Dave Land
Andrea Junker 
When people travel to the past, they worry about radically changing the present by doing something small.
Few people think that they can radically change the future by doing something small in the present.
This is the only real time travel paradox.
Anomnomnomaly@Strandjunker When you travel to the past, that past becomes your future and your future becomes your past.
RichardOntario@anomnomnomaly @Strandjunker Are you saying Time and Events cannot be changed, only Observed and therefore we are only here for the ride because Time has preordained everything?
@RADC @Strandjunker No... I'm saying I stole that line from Bruce Banner in Avengers - Endgame 😋 🤣
@anomnomnomaly @Strandjunker Ahhh Grasshoppa. It couldn’t have been any other way
Naomi
sheislaurence@amythicwitch @caspercdn
@caspercdn
@gatitakicksass
I can't believe she doesn't at least use inverted commas. I was fooled into thinking she was an extraordinary thinker, even going as far as expressing shame before such astuteness, and now I feel a double fool! Likewise her 'pinned post' is uncredited content. Is that a breach of server terms? https://www.facebook.com/wearethemedia2016/photos/-journalism-101-if-someone-says-its-raining-another-person-says-its-dry-its-not-/994411087406585/
@sheislaurence @gatitakicksass @caspercdn I can’t see her account anymore. I was blocked after replying with this info. I logged back into Twitter to find several threads about her (going years back) and it’s very unlikely she’s even a real human being. Her Instagram is all stock photos. It could be anyone with any agenda running these accounts called Andrea junker.
@amythicwitch @gatitakicksass @caspercdn thanks, i have reported her/it now. It's my first report on Mastodon, so curious to see how that's handled!
@sheislaurence @caspercdn @gatitakicksass smart. I can’t remember if I reported her last week when I realized this or not. Hopefully the instance admins care. This is how we can do better than the other places online ❤️
@amythicwitch @caspercdn @gatitakicksass in the olden days of Twitter, I used to report ALL THE TIME, and my JOY at seeing EVERY REPORT acted upon and accounts closed, felt like proper slaying⚔️ . Fingers crossed for #mastodonsocial!
CaptBobbers@Strandjunker
I think, like most people, I fail to grasp the sheer complexity of history. You think "oh, they zigged when they should have zagged, I could travel back in time and change the worlds by convincing everyone to zag!" Never once stopping to consider all of the factors that led to the zigging in the first place.
Perhaps this is partly a consequence of our focus on the "great men" view of historical events. Making it all a reactionary "I can change him" moment.
John Mullinax@CaptBobbers @Strandjunker History is complex, but IMHO the concept of how things change is simple: (1) Things are connected - they affect each other. (2) Things are path dependent - when you walk through a door, the set of new opportunities and choices is different. These two principles can help us see interrelationships of how things change over time. It's still complex, but it makes history more explainable -- and the future a bit little more predictable, too.
I subscribe to the many worlds theory.
If you travel back into the past, you can never travel back to 'your' present because the timeline you left is gone. You could only move forward within the new timeline you created by going back in time.
So it means that making changes to events, won't affect the timeline you left anyway. So there can be no paradoxes. Killing your grandfather so you're not born means nothing because you've not been born in that timeline
Michael Redbendad
Cogito Ergo Resist@CaptBobbers @Strandjunker I think it's more like our obsessive love affair w/ silver bullets. We want one easy-to-find pill to magically make us thin, happy, or smart. We want one project that will make us famous in our field or company, and ensure our stable, preferably rich, future.
Similarly, if we want to fix something in the past, we want it to be that one action or person that's easy to spot.
Too bad a magic bullet only works past the tipping point toward an outcome.
Similarly, if we want to fix something in the past, we want it to be that one action or person that's easy to spot.
Too bad a magic bullet only works past the tipping point toward an outcome.
Stephen Cox Author@CaptBobbers @Strandjunker Bertrand Russell said that history was driven by social and economic forces; impersonal natural forces - his example was climate chsnge in mid Asia big driver of tribes heading west; ideas; and some role for individuals. My fave example of Great Manism debunked is Churchill, who said that had he proposed peace with Germany in 1940, the full Cabinet would have rejected it and he would have been out.
Mike Taylor 🦕@CaptBobbers @Strandjunker Right. The key question that is summed up in the dilemma: if you had euthanized Baby Hitler, how much difference would it have made?
DemocracyMatters 
mark@Strandjunker We know how to do small things. Doing the big ones to shape the future seems daunting, but by the same reasoning you cite, even small actions today could have big implications down the road. Worth keeping in mind.
Howard Chu @ Symas@markrvickers @Strandjunker yes, but we will seldom see or recognize the knock-on effects. We only pay attention to "small changes in the past affecting the present/future" because we can see in the present what the ripple effects could be.
Anthony Hay@Strandjunker Isn't the problem that you have no idea how your actions will affect the future? (Butterfly effect.) On the other hand, what you say is true. Here in Little England you can buy a house in the future if you stop having takaway coffees today.
The Lone Apple 🍎@Strandjunker Honestly, I'd just go find a cop and tell him there's a dude with a gun standing outside of the Dakota building.
SusannaAuthor Old White Hippie@theloneapple @Strandjunker Oh, I like that! How different would the world be if John Lennon hadn’t been murdered?
doleful moo of a cow@Strandjunker if you think about the examples of “something small that radically changes the present” in typical time travel stories of that ilk all sense of paradox will be resolved.
Dan Bencsik@Strandjunker wow that's deep.
Dude@Strandjunker the butterfly effect of the present! Yes!
Downes 🍁@Strandjunker what's significant is the effect of a small change in the past is random. Could be butterflies. Could be an alien invasion. You just don't know.
Most people prefer the change they make to be a bit more predictable. Which means you need to make a large change. And that's why it's hard to make history as just one voice.
Christopher Pickslay
socialianHello Andrea Junker @Strandjunker,
I wrote the shortest Grandfather Paradox resolver I could (a 1 minute read @ the link below)) and posted it to my blog as, Simply Grand. No physics is broken and if you'd like to comment, I'd be OK with that. 👍
https://localsymmetriesonly.home.blog/2021/09/02/simply-grand/
RichardI I like how you resolved the paradox. Made think, and reminded me of the movie Predestination... in that a person becomes their own ancestor. Fun stuff!
Jay Arnold 
@Strandjunker "Create your future from your future, not your past."
spazefalcon@Strandjunker right, if we went back in time... what happens to our lunch? ~ : )
Nicole@Strandjunker nothing new here this is a vast philosophy that was born millenias ago in asia called Zen.
Willow@Strandjunker There’s a difference between changing the future and *meaningfully* changing the future.
David Stone (Just looking)@Strandjunker The future begins with our next step.
Ryden Miles@Strandjunker
Of course if you did something small in the present you could never be sure the future change was due to your small effort.
But otherwise your paradox is brilliant!
Polyrical - music and politics“Small acts, when multiplied by millions of people, can quietly become a power no government can suppress, a power than can transform the world.”
AL@Strandjunker good point
Incognitim
Sue Boyde RPR XR ✡️@Strandjunker At this point we may each have to do something large to affect the future.
kingdom krumb@Strandjunker Personally, I believe that every little thing I do is likely to spawn a chain of events with disastrous consequences.
Detlef Steuer@Strandjunker This is wonderful!😍
Justin Farrimond@Strandjunker Very well put. A perfectly framed picture can easily pass for a window.
✊🏾WiseGuyEddie
Mindy Schwartz@Strandjunker That is very true. It would be nice if people spent more time thinking about the impact their actions will have on the future.
itsa me 🌻
Dr C@Strandjunker I love this! Thank you
Helge Löding@Strandjunker While a nice thought, this is not original, but has been posted many times.
I think it would be only fair if you gave credit where credit is due.
I think it would be only fair if you gave credit where credit is due.
Nancy Williams Painter@Strandjunker It is superfluous to reimagine time 's strangeness in speculative fiction, when my tiny children are doing college applications, and nothing could be stranger than that
stoverphoto
bit101@Strandjunker wow. +1
Gordon1956@Strandjunker I love this perspective Andrea. I may borrow it occasionally if you don't mind?
martin_fff@Strandjunker seems to be a trend on mastodon, problems not being univseral...
@Strandjunker most are unable to commit to not repeating the same mistakes from the past, thus guaranteeing a future they already know they don’t want.
donAlvar_en 
@Strandjunker In case anybody wonders, this is where the quote was cut-and-pasted. Let's try and mention the sources, so that we don't get here the same kind of compulsive cut-and-pasters going for the big audiences as we had in the bird site. https://www.reddit.com/r/Showerthoughts/comments/p4fqeb/when_people_travel_to_the_past_they_worry_about/
Jesse Souki 📚@Strandjunker there is a discipline for thinking about futures and methodologies to increase the likelihood of achieving preferred futures. See, e.g., Jim Dator, “Alternative Futures at the Manoa School,” Journal of Futures Studies, Nov. 2009 (https://jfsdigital.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/142-A01.pdf) & Sohail Inayatullah, “Six pillars: futures thinking for transforming,” foresight, 2008 (https://www.benlandau.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/Inayatullah-2008-Six-Pillars.pdf).
More Or Les@Strandjunker Our life span is basically a Lego block. Lay it, and others will build on it.
Rex Risus@Strandjunker I love this.