Time Travel / TDE confuses the fu­ck out of me

[🌞]

Before I go into my question, I just need to say time travel in any movie, game or story always confuses me because it always leaves me with more questions than answers, but maybe that's the same for everybody?

So, in this game (spoilers ahead) when the TDE is mentioned, it talks about alternative futures and pasts, which makes it sound like they're a completely different past & reality, right? At least that's how I understood it.

However, if Skynet wanted to send the T100 and the two other terminators that made it back before the central core was destroyed, if they killed John Connor and whoever else would that really the future that we saw (played) in this game? Like, say if John Connor was killed by the T1000 that was sent back at the end of the game, would that mean suddenly John Connor would just dissapear in the story we play and no one would realise because he technically wouldn't exist? Or are they sending the T1000 back for an alternative future that they still want to win the war in.

I hope I explained my question easily enough for you people to answer. I always have so many questions about time travel, it confuses me sooo much lol

Thank you anyway ^_^

[Babalonkie]

You live/experience the timeline you are in...

No fate but what we make.

[NuclearSnail]

when you go back in time, and change something, it doesn't change anything for YOU. Your past, your reality and time line continue to exist. You CAN kill your own father before you were born, and still exist. Because, what you've done, simply cast yourself along a different branch of the same pre-existing river. So think of time as like a river, or a bush, with lots of branches at every single point of quantum uncertainty forking off and running parallel to one another, but also, with branches twisting around other branches. The courses of different time lines can be even influenced by the development of others without there ever being direct contact between them.

Now, as for actually changing time... You never try to change big events. Big things are caused by lots of little things, and unless you can change a million things, the big event is inevitable. Killing Hitler would not have stopped ww2. BUT, making one man in the 1600s 15 minutes late to a logging job, would have prevented the social and global pressures that lead to ww1 and 2 in the first place. Unlike in movies, real time travel is very subtle. Little changes end up as huge waves hundreds or even thousands of years down the road.

[🌞]

Escrito originalmente por LunarSail:

when you go back in time, and change something, it doesn't change anything for YOU. Your past, your reality and time line continue to exist. You CAN kill your own father before you were born, and still exist. Because, what you've done, simply cast yourself along a different branch of the same pre-existing river. So think of time as like a river, or a bush, with lots of branches at every single point of quantum uncertainty forking off and running parallel to one another, but also, with branches twisting around other branches. The courses of different time lines can be even influenced by the development of others without there ever being direct contact between them.

Now, as for actually changing time... You never try to change big events. Big things are caused by lots of little things, and unless you can change a million things, the big event is inevitable. Killing Hitler would not have stopped ww2. BUT, making one man in the 1600s 15 minutes late to a logging job, would have prevented the social and global pressures that lead to ww1 and 2 in the first place. Unlike in movies, real time travel is very subtle. Little changes end up as huge waves hundreds or even thousands of years down the road.

Thank you so much for the reply. I understand it a lot better now :)

So basically, if you can go back in time and change something or prevent something, its only changing what happened in THAT time-line that you went back in, not your original time-line?

[NuclearSnail]

-It's only changing what happens in that time line, and not in your original time-line-

Yes.

In back to the future what Marty did in the past affected his future. But this assumes that time is a polar line with a start point and an end point spanning across only three dimensions when in fact modern physics is showing that time is actually just a fourth dimension of directional motion.

[🌞]

Thank you!!!

But then the question comes, why do they care about another time-line?

[NuclearSnail]

Escrito originalmente por Sniffles:

Thank you!!!

But then the question comes, why do they care about another time-line?

Well for skynet, it knew it was being destroyed. So it just wanted some part of itself to live. By sending terminators to other time lines it's able to provide a chance that skynet may be developed and thus perhaps prevail. Skynet I think was programmed to destroy it's enemies and to survive at all other costs. The humans goal would be to try to stop skynet from spawning itself across multiple time lines. So terminator is actually the story of a temporal war being waged across dozens of time lines, and temporal fronts. Skynet, trying to survive and spread everywhere it can, and the humans trying to stop it, or at least to contain it to only a few time lines. Remember in terminator three, which is pretty close to the terminator one and two time lines, it's explained that skynet was a virus that infected a military AI. A virus wants to spread.

[JasonVoorhees]

Escrito originalmente por LunarSail:

Escrito originalmente por Sniffles:

Thank you!!!

But then the question comes, why do they care about another time-line?

Well for skynet, it knew it was being destroyed. So it just wanted some part of itself to live. By sending terminators to other time lines it's able to provide a chance that skynet may be developed and thus perhaps prevail. Skynet I think was programmed to destroy it's enemies and to survive at all other costs. The humans goal would be to try to stop skynet from spawning itself across multiple time lines. So terminator is actually the story of a temporal war being waged across dozens of time lines, and temporal fronts. Skynet, trying to survive and spread everywhere it can, and the humans trying to stop it, or at least to contain it to only a few time lines. Remember in terminator three, which is pretty close to the terminator one and two time lines, it's explained that skynet was a virus that infected a military AI. A virus wants to spread.

You are like ... so smart. :v

Is also why I liked the Terminator TV show. Skynet sent back other agents to ensure its creation, to strengthen itself, and to weaken the Resistance o3o

[Babalonkie]

Escrito originalmente por Sniffles:

Thank you!!!

But then the question comes, why do they care about another time-line?

Imagine what your loved ones or yourself would experience if you did not help them...

[🌞]

Escrito originalmente por Babalonkie:

Escrito originalmente por Sniffles:

Thank you!!!

But then the question comes, why do they care about another time-line?

Imagine what your loved ones or yourself would experience if you did not help them...

True. But its another time-line, you've already saved your current family & friends in your time-line.
I guess if they died though, you would want them to live happy in another life.

[Babalonkie]

Escrito originalmente por Sniffles:

Escrito originalmente por Babalonkie:

Imagine what your loved ones or yourself would experience if you did not help them...

True. But its another time-line, you've already saved your current family & friends in your time-line.
I guess if they died though, you would want them to live happy in another life.

It's a personnel choice... live safely in your safe timeline and enjoy your life... or simply choose to help strangers lives in another timeline/place.

Either way... the terminators created the paradox, but by them creating the TDE... more lives will suffer.

[SpielSatzFail]

If you think about it, the definition of TIME is not a natural variable but man made. It rather is a continous change of state that alters in one direction only. That's why time travel always stays hypothetical. You would need to restore a whole universe instead of simply jumping to a certain point like in "travelling".
Anyway, the best way to possibly imagine it, I agree, is the theory of parallel timelines. Because otherwise (in case of a change in the past) a more or less huge part of our universe would need to vanish or alter magically. Which also would raise the question WHEN would that happen.
In the very moment you press the button of a time machine?
Before you do it since it was destined to happen? (less likely)
In parallel to the change of events happening in the past? (least likely)

Don't start thinking about it ^^

[Angry Obnoxious Goose]

Escrito originalmente por Sniffles:

Thank you!!!

But then the question comes, why do they care about another time-line?

Because that timeline, if skynet wins might potentially find a way to return to original timelines and screw up things there.

Or maybe the thoughts are that if things are changed in the past, the future will change as well. The resistance might not know this, and to be honest we, RIGHT NOW, do not know either if you went back in time, would you change the current present, or will it cause an alternate reality to happen instead.