Time-turning

[sistermagpie]

No: HPFGUIDX 167501

> > Magpie:
> > But I don't think it's irrelevent given the context I 
> > brought that up, which was in response to the opposite
> > of what you're explaining here. Others are claiming 
> > that Harry was saved him his future self, period. 
> > You seem to be saying that time did indeed happen 
> > twice, and that the first time Harry #1 did save 
> > himself. Iow, he didn't really need his future self to
> > save him, he only remembers being saved by his future 
> > self because the two times melded and he therefore 
> > forgot the version where it was not his future self 
> > that saved him.
> > 
> 
> bboyminn:
> 
> Certainly we are all arguing valid theories of Time 
> Travel, but really which is easier and which makes
> the most sense? That multiple divergent inconsistent 
> time-lines are spawned that eventually collapsing back
> on themselves and merge into a whole new consistent 
> time-line, or that the Time Travelers simple arrived 
> at 6:00pm and were always there? There is a scientific 
> corollary that says, the simplest solution is probably
> the correct solution.

Magpie:
I'd say it seems that it depends on the person which is 
more "simple" or correct. You keep claiming that Time happened once 
is easier, but to some of us that seems far more complicated. So we 
should probably all just understand it the best way we can. If one 
person finds it necessary to imagine a version where Harry escaped 
some other way that was then erased so that we didn't see it or 
whatever, that's probably the simplest way for them and none of us 
are helping the other by trying to argue another understanding.:-)

Steve:
> But, there is a flow to this story that isolates one
> particular theory of time travel. There are clues
> dropped to re-enforce that THIS is the model of time
> travel that is being used. That flow, those clues, 
> this model are the 'Time Only Happens Once' model.
> Discussing it from other perspectives is certainly 
> valid as a point of interest, but the selected model
> seems crystal clear to me in the books.

Magpie:
Maybe I'm misunderstanding, but I feel like people keep thinking I 
need to have explained to me what happened in the book rather than 
thinking about the logical implications of what I know happened. I 
didn't miss the clues about what was going on in the book. I get 
that it's all happening at once in terms of what's happening in the 
narrative. I'm not trying to find some way that Hagrid's yell, when 
first heard by Harry and Hermione, was actually despair, and that 
the first thud of the axe was really hitting Buckbeak. I know that 
when Harry thinks he sees his father he's really seeing himself. 
It's very clear to me that nothing changed except Harry's 
perspective there. We're reading the story the same way. We only 
disagree when it comes to--completely outside the story--trying to 
work out the logic of it. That's where your easy solution seems the 
more complicated to me. Obviously you think that saying that "no 
alternative series of events" makes everything easier, but for some 
of us, that's not making anything simpler. I mean, we know there is 
no alternative series of events within canon. That doesn't change 
the paradoxes of Time Travel--which, as you've said, is impossible 
to talk about without getting tied up in knots.

Steve:
> If, in what others are calling the first time-line, 
> Harry is saved by someone who looks like Harry, then
> all these other mysterious and unlikely time-lines
> become very far fetched, especially when we see the
> same events from the perspective of the Time Traveling
> Harry, and discover, lo and behold, it was Harry who
> saved Harry. No wonder the savior looked so much like
> Harry.

Magpie:
I don't think anything is particularly far-fetched compared to Harry 
being saved by a version of himself, which is exactly what happened. 
But again, when people talk about first-time Harry being saved they 
are *not* saying that he was saved by someone who looked like Harry. 
They know that the person who looked like Harry was none other than 
Harry from the future. They're just saying that in order for Harry 
to be living in the future, they think something else must explain 
how he was alive in the future, something else that *there is no 
trace of in canon at all.* So they're not trying to fit this mystery 
scenario into the narrative we read. It was, in Dana's 
words, "erased." 

Steve: 
> Cause dictates Effect independent of the order of the
> occurrence of Cause and Effect. The Effect is whether 
> or not Sirius was saved, the Cause is whether or not
> someone time traveled. Since the Effect did not occur,
> we can only conclude that there was no Cause to 
> precipitate the Effect; that is, NO ONE time traveled.

Magpie:
Yes, but that's never been questioned. That was in my original point 
when I brought up Sirius: we know no one Time Traveled to save 
Sirius because Sirius was not saved by a Time Traveler. It may be 
perfectly true in the Potterverse that you can't change the past, 
but of course, that's why Harry and Hermione had to not know that 
rule in order to go back in time to attempt to change the past. They 
ultimately both did and did not do what they set out to do. They 
went back because they wanted to change what happened the first 
time, and then discovered they didn't change what happened the first 
time. They also went back because it was, they felt, the only way to 
save Buckbeak. And it was how Buckbeak was saved. If they had not 
gone back, thinking they couldn't change the past, the past would 
have happened differently.

zgirnius:
I disagree that one can consider time travel in the Potterverse
without considering how it was written. It is a universe endowed with
certain laws by its creatrix, which govern, among other things, how
time travel works. I guess we agree on what those laws are, something
I had failed to understand from your earlier posts.

Magpie:
I agree that any discussion of Time Travel in the HP-verse is going 
to include how it is written, and the rules the author sets down. 
But at the same time the characters aren't consciously following 
those rules. They don't know their world is neatly arranged by an 
author. Harry and Hermione think Buckbeak was executed and that they 
are going to change it.

zgirnius:
The point you seem to want to discuss is how time travel *really*
would work, logically, in our world, supposing it was actually
possible, and someone invented it. Am I understanding your point
correctly?

If so, these laws are not known for our own world; they are a subject
of disagreement among experts in the field of theoretical physics. 

Magpie:
I guess it's yes and no what I want to discuss. Time Travel, as you 
say, does not exist in our world, so we don't know how it would work 
here. What I think I'm doing is taking logic that exists in both 
worlds and trying to apply it where I think it applies. However Time 
Travel "works" in the WW, we all agree that once you are dead you 
can not Time Travel, which means Harry can not die and then Time 
Travel afterwards any more than Sirius could. We can all agree that 
Harry's experience in PoA was that he was being attacked by a 
Dementor, but was then saved by something he thought to be his 
father but was really himself from the future. But we're all 
probably going to privately work out the logic for that to our own 
personal satisfaction. The fact that Harry's past does not change, 
since things done by his future self in his own time are part of his 
experience and therefore his memory, is not something I have a 
problem with. Dana doesn't have a problem with it either, as far as 
I can tell, but she sees another version of time being erased rather 
than never having existed. That seems to be the way Ceridwen 
explains it to herself as well.

-m