Ontological paradox…
This post is about a time travel paradox, one i find really interesting: The Ontological Paradox, aka Bootstrap Paradox, it’s described as follows:
Assuming time travel is possible, something, either a physical item or info, travels from the future to the past, and becomes the item that was sent back in time in the first place, thus, having no discernible origin, this creates an infinite loop.
Here are some examples: (from Wikipedia)
With info:
~ On his 30th birthday, a man who wishes to build a time machine is visited by a future version of himself. This future self explains to him that he should not worry about designing the time machine, as he has done it in the future. The man receives the schematics from his future self and starts building the time machine. Time passes until he finally completes the time machine. He then uses it to travel back in time to his 30th birthday, where he gives the schematics to his past self, closing the loop. Of course, the schematics must have come from somewhere.
~ A professor travels forward in time, and reads in a physics journal about a new equation that was recently derived. He travels back to his own time, and relates it to one of his students who writes it up, and the article is published in the same journal which the professor reads in the future.
A man builds a time machine. He goes into the future and steals a valuable gadget. He then returns and produces the gadget to the world, claiming it as his own. Eventually, a copy of the device ends up being the item the man originally steals. This of course means that the “real” device is the copy of it, leaving the loop sealed. However, nobody could have created an original device. And it means the invention was his.
~ A young physicist receives an old, disintegrating notebook containing information about future events sent by his future self via a time machine; he copies it over into a new notebook before it deteriorates so badly as to be unusable. Over the years the predictions of the notebook come true, allowing him to become wealthy enough to fund his own research, which results in the development of a time machine, which he uses to send the now old, tattered, disintegrating notebook back to his former self. The notebook is not a paradox (it has an end and a beginning; the beginning where he receives it and the end where he threw it out after he copied the information), but the information is; it is impossible to state where it came from. The professor has transferred the information that he wrote himself, so there was no original notebook.
With physical items:
~A man is locked outside his house because he’s lost his keys. Another man approaches him with the keys. When the man enters his house five minutes later, he encounters a time machine which transports him and his keys back in time five minutes, allowing him to give them to himself and close the loop.
Well, now some examples on Literature, Film and TV
Literature
~ Robert A. Heinlein’s stories “By His Bootstraps” and “—All You Zombies—” involve the predestination paradox, but also play with the bootstrap paradox. In “By His Bootstraps”, the protagonist is asked to go through a time portal by a mysterious stranger, a second stranger tries to stop him, and all three get into a fight which results in the protagonist being pushed through anyway. Ultimately, it is revealed that all three are the same person: the first visitor is his future self and the second an even older future self trying to prevent the loop from occurring. The bootstrap paradox here is in where and how the loop started in the first place. “—All You Zombies—” involves an even more convoluted time loop involving kidnapping, seduction, child abandonment and sex reassignment surgery, resulting in the protagonist creating the circumstances where he becomes his own mother, father, son, daughter, forever-lost lover and kidnapper. (fyi this is the book series which named the paradox)
Film
– Back to the Future: When Marty plays some song on the club at the party, some guy on the outside hears it and later becomes famous with the song, so it in reality didn’t come from anywhere, also, Marty’s mother mentions that she likes the name Marty, after the guy who helped her and McFly get together, so maybe Marty’s name is another bootstrap paradox.
– In The Terminator movies:
- The Terminator cyborg sent back in time to kill Sarah Connor is destroyed, but its components are salvaged to form the basis of the artificially intelligent computer network Skynet that will, in the future, send it back in time on its murderous mission. The knowledge of how to create an artificially intelligent machine therefore has no ultimate source. Contrast with the consistent loop of the decision to send Kyle Reese back through time: while in the past, Kyle Reese- the soldier sent from the future to protect Sarah so that she can give birth to his future commander John Connor- falls in love with Sarah and has sex with her, resulting in him becoming the father of his own commander. This is not an example of the paradox as no information or matter ‘appears out of thin air’.
Kyle gives Sarah a message from the future John. - In Terminator 2: Judgment Day, young John says that his mother made him memorize the message — which, ironically, says that the future can be changed — in order to give it to his father, so that his father might then pass it on to her. At no point do we learn when or how the message was originally composed. Similarly, Kyle shows Sarah how to fight Terminators. Sarah teaches the same methods to John, who trains Kyle in the future. Also, Sarah Connor knows that her unborn son is called John Connor because Kyle Reese said so – the character’s name is in and of itself a bootstrap paradox.
- In the movie Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines, the Terminator tells John Connor and Katherine Brewster that he was sent by Katherine herself after she reprogrammed him to serve the Tech Comm resistance. Later in the movie, he takes the couple to Sarah Connor’s grave and tells them that Sarah buried her weapons there. Since Katherine knew about the weapons location because the Terminator told her, then she told this same information to the Terminator before sending him to the past, the origin of the information about the weapons location remains a complete mystery (Although, since the Terminator mentions that it was put in there in accordance to Sarah Conner’s Will, it is possible that John learned about the weapons later and the Terminator’s presence simply meant that he recovered the stash earlier).
On TV
-In Heroes (one of my all-time favorite TV series)
- In ‘Out of Time’ (and throughout season 2), as Hiro is in the medieval Japan, he spreads the stories of ‘Takezo Kensei’, stories he learned as a child, after finding that the real Takezo, Adam Monroe was no more than a drunken englishman, so he basically spreads the same stories he will lean as a child.
- In ‘Our Father’, present Claire travels to the past and finds herself babysitting her past self, and as she leaves, she tells her father Noah, about his ‘Claire-Bear’ (a nickname he used for her in previous seasons), putting it on his head for him to use.
– In the 2008 television miniseries The Andromeda Strain, the aforementioned disease is sent back in time via a wormhole by the citizens of future Earth, who cannot stop the disease because a required bacterium has gone extinct and only exists in the past. Scientists in the past manage to utilize this bacteria and kill the virus, but a single sample is saved and stored in the International Space Station at the series’ end. It is implied that this sample is the cause of the viral outbreak on the future Earth. (this mini-series was what made me find the paradox for start)
– In the Supernatural episode “In The Beginning” Dean Winchester is sent back in time and meets his mother, and learns that he may be able to kill the Yellow-Eyed Demon, preventing him from killing Mary Winchester, but unwittingly puts the Demon on Mary’s scent, allowing him to kill her as shown in the Pilot. It was later revealed by Castiel, however, that the future could not be changed and events would have unfolded the same way had Dean not interfered. In the same episode, Dean stops his father on the way to buying a VW Camper and convinces him to instead buy a Chevrolet Impala, which is a staple of the show and later becomes Dean’s.
Videogames
– In RuneScape there is a quest (Meeting History) in which you travel back in time to meet the first family to arrive to Gielinor, and you help them with the skill they discovered, suggesting a name for it (Magic), then you travel back and try to name it after yourself, but its too late
Interesting isn’t it?, i don’t know what to say about this, I guess we’ll have to wait until we can travel back in time to corroborate or deny this xD
-Later, Dave
Once Upon a Cycle 