Continuity of existence in time travel
May. 11th, 2011 10:26 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jackSomething I forgot to add in the previous post is that a very similar question applies to time travel.
Most stories[1] dealing with time travel implicitly take a stance on history being deterministic (either a single world track, or a steady loop in a multiverse of world-tracks), or being changeable.
But the narrative typically only follows one character through one worldtrack. Precisely because, if you start asking questions like "if you change history, what happens to all the people who were already there" and "can a narrative jump about between worldtracks", your brain will melt with indecision. It's almost the same question as having the ability to make multiple virtual copies; if there are lots, then which one is "the" one the story follows?
[1] Stories being the best proxies we have for "how we would deal with blah in real life"
Most stories[1] dealing with time travel implicitly take a stance on history being deterministic (either a single world track, or a steady loop in a multiverse of world-tracks), or being changeable.
But the narrative typically only follows one character through one worldtrack. Precisely because, if you start asking questions like "if you change history, what happens to all the people who were already there" and "can a narrative jump about between worldtracks", your brain will melt with indecision. It's almost the same question as having the ability to make multiple virtual copies; if there are lots, then which one is "the" one the story follows?
[1] Stories being the best proxies we have for "how we would deal with blah in real life"