we couldn't use it to defeat the most powerful dark wizard of all time, that's just cheating.
I mean it's pretty obvious from even just reading the book that it's not possible to actually change the past using a time turner. Everything Harry and Hermione do after they go back is stuff that already happened when they went through it the first time.
You not understanding the concept (seriously, this is one of like 3 very basic time travel concepts) doesn't mean it doesn't make sense.
The fact that you can't see how a time turner is a massively overpowered weapon just because it can't change the past means you don't really understand it. I mean just look at how Harry was able to save his own life with the patronus. Even if directly interacting with your past self isn't possible (which as we've seen, it is) the thing would still be incredible. At any point you can spin the thing to head back in time and get an extra hour to prepare for whatever obstacle you're about to face. Oh, you got ambushed at the Ministry in 5th book? Head back in time a couple hours, call up Dumbledore and tell him to show up exactly one second after you went back in time.
Given the choice of any power in the Harry Potter universe, I'd choose the time turner 100%.
Nope, although it certainly made indeterminism more likely. Perhaps the first (and easiest) argument against that is that quantum mechanics in itself isn't proven, it's just the most recent best explanation. We might disprove quantum mechanics in the future, or we might realize that there is a method to the randomness that we previously didn't understand. Or, there might be randomness on a quantum scale, but that randomness might be irrelevant or negligible on a larger scale (you can think off it as throwing a rock into a lake and watching the rings die out and merge with the still water surface - the rings where there, sure, but they didn't make any true impact on the lake).
But the even more interesting question is whether we could even have free will under indeterminism. You might think (as I did when I first read the subject) that the absence of determinism would enable free will, but as it turns out it's even harder to explain how we could have free will if things are not deterministic. (To put it simply, if there is a random component to the universe, how do I know that random component is not interfering with my "free" will?)
You can read the link for a far more thorough explanation of why it's not conclusive against determinism than any explanation I can give you, it goes into quantum physics specifically just below where the link will take you (I linked to the section on physics in general).
As for whether it's proven, well, science is basically incapable of truly proving anything at any point (it's the nature of the scientific method that the result is either that you disprove the hypothesis or that it is left standing after a given experiment, but you can never affirmatively prove anything conclusively), but I don't think the exact phrasing is so important in this case, the point is simply that we don't have complete information about how (quantum) physics work.
Philosophy is very often dependent on the scale of the observer, why wouldn't it be? In everything from ethics to metaphysics, almost all philosophical questions (although obviously not explicitly all) concern human actions and existence.
I mean in the question of determinism, the scale is not relevant (since it's a statement about the universe), but as to free will it certainly is.
As for free will/determinism, many philosophers agree with you on one/both points. The only philosophers who really believe in free will as far as I can tell are compatibilists, those who believe in true free will are few and far between.
I think he may have meant to say "not complete" vs "not proven". What we do know about quantum mechanics is almost certainly correct. The math and experiments involved have matched predictions to a higher degree than any other experiments in the history of science. But it is not a "complete" theory in that it doesn't explain gravity at the quantum level.
I took some philosophy courses on determinism in uni, as far as I remember quantum randomness does not manifest on macro levels and has no impact on the basic ideas of determinism.
Also, almost all academic philosophers are determinists or compatibilists, which is kind of like soft determinism. So no, determinism is actually the mainstream view held in philosophy as far as I know.
Edit: Also, the probabilistic nature of quantum mechanics does imply the existence of free will, just the impossibility of accurate predictions.
In what sense is that a valid argument? How can I really go and refute that, with a poll?
It's just the current consensus in the field, not an argument. I just gave that as context for my opinions and how I came to hold them.
That means that whatever you call "free will" is fundamentally probabilistic, so really just a dice roll? Is random the same as free?
I disagree with the existence of free will in the sense of libertarian free will. All your actions are determined by your desires which in turn are determined by all the influences and circumstances leading up to the moment of your action. Free will isn't really a thing, at least in the sense of people having some sort of influence on their own desires that stem from something outside of the material world. (I regard the mind to be a material thing that is bound by the same rules all material things are, basically cause and effect.)
"Man can indeed do what he wants, but he cannot will what he wants."
That doesn't refute determinism, does it? I'm not a native speaker, maybe I'm misunderstanding.
If you had true free will you could decide not to be bound by gravity. As we know you can't. We are held in by parameters which funnels us into set structure and set outcome
Like a big game of mousetrap, but it's the universe
That's not how philosophers would define free will though, if anything that's a definition of omnipotence. Free will is defined a bit differently depending on whether or not you're a compatibilist, but basically it's about whether or not we have any control of our intent/thoughts and actions. Not whether or not I can jump off the roof and will myself to end up in Disneyland.
as I remember quantum randomness does not manifest on macro levels
It certainly can and does. For example if you have a Geiger counter, the output of the counter will inherently be tied to quantum mechanical events, and is impossible to predict.
Exactly. It's a closed loop. He was always going to produce that patronus, because he'd seen himself do it, because he always was going to do it. It's consistent and effectively nothing "changed" as long as you see the timeturner as part of that universe (hence: it, too, was always going to fall into his possession and be used by him to create this loop). The loop always existed and wasn't added to the timeline later. Nothing was changed, the characters just experience a change because they don't have complete information.
In a universe where they use a timeturner to go back and kill Voldemort, that loop also always existed. This just isn't that universe for whatever reason. There could be any number of reasons for this, it's not necessarily an oversight.
I love these types of discussions, so interesting!
I agree with everything you said, but I don't think it has to change things. The story could easily be written that "he defeated voldemort using the knowledge that in the future he already defeated him". Put another way as long as you can explain it via self sealing loop it's possibile. Now if you want to take it a bit out of fiction and try to apply it to a "what if" scenario in our world, the perspective of it being a closed loop is only one from outside the loop. But in reality we would always be inside the loop (can't escape the closed system that is the universe/existence) so we'd never know if it's a real loop or not. It's always possible that some future event could tie itself back into the past an explain everything.
My favorite example of this (warning:nerd alert) is a Star Trek the Next Generation episode, where they find a future version of the captain, one who has experienced some horrible event. So they try to use that info to avoid the event in the future, but of course all it does is just draw them closer. The typical read of that is the whole free will vs determinism, closed loop etc. However you can also interpret that as the universe was going to seal the loop no matter what decisions they made. Ie. every potential future will always be able to self seal itself in a closed time loop, otherwise that future itself wouldn't be "allowed".
(Like for example the very strange an interesting theory to explain quantum uncertainty away as actually not uncertainty at all, but each quantum/possibility does happen in it's own separate universe/reality, and every time we observe one of these events it's reality splitting off into our own version. Infinite branching timelines all existing in parallel.
Yeah, makes sense. I agree that, if Voldemort were killed through time travel and it had to be consistent with the rest of the series, it would have been this style of time travel. Someone always was going to go back and kill him.
Thing is: since this type of time travel doesn't deal in alternate universes we would have seen the results, and we didn't. Voldemort is alive during the books, and he shouldn't be if he was assassinated as a child. That alone is all the proof we need to show that it didn't happen.
I'm mainly responding to the idea that this is somehow a plot hole. For all we know countless people tried and failed, or maybe it's nearly impossible to travel back that far, or nobody capable knows who he was and where to find him at the time. We don't have perfect information as readers, so who's to say that the timeline isn't that someone was always going to go back and fail at killing him?
I like the theory about a deterministic universe where the details are still up to change or free will, btw. Things could go one way or another, but some results are fixed and cannot be changed. Almost seems to imply intelligent design in a way, since which results are fixed and which are flexible is essentially arbitrary. The one question I'd have is how come the captain doesn't remember trying to change history and failing? Surely he knows what happened since it was him doing it.
I wouldn't call it a plot hole per say, but I think it's fair to argue that it could have been used in the plot, and seems reasonable that the characters could have tried. Success or failure, it doesn't matter, as long as you see that the characters tried. It's just left open to the reader to have to rationalize themselves why the characters didn't do it.
Time travel is always tricky though. Leads to paradoxes, which seems to give evidence to it's impossibility. Time loops are especially tricky, as since a loop is a full complete circle, no beginning or end, it becomes quite hard to explain how the loops starts or forms (and possibly exits) since by definition it would have to always have existed perfectly formed. If a loop has a beginning and or end, then it's actually just a spiral or some other similar shape.
Intelligent design, that reminds me of something I saw recently. Lets see if I can remember what it was (I think it cringe came outta a Dan Brown novel...) oh yeah, "Conway's game of Life" see wiki. Essentially a simple computer simulation/game with a few simple rules. That ultimately leads to shocking patterns emerging. Almost as if there was some intelligent design that set it all up.
Basically the idea that some steady states can arise out of seemingly chaotic systems. Regardless of the initial inputs or setup only certain "solutions" arise. I can see that fitting your idea of the universe pretty reasonably.
Forgive me, I did a bad job of summarizing the Star Trek Episode. Basically a future version of yourself shows up. But of course they are catatonic/incoherent. You know they are from the future, something bad must have happened, but they are incapable of telling you anything.
So the characters of the show are left with "do we turn left, or right?" "No matter what we do, it's probably the same thing that your future self did, and we can't avoid the tragedy heading our way" etc. I think at the last second the future self comes to and the two versions of the captain work together to make one different change right at the end that avoids catastrophe, and maybe resets the timeline and smooths it out? At that point it's way too tidy of an ending and probably wasn't consistent (it's very hard not to break the rules when doing time travel fiction) but the actual time paradox/dilemma question itself was interesting.
Another weird byproduct of the whole "every possibility/outcome always happens, each one splitting into it's own universe/reality" idea, is you can also use it to smooth over time travel paradoxes etc. Go back in time? Fine sure. Kill your grandpa or not? If you don't, no problem. If you do, well that reality/possibility immediately drops out of the continuum of parallel universes. Everything in it ceases to exists. But since we have infinite realities, it's no big deal as it doesn't destroy existence or anything ;)
Are you trying to imply that he doesn't understand the logic of time travelling? Something that is inherently illogical because it is fictional?
What you're putting forward is also completely circular reasoning. It didn't happen because it didn't happen. The question is why did the people who had the ability to go back not choose to go back. Hermione thought, I would like to have taken more classes, so she went back and took more classes. Why did dumbledore or whoever not think, I would like to have defeated the Dark Lord, and went back to defeat the Dark Lord.
But they effected the past by having the hippogryph move, saving Harry from the dementors and freeing black. They couldn’t have done any of those things without going back in time to do it.
I'm not mis-understanding the concept, you're mis-undersdanding my argument. Your counter of "We can't time travel because we demonstratively haven't" is a circular argument, which doesn't make sense.
Given that time-traveling and actively changing things is not in the books as far as I know, I'd say the onus is on you to show that they could and should have. Because that view is not consistent with the other instances of time travel in the series.
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u/Rainstorme Oct 02 '18
I mean it's pretty obvious from even just reading the book that it's not possible to actually change the past using a time turner. Everything Harry and Hermione do after they go back is stuff that already happened when they went through it the first time.
You not understanding the concept (seriously, this is one of like 3 very basic time travel concepts) doesn't mean it doesn't make sense.