You're looking at this in such a wrong way. Closed time loops are not a plot. They are a plot device. These stories are not about characters going through a time loop, they are about what characters do and how they develop while going through a time loop, and how they use that time loop, exactly like how "groundhog day" plots function. The time in these stories is not a line, nor it is usually a loop. It's at least a bidimensional plane through which the characters move and act. Causality has no meaning or purpose in these plots because when time is treated this way, nothing, literally nothing, has causality. And when this use of time collapses once again into a line, all the causalities come back. Because that's how causality happens. Looking at the causality of a linear time from the perspective of a planar time makes as much sense as looking at the depth of a square.
"It's happened because it happened because it happened because it happened" is what makes it interesting. Pondering the causality that seemingly closes in on itself is incredibly thought provoking. A person goes through a series of events, then after successfully making it through those events, goes back in time and sets things up in a way that allows them to happen. When done properly, it isn't fate, but instead, a character using their agency to make things work out the way they did. One of my favorite closed loop narratives is a series named Summertime Rendering, where the first scene of the series is also the second to last one, from a different point of view. A proper closed loop is anything but lazy, because it's very difficult to properly set up that loop moment in a way that makes sense and is foreshadowed.
Also in physics there is something known as "prime mover" . Our minds are wired to understand cause and effect in a linear and temporal manner, mainly because this is how we experience and interact with the world. This cognitive predisposition might influence our understanding of complex or abstract phenomena, like the creation of the universe.f everything has a cause, then what caused the first thing? This leads to the idea of a first uncaused cause or a prime mover. For some, this might suggest a divine creator or some supernatural force. For others, it could be a yet-to-be-understood natural phenomenon. Maybe since we are bound to this linear perception it is by design impossible for us to understand how something happened without a cause (like the big bang), which is also why we can't understand closed loops where the cause of something happens due to that same thing (like Savitar in the Flash S3)
Time travel can never be logical consistent. But it must make sense in the story : I personally think that Looper has a big problem in this case, because you can see instantaneous effect on the bodies, but never on the mind, and that is a big issue for me. For dr Who, I think Blink is not the same as the ending of season 5 : because it helps other people, it is just a case where the doctor gives an upper hand to people in the first case. The use of the time traveling paradox for the ending of season 5 is really a deus ex-machina, but it was badly prepared and badly executed : for example it was not at the end of the story. It makes all the future stories inconsequential and I was also very upset by it. For the Prisoner of Azkaban, I don't see it as a big issue : I see it as a tale about learning (try, fail, learn, grow), but JK Rowling has made the mistake to talk about about the time-turners afterward. Personally, I think that Predestination is very clever because it is a character without agency that we follow, but we see that this lack of agency is not the same as a lack of emotion. I think it a tale about self-acceptance (the Unmarried Mother), Stoic philosophy (the Barkeep) and consequentialist ethics (the Fizzle Bomber).
I think you’re missing something big: these stories work fine if you assume that there is no true free will, and that the universe (at least the one in the story) is firmly predetermined, without any randomness or choice. If this is true about the main timeline, it makes complete sense to be true about time traveling people as well.
I’m using this method for my time travel novel and I think I’ve made it work perfectly. It’s all about execution. And just because you think something is “contrived” doesn’t mean you’re objectively right or that everyone agrees with you. Or even most people. I think it’s the coolest time travel method in storytelling but I don’t go around trying to convince people to think the way I do, or act like I’m 100% correct. But then it seems like my ego isn’t quite as puffed up as yours is.
You described the Harry Potter scene incorrectly. Harry didn't realize it was him until after he did it. He thought it was his father until the moment it was him doing it. Harry didn't even know time travel was possible until Hermione showed him. The only thing either of them knew was where they would be in the past. Harry didn't make the patronus so that he would go back in time and make the patronus. He did it to save himself and Sirius from dying. IMO how Harry Potter did it was great because of the set up. There's the "how did you get here" gag with Hermione through the first half of the movie where she appears somewhere she wasn't before. The stones being thrown, Hermione's howl, and the patronus are all mysterious until we find out it was always the characters. It was always character action. You also argue that a Closed Loop doesn't make sense because it implies something must be consciously controlling it. But, as far as we know, there could be some principle of the universe that means makes time closed and prevents it from being tampered with. I watched this video twice and I'm still confused about what makes closed loops bad. It's actual time travel. If we look out branching timelines time travel, all you really have is a multiverse story. This means you're never going back in time to your own past but rather to the past of a different timeline. If a writer wants a story where the characters go back to their past you either end up with a closed loop or a butterfly effect story. With the later, you have to consider paradoxes.
I do agree with your points. It used to bother me as well, until I kinda gave up and told myself that time travel is never going to make sense, so there's no reason to think about it. This idea saves me the headache of these paradoxes, at the cost of making me loose most of my interest in any story as soon as time travel is introduced.
It isn’t a plot hole. A plot hole is an inconsistency in the narrative. Something having unrealistic science isn’t the same as a plot hole. The grandfather paradox is a plot hole, because it’s a blatant self contradiction. The multiverse isn’t a plot hole but it does lead to a whole heap of other issues, like all consequence being lost, as there can always be other versions of the same characters out there that get different endings.
@DysnomiaFilms Because they're not inuniverse contradictions. Just because chromosomes don't allow people to give birth to themselves in real life, it doesn't mean they can't in a work of fiction. The grandfather paradox is a blatant contradiction in any circumstance it's used. The audience might not notice it if wrapped up in the story, but it's still there. I agree with some of your points. I do think agency can end up lacking in characters who are a part of causal loops and it can get tedious if the characters are always bound by fate. Time travel is something I think is generally best avoided in a story.
@@gilgamesh310 You just said grandfather paradoxes are contradictions inherently after telling me this particular form of grandfather paradox is not a contradiction. The made-up hermaphrodite nonsense IS grandfather paradox, and therefore a plot hole. And it is only scientific in-universe in the sense that the grandfather paradox is said to exist in the universe. It's not like there is a species in universe that has this hermaphroditic trait. It still only exists in this one person as a result of a paradox with no causal origin. It's still literally conjured out of the ether.
@DysnomiaFilms It seems you don't know what a grandfather paradox is. What you're criticising is the bootstrap paradox. Back to the Future has the grandfather paradox. Even if we count what happened in Predestination as being a plot hole, it doesn't mean all time travel stories that have the same time travel have it. They're not all based around people having sex with each other. You even displayed clips of 12 Monkeys, but said nothing about, because you knew it didn't suffer from this. There's another film called TimeCrimes where this also applies. I'd even argue, it's not a problem in The Terminator, because Kyle Reese being John Connor's father is scientifically possible.
One story I read (can't remember which one) addressed this by saying that time travel is very risky, with any attempt at it having a small but not negligible chance of eradicating the time travelers from reality. Since all observed instances of time travel fit the closed loop model, it's assumed that anyone who tries going back in time with both the means and intent to change the past will be one of those who never make it to the past in the first place. It's unclear whether these time travel failures are actually caused by the paradox-inducing nature of the intended time travel. Given the consequences for failure, few time travelers are willing to test it.
The issue with thinking there is an issue is that you presume free will exists but that's less scientific that the already highly unlikely time travel. Which to be clear doesn't necessarily mean anything for quality of fiction, but yes given what we know you could never change the past because free will isn't real.
Determinism is a different issue. Sure, you can technically argue our brains and therefore decisions are the result of deterministic systems of particles, but on a macro scale our decisions exist, and they logically cause outcomes based on how we decide. Cause and effect is taken out of the picture in a closed loop, your decisions CAN NOT change the end result. Knowledge of the future should give the ability (or deterministically cause you) to take actions to alter the future, but a closed loop precludes this possibility.
So I guess the author of this video is not even born yet. He is going to watch it for the first time in a few years, then he'll come back in time to 2023 and create the exactly same video and post it here on youtube.
This is personally my favorite form of time travel from a character perspective and with the caveat that it's not confirmed to be a closed loop until near the end. Particular examples being The Terminator (only the 1st one), Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, LOST, and some episodes of The Twilight Zone. I especially find it interesting when a character pushes another character that they care for to time travel that knows the fate of the time travelling character. I will say that it can't be the only form of time travel in a narrative and it needs to be done well as it can be very boring if revealed too soon.
I apologize for the unavoidable spoilers, but I think you'll like "12 Monkeys (1995)", the movie, not the TV series. I didn't agree with most of the things the guy says in this video, but I think he does have a point when talking about the Predestination movie, where the guy is his own father and mother. That is indeed a problem, the "guy" has no origin. In this case, there is some predestination or causal loop going on, but the character itself is a bootstrap paradox, an "artifact" that has no origin, and that really doesn't make any sense, it's something that can't exist outside of a fictional story. I think the example with Fry in Futurama is a bit different, in that case I don't think it's a bootstrap paradox, but just your average predestination paradox, where the future is causing the past to happen the way it always does. It's true that Fry provided himself with a bunch of his own genes, but this is only a problem because there are not enough generations between him and himself to explain how he could have a grandson with exactly the same genes as he does. This happens because it's an animated comedy that wants to make a joke of him being his grandfather, but if Fry had become his great great great... great grandfather, it wouldn't make much of a difference that he became part of his ancestors genetic pool. So, in this case, I don't think we have the same problem of genetic information coming from nowhere, like it happens in the movie Predestination. What I think the guy from the video doesn't get it is that there's nothing wrong with the future causing itself to happen. In a universe where time travel exists and the future can influence/cause the past, it should be perfectly possible. What you can't have is a grandfather paradox, which is just another way of saying that the past can't/won't be changed. If time travel is possible, you can't go back and "cancel" the past in any way, you can just "help" make it happen the way it always does.
Hey, I really hope you see this comment... Man... I finally found someone who scratched my itch. The "It happened because it happened" part is exactly why I hate some causal loop stories. Some people may think it's "Thought provoking", but maybe what they don't realize is it's just the pinnacle of lazy writing. Because honestly... wouldn't it be MORE "Thought provoking" if the writer explicitly weaved together the reasons of HOW such a thing has "Already happened".... WITHOUT LEAVING OBVIOUS plot holes? the easiest thing to do in ANY fiction, is to break reality, especially in such a way. If done right, the world can become believable, like magic and dragons, some things don't need to be explained, because the viewer can plausibly find an answer, or he just believes this is how the world is. But when you're talking about a "Time Loop", where LITERALLY THE MAIN POINT IS TO USE OUR BRAINS to understand the story, if it's just inherently flawed... Then what's even the point of the story? Where is the effort? That's just lazy, and unsatisfying. One of my other issues is somehow such writing is praised for being super clever... But I fu**ing bet you, that if you ask the writers of these shows, and they physically can't lie, they'd say they too don't understand it. That's what grinds my gears... if the writer doesn't even comprehend it. What's even the FFFFFFFFing point? To me, I think the movie (Predestination) is the best guide of "What Not To DO in your causal loop story".
Per Larry Niven’s excellent essay on the subject, time travel to the past also violates the conservation of matter and energy, since (to take an example) if you and your time machine travel two months back into the past, there is now an extra copy of you and the machine with all that matter and energy that have literally popped out of nowhere. But even if travel to the past were possible, changing it wouldn’t be. All of the possible changes any traveler would make that could alter the future would continually (whatever that word means in this context) happen on an endless recursive loop, altering the time stream endlessly. A traveler cures Alexander of whatever killed him; another prevents the Black Death; a third murders Hitler in his crib, with all of the downstream changes that would ensue. Elsewhere in the universe, perhaps other civilizations are doing the same thing. So there would be no stability to time or causal reality at all. . . until someone made a change that resulted in no time travel ever being invented anywhere, by any species.
I think it depends on the story. Stories where anybody can just use a "time turner", a suitcase or another time machine to just portal into point in the past really do create the problem you're talking about and a few others, mainly allowing anybody from the future to #$@$ with the past by choosing to open a portal to a point in space and time where they know they had not been in the past, like let's say in the middle of the football field of the 2010 World Cup final game. In order to prevent that, a good story could be the ones where first they build the "arrival" time gate, and the time travelers from the future can only go to the past after the time gate in the past has been completed, so they can get out from it, and not before. The time gate would also need to be powered by some energy and maybe some sort of "stuff", to "print" in the past the information that is coming from the future. Some stories don't even send time travelers to the past for that very reason, and instead just exchange information somehow, with the person in the past having some way of seeing/knowing the future, allowing this exchange of information. I think prophecies are the most ancient form of "time travel" stories.
Wait then do you have any problem in regards to time loop/travel of in itself? Or only when time loop/travel where the person time looped/traveled has a hand in the whole scenario? Would love to hear your opinion on time loop of in itself!
It shows how incompetent the writers are when giving their characters reasons to do things, they want time travel in there story, why well because the character needs to, well why oh because thats the loop they have been in
I feel like Arrival the novel handled this situation better than the other examples here. It accepts that the closed loop perception of time means that there is no agency and then depicts the main characters struggle in finding her life’s meaning if she she has no agency in her actions at least subconsciously. The movie did it as much justice as it could for an entertaining film but the novel actually talks about this weird interaction. It accept the horrible logic of closed loops and fights to see what meaning humans can find in it if everything is predetermined. Also in the book the alien shared the language simply to share it, not for some stupid weapon advancement the movie showed which makes more sense in the context of closed loop reality. You should give it a try!!
Also the book says that her daughter dies from a rock climbing incident instead of cancer. This difference is impt cause we can read the main character justify that it was her visceral need to make rock climbing forbidden that ultimately makes her daughter rebel and fall in love with rock climbing, instead of admitting that fate ordains that her daughter must die. Even thought just like the movie she jumps between different times in her life, the book stresses that she experiences it all at once simultaneously. This is what allows her to find deeper meaning in her love for her husband and daughter as she realises that even within a closed loop timeline she will choose love over even trying to purge herself from it entirely. Rly interesting way to embrace the logical fallacies compared to the “ooh so smart the main character used time travel to save themselves” whilst showing the agency and character growth she can develop whilst realising she has no agency
Future-self saving past-self is a thinly veiled deus ex machina, but I do think self-fulfilling destiny style plots can be worth exploring. I guess the unsaid philosophy behind most of these is that once you have the ability to time travel, you suddenly always have and always will. And... in a way, you already have split into a new timeline, wherein you have the ability to save yourself. Your original self from the unaltered timeline either got out of the situation a different way, or was never put in it in the first place, but according to your perception as your current self, it would appear to be a self-fulfilling prophecy... Who knows, it's all so impossible, it makes the possibilities endless. I think there's still plenty to be explored, but the only real crime is being lazy about it, or making rules and not following them to their logical conclusion. Also, giving birth to yourself? That's dumb.
Or we could just not think so hard about our entertainment and be like: "Hey! That was fun. That was a good time that made me forget that the world is falling apart around me for a few hours." That's what I like to do.
Sure, you are free to do that, no problem, but as someone who appreciates the craft of writing and filmmaking and wants to learn to do it well myself, I actually do find value in learning to differentiate between good and bad writing.
@@DysnomiaFilmsI also recommend Steins;Gate for how it explains and resolves the time loop elements, weaving in real life precedents to make its world more fleshed out and believable. Its sequel, Steins;Gate 0, builds off of the predecessor and introduces new elements that put a twist in the narrative. It has honestly been a long time since I last gone through the Steins shows. They were my introduction to a well-written time travel story, though, and I hope it measures up or even surpasses your experiences with western media's interpretation of the genre.
@@OLDg_Vids it's not closed loop, they have "timelines" numbered like 0.999, 0.9998, 0.9997... or something. but in the end they actually do a closed loop, or pretending to be closed loop, idk if they're actually save timelines or just single timeline (because in steins;gate 0 we actually see glimpse of every timeline they left behind). or i'm just dumb thinking about fiction.
I'm gonna have to disagree strongly. You're saying causal paradoxes are 'lazy' because.. what, it removes the characters' agency? Maybe when done incredibly poorly, like with the Dr Who example which is just a thinly veiled deus ex machine that had to be closed. What about something like Deponia Doomsday; where Rufus experiences multiple forms of time loops. One of which he time travels to the past, then inadvertantly sets up a carnival to contain the tools he'll need in a future visit (that we already experienced). He didn't do this by choice. Perhaps as a comedy it's poking fun at the trope? But it's far from a plot hole, kind of the opposite imo. What about Alan Wake? The characters never time travel themselves, but the magical effects of the lake works through time... meaning all three major parties using the lake's power have written each other into existence. Alan Wake wrote about Tom, Tom wrote about Alan, Alan wrote about the band, which wrote about Tom again and the very antagonist of the story. Yes, it happens because it happens because it happens. But that's the fucking point. It's what makes it interesting and thought provoking. Everything has to have an origin... but in these scenarios they sometimes don't, and that's baffling. When used as a deus ex machine I guess it can be """"lazy"""", but literally any trope is "bad" when it's done poorly. That doesn't negate the trope's potential to be incredible interesting when written right. I think you're just being biased from bad experiences with the trope and are hung up on the "it doesn't make sense" part. Dude, it's time travel, it's never going to make sense. I'd even argue that causal paradoxes are the only form of time travel fiction that _do_ make any form of logical sense.
I had an idea for a pseudo-time loop story that hopefully fixes the cause-and-effect issue, the only reason the future refuses to change in this story is that there are actually two time travelers who have opposing goals. So whenever one does something that could change the future, the other time traveler intentionally reverses it in some way. The thematic message for this would be to not dwell on the things you can't change but focus on the things you can change. Which is symbolized in the climax with the two time travelers returning to the present using everything they learned about each other throughout the story in one final battle.
I guess you've never heard of Attack on Titan. closed time loop is the ONLY time travel model other than multiverses, that makes sense, and unlike the multiverse model where nothing has any consequences, closed loop is the only one that both makes sense and has consequences, and that's probably why all the best time travel stories are closed time loop. Also you just don't even get the loop, no paradox could happen because no paradox has ever happened. You can't kill your grandfather because your grandfather was never killed. Nobody is tailoring these events, the universe does not allow paradoxes to happen because that's how it works. Why are there no 4 sided triangles? Why are there no perpetual motion machines? Is our universe secretly writing a script so nobody could ever invent free energy? No it can't happen because free energy is paradoxical, it is against the laws of nature. And for the same reason, paradoxes cannot happen with time travel, simple as that. Look at your examples buddy, Futurama? The Simpsons? What did you expect? Are these supposed to be serious stories in the first place?
Mostly I still see closed loop time travel as the many-worlds-interpretation; you don't go back in time you just create a cloned universe with all atoms/etc in the exact state your origin universe was, along with yourself and whatever you brought along, in a sort of timy wimy big bang 2 metaphysical boogaloo. You don't appear out of thin air, the entire universe does, and has no prior history. Traveling forward might do something similar, creating a universe that reflects a 100% deterministic outcome of what happened between your departure and arrival. But of course something like that is impossible unless God (or destiny or whatever we would call it) was real, it's just fun to think about I guess. th-cam.com/video/v6R02dP10Gs/w-d-xo.html
Good call, Soul Reaver was an insanely good time travel story. I think the many worlds is a bit different from the multiverse/alternative timelines, and they both can happen at the same time. Let's assume that time travel is not possible in our universe, but the many worlds interpretation is true. This would mean that there are like infinite parallel universes/timelines where all possible variations exist, but even though they can be visualized as branching trees, they just look similar to the time traveling "trees", because in none of them the future can influence the past. For the sake of visualization, let's imagine that the many worlds + no time travel creates infinite "straight lines", like spaghettis, all parallel to each other without touching. Even if many of them share the same past before a certain point, they are all different, some more than others, since all possible versions exist. Now, on a Many Worlds + Time travel universe, instead we will have infinite multiverse "trees", all parallel to each other, all possible variations of the multiverse trees. Inside each tree, the future can influence the pas through time travel, but as far as the many worlds part goes, one tree has no contact with teh other. Even if all possible multiverse trees exist, they are all independent from each other. Inside every multiverse tree, there should be a few timelines where the past won't be changed. These are the predestination/ causal loop timelines, like Harry Potter and Terminator 1. The other timelines, where the time traveling caused the past to change, are the ones where the multiverse becomes a clusterfuck. The other ones that would have created impossible paradoxes are the impossible ones, and these don't even come to be/exist. I hope this made some sense.
I think time loop paradoxes and Back to the Future logic are nonsense (though sometimes entertaining) and places unrealistic importance on the time traveler. I mean why would the universe care if you killed your grandfather, yeah that timeline is gone now but there is no paradox, youre standing over your grandfathers body. I think Primer is close to the best, new timelines from the time travelers perspective.
You're looking at this in such a wrong way. Closed time loops are not a plot. They are a plot device.
These stories are not about characters going through a time loop, they are about what characters do and how they develop while going through a time loop, and how they use that time loop, exactly like how "groundhog day" plots function.
The time in these stories is not a line, nor it is usually a loop. It's at least a bidimensional plane through which the characters move and act. Causality has no meaning or purpose in these plots because when time is treated this way, nothing, literally nothing, has causality.
And when this use of time collapses once again into a line, all the causalities come back. Because that's how causality happens.
Looking at the causality of a linear time from the perspective of a planar time makes as much sense as looking at the depth of a square.
Exactly! Thank you! I agree 100%, this guy doesn’t know what he’s talking about. Notice how he was too cowardly to even respond to your comment.
"It's happened because it happened because it happened because it happened" is what makes it interesting. Pondering the causality that seemingly closes in on itself is incredibly thought provoking. A person goes through a series of events, then after successfully making it through those events, goes back in time and sets things up in a way that allows them to happen. When done properly, it isn't fate, but instead, a character using their agency to make things work out the way they did. One of my favorite closed loop narratives is a series named Summertime Rendering, where the first scene of the series is also the second to last one, from a different point of view. A proper closed loop is anything but lazy, because it's very difficult to properly set up that loop moment in a way that makes sense and is foreshadowed.
They still all ultimately feel contrived because honestly they are, for reasons I outlined in the video.
Also in physics there is something known as "prime mover" . Our minds are wired to understand cause and effect in a linear and temporal manner, mainly because this is how we experience and interact with the world. This cognitive predisposition might influence our understanding of complex or abstract phenomena, like the creation of the universe.f everything has a cause, then what caused the first thing? This leads to the idea of a first uncaused cause or a prime mover. For some, this might suggest a divine creator or some supernatural force. For others, it could be a yet-to-be-understood natural phenomenon.
Maybe since we are bound to this linear perception it is by design impossible for us to understand how something happened without a cause (like the big bang), which is also why we can't understand closed loops where the cause of something happens due to that same thing (like Savitar in the Flash S3)
@@eduardomachado3740 such an interesting subject to ponder!
Isn't that what Peabody and Sherman was about? I could be completely wrong.
@@TwistedTipples a lot of stories tackle it in a well thought out and elaborate way, yeah.
Amazing video! Didn't even notice the amount of views until after I watched it. Got me completely engaged thinking you had 500k+ subs. Congrats! :)
Same here, thought the channel is way more popular
Time travel can never be logical consistent.
But it must make sense in the story : I personally think that Looper has a big problem in this case, because you can see instantaneous effect on the bodies, but never on the mind, and that is a big issue for me.
For dr Who, I think Blink is not the same as the ending of season 5 : because it helps other people, it is just a case where the doctor gives an upper hand to people in the first case. The use of the time traveling paradox for the ending of season 5 is really a deus ex-machina, but it was badly prepared and badly executed : for example it was not at the end of the story. It makes all the future stories inconsequential and I was also very upset by it.
For the Prisoner of Azkaban, I don't see it as a big issue : I see it as a tale about learning (try, fail, learn, grow), but JK Rowling has made the mistake to talk about about the time-turners afterward.
Personally, I think that Predestination is very clever because it is a character without agency that we follow, but we see that this lack of agency is not the same as a lack of emotion. I think it a tale about self-acceptance (the Unmarried Mother), Stoic philosophy (the Barkeep) and consequentialist ethics (the Fizzle Bomber).
I think you’re missing something big: these stories work fine if you assume that there is no true free will, and that the universe (at least the one in the story) is firmly predetermined, without any randomness or choice. If this is true about the main timeline, it makes complete sense to be true about time traveling people as well.
I've responded to another comment talking about predeterminism where I address the difference narratively.
I’m using this method for my time travel novel and I think I’ve made it work perfectly. It’s all about execution. And just because you think something is “contrived” doesn’t mean you’re objectively right or that everyone agrees with you. Or even most people. I think it’s the coolest time travel method in storytelling but I don’t go around trying to convince people to think the way I do, or act like I’m 100% correct. But then it seems like my ego isn’t quite as puffed up as yours is.
It doesn't matter if people agree that is contrived. It has no impact on whether it is.
You described the Harry Potter scene incorrectly. Harry didn't realize it was him until after he did it. He thought it was his father until the moment it was him doing it. Harry didn't even know time travel was possible until Hermione showed him. The only thing either of them knew was where they would be in the past. Harry didn't make the patronus so that he would go back in time and make the patronus. He did it to save himself and Sirius from dying. IMO how Harry Potter did it was great because of the set up. There's the "how did you get here" gag with Hermione through the first half of the movie where she appears somewhere she wasn't before. The stones being thrown, Hermione's howl, and the patronus are all mysterious until we find out it was always the characters. It was always character action.
You also argue that a Closed Loop doesn't make sense because it implies something must be consciously controlling it. But, as far as we know, there could be some principle of the universe that means makes time closed and prevents it from being tampered with.
I watched this video twice and I'm still confused about what makes closed loops bad. It's actual time travel. If we look out branching timelines time travel, all you really have is a multiverse story. This means you're never going back in time to your own past but rather to the past of a different timeline. If a writer wants a story where the characters go back to their past you either end up with a closed loop or a butterfly effect story. With the later, you have to consider paradoxes.
I do agree with your points. It used to bother me as well, until I kinda gave up and told myself that time travel is never going to make sense, so there's no reason to think about it. This idea saves me the headache of these paradoxes, at the cost of making me loose most of my interest in any story as soon as time travel is introduced.
It isn’t a plot hole. A plot hole is an inconsistency in the narrative. Something having unrealistic science isn’t the same as a plot hole. The grandfather paradox is a plot hole, because it’s a blatant self contradiction. The multiverse isn’t a plot hole but it does lead to a whole heap of other issues, like all consequence being lost, as there can always be other versions of the same characters out there that get different endings.
What's not a plot hole? If a contradictiion is a plot hole, how does anything I've described not qualify?
@DysnomiaFilms Because they're not inuniverse contradictions. Just because chromosomes don't allow people to give birth to themselves in real life, it doesn't mean they can't in a work of fiction. The grandfather paradox is a blatant contradiction in any circumstance it's used. The audience might not notice it if wrapped up in the story, but it's still there. I agree with some of your points. I do think agency can end up lacking in characters who are a part of causal loops and it can get tedious if the characters are always bound by fate. Time travel is something I think is generally best avoided in a story.
@@gilgamesh310 You just said grandfather paradoxes are contradictions inherently after telling me this particular form of grandfather paradox is not a contradiction. The made-up hermaphrodite nonsense IS grandfather paradox, and therefore a plot hole. And it is only scientific in-universe in the sense that the grandfather paradox is said to exist in the universe. It's not like there is a species in universe that has this hermaphroditic trait. It still only exists in this one person as a result of a paradox with no causal origin. It's still literally conjured out of the ether.
@DysnomiaFilms It seems you don't know what a grandfather paradox is. What you're criticising is the bootstrap paradox. Back to the Future has the grandfather paradox.
Even if we count what happened in Predestination as being a plot hole, it doesn't mean all time travel stories that have the same time travel have it. They're not all based around people having sex with each other. You even displayed clips of 12 Monkeys, but said nothing about, because you knew it didn't suffer from this. There's another film called TimeCrimes where this also applies. I'd even argue, it's not a problem in The Terminator, because Kyle Reese being John Connor's father is scientifically possible.
I always thought fry wasn't his own grandfather until he changed the past by being there. Bill and ted is the funniest version of this
One story I read (can't remember which one) addressed this by saying that time travel is very risky, with any attempt at it having a small but not negligible chance of eradicating the time travelers from reality. Since all observed instances of time travel fit the closed loop model, it's assumed that anyone who tries going back in time with both the means and intent to change the past will be one of those who never make it to the past in the first place.
It's unclear whether these time travel failures are actually caused by the paradox-inducing nature of the intended time travel. Given the consequences for failure, few time travelers are willing to test it.
The issue with thinking there is an issue is that you presume free will exists but that's less scientific that the already highly unlikely time travel.
Which to be clear doesn't necessarily mean anything for quality of fiction, but yes given what we know you could never change the past because free will isn't real.
Determinism is a different issue. Sure, you can technically argue our brains and therefore decisions are the result of deterministic systems of particles, but on a macro scale our decisions exist, and they logically cause outcomes based on how we decide. Cause and effect is taken out of the picture in a closed loop, your decisions CAN NOT change the end result. Knowledge of the future should give the ability (or deterministically cause you) to take actions to alter the future, but a closed loop precludes this possibility.
So I guess the author of this video is not even born yet. He is going to watch it for the first time in a few years, then he'll come back in time to 2023 and create the exactly same video and post it here on youtube.
This is personally my favorite form of time travel from a character perspective and with the caveat that it's not confirmed to be a closed loop until near the end. Particular examples being The Terminator (only the 1st one), Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, LOST, and some episodes of The Twilight Zone. I especially find it interesting when a character pushes another character that they care for to time travel that knows the fate of the time travelling character.
I will say that it can't be the only form of time travel in a narrative and it needs to be done well as it can be very boring if revealed too soon.
I agree, it’s one of the most interesting, satisfying tropes in time travel when done correctly. I’m actually using it in my time travel novel.
I apologize for the unavoidable spoilers, but I think you'll like "12 Monkeys (1995)", the movie, not the TV series.
I didn't agree with most of the things the guy says in this video, but I think he does have a point when talking about the Predestination movie, where the guy is his own father and mother. That is indeed a problem, the "guy" has no origin. In this case, there is some predestination or causal loop going on, but the character itself is a bootstrap paradox, an "artifact" that has no origin, and that really doesn't make any sense, it's something that can't exist outside of a fictional story.
I think the example with Fry in Futurama is a bit different, in that case I don't think it's a bootstrap paradox, but just your average predestination paradox, where the future is causing the past to happen the way it always does. It's true that Fry provided himself with a bunch of his own genes, but this is only a problem because there are not enough generations between him and himself to explain how he could have a grandson with exactly the same genes as he does. This happens because it's an animated comedy that wants to make a joke of him being his grandfather, but if Fry had become his great great great... great grandfather, it wouldn't make much of a difference that he became part of his ancestors genetic pool. So, in this case, I don't think we have the same problem of genetic information coming from nowhere, like it happens in the movie Predestination.
What I think the guy from the video doesn't get it is that there's nothing wrong with the future causing itself to happen. In a universe where time travel exists and the future can influence/cause the past, it should be perfectly possible. What you can't have is a grandfather paradox, which is just another way of saying that the past can't/won't be changed. If time travel is possible, you can't go back and "cancel" the past in any way, you can just "help" make it happen the way it always does.
Doesn't the existence of the universe violate cause and effect?
Not sure. But nothing within the universe does.
Hey, I really hope you see this comment...
Man... I finally found someone who scratched my itch.
The "It happened because it happened" part is exactly why I hate some causal loop stories.
Some people may think it's "Thought provoking", but maybe what they don't realize is it's just the pinnacle of lazy writing.
Because honestly... wouldn't it be MORE "Thought provoking" if the writer explicitly weaved together the reasons of HOW such a thing has "Already happened".... WITHOUT LEAVING OBVIOUS plot holes?
the easiest thing to do in ANY fiction, is to break reality, especially in such a way.
If done right, the world can become believable, like magic and dragons, some things don't need to be explained, because the viewer can plausibly find an answer, or he just believes this is how the world is.
But when you're talking about a "Time Loop", where LITERALLY THE MAIN POINT IS TO USE OUR BRAINS to understand the story, if it's just inherently flawed...
Then what's even the point of the story? Where is the effort? That's just lazy, and unsatisfying.
One of my other issues is somehow such writing is praised for being super clever...
But I fu**ing bet you, that if you ask the writers of these shows, and they physically can't lie, they'd say they too don't understand it.
That's what grinds my gears... if the writer doesn't even comprehend it.
What's even the FFFFFFFFing point?
To me, I think the movie (Predestination) is the best guide of "What Not To DO in your causal loop story".
Per Larry Niven’s excellent essay on the subject, time travel to the past also violates the conservation of matter and energy, since (to take an example) if you and your time machine travel two months back into the past, there is now an extra copy of you and the machine with all that matter and energy that have literally popped out of nowhere.
But even if travel to the past were possible, changing it wouldn’t be. All of the possible changes any traveler would make that could alter the future would continually (whatever that word means in this context) happen on an endless recursive loop, altering the time stream endlessly. A traveler cures Alexander of whatever killed him; another prevents the Black Death; a third murders Hitler in his crib, with all of the downstream changes that would ensue. Elsewhere in the universe, perhaps other civilizations are doing the same thing. So there would be no stability to time or causal reality at all. . . until someone made a change that resulted in no time travel ever being invented anywhere, by any species.
I think it depends on the story. Stories where anybody can just use a "time turner", a suitcase or another time machine to just portal into point in the past really do create the problem you're talking about and a few others, mainly allowing anybody from the future to #$@$ with the past by choosing to open a portal to a point in space and time where they know they had not been in the past, like let's say in the middle of the football field of the 2010 World Cup final game.
In order to prevent that, a good story could be the ones where first they build the "arrival" time gate, and the time travelers from the future can only go to the past after the time gate in the past has been completed, so they can get out from it, and not before. The time gate would also need to be powered by some energy and maybe some sort of "stuff", to "print" in the past the information that is coming from the future.
Some stories don't even send time travelers to the past for that very reason, and instead just exchange information somehow, with the person in the past having some way of seeing/knowing the future, allowing this exchange of information.
I think prophecies are the most ancient form of "time travel" stories.
Wait then do you have any problem in regards to time loop/travel of in itself? Or only when time loop/travel where the person time looped/traveled has a hand in the whole scenario?
Would love to hear your opinion on time loop of in itself!
What do you mean? In all of these cases the involvement of the characters in deciding the loop seems to be illusory/irrelevant.
It shows how incompetent the writers are when giving their characters reasons to do things, they want time travel in there story, why well because the character needs to, well why oh because thats the loop they have been in
The big bang kinda came out of nothing....
That was great. I really enjoyed your video
I feel like Arrival the novel handled this situation better than the other examples here. It accepts that the closed loop perception of time means that there is no agency and then depicts the main characters struggle in finding her life’s meaning if she she has no agency in her actions at least subconsciously. The movie did it as much justice as it could for an entertaining film but the novel actually talks about this weird interaction. It accept the horrible logic of closed loops and fights to see what meaning humans can find in it if everything is predetermined. Also in the book the alien shared the language simply to share it, not for some stupid weapon advancement the movie showed which makes more sense in the context of closed loop reality. You should give it a try!!
Also the book says that her daughter dies from a rock climbing incident instead of cancer. This difference is impt cause we can read the main character justify that it was her visceral need to make rock climbing forbidden that ultimately makes her daughter rebel and fall in love with rock climbing, instead of admitting that fate ordains that her daughter must die. Even thought just like the movie she jumps between different times in her life, the book stresses that she experiences it all at once simultaneously. This is what allows her to find deeper meaning in her love for her husband and daughter as she realises that even within a closed loop timeline she will choose love over even trying to purge herself from it entirely. Rly interesting way to embrace the logical fallacies compared to the “ooh so smart the main character used time travel to save themselves” whilst showing the agency and character growth she can develop whilst realising she has no agency
Future-self saving past-self is a thinly veiled deus ex machina, but I do think self-fulfilling destiny style plots can be worth exploring. I guess the unsaid philosophy behind most of these is that once you have the ability to time travel, you suddenly always have and always will. And... in a way, you already have split into a new timeline, wherein you have the ability to save yourself. Your original self from the unaltered timeline either got out of the situation a different way, or was never put in it in the first place, but according to your perception as your current self, it would appear to be a self-fulfilling prophecy... Who knows, it's all so impossible, it makes the possibilities endless.
I think there's still plenty to be explored, but the only real crime is being lazy about it, or making rules and not following them to their logical conclusion. Also, giving birth to yourself? That's dumb.
Or we could just not think so hard about our entertainment and be like: "Hey! That was fun. That was a good time that made me forget that the world is falling apart around me for a few hours." That's what I like to do.
Sure, you are free to do that, no problem, but as someone who appreciates the craft of writing and filmmaking and wants to learn to do it well myself, I actually do find value in learning to differentiate between good and bad writing.
Have you watched Steins;Gate dude?
Nope, any good?
@@DysnomiaFilms It's fucking great man. You should really watch it if you think closed loop time travel stories can't be great
@@DysnomiaFilmsI also recommend Steins;Gate for how it explains and resolves the time loop elements, weaving in real life precedents to make its world more fleshed out and believable. Its sequel, Steins;Gate 0, builds off of the predecessor and introduces new elements that put a twist in the narrative.
It has honestly been a long time since I last gone through the Steins shows. They were my introduction to a well-written time travel story, though, and I hope it measures up or even surpasses your experiences with western media's interpretation of the genre.
@@OLDg_Vids I agree that Steins;Gate is great but its not a closed loop time travel I think.
@@OLDg_Vids it's not closed loop, they have "timelines" numbered like 0.999, 0.9998, 0.9997... or something. but in the end they actually do a closed loop, or pretending to be closed loop, idk if they're actually save timelines or just single timeline (because in steins;gate 0 we actually see glimpse of every timeline they left behind).
or i'm just dumb thinking about fiction.
I'm gonna have to disagree strongly. You're saying causal paradoxes are 'lazy' because.. what, it removes the characters' agency? Maybe when done incredibly poorly, like with the Dr Who example which is just a thinly veiled deus ex machine that had to be closed.
What about something like Deponia Doomsday; where Rufus experiences multiple forms of time loops. One of which he time travels to the past, then inadvertantly sets up a carnival to contain the tools he'll need in a future visit (that we already experienced). He didn't do this by choice. Perhaps as a comedy it's poking fun at the trope? But it's far from a plot hole, kind of the opposite imo.
What about Alan Wake? The characters never time travel themselves, but the magical effects of the lake works through time... meaning all three major parties using the lake's power have written each other into existence. Alan Wake wrote about Tom, Tom wrote about Alan, Alan wrote about the band, which wrote about Tom again and the very antagonist of the story.
Yes, it happens because it happens because it happens. But that's the fucking point. It's what makes it interesting and thought provoking. Everything has to have an origin... but in these scenarios they sometimes don't, and that's baffling. When used as a deus ex machine I guess it can be """"lazy"""", but literally any trope is "bad" when it's done poorly. That doesn't negate the trope's potential to be incredible interesting when written right. I think you're just being biased from bad experiences with the trope and are hung up on the "it doesn't make sense" part. Dude, it's time travel, it's never going to make sense. I'd even argue that causal paradoxes are the only form of time travel fiction that _do_ make any form of logical sense.
I had an idea for a pseudo-time loop story that hopefully fixes the cause-and-effect issue, the only reason the future refuses to change in this story is that there are actually two time travelers who have opposing goals. So whenever one does something that could change the future, the other time traveler intentionally reverses it in some way. The thematic message for this would be to not dwell on the things you can't change but focus on the things you can change. Which is symbolized in the climax with the two time travelers returning to the present using everything they learned about each other throughout the story in one final battle.
I guess you've never heard of Attack on Titan.
closed time loop is the ONLY time travel model other than multiverses, that makes sense, and unlike the multiverse model where nothing has any consequences, closed loop is the only one that both makes sense and has consequences, and that's probably why all the best time travel stories are closed time loop. Also you just don't even get the loop, no paradox could happen because no paradox has ever happened. You can't kill your grandfather because your grandfather was never killed. Nobody is tailoring these events, the universe does not allow paradoxes to happen because that's how it works. Why are there no 4 sided triangles? Why are there no perpetual motion machines? Is our universe secretly writing a script so nobody could ever invent free energy? No it can't happen because free energy is paradoxical, it is against the laws of nature. And for the same reason, paradoxes cannot happen with time travel, simple as that.
Look at your examples buddy, Futurama? The Simpsons? What did you expect? Are these supposed to be serious stories in the first place?
Mostly I still see closed loop time travel as the many-worlds-interpretation; you don't go back in time you just create a cloned universe with all atoms/etc in the exact state your origin universe was, along with yourself and whatever you brought along, in a sort of timy wimy big bang 2 metaphysical boogaloo. You don't appear out of thin air, the entire universe does, and has no prior history. Traveling forward might do something similar, creating a universe that reflects a 100% deterministic outcome of what happened between your departure and arrival. But of course something like that is impossible unless God (or destiny or whatever we would call it) was real, it's just fun to think about I guess. th-cam.com/video/v6R02dP10Gs/w-d-xo.html
Semantics
Good call, Soul Reaver was an insanely good time travel story.
I think the many worlds is a bit different from the multiverse/alternative timelines, and they both can happen at the same time.
Let's assume that time travel is not possible in our universe, but the many worlds interpretation is true. This would mean that there are like infinite parallel universes/timelines where all possible variations exist, but even though they can be visualized as branching trees, they just look similar to the time traveling "trees", because in none of them the future can influence the past.
For the sake of visualization, let's imagine that the many worlds + no time travel creates infinite "straight lines", like spaghettis, all parallel to each other without touching. Even if many of them share the same past before a certain point, they are all different, some more than others, since all possible versions exist.
Now, on a Many Worlds + Time travel universe, instead we will have infinite multiverse "trees", all parallel to each other, all possible variations of the multiverse trees. Inside each tree, the future can influence the pas through time travel, but as far as the many worlds part goes, one tree has no contact with teh other. Even if all possible multiverse trees exist, they are all independent from each other.
Inside every multiverse tree, there should be a few timelines where the past won't be changed. These are the predestination/ causal loop timelines, like Harry Potter and Terminator 1. The other timelines, where the time traveling caused the past to change, are the ones where the multiverse becomes a clusterfuck. The other ones that would have created impossible paradoxes are the impossible ones, and these don't even come to be/exist. I hope this made some sense.
Trash can. Remember a trash can
I think time loop paradoxes and Back to the Future logic are nonsense (though sometimes entertaining) and places unrealistic importance on the time traveler. I mean why would the universe care if you killed your grandfather, yeah that timeline is gone now but there is no paradox, youre standing over your grandfathers body.
I think Primer is close to the best, new timelines from the time travelers perspective.
I feel like that’s why Dark season 3 was crap
I don't know why you say that when it was season 3 that broke free of the kind of time travel he described.
just don't do time travel at all
I am using multi universes/branching timelines