen in my world and it can't, because my world is the world where no one left their phone in 1929.
Yes. There are many paths forward from any moment in time but only one path backwards. That means that to get to where you are right now whatever happened in the past has already happened and can't be changed.
But that doesn't mean you'd stay in that branch once you went back and veered off. Apparently you want to think of it like a tree. Thats fine. Sunlight hits leaves on older branches to give it the energy to grow new branches. Energy gathered from the leaves of older branches is used to grow new branches. Not visit and go back up. So let's say you're at the top of the tree right now and you travel back and change something, (a new branch) what on earth makes you think you'll be coming back up the trunk?