[2315] a Kat out there, somewhere

[wies]

Wow, it seems like she is in a way grieving for the Kat who had to live on without Annie.

[warrl]

But there's an alternate explanation. No parallel timelines. The little squiggly white guy was wrong about that. It's just that under certain circumstances cause CAN come after effect.

(Oh, and Loup can clone someone complete with clothing and memories.)

But what Squiggly said gave Kat sufficient clues that she now know she needs to do (or at least arrange) some specific things to cause what has already happened. And it was inevitable that she (or someone) would get sufficient clues somehow, and decide to follow through, because otherwise there would be a paradox.

[arkadi]

Jun 3, 2020 19:22:43 GMT arkadi said:

But that still leaves us with the problem that there's another universe where Annie just disappeared and a lot of things have gone south. Kat might decide that she doesn't want an alternative version of herself grieving the loss of "her" Annie and make it her duty to return her to her original timeline;or we could have Alternative Kat taking action from her own side to get Annie back.

I knew that was gonna be the issue! I wonder if we'll get to see Alt-Kat intervening to bring "her" Annie back to her own timeline?

Anyway, Annies need to administer a hug ASAP.

[theonethatgotaway]

oh no, mah heart...

[King Mir]

Jun 8, 2020 7:28:34 GMT warrl said:

But there's an alternate explanation. No parallel timelines. The little squiggly white guy was wrong about that. It's just that under certain circumstances cause CAN come after effect.

(Oh, and Loup can clone someone complete with clothing and memories.)

But what Squiggly said gave Kat sufficient clues that she now know she needs to do (or at least arrange) some specific things to cause what has already happened. And it was inevitable that she (or someone) would get sufficient clues somehow, and decide to follow through, because otherwise there would be a paradox.

We already have an example of cause after effect: Coyote. The tic tocs are just another mythical being. Kat needed to create the tictocks, because she's the angel in this mythology. But she doesn't necessarily need to figure out how to "break time". It may be that the robots collective trust in her angelic nature are enough to make the Ornithonic something that has always existed.

[saardvark]

Kat contemplates becoming a Time-Lord, cringing at the thought and the road she would have to travel* - the loss of her dearest friend.

*well, one of her, anyway...

[imaginaryfriend]

Last panel: Double hug incoming!

[pyradonis]

Jun 8, 2020 7:49:40 GMT King Mir said:

Jun 8, 2020 7:28:34 GMT warrl said:

But there's an alternate explanation. No parallel timelines. The little squiggly white guy was wrong about that. It's just that under certain circumstances cause CAN come after effect.

(Oh, and Loup can clone someone complete with clothing and memories.)

But what Squiggly said gave Kat sufficient clues that she now know she needs to do (or at least arrange) some specific things to cause what has already happened. And it was inevitable that she (or someone) would get sufficient clues somehow, and decide to follow through, because otherwise there would be a paradox.

We already have an example of cause after effect: Coyote. The tic tocs are just another mythical being. Kat needed to create the tictocks, because she's the angel in this mythology. But she doesn't necessarily need to figure out how to "break time". It may be that the robots collective trust in her angelic nature are enough to make the Ornithonic something that has always existed.

I thought the same thing. Not just Coyote, all thise mythical beings have retroactively come into existence before the first humans got the idea of believing in them, which created them. As far as we know, this creates no alternate timelines (Clippy said there normally is just one timeline) but instead rewrites the past.

We have to cut Kat some slack here. She did not witness Coyote talking about his great secret. She is trying to make logic out of how she imagines time travel.

[arf]

Coyote might have been able to give Kat a few pointers, but maybe Jones will do.

[speedwell]

All Kat needs to do is become a god.

[Jota]

Jun 8, 2020 7:28:34 GMT warrl said:

But there's an alternate explanation. No parallel timelines. The little squiggly white guy was wrong about that. It's just that under certain circumstances cause CAN come after effect.

(Oh, and Loup can clone someone complete with clothing and memories.)

But what Squiggly said gave Kat sufficient clues that she now know she needs to do (or at least arrange) some specific things to cause what has already happened. And it was inevitable that she (or someone) would get sufficient clues somehow, and decide to follow through, because otherwise there would be a paradox.

If that were true, then Annie would belong in this timeline. But we've already been told that's not the case.

[jda]

So Sad She Had to Break Time.
My new motto, maybe to be released as a Spotify Emo song.

[todd]

I don't think that the "Annie originally died" approach is necessary; my own interpretation of time loops is "it always happened this way". (It probably stems - at least, in part - from a children's time travel fantasy I wrote, which used the "time travelers don't change history because they were already there". I won't go into detail about that, because I want to avoid spoilers - it's still unpublished, and in need of some revisions, though the take on time travel will stay the same - but let's just say that in it, time travelers are responsible for a lot of the unheeded warnings and prophetic remarks in history.)

The rules in the universe of "Gunnerkrigg Court" are probably different, though - and people have brought up the little ghost with the clipboard. (Of course, it's always possible that he will be revealed in a later chapter as mistaken - or maybe even lying, to manipulate Kat into doing what he and his boss want her to do.)

[ctso74]

"Beak time"
Eggsellent pun.

[TBeholder]

Now she needs to figure out the "easy" solution: merge with the Kat who goes that mad! She gets solace (and no small satisfaction in her work), this Kat gets experience with timeline-warping mad science.

I suspect she still underestimates this mess, however.

[The Anarch]

Kat better get it all figured out soon or that timenado is gonna come along and tear up Arcadiakrigg Bay Court.

[fia]

Okay. I love Kat. I feel for her. But I am a little annoyed at Kat, or this writing of her. How can she know advanced cognitive computation, biology, quantum computing, physics, AND basically every hard science and not grok consistent time travel???

A good friend of mine wrote her philosophy dissertation on time travel and we spent weeks watching every major time travel movie. She hated almost all of them, time travel logic wise, (especially Looper) because they all made basic mistakes in logical consistency, except for Primer, 12 Monkeys, and a few others (I think Donnie Darko and Bill & Ted are also consistent).

(She was okay with Back to the Future in spite of its obvious inconsistencies because it's just such a fun movie).


Maybe Tom has a different metaphysics of travel in mind. Like, if you go "back in time" you are not traveling back in your own timeline, but in an alternate dimension that diverged from your original one. If so, though, I would argue that is not proper time travel, but dimension travel, and if so, I object on nominal grounds.

If that's the situation there's no good reason to expect an alternate dimension Kat is the one responsible for saving this-world Annie, because it would be hard to tell whether this-world Kat really isn't the one who sent back the tic-toc herself until much after the current moment. That is, if alternate dimension travel is possible (that's a true paradox right there, by how we typically define unified realities as "spaces that can interact in spacetime" - if you could travel 'between' realities they wouldn't be alternative possibilities, they would be the same spacetime reality just with duplicated spacetime twins all over the place) it doesn't rule out consistent time travel within the same dimension.

[wanderer]

MUST the loop have started at some point? You're talking about non-linear events. In a linear timeline yes, every effect must have a prior cause. In a non-linear one, however, that is not necessarily the case.

For that matter, calling this situation a "loop" is not necessarily accurate either. These events (Annie being saved by the bird, Kat making the bird, Kat sending the bird back in time) all happened ONCE. And only once. The fact that the effect predates the cause does not make the situation a loop. Events aren't repeating: they all only happen once, and people keep going on past them. Kat seems to be stuck in purely linear perspective of time, not able to grasp that things clearly aren't that way.

Anyway, Kat's hypothesis doesn't actually fit the facts even as they're given. Even if we take alternate timelines as truth, for Annie to not belong in this timeline due to dying from falling off the bridge, then... well... she would be DEAD, and Kat would not have rescued her. The very fact that Kat went down there and found Annie still alive means that this is not the timeline where Annie died. The whole thing about alternate timelines with time travel is that you CANNOT change your own past: you can merely create/enter another timeline where its version of the past turns out differently.

TLDR: Kat's explanation for the arbiter's statement does not hold water under analysis. There must be another explanation.

[fia]

Jun 8, 2020 14:12:58 GMT wanderer said:

MUST the loop have started at some point? You're talking about non-linear events. In a linear timeline yes, every effect must have a prior cause. In a non-linear one, however, that is not necessarily the case.

No no, it is exactly the opposite. 'True' time travel requires traveling within your own spacetime on a line. So true time travel creates causal loops (but not alternate dimensions or possibilities).
This you can logically get phenomena like 'djinn', objects that don't begin or end anywhere because they are passed on and backwards through time in a way that makes them their own causal antecedent, even in the future.


The thing you describe later is not true time travel, but "dimensional travel", which suggests that our spacetime is causally coextensive with a different one - which makes little sense because if it's causally coextensive it is not a different spacetime at all.


EDIT: On a second reading, maybe we are agreeing on the substance, if not the terminology? Maybe I misunderstood your post.

[wanderer]

Jun 8, 2020 14:24:07 GMT fia said:

Jun 8, 2020 14:12:58 GMT wanderer said:

MUST the loop have started at some point? You're talking about non-linear events. In a linear timeline yes, every effect must have a prior cause. In a non-linear one, however, that is not necessarily the case.

No no, it is exactly the opposite. 'True' time travel requires traveling within your own spacetime on a line. So true time travel creates causal loops (but not alternate dimensions or possibilities).
This you can logically get phenomena like 'djinn', objects that don't begin or end anywhere because they are passed on and backwards through time in a way that makes them their own causal antecedent, even in the future.


The thing you describe later is not true time travel, but "dimensional travel", which suggests that our spacetime is causally coextensive with a different one - which makes little sense because if it's causally coextensive it is not a different spacetime at all.


EDIT: On a second reading, maybe we are agreeing on the substance, if not the terminology? Maybe I misunderstood your post.

I am responding to two different issues in my post. First is Kat's "the loop must have started at some point", which I fundamentally disagree with. The second is Kat's belief that the arbiter's statement means that Annie actually died and that her being here alive means she must be from an alternate universe, which makes no sense at all, even if you accept the existence of alternate timelines/universes for the sake of this story.

Reading your posts, I believe you and I are basically saying the same thing, at least in regards to time travel itself.

[imaginaryfriend]

Because we're dealing with the Gunnerphysics I think it's possible that one or more Tocs appeared because they were inevitable. Because alternate timelines are in play I think it's more likely that Kat is correct that she sent one or more back in time and/or it is a loop but I don't think it necessarily follows that the number of Tocs equals the number of loops or concurrently running timelines. If Antimony lived or died Kat would make one or more Tocs eventually because it was built as an enjoyment project and not for the purpose of saving Antimony, at least not yet. I think we're dealing with one prime time (heh) line and one or more temporary supporting alternates that do not in the generally-accepted sense exist, otherwise there'd be a plethora of the damn things and the bureaucracy would always have to manage them. Antimony hasn't been saved yet but she's alive because she will be. Effect has preceded cause but it's a fictional universe with a continuum between matter and ether... so that can happen sometimes.

[Ahakarin]

So in the end, it's not the metaphysics, paradoxes, or any of those implications or convolutions, but the idea of her best friend dying that has stretched Kat to the breaking point...

That's as sweet as something sad can be.

[bedinsis]

I already posted a theory of how the loop could work if we assume that alternate timelines don't exist:

Jun 5, 2020 15:41:09 GMT bedinsis said:

I imagine it as a varying timeloop eventually reaching a stable equilibrium:

Timeline 1: Annie falls to her death, Kat never finds out that Alistair was turning into and bird and never develops a bird phase, in chapter x+10 Kat sends a drone back to the past to save her friend that past on...
*timeline reset*
Timeline 2: Annie is saved by Kat's drone, Kat is shoved in Alistairs face when tranforming into a bird and develops a bird phase, inspired by Annie's rescue recount Kat builds a drone, which diverges incrementally from the drone that saved Annie, in chapter x+5 Kat realizes that despite not being completely identical it probably is the one that saved Annie and sends it to the past...
*timeline reset*
Timeline 3: Annie is saved by Kat's drone, Kat is shoved in Alistairs face when transforming into a bird and develops a bird phase, inspired by Annie's rescue recount Kat builds a drone, which diverges incrementally from the drone that saved Annie in this timeline making it look more birdlike, in chapter x+5 Kat realizes that despite not being completely identical it probably is the one that saved Annie and sends it to the past...
*timeline reset*
Timeline 4: Annie is saved by Kat's drone, Kat is shoved in Alistairs face when transforming into a bird and develops a bird phase, inspired by Annie's rescue recount Kat builds a drone, which diverges incrementally from the drone that saved Annie in this timeline making it look more birdlike, in chapter x+5 Kat realizes that despite not being completely identical it probably is the one that saved Annie and sends it to the past...
*timeline reset*
[insert N amount of resets]
*timeline reset*
Timeline N+4: Annie is saved by Kat's Tic Toc, Kat is shoved in Alistairs face when transforming into a bird and develops a bird phase, inspired by Annie's rescue recount Kat builds the Tic Toc, identical to the one that saved Annie, in chapter x she sends it to the past, realizing she is only doing what has already happened.

Since Saslamel's assistant talked about "other timelines" I am doubtful this theory holds much water.

The link in the first post is was incorrect, by the way but I see you fixed it.

[Dvandaemon]

Jun 8, 2020 14:24:07 GMT fia said:

Jun 8, 2020 14:12:58 GMT wanderer said:

MUST the loop have started at some point? You're talking about non-linear events. In a linear timeline yes, every effect must have a prior cause. In a non-linear one, however, that is not necessarily the case.

No no, it is exactly the opposite. 'True' time travel requires traveling within your own spacetime on a line. So true time travel creates causal loops (but not alternate dimensions or possibilities).
This you can logically get phenomena like 'djinn', objects that don't begin or end anywhere because they are passed on and backwards through time in a way that makes them their own causal antecedent, even in the future.


The thing you describe later is not true time travel, but "dimensional travel", which suggests that our spacetime is causally coextensive with a different one - which makes little sense because if it's causally coextensive it is not a different spacetime at all.


EDIT: On a second reading, maybe we are agreeing on the substance, if not the terminology? Maybe I misunderstood your post.

I don't think many people consider that dimensional travel because it isn't an alternate dimension until such point the time traveler arrives. That and a nebulous definition of what counts as a dimension and how that is distinct from timeline.


Personally my main suspension of disbelief for time travel is the absence of black holes. Unless the travelers are intangible all that matter coalescing in significant points in history would lead to a space-time collapse.

[Igniz]

Jun 8, 2020 16:27:01 GMT bedinsis said:

The link in the first post is incorrect, by the way.

No, it is not. Actually, the link is part of the loop, too.

[warrl]

Jun 8, 2020 17:27:22 GMT Dvandaemon said:

The thing you describe later is not true time travel, but "dimensional travel", which suggests that our spacetime is causally coextensive with a different one - which makes little sense because if it's causally coextensive it is not a different spacetime at all.

EDIT: On a second reading, maybe we are agreeing on the substance, if not the terminology? Maybe I misunderstood your post.

I don't think many people consider that dimensional travel because it isn't an alternate dimension until such point the time traveler arrives. That and a nebulous definition of what counts as a dimension and how that is distinct from timeline.

One version of the many-worlds theory that I've come across says that EVERY time any event could go either of two or more ways - down to whether a particular subatomic particle decays "right now" or not - splits off a new universe. However, these universes are themselves unstable, because most such events make little to no difference in the long run, and two universes that are insufficiently dissimilar are likely to collapse into a single universe. (This was incidentally proposed as an explanation of why our memories get hazy over time - we're remembering multiple universes that weren't sufficiently dissimilar, so the areas where they WERE dissimilar we get confused about.)

[blahzor]

Jun 8, 2020 14:07:06 GMT fia said:

Okay. I love Kat. I feel for her. But I am a little annoyed at Kat, or this writing of her. How can she know advanced cognitive computation, biology, quantum computing, physics, AND basically every hard science and not grok consistent time travel???

A good friend of mine wrote her philosophy dissertation on time travel and we spent weeks watching every major time travel movie. She hated almost all of them, time travel logic wise, (especially Looper) because they all made basic mistakes in logical consistency, except for Primer, 12 Monkeys, and a few others (I think Donnie Darko and Bill & Ted are also consistent).

(She was okay with Back to the Future in spite of its obvious inconsistencies because it's just such a fun movie).


Maybe Tom has a different metaphysics of travel in mind. Like, if you go "back in time" you are not traveling back in your own timeline, but in an alternate dimension that diverged from your original one. If so, though, I would argue that is not proper time travel, but dimension travel, and if so, I object on nominal grounds.

If that's the situation there's no good reason to expect an alternate dimension Kat is the one responsible for saving this-world Annie, because it would be hard to tell whether this-world Kat really isn't the one who sent back the tic-toc herself until much after the current moment. That is, if alternate dimension travel is possible (that's a true paradox right there, by how we typically define unified realities as "spaces that can interact in spacetime" - if you could travel 'between' realities they wouldn't be alternative possibilities, they would be the same spacetime reality just with duplicated spacetime twins all over the place) it doesn't rule out consistent time travel within the same dimension.

Because she never thinks about things that are impossible to her. Other things are impossible but she sees it enough to get data and figures it out her way. People are now saying she will do something impossible but she can't get data on it til some future she has no idea how far away it is. So she's just in constant anxiety on something she knows will come. She's getting no comfort that she has already solved it in the future

[sebastian]

Jun 8, 2020 14:24:07 GMT fia said:

No no, it is exactly the opposite. 'True' time travel requires traveling within your own spacetime on a line. So true time travel creates causal loops (but not alternate dimensions or possibilities).
This you can logically get phenomena like 'djinn', objects that don't begin or end anywhere because they are passed on and backwards through time in a way that makes them their own causal antecedent, even in the future.

That kind of things always annoyed me. Objects like that don't make sense because they would get older and older and older with each 'loop', until they break or turn into dust, or cosmic radiation, or something.

[warrl]

Jun 8, 2020 18:57:22 GMT sebastian said:

Jun 8, 2020 14:24:07 GMT fia said:

No no, it is exactly the opposite. 'True' time travel requires traveling within your own spacetime on a line. So true time travel creates causal loops (but not alternate dimensions or possibilities).
This you can logically get phenomena like 'djinn', objects that don't begin or end anywhere because they are passed on and backwards through time in a way that makes them their own causal antecedent, even in the future.

That kind of things always annoyed me. Objects like that don't make sense because they would get older and older and older with each 'loop', until they break or turn into dust, or cosmic radiation, or something.

Well, I didn't see any obvious signs that the tic-tocs that saved Annie were different ages... but let's go with this.

Imagine Kat has installed a chronometer in the tic-toc, so there's a spot on the back of its head that shows how long it has been around.

She sends it 200 years into the past. A moment later another tic-toc lands next to her. She checks its chronometer; it's 200 years old. She says "what the heck" and sends it 200 years into the past. Then she hears the flapping of wings, turns around, and there's a 400-year-old tic-toc. Zap, into the past... 800 years... 1000 years... but not one 1200 years, because one was broken while saving Annie.

Alternative plan: same chronometer idea. She sends the first one into the past. A moment later the 200-year-old one arrives and pecks a message into the desktop: "Make and send four more. - Coyote". So she does. One got crushed, so there continue to be four functional tic-tocs somewhere around the court.

Neither of these scenarios have the issue you're complaining about.

[saardvark]

Jun 8, 2020 13:22:20 GMT ctso74 said:

"Beak time"
Eggsellent pun.

do Tic-Toes lay metal eggs?  (burning question of the hour...)