Time-traveling consequences: Part 3:- Predestination Paradox & Free Will
Previous cycles:-
In Part 1, we had discussed “Bootstrap Paradox” in which an object, idea, or thought traveled back to the past from the future, without having a true origin, gets stuck on an endless loop. In Part 2, we had discussed “Grandfather Paradox” in which someone goes back in time to change something which restricts that person to go back and change that in the first place.
You can check out the whole story from the following links if you hadn’t yet:-
Prologue:-
From the beginning of the series, I always had a Trilogy in mind. Let’s begin the final cycle.
“Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And if you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you!” — Sir Friedrich Nietzsche (German Philosopher)
Isn’t it so fascinating and wonderful to go back and change the past? Like if we can go back and prevent this ongoing pandemic, preventing WW-1 and WW-2, erasing 26/11 and 9/11 from history, etc. Come on you already read about Grandfather Paradox and all its problems. Traveling back and changing past might create an alternate reality. BUT YOU MISSED OF ANOTHER POSSIBILITY!
Life isn’t always beautiful:-
Before getting into the definition of Predestination Paradox, as I always did in the previous articles, let’s take an exemplar story:
You are Lisa, fun loving kid. You live happily with your younger brother Louis, mom, and dad. Days are passing wonderful and one-fine-night your parents decided on a romantic movie date. But fate is cruel. On their journey, their car slid off the bridge and drowned into the river. They were found dead.
It had been very tough on you both. You two hardly able to live, mentally broken, physically just living. But you were always an excellent school kid. The government rewarded you with scholarships and funded for your studies. Both of you get admitted for Physics department of MIT. You both have only one goal in life, to save your parents from accident, somehow.
You two began working on a time-machine. After several years, with immeasurable failed attempts, finally, you both were able to build a machine that can take people at a particular co-ordinate at a particular time. For testing purposes, you both tried it out several times, and every time it went successful. You both were prepared for the final ultimate time-jump, saving your parents on the day the accident caused, before they can go out for a dreadful movie date.
Both of you onboard the time-machine marking the correct coordinates and time-gap. And you pressed the LAUNCH button. But due to several usages before this, the machine got a problem and the coordinates slightly deviated. You both appear on a bridge, instead of your home. Before both of you can blink eyes, you saw a car racing towards you. The driver also noticed the persons ahead and quickly steered the wheel to avoid the collision, tires skidded and the car flew into the river. Before you can do anything, you noticed the car. It belong to your parents.
Screaammmmmmmmmmmmmm. Curtain drops.
Predestination Paradox:-
You are the reason for your parent’s death! The accident you wanted so desperately to change in your whole life, it turns out you are the one responsible for it. And that’s what is meant by Predestination Paradox.
Time for some formal definition:
A Predestination Paradox refers to a phenomenon in which a person traveling back in time become part of past events, and may even have caused the initial event that caused that person to travel back in time in the first place.
A predestination paradox also called a causal loop or temporal causality loop is a paradox of time travel that is often used as a convention in science fiction. It exists when a time traveler is caught in a loop of events that “predestines” him to travel back in time. In this theory, causality is turned on its head, as the flanking events are both causes and effects of each other, and this is where the paradox lies. Because of the possibility of influencing the past while time traveling, one way of explaining why history does not change is by saying that whatever has happened was meant to happen. A time traveler attempting to alter the past in this model, intentionally or not, would only be fulfilling his role in creating history, not changing it. This raises the issue of whether there is such a thing as free will.
What is Free Will?
As the name suggests, Free Will defines that our choices are completely held and executed by ourselves. For example, it’s up to us what we want to eat for breakfast, whom we want to hang out with, what we want to do with our lives. But what if, all of the actions we take are a result of a predetermined fate and we mercilessly end up fulfilling our fate, even though we liked it or not.
Libertarian Free Will v/s Hard Deterministic :-
The belief that humans are capable of entirely free actions is termed as Libertarian Free Will. So a lot of Philosophers think that our thoughts and actions are free but many of the others also believe that all events are based on some past event, and nothing other than what did occur could have occurred. This is referred to as Hard Deterministic.
Many might argue both theories go hand in hand. But it isn’t the case. Truly free actions require options. Options in which one could have traveled on some other road. But Deterministic theory doesn’t allow options. It holds that every event is based on past events. And in turn, it means that the traveler couldn’t have done anything other than what they did and thus, they are never free!
“If we know our fate beforehand, can we change it?”
In the previous story, Lisa and her brother Louis weren’t aware of the fact that traveling back trying to avert their parent’s accident would in turn cause the accident in the first place. But what if we already knew what would be going to happen, trying to alter it, would the result be different in this case?
Let’s take a popular Greek mythology example, King Oedipus Prophesy:-
According to ancient Greek legend, a prophecy foretold when Oedipus was born, that he would kill his father and marry his mother. Having known this, his father abandoned him and left to die believing the prophesy won’t come true.
But instead, he was discovered and raised by another king. When Oedipus grew up, he came to know about the prophecy. In the turn of saving his father, he left them, trying to alter the prophecy.
Traveling toward Thebes, he encountered Laius, his biological father who provoked a quarrel in which Oedipus killed him. Continuing on his way, Oedipus found Thebes plagued by the Sphinx, who put a riddle to all passersby and destroyed those who could not answer. Oedipus solved the riddle, and the Sphinx killed herself. In reward, he received the throne of Thebes and the hand of the widowed queen, his mother, Jocasta.
As expected, Oedipus couldn’t change his fate although knowing the prophecy previously. Every decision they took led them to fulfill their fate. And thus we are safe to conclude, that fate is meant to be fulfilled, knowingly or unknowingly.
Summing up:-
Thus Predestination Paradox refers to a phenomenon in which a person traveling back in time become part of past events, and may even have caused the initial event that caused that person to travel back in time in the first place. And in most cases, the traveler doesn’t possess free will, and fate is predetermined.
Epilogue:-
I would love to conclude this Time-traveling consequences series here. The main inspiration behind time-traveling paradoxes is the show “Dark”, A german Netflix original show which beautifully takes into account various examples of Paradoxes. Also, the time-traveling movies Predestination and Primer are must watch. Also, J.K. Rowling Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban and Christopher Nolan’s Interstellar follows the Predestination paradox.
Thanks for your patience reading. Clap if you liked the article.
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