[HPforGrownups] Time Travel: Analyzing Hermione's missed Charms class

[Troels Forchhammer]

No: HPFGUIDX 138011

At 16:05 18-08-05 +0000, davenclaw wrote:


<snip>

>Conclusion:  What we know about time-travel in HP means that JKR
>messed up something along the way.  Either "changing the past" is
>not as absolute as it sounds, but rather should be "purposely
>altering the course of events", or "free will" in the present has
>the potential to be severely hampered by decisions we will make in
>the future.

That is a common misunderstanding for people criticising Novikov's
Self-Consistent Histories, but it fails under closer scrutiny.

The limitation on the possible successful causes of action is imposed,
under this theory, by the the laws of nature -- the same laws that
prevent you from walking bare-footed head down on the ceiling, but
nobody's complaining that Newton robs them of their Free Will . . .

(and then there's the whole issue about the directions of time and
causality, but we'd better leave that for elsewhere)

/Troels