Apparently, it's a bit of a thought exercise, introducing logic and paradoxes. Even to the point of there being serious academic papers about it.
One of the people I follow on Twitter, @sarahlyall, a reporter for the NYT, has posted a link to the "what if" exercise that NPR's Short Wave has posted: "Paradox-Free Time Travel Is Theoretically Possible, Researchers Say."
You can play along with all sets of "what ifs" but the article mentions the "grandfather" paradox"—in which a time traveler kills their own grandfather, in the process preventing the time traveler's birth.
"The logical paradox has given researchers a headache, in part because according to Einstein's theory of general relativity, 'closed time curves' are possible, theoretically allowing an observer to travel back in time and interact with their past self—potentially endangering their existence.
Jack Finney's novel 'Time and Again' is a great time traveler tale that rests on keeping a letter from being mailed.
Apparently, researchers say that "such a paradox wouldn't necessarily exist because events would adjust themselves." Even after killing your grandfather, you'd be born anyway. Which of course means that someone other than the grandfather you know would be the one to get your grandmother pregnant. You'd just have a different grandfather.
I've played the "what if" game several times myself, imagining that John Harrison, the former FBI agent and Assistant Vice President at Empire BlueCross and BlueShield was never hired, and therefore wouldn't have been able to murder my two co-workers, firing 14 shots from two handguns, and then killing himself with the 15th shot at our offices on September 16, 2002 at 8:24 a.m.
Years ago I discussed the shootings that I witnessed with a retired NYPD police captain and she told me part of their training as police offices is to never think "what if." It's futile.
For Mr. Harrison not to be hired there would have had to be no opening—someone was already in the position. This was not the case. There was an opening since the person who held the position was let go.
The person who let that person go was a new hire who was brought on because their position was open, the prior office holder had left to join another company. So, if the person who had the old VP position had stayed on, there wouldn't have been an opening to hire the person who let the person go that created the vacancy that they filled by hiring John Harrison.
As for a time line, I've pulled the covers back from 2002 to about 1998. I could keep going. The person who was hired who left that created the opening to hire the person who let the person go who was replaced by their selection of John Harrison might themselves have never been hired in 1996. Thus, two people would not have been murdered at their workplace. They'd still be alive and we would have stayed in touch, even after I left two years after the shootings, which of course would not have occurred had all the things I outlined never happened. Then, maybe I wouldn't have left.
In all this, I didn't even touch on if someone hadn't been born, only if they had never been hired to fill vacancies that would not have been created by people if they didn't leave for other jobs or get fired.
If I were to keep going backwards, there wouldn't be a white board big enough, or enough arrows drawn by colored markers to diagram the goings on that would not have happened.
When now tempted to play the "what if" gambit I think of the immortal word Al Pacino often utters when he was playing Lefty in the movie 'Donnie Brasco.'
"Fuhgetaboutit!"
http://www.onofframp.blogspot.com
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