Quote:
Originally Posted by Gamer_2k4
It's substantially different to do math with the wrong values than to do math with the wrong equations. Ignoring the importance of causality amounts to using the wrong equations. Actually, it's worse; its like saying the sum of two numbers is not constant.
We may not understand 99% of the universe, but we all understand causality. The fact that understanding is even an option requires causality to be universally applicable. Just as you couldn't do calculus without addition, you can't have time without causality. Time represents our ordering of the universe, and we couldn't order it if it didn't follow a logical pattern.
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I still don't get how you don't understand time travel causality. You can't look at it from the perspective of the time stream in general, you have to look at it from the perspective of the time traveler. As long as events are causal from his perspective, logic is satisfied.
Let's take the most obvious example of a "backwards" causality as pertains to time travel, time travel into the past itself. Someone appears in the past "after" having activated his time machine in the future. Now by your explanations, this is clearly impossible, since the cause (activating the machine) happens
after the effect (appearing in the past). But it really doesn't. To the perspective of the time traveler and the time machine, the effect came after the cause. In order for time travel to the past to even exist (in fiction, reality, whatever), causality has to be relative to the observer, in this case the traveler. And why not? Einstein already showed that
time itself is relative to the observer, after all.