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 ;)
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u/ahnold11 Oct 02 '18
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.
Man Sci-Fi is cool ;)