“retrospective past actions”
Here’s what I’m thinking about. I’ve arrived here, now. Some future version of me travels to the past and changes my past. What happens to my memories? Am I still the same person I was before my past changed? Why would my future me go back into the past in order to change the present me, also changing the future me, perhaps in a way that I can’t go back to the past. So if I can’t go back to the past, I didn’t go back to the past, and my past was never changed.
Ok, we can try to trace all the what-ifs and play time travel games. Why? What do we get out of it? Is it merely entertainment, or do we actually learn something useful in the world as we know it, which does not include time travel?
Is this about the nature of identity? Is this about paradoxes? Is it about messing our heads? Is it about finding another way to alter our consciousnesses? What?
And looking forward—if we are to change ourselves in the past, then the future must already have happened because we don’t yet have a time machine. If we can travel through time, then all time must already be in existence. But if it is in existence, then our actions have already happened, and that means we can’t change them.
If the past and future have already happened, then when we went back to the past to change the future, we changed nothing because it had all already happened. But if we changed nothing, why do we think something was changed? What motivated our future selves to go to the past to make changes?
What the hell is the story here? Am I just juggling memes with a molten shoehorn? Yeah. Try to wrap your head around that one! Or is that being way too generous? And why do I bother? Why does anyone bother? Don’t we have better things to do with our time? Look. I’m flying in whiteout conditions, my altimeter is sinking dramatically no matter which way I pull the stick. I’m dizzy; I’m about to throw up; and I’ve got to be closing in on the surface of the ocean at an incredible clip.
Could someone please get me a drink?