If time travel were to exist, which theory would you subscribe to?

Some ideas are:

You branch off into another timeline and your actions make no difference to the previous timeline
You’ve already taken said actions but just didn’t know about it so nothing changes
Actions taken can have an effect (so you could suddenly erase yourself if you killed your parents)
Only “nexus” or fixed events really matter, the timeline will sort itself out for minor changes
something else entirely

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Probably the branch off one.

Though, speaking of time travel, I really don't understand/like the whole Harry Potter dementor (however it's spelt) lake scene in the movie where future Harry saves past Harry. How does that work? Wouldn't in an initial timeline Harry have to somehow save himself before he could travel back in time to save his past self? The way I see it, it just looks like an infinite cycle of Harry saving his past self with no origin point.
- That’s called the bootstrap paradox if you want to look that up.

133 comments