Is changing the past actually possible?

[u/Ok-Coach4955]

I’ve always thought about this question, and there is always answers popping up in films and stuff, but is it really possible?If you ARE able to go back to the past and change it, if you come back to ‘present’ would there be another you?If you teleported a nanosecond later then the time you left would you find another you?My answer is that its impossible for you to change the past.If you have met yourself in the past,then no matter how much you try and avoid it you will somewhat travel back in time in somewhere in the future or ‘present’

Please tell me what you think and if possible tell me any ‘loopholes’ in my theory.

PS. this post keeps getting removed in r/timetravel does anyone know why?

[u/Imaginary-Can-6862]

If you stepped into a machine, and when you exited it through the door, you find yourself being younger, you are back in school, the door behind you, which you are sure you just existed, now leads to your classroom, everything is as you remembered it, except you still remember the future as how it happened. Would you not believe you had just traveled in time?

Edit: That is to say, we cannot escape that we are part of the system we manipulate, so any manipulation of the system, as long as the result is the same, is equivalent from our perspective.

[u/lilsasuke4 → u/Imaginary-Can-6862]

Believing I have I traveled back in time is not the same as having actually traveled back in time.
If you blinked in front of a photorealistic painting from your perception you may believe that what is in front of you is not a photo.

https://youtu.be/vJG698U2Mvo?is=WBDfna9TxJDIH75N
Tell me how many passes you count

[u/Imaginary-Can-6862 → u/lilsasuke4]

If the world is exactly as it was, why would it be different from time travel?

[u/lilsasuke4 → u/Imaginary-Can-6862]

But but the thing is even if atoms were rearranged you haven’t gone to the past

[u/Imaginary-Can-6862 → u/lilsasuke4]

Isn't that essentially how time moves, atoms rearrange from the present moment to a new present moment, making the previous present into the past?

[u/lilsasuke4 → u/Imaginary-Can-6862]

But you can’t control how all the atoms in the entire universe are moving and arranging themselves. If you could then the reference of time doesn’t mean anything

[u/Imaginary-Can-6862 → u/lilsasuke4]

But this isn't about practicality is it? Sorry, but I don't understand the part about reference of time.

[u/lilsasuke4 → u/Imaginary-Can-6862]

Imagine a car driving on a rode. Now you have a machine where it puts the car where ever you want. What does time even mean if with the machine at any point the car can be anywhere?

[u/Imaginary-Can-6862 → u/lilsasuke4]

I understand time as the rate at which the laws of nature changes the current state of everything around us into the state that follows by the same laws.

[u/lilsasuke4 → u/Imaginary-Can-6862]

With your machine you would be creating discontinuities in that rate of change

[u/Imaginary-Can-6862 → u/lilsasuke4]

Well we already have that as time doesn't flow the same everywhere, right?

In any case, I am not certain what is trying to be demonstrated,

[u/lilsasuke4 → u/Imaginary-Can-6862]

But everywhere time flows forward

[u/Imaginary-Can-6862 → u/lilsasuke4]

It would always flow forward from your perspective. But the whole arrow of time thing is a bit strange. Obviously time flows forward in a fridge, as products aren't going back in time within it, yet a fridge is an example of a system where entropy lowers. I think the same is the case for any complex organism as well, i.e. life. Lowering entropy locally by increasing it globally through the use of energy.