How do you resolve the Grandfather Paradox?

[Chichiri]

Assume time travel is possible.

You build a time machine, travel back to when your grandfather was 10 years old, and shoot him in the head. That would mean that you were never born. That would mean that the time machine was never built, thus you never went back in time. Thus, your grandfather was never killed, which means that your father was born, and thus you. Then you build a time machine . . .

How do you think this paradox is resolved?

[arwalden]

1. I Saw This On Futurama...

By some strange twist of fate, you end up screwing the chick who will become your future grandmother and thus you become your OWN father's father and so too you become your OWN grandfather.

[Deja Q]

2. I was going to say the same thing about that pervert Philip J Fry!

:rofl:

Of course, without grandpa to make you in the first place, how can you go back to screw her? Temporal paradoxes are so kewl. :D

[Roland99]

3. Or maybe you end up becoming:

your father's brother's nephew's cousin's former roommate

[The_Casual_Observer]

4. Is this an illusion to that old favorite "I'm my own grandpa"?

Oh, many, many years ago
When I was twenty-three
I was married to a widow
Who was pretty as can be
This widow had a grown-up daughter
Who had hair of red
My father fell in love with her
And soon the two were wed

This made my dad my son-in-law
And changed my very life
For my daughter was my mother
'Cause she was my father's wife
To complicate the matter
Though it really brought me joy
I soon became the father
Of a bouncing baby boy

This little baby then became
A brother-in-law to Dad
And so became my uncle
Though it made me very sad
For if he was my uncle
Then that also made him brother
Of the widow's grown-up daughter
WHo of course is my step-mother

Chorus
I'm my own grandpa
I'm my own grandpa
It sounds funny I know
But it really is so
Oh, I'm my own grandpa

My father's wife then had a son
Who kept them on the run
And he became my grandchild
For he was my daughter's son
My wife is now my mother's mother
And it makes me blue
Because although she is my wife
She's my grandmother too

Now if my wife is my grandmother
Then I'm her grandchild
And every time I think of it
It nearly drives me wild
For now I have become
The strangest case you ever saw
As husband of my grandma
I am my own grandpa

[Reverend_Smitty]

5. Have you read Sarah Vowell's book...

Assassination Vacation? I just finished it this afternoon and she discussed the grandfather paradox in one of the chapters

[Xithras]

6. Absolutely nothing.

There's no reason to believe that anything out of the ordinary would happen. The "past" that existed between the killing of your grandfather and the point of your departure would be altered, but since that past never occurred in that timeline, nothing would be disrupted. You, on the other hand, would become a man out of time.The past that built the time machine would only exist in your memories.

This itself creates an interesting opportunity and a potential reason why time travel will never happen. If a scientist invents one, and then an unscrupulous criminal to travel back in time and kills the inventor as a boy, the criminal will become the only person in the world to possess a time machine, or with the knowledge that one ever existed. Thanks to human nature, this essentially gurantees that time travel will never be possible.

[democrat in Tallahassee]

9. Xithras, I agree with you. If you exist then killing your grandfather

before you were born would not affect you. You wouldn't just magically cease to exist just because your grandfather died, even if if was before you were born.
Your family tree and the future, obviously, would be quite different from what you remember, but you would still be the same.

[Jamastiene]

7. You have to screw your grandmother

and end up an inbred repug??? Not recommended. :P

[Demit]

8. Gee, in Superman comics they always resolved this by pointing out that

you couldn't alter history because it has already happened. Thus you would always somehow be thwarted from shooting your grandfather. You wouldn't be able to do it.

Worked for me, as a 10 year old.

[MyshkinCommaPrince]

10. Dream Sequence

"The Miracleman Family woke up, and it was all a dream...."

Then you discover some paradoxical indication that it may have been real, after all, but not until the last panel or paragraph of the story.

[hickman1937]

11. Someone has access to a time machine, and all they can think to

do is shoot grandpa? They deserve to be erased, or spend some quality time in one of the finer penal institutions of the time. Myself, I'd buy stock in IBM, and will it to my grandfather's grandchildren, at the very least.

[NMMNG]

12. Exactly

Why do something stupid like go back to shoot someone when you can buy a bunch of stocks. Sign me up for Microsoft, IBM, Apple, Ebay, etc. When I'm a gazillionare I can end world hunger and a bunch of other problems.

While I'm at it, I could make sure George and Barbara Bush never meet...:evilgrin: