If you had a machine that created a window through which you could see the future, and in the future you wrote down the winning lottery numbers and relayed that information to your present self before that lottery number was drawn.

However, in your present selfs excitement, you turn off the machine before your future self wrote the winning lottery numbers into it for your past self.

What would happen?

  • ada@piefed.blahaj.zone
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    15 hours ago

    I’m not talking about about the possibility of real infinite dimensions. I’m talking about sci fi, and stories, which is the context of the OPs question.

    In a “real” scenario, the experience that matters is the one I’m having, not the one other versions of me might be having.

    But in a story, there is no “true” timeline, or a more “real” timeline. They’re all being retold to us indirectly, and the choice of the version of the person retelling those experiences is arbitrary by the author. It doesn’t matter what perspective the author chooses, because every other outcome also happened, the author just didn’t tell us those stories.

    • Zwuzelmaus@feddit.org
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      4 hours ago

      But in a story, there is no “true” timeline, or a more “real” timeline.

      That would be the most boring story ever.

      It becomes interesting at that point where one (or some) of the possibilities get a special meaning “above” all the others.

      • ada@piefed.blahaj.zone
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        3 hours ago

        That’s exactly my point! In an infinite timelines story, there is nothing that has special meaning over the others, making it boring, because it’s all irrelevant!

        • FooBarrington@lemmy.world
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          41 minutes ago

          I get what you mean, but I have to disagree a bit. The slice of the multiverse we’re looking at is special because we’re looking at it. It only makes it irrelevant if the slices are treated as fully replaceable.

          Take for example Invincible. The comics & series focus on a young superhero who could have become incredibly evil, but didn’t. The multiverse is used to highlight this: it shows alternative versions of him that did become evil, and it even says that most alternative versions did so. This makes the version of him we focus on that much more special, and allows for interesting character progression through being confronted with his fears.

          But it only works because of the restraint of the writers, never showing us another good version of Invincible, only focusing on evil alternatives.

    • davidgro@lemmy.world
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      13 hours ago

      I’d say that the one that’s written is the ‘true’ timeline in the story the same way that the reality we experience is the only one that matters.

      • ada@piefed.blahaj.zone
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        10 hours ago

        The reality I experience is the only one that matters to me. To an outside observer, all of them are as equally real and there is no true timeline.

        In a story, there is no real, there is only outside observers…