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With all due respect to Mr. Wynn…

— ProfOzone

A few people have asked me what my take is on time-travel theories in general and the above-named theory in particular. Since I have a number of issues with this particular theory that, I think, elucidate my general concerns with such theories, perhaps I can address all queries by speaking just to this theory. With all due respect to Mr. Wynn (not intending to pick on you, dude… but your time-travel theory is king at the moment :-), these are the most pressing problems with the theory, in my observation:

Problem #1… the Gedanken experiment:

“In the case of the Grandfather Paradox, while they [sic] logic is clear, the actual experience of it is a mystery. Imagine actually standing there in the past, holding a loaded gun to the head of your grandfather… what would actually prevent you [from killing him]? ‘Something’ would, some unknown mechanism of physics… and that is where the writers of ‘Lost’ imagine for us.”

If we’re going to conclude that one implication of this thought experiment is that the laws of physics would prevent you from creating a paradox in killing your own grandfather before your parent was born, then why wouldn’t the laws of physics prevent the paradox of you wandering about in the time of your grandfather at all? Killing your grandfather when he was a child would be an especially dramatic paradox for you personally, but you’d be creating all kinds of paradoxes for everyone else just as soon as you arrived in the past. What if a man, after he arrived in the past, accidentally bumped into a woman on the street who smiled broadly and said, “I beg your pardon” in a manner that showed she took a shine to him. What if her encounter with the time traveler subtly altered her perception of “the ideal man”, eventually slightly adjusting her dating choices and ultimately changing who she married and had children with, profoundly altering the future? If we go along with the thought experiment as stated, it seems to me we’re forced to disallow all time travel, not just certain kinds.

Problem #2… how far back one can go:

“There is a very important concept in time travel here, which is that you can NEVER travel back further in time than the creation of your time machine; Hence the impossibility of visiting the dinosaurs, etc.”

If time travel is permitted, there’s no logic to support this rule. See “Problem #1”. However, it does seem as though the specific kind of machine described would have this limitation, since in such a machine one can only travel from “point A” to “point B”. But if the above quote is meant to be a general rule of time travel and not one that pertains to the limitations of the specific machine suggested, it isn’t logical in the context of the thought experiment as stated.

Problem #3… resetting door number two every 108 minutes:

Are we presuming that the door can move back in time relative to door number one while the people on the island continue to experience time normally? It seems to me that, based on the description of things as provided, resetting the door every 108 minutes would mean the inhabitants of the island live the same 108 minutes over and over again. That is, they’d do it over and over again relative to an observer at door number 1. Eventually the station might be destroyed (as events like the crash of flight 815 cause each 108 minutes not to always go precisely as the ones before), thus stopping the resetting of door 2, at which point door 1 and door 2 would start up again traveling at the same “time pace”. But to the people in door number 2, they will have only pressed the button once before the station is destroyed and will have no sense of how many 108-minute time intervals have passed relative to the observer in door 1. (Time traveler: “You’ve been pressing that button for twenty years.” Kelvin: “What are you talking about? This is going to be the first time I’ve EVER pushed it!”)

Problem #4… childless women not able to conceive due to time paradox:

If time travel is permitted, there’s no logic to support this rule. See “Problem #1”. It’s obvious from the rules of the thought experiment that going back in time does not erase the past version of you. If it did, then merely by arriving in the past you have prevented your eventual birth and whether or not you kill the boy who would have eventually become your grandfather is irrelevant. Likewise, the “original” past version of a female time traveler is not erased and is still childless in her own right despite the fact that the timeline where the female time traveler has gone now contains two versions of the same person (a past version and a future version). I can see no reason why the time traveler couldn’t conceive and have children just fine, as any paradox that would prohibit it would prohibit her traveling back in time at all.

Problem #5… It’s impossible or catastrophic if a person travels to before they are born and dies before they are born.

If time travel is permitted, there’s no logic to support this rule. See “Problem #1” and “Problem #4”.

Problem #6… In the show, a person who goes back in time is a combination of their past and present selves.

This rule appears rather arbitrary and “ad hoc” in a theory that otherwise seems to work very hard in deriving the rules from the logic of the time machine, artistic license notwithstanding. In any case, we’ve witnessed rapid healing on the island that was not generated from moving from “door 1 to door 2” (note how John’s bite wound from his father healed much faster and without scarring compared to the other wounds we’ve seen John get, including the characteristic scar over his right eye). So it would seem simpler just to acknowledge that the island does, in fact, have healing properties according to the mythos of the show.

Problem #7… Schrodinger’s Cat

Again, artistic license notwithstanding, this is a very questionable application of this quantum physics thought experiment. Even if we could fudge things A LOT and allow it, a point of critical importance is this: the cat is only both dead AND alive so long as nobody opens the box she’s in. Since the whole world seemed to know that the plane crashed and there were no survivors (that is, since the box has so clearly been opened), then there should be no way, via wormhole or time bubble or any other method, for someone in the “they’re dead” universe to find a way to the universe where “they survived” the way Naomi and Cooper did. If the only defense against this point is, “Well, they’re writers, they can apply the concept in whatever way they wish,” then, again, this seems like an arbitrary argument given a theory whose value seems to rest on the strength of its tie to scientific principles. It would seem much simpler to note that a wreck at the bottom of a four-mile deep ocean trench that only small, privately-owned, remote-control subs with video cameras can reach would be easy to fake. There’s no need even for wreckage or bodies. Just doctor the video shot by the mini-subs. If Widmore’s firm was the one handling the search for the wreck, this could easily have been done and contained.

Problem #8… John kidnapping his father

The theory suggests that the only reason John has the use of his legs is because he’s in the past and shares some qualities with his past self. Will he venture to the future, lose the use of his legs, and still manage to organize and execute the kidnapping of his father? Not impossible to imagine if he could somehow solicit help back in the future. But this makes things quite a bit more complicated than was suggested and I don’t find this very plausible.

Problem #9… Desmond’s “time loop” explained by the theory

This point is claimed, but not explained, and I see no logic in the theory that makes it self-evident. In fact, trying to apply the theory to many other things not explicitly addressed in the theory quickly becomes problematic if one takes the time to attempt it.

I hope this post satisfies those of you who were curious about my thoughts on this. For more discussion on the trouble with time travel and alternate timelines, please see my post “Timeline Trouble”.

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