The Grandfather Paradox

  • A man travels back in time and kills his biological grandfather (on his mother's side) before his mother is born.
  • As a result, the man's mother (and by extension the man himself) would never have been born.
  • If the man was never born, he could not have travelled back in time after all, which means the grandfather would still be alive.
  • This means the WOULD have been born, allowing him to travel back in time and kill his grandfather.
  • Thus, each possibility seems to imply its own negation, a type of logical paradox.
In my opinion, this either means:

a) Time travel is impossible

b) The human brain is not capable of the complexity needed to solve the paradox

Thoughts? Opinions?

  
I just wanted to say that I've enjoyed Renovatio (Season 1) thus far. The first posts from everyone have been fun reads. I've got a couple things in the works for this month.

B.@.D



Song For Today:
"Everything" (Tim Grube Vocal Mix)
- Tenishia

21 comments:

Anonymous said...

impossible - period point blank

Anonymous said...

you would be unable to actually kill your grandfather - something would prevent it.

Anonymous said...

.....cause we all want to kill our grandfathers now don't we???

Anonymous said...

you would be able to do it, but you'd never get a rough handjob form a romanian again

Anonymous said...

This is too easy but I will keep it simple for now. Just because you killed your grandfather doesn't mean you can't be born. Your grandmother was pregnant with your mom already so your birth in the time line remains.

Mizzle

Anonymous said...

Incorrect. The man killed your grandfather BEFORE you he was conceived.

Anonymous said...

i think b@d should google this to find an answer???

Anonymous said...

Incorrect. The man killed your grandfather BEFORE you he was conceived.

Is this even english?

Anonymous said...

You know what I meant........ Mizzle. lol

Anonymous said...

i agree that time travel is not possible because of this reason and some like it

Mizzle said...

Parallel universe theory pretty much washes it's feet with this stupid paradox... just sayin...

B-Rush said...

I'm with Mizzle on this one actually, subscribe to the Alternate/tangent Universe theory on time-travel, and there's no issue with the Grandfather Paradox.

Anonymous said...

how the fuck do you debate something like this against something (time travel) that hasn't proved possible anyways? time travel is not a real thing - therefore it's not a real fucking debate. its all theories, people. no offense miz or brush. but there's no intelligent argument one way or the other.

Anonymous said...

hi B-Rush!!!!!

Introducing the CEO said...

Grandpa came forward in time, cloned himself (this would clearly be possible before time travel), took the clone back through time, waited for you (knowing that time travel was possible it would be assumed that your future grandson would come back in time to, for some godforsaken reason, attempt to negate his very existence), and killed you with an axe when you came through the portal and lived the rest of his life with reckless abandon which inevitably ended in a horrible naked skydiving accident while the clone fucked your grandmother until you were ill conceived... just like this goddamned paradox... Too easy

Mizzle said...

"how the fuck do you debate something like this against something (time travel) that hasn't proved possible"

Ok, everyone. The anonymous comment person has spoken. We no longer can have fun debating things on this site. So lets just end this and have another post.

Mizzle said...

I do have a comment though... we are well over 500 visits already and this is only 8 days old. It's becoming a household name.

Anonymous said...

whoa

Anonymous said...

who is introducing the CEO?

The Prince said...

We need to find someone who went to the "Conference for time travelers" at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in early 2005. I'm sure these physicists came up with some sort of mathematical formula that tackled this issue, and the question as to why 1.21 gigawatts is needed for it to even be a possibility.

Anonymous said...

because 1.21 gigawatts is equal to a bolt of lightning?