For what it’s worth, my knowledge of physics tells me the following:
If it’s possible to transmit information back in time, physical laws probably nevertheless have at least one consistent solution, i.e. paradoxes are impossible. This comes from something I read about how this is the case in a billiard-ball computer (researchers built a NOT gate and put it across a wormhole; the result was that an invalid logic value came out of the wormhole and the NOT gate left this invalid value unaffected), and the fact that quantum computers use only unitary transformations, which… tend to have fixed points, at least.
It is probably not possible to transmit information back in time.
Isn’t the possibility of perfectly predicting the future pretty much the same as the possibility to transmit things back in time? Or maybe we’re not predicting the future at all, in which case… hmm.
No. The arbitrary ability to transmit things back in time can be used to set up paradoxes. Predictions, on the other hand, can be innacurate, describe counterfactual futures, or be poorly specified, but they do not result in paradoxes.
For what it’s worth, my knowledge of physics tells me the following:
If it’s possible to transmit information back in time, physical laws probably nevertheless have at least one consistent solution, i.e. paradoxes are impossible. This comes from something I read about how this is the case in a billiard-ball computer (researchers built a NOT gate and put it across a wormhole; the result was that an invalid logic value came out of the wormhole and the NOT gate left this invalid value unaffected), and the fact that quantum computers use only unitary transformations, which… tend to have fixed points, at least.
It is probably not possible to transmit information back in time.
Omega’s predictions are based on applied determinism (observing the current state and calculating the future), not time travel.
Isn’t the possibility of perfectly predicting the future pretty much the same as the possibility to transmit things back in time? Or maybe we’re not predicting the future at all, in which case… hmm.
No. The arbitrary ability to transmit things back in time can be used to set up paradoxes. Predictions, on the other hand, can be innacurate, describe counterfactual futures, or be poorly specified, but they do not result in paradoxes.