EDIT - Sabu, ask the admins to delete my post if you want, it's cool... but I think this should be mentioned anyway, even though you don't want to hear it it is after all a viable answer. A linear timeline seems too simplistic to me, it makes us too important in the universal plan or something... Besides, the end is worth it - END EDIT
To be honest, I agree with Jackalman's assessment to an extent, but I have long held with the theory that every event, no matter how small, where there is a choice made, by everyone and everything, splits off individual timelines which continue on a parallel course, each one of those embodying one result of the various choices not taken, and the timeline that said person or thing experiences is the single result of the choice made. In other words, there are infinite parallel lines of future time. However, if said person/thing wants to go back and change something, that person/thing will go back along the path that was taken - a single line into the past that reflects all the choices that individual and others in his/her/its line before, has made - thus anything changed branches off yet further infinite future lines, yet different from those that had already been created. This happens for everyone and everything in the universe. There is no real issue of paradox here, but this theory has an added complication in that each timeline has or has had or will have a "you" - and that "you" is only aware of the one path that he/she/it is on.
So can you go back, kill your father, do your mother and become your father? not as easy as all that, because you only have access to your path, and not those of the others - in this scenario you would have to have access to the root timeline that spawned all the others, which is to say have access to the decision that resulted in the first "you" to make a decision. confused yet? add to that the genetic drift that was mentioned and the likelyhood that you'd be you on the exit of this choice is slim. Plus this theory does not entertain the idea of a loop, as it is not setting up a loop so much as an alternate outcome each time this happens; the decision may be a loop, but the outcome is not, and would be different each time it happened, in infinite forward paths.
ok, now I've confused myself...
Stipulate a linear timeline, and sure, you can be your own father if you are a clone of your father to begin with - and yes it would be a loop, but it could be influenced to change that - say you decided after hooking up with your mom that you didn't want this to happen again - if you made the child aware of his origins, it's a 50/50 shot as to whether he'd do it again in the future, not an infinite loop as you propose. beside that, other changes creep in - maybe past you decided to have more children than there originally were in your family. Or maybe your mom decides not to have kids at all. Maybe knowing your upbringing causes you to raise the kid slightly differently, resulting in a different personality - or maybe there's some kind of accident that wouldn't have happened if you hadn't gone back (since it's you making the decisions and you are NOT your original dad - a different personality and experience set even if the genes are identical, clony!... it's not all cut & dried like you propose, even if you don't accept the multiple line theory. |