The butterfly effects would add up and and any zygote formed would not be the hitler-as-we-know anymore, since it would be a different combination of sperm and eggs.
Who needs guns when you got a time machine? Don’t like your highschool bully, just bump into their parents back in time. Or you know, “bump” ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°) into their parents.
So if I leave my phone in 1929, nothing changes? That’s absurd.
If you left your phone in 1929 then you had already done it in the past today. Nothing changed.
I feel like just accepting that as the answer is a philosophically lazy answer that simply doesn’t pass the logic test because I didn’t have a time machine. Now I do. Things change. And even if it doesn’t change for us, it changes the course of time for them. Can you imagine the leap in tech if a modern flagship phone was found in the 70s? You wouldn’t be able to go so far back that they’re incapable of interpreting the tech, like what would a hunter/gatherer glean from a phone? Nothing. But in the 40s? Certainly we could have learned a lot from it by then.
You can’t just wave off something that’s pure speculation as if you know anything about it. This is as close to some weird time theology I can think of. Like the “gods plan” of time.
It’s called an ontological paradox.
I disagree. If you made a change in 2000 you had already made it when whatever happened in 2025 happened. If you went back and killed Hitler in 1885 that had already happened in 1933 when Hitler was appointed Chancellor. What happened in 1885 didn’t change what happened in 1933. Maybe you killed the wrong person. Maybe history got wrong who Hitler was. Maybe Hitler assumed the identity of the dead infant and went on to be appointed Chancellor. The point is that whatever happened in 1935 happened after whatever happened in 1885.
Edit: It’s called an ontological paradox.
Many worlds theory gives us an alternative - in one world I left my phone in 1929 and that shaped that world tremendously.
But that didn’t happen in my world and it can’t, because my world is the world where no one left their phone in 1929.
Yes. There are many paths forward from any moment in time but only one path backwards. That means that to get to where you are right now whatever happened in the past has already happened and can’t be changed.