If we are in a time loop we won’t be trying to escape it, but rather exploit it.
For example: Suppose I find out that the entire local universe-bubble is in a time loop, and there is a way to build a spaceship that will survive the big crunch in time for the next big bang. Or something like that.
Well, I go to my backyard and start digging, and sure enough I find a spaceship complete with cryo-chambers. I get in, wait till the end of the universe, and then after the big bang starts again I get out and seed the Earth with life. I go on to create a wonderful civilization that keeps to the shadows and avoids contact with “mainstream” humanity until, say, the year 2016. In the year 2014 of course, my doppelganger finds the machine I buried in his backyard...
I’m not saying this scenario is plausible, just that it is an example of exploiting time travel despite never breaking the loop. Or am I misunderstanding how this works?
As long as every loop is identical to every other loop, why not. I don’t know if you would call it “exploit”, since, classically, your actions are predefined (and already happened infinitely many times), and quantum-mechanically, they are determined up to a chance (or, equivalently, every outcome happens in one of the Everett branches).
If we are in a time loop we won’t be trying to escape it, but rather exploit it.
For example: Suppose I find out that the entire local universe-bubble is in a time loop, and there is a way to build a spaceship that will survive the big crunch in time for the next big bang. Or something like that.
Well, I go to my backyard and start digging, and sure enough I find a spaceship complete with cryo-chambers. I get in, wait till the end of the universe, and then after the big bang starts again I get out and seed the Earth with life. I go on to create a wonderful civilization that keeps to the shadows and avoids contact with “mainstream” humanity until, say, the year 2016. In the year 2014 of course, my doppelganger finds the machine I buried in his backyard...
I’m not saying this scenario is plausible, just that it is an example of exploiting time travel despite never breaking the loop. Or am I misunderstanding how this works?
As long as every loop is identical to every other loop, why not. I don’t know if you would call it “exploit”, since, classically, your actions are predefined (and already happened infinitely many times), and quantum-mechanically, they are determined up to a chance (or, equivalently, every outcome happens in one of the Everett branches).