Some ideas are:

  • You branch off into another timeline and your actions make no difference to the previous timeline
  • You’ve already taken said actions but just didn’t know about it so nothing changes
  • Actions taken can have an effect (so you could suddenly erase yourself if you killed your parents)
  • Only “nexus” or fixed events really matter, the timeline will sort itself out for minor changes
  • something else entirely
  • dukeofdummies@lemmy.worldEnglish
    2·
    4 days ago

    Oh I agree, it’s horrifying. And I have noooo guarantee that it’s me doing the jump. Don’t misunderstand I am NOT the only real mind in this example. I’m curently just hitching a ride on said laser beam. No guarantees that I will be the same or even exist if somebody so much as moves a pebble into the past from the future.

    Existential dread all the way. If we get time travel I think it’s as horrifying a prospect as teleportation on a universal scale with only the traveller maintaining continuity.