ばか！バカ！　馬鹿ー月！

Why are we arguing over the theft of a watch?

because that watch might be the key to unlocking the secretes of Oni's eyebrows

It all started from this

Dan wrote:Maybe Haruhi is her own mother?!

OMG! Infinite loop error!

A fine example of how simple jokes can cause page-long forum discussions

Off topic power++;

Quiet Lurker wrote:According to the Novikov self-consistency principle, the time traveller physically cannot steal the watch unless the state of the watch being stolen from the future is identical to the state of the watch being obtained in the past.

Novikov principle is rather vague - it doesn't really describe laws which cause to happen things that must happen - or that prevent things that shouldn't happen from happening. However, the existence of such laws would be violation of causality in itself, it seems.

Douglas Adams, on time travel:

One of the major problems encountered in time travel is not that of accidentally becoming your own father or mother. There is no problem involved in becoming your own fahter or mother that a broad-minded and well adjusted family can't cope with. There is no problem about changing the course of history - the course of history does not change because it all fits together like a jigsaw. All the important changes have happened before the things they were supposed to change and it all sorts itself out in the end.

The major problem is quite simply one of grammar, and the main work to consult in this matter is Dr Dan Streetmentioner's "Time Traveler's Handbook of 1001 Tense Formations". It will tell you, for instance, how to describe something that was about to happen to you in the past before you avoided it by time-jumping two days in order to avoid it. The event will be described differently according to whether you are talking about it from the standpoint of your own natural time, from a time in the further future, or a time in the further past and is further complicated by the possibility of conducting conversations while you are actually traveling from one time to another with the intention of becoming your own mother or father.

Most readers get as far as the Future Semiconditionally Modified Subinverted Plagal Past Subjunctive Intentional before giving up; and in fact in later editions of the book all the pages beyond this point have been left blank to save on printing costs.

(From The Restaurant at the End of the Universe)

BANNED

Oni-kun, your banning posts have been lackluster as of late. At least include some kind of witty retort.

An outside source knows you built a time machine. Knowing this, he or she finds out your destination and goes in time to a few moments before you. He or she puts the watch on the table. At this point you get the watch, and then go back in time.

Now he or she goes back two more minutes into the past and steals the watch from the thirty year old you. The watch was originally belonging to the outside source, then goes to you for 13 years, then goes back to the outside source.

I win.



...and who knows how the universe deals with time-travel paradoxes. Either it has some force to enforce them, or it is destroyed if one happens, or it does not know and it keeps flowing, or time travel is not possible at all so it cannot happen.
As for becoming your own parent, it would not be possible. I could see it happen in the time keeps flowing model:

You are female and originally born to normal parents, then go back in time and have a child, prevent your parents from having you, then proceed to continue living. This new child continues to live in a way that makes sure she manages to go back in time and have another child with her father. (I can't really explain my reasoning from here on exactly; if you have heard of Newton's [url]Methodhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newton's_method[/url], it will make lot more sense.) With each repletion of the cycle, the newest child will be just a little bit closer to the previous one, until it gets to the point where there is effectively no difference between the child that is going back in time and the one that is in current time. After 10^3290470 or so cycles, the two will be so close to exactly the same that they are the same. At this point they take the same actions in each cycle, that is they are so identical to each other they take the exact actions each repetition, down to the movement of individual atoms. At this point, you are your parent. You are born, live to the time you go back in time, then have a child and continue to live until you die.

Appear after traveling back in time-A
Birth -B
Death -D
Leave to go back in time -L


A---->---B--->--------L----->D
^---------------------<v

Beware the talking cat wrote:An outside source knows you built a time machine. Knowing this, he or she finds out your destination and goes in time to a few moments before you. He or she puts the watch on the table. At this point you get the watch, and then go back in time.

Now he or she goes back two more minutes into the past and steals the watch from the thirty year old you. The watch was originally belonging to the outside source, then goes to you for 13 years, then goes back to the outside source.

I win.

Erm... you lost me here, cat. What does that prove?

Beware the talking cat wrote:...and who knows how the universe deals with time-travel paradoxes. Either it has some force to enforce them, or it is destroyed if one happens, or it does not know and it keeps flowing, or time travel is not possible at all so it cannot happen.

I believe paradoxes don't exist to begin with, if only in our minds. Whenever such "paradox" comes up, it probably means we simply got the model of time-travel wrong. And yes, it's quite possible that time travel is not possible at all.

Beware the talking cat wrote:As for becoming your own parent, it would not be possible. I could see it happen in the time keeps flowing model:

You are female and originally born to normal parents, then go back in time and have a child, prevent your parents from having you, then proceed to continue living. This new child continues to live in a way that makes sure she manages to go back in time and have another child with her father. (I can't really explain my reasoning from here on exactly; if you have heard of Newton's [url]Methodhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newton's_method[/url], it will make lot more sense.) With each repletion of the cycle, the newest child will be just a little bit closer to the previous one, until it gets to the point where there is effectively no difference between the child that is going back in time and the one that is in current time. After 10^3290470 or so cycles, the two will be so close to exactly the same that they are the same. At this point they take the same actions in each cycle, that is they are so identical to each other they take the exact actions each repetition, down to the movement of individual atoms. At this point, you are your parent. You are born, live to the time you go back in time, then have a child and continue to live until you die.

Not possible for several reasons:
1. The effect, theoretically, would be the opposite one - you'll be copying the father, not yourself this way. Speaking of which,
2. What if it's a boy?
3. Once again, biology: morale aside, having a child with your own father would result in some nasty genetical consequences, which in turn means your child probably wouldn't be healthy enough to reproduce, or even live long enough to be able to do that (actually, that is the real reason why incest is considered taboo in any society).

Time for the revised edition.(actually, after thinking about it, if it was a male, all that would happen would be for that male to eventually have a female child who would have to find another mate)

Same as before only this time, assume that you find a male with absolutely no genes that could cause genetic diseases(I think that the odds are low enough here anyway that it doesn't really matter to add one more unlikely condition). Eventually, each copy will become genetically a child of as if the father was capable of having a child with himself; not a clone, but similar.

This really has pretty much no chance of happening. Now the watch, that could actually happen.

Beware the talking cat wrote:Time for the revised edition.(actually, after thinking about it, if it was a male, all that would happen would be for that male to eventually have a female child who would have to find another mate)

Err no, I didn't mean "what if protagonist is a boy", it was more like "what if one of those "recycling children" is a boy - or vice a versa if you're male in the beginning. Gender switch makes all your efforts go to waste