Author Topic: Guardia Royal Line Paradox  (Read 18608 times)

Kyronea

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Re: Guardia Royal Line Paradox
« Reply #45 on: February 17, 2007, 03:01:34 pm »
And? Is there anything to suggest that the quest takes so long that it is impossible for Ayla to come back and get pregnant? (Forget the inns)
The simple fact is they never go to back before they arrived at a specific point in time. Everything in the game happens in sequence. Say when they first go to 65,000,000 B.C. they arrive on January 9th. They can never go to back before that date in 65,000,000 B.C. Therefore, until the adventure is over, time proceeds as if Ayla had not returned, because until the adventure is over, there IS no after the adventure. That's how it works.

Mystic Frog King

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Re: Guardia Royal Line Paradox
« Reply #46 on: February 17, 2007, 03:04:36 pm »
Except for the fact that when she is travelling back in time she is traveling to before the events of the adventure happened, so there is no need for an 'after the adventure' in this case.

AuraTwilight

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Re: Guardia Royal Line Paradox
« Reply #47 on: February 17, 2007, 04:01:05 pm »
Quote
Except for the fact that when she is travelling back in time she is traveling to before the events of the adventure happened, so there is no need for an 'after the adventure' in this case.

No, that's not true in the slightest. If only because that means there'd be two of each party member in every time period.

OOT is different because only Link's consciousness travels through time anyway, which is a very, very, very, VERY significant difference.

Mystic Frog King

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Re: Guardia Royal Line Paradox
« Reply #48 on: February 17, 2007, 04:07:51 pm »
Which probably happened but would be far to annoying for gameplay purposes.

Chrono'99

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Re: Guardia Royal Line Paradox
« Reply #49 on: February 17, 2007, 07:03:23 pm »
What am I, invisible man??

ZeaLitY

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Re: Guardia Royal Line Paradox
« Reply #50 on: February 17, 2007, 07:12:07 pm »
Yeah; look up flow principle, guys.

Radox Redux

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Re: Guardia Royal Line Paradox
« Reply #51 on: March 08, 2007, 07:02:41 pm »
I'm gonna try and lay down a theory here even if it may not be accepted. We already know that as an extension of Time Travelers Immunity, the Time Bastard will remove any clones created through the manipulation of time. This is done to protect from paradoxes. My question is why can't it work in reverse.

As you guys have said, time can assume nothing. That is, it can't assume a time traveller will die, nor will reappear. In theory, it should appear that the traveller has dissappeared from history. However, why can't the time bastard theory be applied in reverse? Allow me to elaborate...

In order to minimise the possible paradoxes, a kind of 'reverse-time bastard' occures where by a time clone appears at the point where the time traveller is expected to return, and lives their life for them, for the sake of keeping the continuity of the future.

If the time-travellers succeed in their mission, then they would return to the point in time that the clone appeared, changing time so that the clone is never neccesary. This would explain why the Guardia line remains stable, whilst still allowing a changes to be made t the timeline.

This could also go some lengths to explain the doppelgangers that appear in the Ocean Palace. We already know that it had certain chronological capabilities, since once it's power is amplified by Lavos, it turns into what people know as the Black Omen.

Now, I'll hand this over to you and see who shoots this theory down first.  :D

AuraTwilight

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Re: Guardia Royal Line Paradox
« Reply #52 on: March 09, 2007, 06:32:34 pm »
That's just the thing. The timeline NEVER respects ANYONE to return. If you leave your time period, it assumes you're gone forever until you actually go back.

Chrono'99

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Re: Guardia Royal Line Paradox
« Reply #53 on: March 09, 2007, 06:46:10 pm »
Never assume that what you see and feel is real... I'd like someone to actually cite a counter-example to Radox Redux, if there is any.

Radox Redux

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Re: Guardia Royal Line Paradox
« Reply #54 on: March 09, 2007, 08:07:09 pm »
That's just the thing. The timeline NEVER respects ANYONE to return. If you leave your time period, it assumes you're gone forever until you actually go back.

Don't worry, I'm very aware that my theory is long-shot. However time can neither assume that the characters can return, but they also can't assume that they won't return. The thing with time-travelers is that they are suspended above chance. If the time-travellers did die, then the clones would never be created, and history will simply see a bunch of mysterious disappearances. The clones are merely placeholders that hold the place in the travellers expected return point, until the travellers either return (meaning time is changed and the clones are never created.) or until they die. This seems to be the simplest way that the planet could maintain the continuity without making assumptions.

Look at it from the entity's pov: You want Crono, Lucca and Marle to learn of the day of Lavos via 2400 AD? But you can't becuase removing them from the timeline (especially Marle) would result in that timeline becoming ultimatly innaccessable, unless the entity made some sort of counter-measure for this eventuality, such as in my theory, whereby the new future is identicle to the one that would have existed had Crono and crew not took off from 1000 AD.

EDIT: yes, I'm aware that removing Marle from the timeline, wouldn't make that much difference, but assume it does for the sake of example.
« Last Edit: March 09, 2007, 08:22:16 pm by Radox Redux »

Leebot

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Re: Guardia Royal Line Paradox
« Reply #55 on: March 15, 2007, 01:38:17 pm »
Never assume that what you see and feel is real... I'd like someone to actually cite a counter-example to Radox Redux, if there is any.

Aha, herein lies the problem: Shifting the burden of proof to us to disprove his theory. The burden of proof is always on the positive claimant. In a case like finding the rules for time-travel in this game, proof is hard to find, so the goal is to apply Occam's Razor to find the simplest explanation that accounts for everything we see.

So, let's look into this theory, and see what it's assuming. On the surface, it seems simple, but there's one big complication: How does the timeline figure out when and how a time-traveler is expected to return? Does it run a simulation in an alternate universe to see what would happen there? But that simulation would require first performing it so that the time traveler would first leave to a future where they hadn't returned (all of that's uncertain). But then, the clone generated wouldn't be faithful to what would happen to the next iteration of the time-traveler. The only choice is to run the simulation again, and keep running it until it reaches a stable limit.

But there end up being problems with this. First of all, what if it doesn't reach a stable limit? What if it enters into an alternating loop (chain of events in timeline A lead to timeline B being generated, and B leads to A being generated)? What if there are alternate stable solutions that aren't arrived at by this process of iteration? How is the one that actually happens chosen?

And then there are the problems of what this explanation requires: Namely, at least one simulation of the universe for some extended period of time. This is a pretty big thing to postulate, and we have no evidence to believe such simulations are going on. On the other hand, we do have simpler explanations which don't require so many big assumptions, so Occam's Razor would imply that those are favored.

AuraTwilight

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Re: Guardia Royal Line Paradox
« Reply #56 on: March 15, 2007, 06:16:04 pm »
And there's the much easier, simpler assumption for the universe to make: That they don't come back at all, and to just progress as things are.

Radox Redux

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Re: Guardia Royal Line Paradox
« Reply #57 on: March 17, 2007, 12:31:36 am »
Never assume that what you see and feel is real... I'd like someone to actually cite a counter-example to Radox Redux, if there is any.

Aha, herein lies the problem: Shifting the burden of proof to us to disprove his theory. The burden of proof is always on the positive claimant. In a case like finding the rules for time-travel in this game, proof is hard to find, so the goal is to apply Occam's Razor to find the simplest explanation that accounts for everything we see.

So, let's look into this theory, and see what it's assuming. On the surface, it seems simple, but there's one big complication: How does the timeline figure out when and how a time-traveler is expected to return? Does it run a simulation in an alternate universe to see what would happen there? But that simulation would require first performing it so that the time traveler would first leave to a future where they hadn't returned (all of that's uncertain). But then, the clone generated wouldn't be faithful to what would happen to the next iteration of the time-traveler. The only choice is to run the simulation again, and keep running it until it reaches a stable limit.

But there end up being problems with this. First of all, what if it doesn't reach a stable limit? What if it enters into an alternating loop (chain of events in timeline A lead to timeline B being generated, and B leads to A being generated)? What if there are alternate stable solutions that aren't arrived at by this process of iteration? How is the one that actually happens chosen?

And then there are the problems of what this explanation requires: Namely, at least one simulation of the universe for some extended period of time. This is a pretty big thing to postulate, and we have no evidence to believe such simulations are going on. On the other hand, we do have simpler explanations which don't require so many big assumptions, so Occam's Razor would imply that those are favored.

I dislike Occam's Razor, as (ironically) it's one of the biggest assumptions a person can make. But anyway... Forgive me for not elaborating, but to clarify, I had the entity in mind when I thought of the predicted point that a traveller should return. Don't forget that the entity is responsable for the gates and it effectively wanted Crono and the gang to experiance certain matters. Keeping this in mind, the entity would have a certain plan for the traveller and thus would know the expected return point. When I made my theory I had only the travellers from Chrono Trigger in mind, essentially because the entity would require Crono and the gang to see their future. Or ,in the least, the nearest future possible. I didn't mean the theory to apply to time-travel as a whole, as that would be quite a stretch. (BTW this would still apply to Ayla, if you wish for me to explain why then simply ask and I will.)

And for the record your use of Occam's Razor is flawed. You say, (and I shall quote directly)
Quote
so the goal is to apply Occam's Razor to find the simplest explanation that accounts for everything we see.
I believe my my theory of time-traveller placeholders to be the simplist theory on how to account for the guardia line paradox.
« Last Edit: March 17, 2007, 12:36:11 am by Radox Redux »

tjbk_tjb

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Re: Guardia Royal Line Paradox
« Reply #58 on: March 18, 2007, 03:22:55 pm »
I'm not sure if this sounds sensible, but how about if they end up in a superposition of simultaneously being there and gone, with them more likely to be gone on average?

Leebot

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Re: Guardia Royal Line Paradox
« Reply #59 on: March 18, 2007, 03:36:29 pm »
To sum it up, your argument seems to amount to "The Entity did it." In the real world, we call these "Goddidit" types of arguments. But before I get into that, let's talk about Occam's Razor. (As it applies within our universe first.)

Let's go back to what the Razor actually says: Any explanation of observed phenomena should make as few assumptions (and postulate as few hypothetical entities) as possible. This is often paraphrased as, "All things being equal, the simplest solution tends to be the best one." But why should this be? The best support from it (that I've seen, and in my opinion) comes from Jerrold Katz:

Quote from: Katz (1998)
If a hypothesis, H, explains the same evidence as a hypothesis G, but does so by postulating more entities than G, then, other things being equal, the evidence has to bear greater weight in the case of H than in the case of G, and hence the amount of support it gives H is proportionately less than it gives G.

This means that if we have available to us a given set of evidence and two theories, G and H, H being more complicated, and both G and H explaining observed phenomena, then H, by nature of being more complex, is going to require more evidence to support it. Since we have a finite set of evidence, H will have proportionately less evidence for it (relative to how much it needs) than G. This means that G is better supported by the evidence, so G is the better theory.

Now, what happens when we're working with finding the laws for a fictional world? We have to keep in mind that it was written by humans. If they have a significant imagination, they're going to want to show it off, and we'll see it in the world. If there's a consistent set of laws in this world, it's likely that the writer wouldn't intend it to be unnecessarily complicated, and would probably be imagining the simplest set of laws that explains everything that happens. Even if the writer comes up with a more complicated set than we do, if ours explains everything we see in the world, it's just as valid, seeing as we can't go in and compare them (if the writer writes more, things will change). Plus, our theory has the aesthetic benefit of being simpler, so we might as well go with it.

Okay, onto your argument. The problem with any type of Goddidit arguments is that they lack any predictive power. If we assume that some entity did something in any particular case, we lack a springboard to predict for future cases as we don't know if or how the entity will intervene in that case. If we have no other possible explanation for the events, this isn't such a big deal. But if we do have another explanation (as we do in this case), then it makes sense to use it, as it gives us something we can use for fan projects (fiction, Crimson Echoes, etc.) Of course, we'll never be able to definitively determine which actually happens, but the latter case helps us proceed a lot more.