Jump to content

Bran As Tool Of Extrapolation, Wiki Of Westeros


Recommended Posts

58 minutes ago, Cron said:

 

<snip>

Tha's an amazing conversation. I'm afraid these days I don't have time to really elaborate on this since it's a very complex question, but I love both science fiction/time travel and Bran's growing powers. SO that topic is fascinating is for me. Meanwhile; I'll post for you the conversation we had about this topic in the thread of Bran's growing powers last year in case you wanna have a look at that:

It started around here with this post (bear in mind that at first we didn't have Kristian's interview where he states that while holding the Door he was not warged), but in the next page once we learnt the truth that he was not warged in his final moments we took that into consideration:

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

3 hours ago, Cron said:

In GoT, Bran accidentally did heavy damage to Hodor's (Wyllis') brain.  There is no doubt in my mind that Bran caused the damage that limited Wyllis to being able to only say one word for the rest of his life ("Hodor," which is, of course, a sort of contraction for "Hold the door").

My understanding is that some "wires got crossed" (figuratively speaking), or something overloaded b/c Bran was greenseeing and warging into Hodor (past and/or future Hodor) at the same time.

I had a different understanding of 'Hodor situation'.

Bran served a role of a bridge/conductor between Wyllis and Hodor, because he was simultaniously near both of them, in past and in present. And it has nothing to do with Bran's warging. It wasn't caused by warging, it was caused by what happened to Horod's body during that warging.

Wyllis became damaged because he experienced moment of his future death. And what he felt was so horrible, that he lost his mind.

Hodor in present was stabbed multiple times, and torn apart by wights, and Wyllis in past felt all that pain, and damage, and fear. And that experience changed him forever. He suffered severe psychological trauma, NOT brain damage.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

25 minutes ago, Megorova said:

I had a different understanding of 'Hodor situation'.

Bran served a role of a bridge/conductor between Wyllis and Hodor, because he was simultaniously near both of them, in past and in present. And it has nothing to do with Bran's warging. It wasn't caused by warging, it was caused by what happened to Horod's body during that warging.

Wyllis became damaged because he experienced moment of his future death. And what he felt was so horrible, that he lost his mind.

Hodor in present was stabbed multiple times, and torn apart by wights, and Wyllis in past felt all that pain, and damage, and fear. And that experience changed him forever. He suffered severe psychological trauma, NOT brain damage.

Wow, very interesting, seriously.

I never thought about it quite like that, but as far as I know, you could be right.

It DOES seem that information was passed from "present Hodor" to "past Hodor," no doubt, so maybe it DID happen as you say.

I do think such severe psychological trauma is a form of brain damage, though, but maybe that's just me. To me, Wyllis/Hodor clearly suffered some form of severe brain damage, whether it was all b/c of physical damage to his physical brain or not.

My suspicion is that we will never know exactly what happened for sure, but hey, maybe I'm wrong.  It seems likely that Bran will be doing more "time travel projection into the past" in Season 8, and who knows, perhaps he will figure out exactly what went wrong with Hodor, and explain it to us.

By the way, I've seen you around here, and I've been meaning to say I like your name. Is it Eastern European by any chance?  (I assume it's not your real name, but perhaps influenced by that geographic region, which I think is pretty cool.)  If you'd rather not say then that's fine, too, I understand.

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

36 minutes ago, Cron said:

Wow, very interesting, seriously.

I never thought about it quite like that, but as far as I know, you could be right.

It DOES seem that information was passed from "present Hodor" to "past Hodor," no doubt, so maybe it DID happen as you say.

I do think such severe psychological trauma is a form of brain damage, though, but maybe that's just me. To me, Wyllis/Hodor clearly suffered some form of severe brain damage, whether it was all b/c of physical damage to his physical brain or not.

My suspicion is that we will never know exactly what happened for sure, but hey, maybe I'm wrong.  It seems likely that Bran will be doing more "time travel projection into the past" in Season 8, and who knows, perhaps he will figure out exactly what went wrong with Hodor, and explain it to us.

I have to start by saying that I had a really hard time trying to wrap my brain around what happened to Hodor. And maybe we'll never get an explanation. 

But what id like to ask is, if wyllis somehow saw what was happening to hodor, does that mean that the future is predetermined? Because otherwise how would wyllis be able to see what the future holds on account of bran going back in time from the cave?

My theory on the issue is that wyllis, for whatever reason, also had greenseeing abilities. He saw his own future, maybe due to bran being there or independent of bran, and couldn't deal with it because he wasn't 'trained' like bran was. Sorry if I'm not making sense. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

5 hours ago, Cron said:

@Iron Mother and @princess_snow and @Meera of Tarth

Great conversation.  I certainly do not claim to have all the answers, but here's my understanding of a few things:

(1)  In GoT, Bran accidentally did heavy damage to Hodor's (Wyllis') brain.  There is no doubt in my mind that Bran caused the damage that limited Wyllis to being able to only say one word for the rest of his life ("Hodor," which is, of course, a sort of contraction for "Hold the door").

My understanding is that some "wires got crossed" (figuratively speaking), or something overloaded b/c Bran was greenseeing and warging into Hodor (past and/or future Hodor) at the same time.  For me, the fact that the word Wyllis was locked in on ("Hodor") was a contraction of what Hodor was hearing in the future ("Hold the door") makes it 100% certain that the link to the future through Bran caused the damage to Wyllis' brain (note that it seems beyond dispute that "Hodor" is a contraction of "Hold the door," since, on the show, we are shown Wyllis' words "morphing" from "Hold the door" into "Hodor," as he repeats it over and over and over, starting out with "Hold the door" and bit by bit gets to "Hodor," which he is saying at the end.  (Also noteworthy here is that we have been told what happened to Hodor is canon, and will happen in the books, as I strongly recall)

(2)  Regarding travel into the future in the "real world":  My understanding is that this is a LOT more than abstract theory.  In fact, my understanding is that scientists have confirmed that it is scientific fact that you CAN travel into the future.

If you look into Albert Einstein's theory of special relativity, I believe you will find that he said space and time are actually slightly different aspects of the same thing (the space-time continuum), AND that the passage of time is relative to how bodies move through space relative to each other.  Basically, the faster you are going, the faster time passes for objects NOT moving as fast as you.  This is confirmed, as I strongly understand it.  Thus, as I believe I mentioned above, if you got in a spaceship and travelled away from the Earth very fast (say, near the speed of light), then turned around and returned, you would find that more time has passed on Earth than passed for you, and thus you would have travelled into the future. (For example, you might go on a trip through space in which you aged a few years, and then returned to Earth to find that the year was 2117, one hundred years after you left.  These numbers are not precise, just a hypothetical example.)

(3)  Regarding time travel into the past in the "real world":  This is more theoretical, but my understanding is that many scientists now believe that, yes, it IS possible to travel into the past.  Basically, the physics, as I understand it, depend mostly on enormous amounts of gravity.   The "problem," though is potential paradoxes (thus, finally, almost bringing me around to Hodor, which I'll get to in a minute.

As I understand it, there are two main theories that can resolve paradoxes of time travel into the past.  One would hold that when Bran went into the past and changed it, he created a timeline split, which effectively created an alternate reality.  From that point forward, what we know as the "universe" of GoT, we are following that alternate reality.

The second main theory that can resolve apparent paradoxes from time travel into the past says that ALL imaginable and conceivable realities ALREADY exist, and all Bran did was travel through a space-time dimension (the 5th or 6th dimension) to an alternate reality destined to proceed as we saw on t.v. screens.  (This relates to 11-dimensional theories of the multiverse, which hold that ANY and ALL "universes" or alternate realities you can imagine already DO exist.  This is not just science fiction, by the way.  MANY leading scientists on our planet right now believe it is true, although the math and physics are beyond my ability to even fully understand, much less explain here.)

So.   Under either theory to resolve paradoxes, there IS a version of "reality" in which Wyllis never turned into "Hodor," and thus there is no paradox.  If Bran caused a timeline split, there is still a timeline where Wyllis never turned into Hodor, it's just NOT the timeline we are following on the show.  Similarly, under the "truly infinite 11-dimensional multiverse" theory, which postulates that ALL possible versions of reality not only CAN exist, but actually already DO exist somewhere and "somewhen" in the space-time continuum, there IS a version of reality where Wyllis never turned into Hodor, and thus, once again, there is no paradox.

Also, for anyone interested in time travel who hasn't seen all 3 "Back to the Future" movies with Michael J. Fox, I would highly recommend them.  They are VERY light on science (to put it mildly), but a LOT of fun, and they can be VERY helpful in becoming accustomed to thinking fourth-dimensionally.

Final note:  For anyone reading this who would like to learn more about this stuff, I would recommend Googling "einstein's theory of special relativity," "how to think in 10 dimensions" (there are some GREAT short videos that explain some of this stuff), and "11-dimensional theories of the multiverse."  

Thankyou for this, this is what I was thinking of ! You explained it well.

I have seen all the back to the future movies, Im also a big fan of The Time Machine - the original.   

8 minutes ago, Apoplexy said:

I have to start by saying that I had a really hard time trying to wrap my brain around what happened to Hodor. And maybe we'll never get an explanation. 

But what id like to ask is, if wyllis somehow saw what was happening to hodor, does that mean that the future is predetermined? Because otherwise how would wyllis be able to see what the future holds on account of bran going back in time from the cave?

My theory on the issue is that wyllis, for whatever reason, also had greenseeing abilities. He saw his own future, maybe due to bran being there or independent of bran, and couldn't deal with it because he wasn't 'trained' like bran was. Sorry if I'm not making sense. 

Its such a difficult subject for (me) - Im not a scientist - to explain in regards to Hodor. You are making sense with your questions tho. I always initally thought he had seen some vision of his future which is why he was traumatised and could only say ' Hodor ' . In terms of what @Cron just said I think the answer is no ?? Because it actually happened at the moment Bran was warged both into present/past Hodor. That was when an alternate timeline/ reality was created ? God its early where I am and I have just overloaded my brain lol before my morning coffee !   

Link to comment
Share on other sites

17 minutes ago, Apoplexy said:

I have to start by saying that I had a really hard time trying to wrap my brain around what happened to Hodor. And maybe we'll never get an explanation. 

But what id like to ask is, if wyllis somehow saw what was happening to hodor, does that mean that the future is predetermined? Because otherwise how would wyllis be able to see what the future holds on account of bran going back in time from the cave?

My theory on the issue is that wyllis, for whatever reason, also had greenseeing abilities. He saw his own future, maybe due to bran being there or independent of bran, and couldn't deal with it because he wasn't 'trained' like bran was. Sorry if I'm not making sense. 

An interesting theory, and I really don't know whether it's correct or not.

I don't think we can dismiss any possibility, b/c so little is known about what actually happened, and so little has been explaiend by the show (in fact, I think NOTHING has been explained by the show, so far as I recall)

So, you could be right.  Do you have any evidence to support your theory, or would you say it's just a hunch, or intuition?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

5 minutes ago, princess_snow said:

Thankyou for this, this is what I was thinking of ! You explained it well.

I have seen all the back to the future movies, Im also a big fan of The Time Machine - the original.   

Its such a difficult subject for (me) - Im not a scientist - to explain in regards to Hodor. You are making sense with your questions tho. I always initally thought he had seen some vision of his future which is why he was traumatised and could only say ' Hodor ' . In terms of what @Cron just said I think the answer is no ?? Because it actually happened at the moment Bran was warged both into present/past Hodor. That was when an alternate timeline/ reality was created ? God its early where I am and I have just overloaded my brain lol before my morning coffee !   

Very interesting. Seems like a fair number of people seem to believe Wyllis saw a vision of the future and was traumatized by it, and that's what caused him to be "Hodor."

You could all be right.   I hadn't thought of it quite that way, but maybe I missed he forest for the trees.   I guess I always just figured that Bran was very clumsy and inexperienced in what he was doing, and accidentally just fried or overloaded Hodor's brain in some way (at least, regarding Hodor;s ability to SPEAK normally.  Clearly, Hodor can THINK normally, which always made me wonder "Why doesn't he just carrry around a notepad and write stuff down?"  Clearly, Hodor understands what other people are saying, he understands language.  There are many times Bran tells him to do something, and he does it. But who knows, maybe the same problem that prevents him from speaking normally would prevent him from communicating through writing, too.  Dunno.)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

5 minutes ago, Cron said:

Very interesting. Seems like a fair number of people seem to believe Wyllis saw a vision of the future and was traumatized by it, and that's what caused him to be "Hodor."

You could all be right.   I hadn't thought of it quite that way, but maybe I missed he forest for the trees.   I guess I always just figured that Bran was very clumsy and inexperienced in what he was doing, and accidentally just fried or overloaded Hodor's brain in some way (at least, regarding Hodor;s ability to SPEAK normally.  Clearly, Hodor can THINK normally, which always made me wonder "Why doesn't he just carrry around a notepad and write stuff down?"  Clearly, Hodor understands what other people are saying, he understands language.  There are many times Bran tells him to do something, and he does it. But who knows, maybe the same problem that prevents him from speaking normally would prevent him from communicating through writing, too.  Dunno.)

This is where it gets tricky for me. So if Bran created Hodor in that moment, yet Hodor was Hodor before Bran went back to that vision does the alternate or split reality still apply ?   

Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 minute ago, Cron said:

An interesting theory, and I really don't know whether it's correct or not.

I don't think we can dismiss any possibility, b/c so little is known about what actually happened, and so little has been explaiend by the show (in fact, I think NOTHING has been explained by the show, so far as I recall)

So, you could be right.  Do you have any evidence to support your theory, or would you say it's just a hunch, or intuition?

I thought of it because of Hodor being related to old nan. She is really old, nobody's quite sure about when she came to winterfell and she tells bran stories about things beyond the wall. So it is possible she has some connection to magic, which could mean that hodor also possibly has some connection to magic.

Moreover, wyllis's eyes were completely white when he fell into a stupor. Whenever bran wargs into Hodor, his eyes get back to normal after his eyeballs rotate for a few seconds. I don't know if this was done intentionally or not.

Beyond this, I don't really have any substantial evidence.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

9 minutes ago, princess_snow said:

This is where it gets tricky for me. So if Bran created Hodor in that moment, yet Hodor was Hodor before Bran went back to that vision does the alternate or split reality still apply ?   

This is what I fail to understand too, which is what makes me believe there has to be another explanation. If Hodor was hodor before bran went back, how did bran make any of it happen?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

14 minutes ago, Apoplexy said:

This is what I fail to understand too, which is what makes me believe there has to be another explanation. If Hodor was hodor before bran went back, how did bran make any of it happen?

It just gets so confusing. I am sure I read an explanation for this at the time the episode aired and I understood it better at the time. I havent rewatched that season since it aired so Ive just not followed the threads. Hoping Cron can explain this !

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I think Bran will regain some  or most traits of his identity and will recover from his state of de-humanization. In fact, we already have seen signs of a slow recovery throughout the season. In his first interaction with his family, he was a complete freak. He didn't hug Sansa back, and told her she looked beautiful the day the most horrific things happend to her. His first meeting with Arya was an improvement, he hugs her back, and to prove his omniscience he does not allude to Arya's suffering (he does not say, for example, "you were fast when you ran for your life with your guts hanging out"), but to Arya's goals, and gifted her with something that can help her attain her goals. Then he involves himself in the old and current wrongdeeds commited against his family, hence his participation in Littlefinger's demise. And in the last interaction, we see him interacting more humanly with a person who helped him once "you helped me cross the wall... you are a good man". What a difference with his farewell to Meera, who had not just ocassionally helped him, but truly risked her own life to allow him to become who he needed to become! And then, in the same interaction, we see him trully concerned by a piece of information he has about another family member. So, there was a clear evolution from the first episode to the last one, we can expect this evolution to continue. 

On 2/9/2017 at 2:15 AM, falcotron said:

Personally, I'm kind of disappointed by that. Not that I don't feel bad for Bran and his family, but from a story-telling point of view, I like that in GRRM's world magic has a cost, and the idea that the cost of being a super-wizard is becoming inhuman and losing everything that made him Bran felt right to me; if the cost is just acting "a little autistic" (as Isaac has put it) for a while but gradually getting better, that doesn't seem like nearly the right price

Is not losing his legs enough to pay the cost? To have to depend on others forever, even to be able to go meditate (or greensee) under the heart tree? He had to give up all his desires and dreams, everything he hoped to be, for the sake of something he did not choose.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, princess_snow said:

This is where it gets tricky for me. So if Bran created Hodor in that moment, yet Hodor was Hodor before Bran went back to that vision does the alternate or split reality still apply ?   

Well, I think that we have to divide possible answers into 2 major categories, each of one of which has more sub-categories. 

The first major category is "the answer(s) in the world of Planetos, according to GRRM and the showrunners."  I see 2 different sub-categories of answers here, if GRRM and the show runners were to disagree. Basically, though, my point is that in the world of "fiction," the creator makes the rules, so that would be GRRM and the showrunners. To my knowledge, none of them have spoken on this issue, and to my knowledge neither the books nor the show answer it, either.  So, whatever GRRM and the showrunners say is canon, BUT, I will offer this opinion:  If they claim that only one reality exists, it is immutable (cannot be changed), no alternate realities exist, and no timeline split ever occurred, then I think their opinions are very contrary to modern scientific ideas, but hey, it's their world, we just play in it.

The second major category would be 'the probable answer in the real world."  This category, i think, has five possible sub-categories.  (1)  Time travel into the past is not possible, and thus we don't need to worry about or try to explain any of this, (2) time travel into the past is possible, and would create a timeline split, so there is no paradox problem, (3) time travel into the past is possible, but an infinite number of possible pasts,  futures, and alternate realities ALREADY exist, so there is no paradox, (4) some other explanation can resolve an apparent paradox, or (5) paradoxes are not a problem cuz actually it IS possible for a thing to both "be" and "not be" at the same time, all in our single universe and timeline.

Now...which of these 5 is correct?  I don't think we are 100% positive.  Different people believe different things.  In my opinion, the weight of current scientific theory seems to be in favor of No. 3, but to my knowledge it has not been 100% proven yet, and certainly I am not skilled enough in math or physics to claim I know the answer from personal experience, knowledge or reasoning.

Now, if all of that is unsatisfying to you, I'm sorry, and I wish I knew "THE" answer so I could tell it to you, but I just don't.

Hopefully there's at least something in what I wrote worth thinking about, though. 

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, Apoplexy said:

I thought of it because of Hodor being related to old nan. She is really old, nobody's quite sure about when she came to winterfell and she tells bran stories about things beyond the wall. So it is possible she has some connection to magic, which could mean that hodor also possibly has some connection to magic.

Moreover, wyllis's eyes were completely white when he fell into a stupor. Whenever bran wargs into Hodor, his eyes get back to normal after his eyeballs rotate for a few seconds. I don't know if this was done intentionally or not.

Beyond this, I don't really have any substantial evidence.

Wow, great stuff, seriously.  The connection to Old Nan never occurred to me (although I did know Hodor is her descendant or related to her in some way, i can't recall exactly how.  I'm pretty sure Hodor has some giant blood, too, but maybe that was just a legend or rumor.)

And yeah, you make a very strong point about Old Nan.  It would not be surprising at all to learn there was something supernatural about her.  She told stories that we are learning were very accurate, stories about things that happened many thousands of years ago.

And the part about Hodor's eyes could be significant, too.

Great food for thought!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

3 minutes ago, Cron said:

Well, I think that we have to divide possible answers into 2 major categories, each of one of which has more sub-categories. 

The first major category is "the answer(s) in the world of Planetos, according to GRRM and the showrunners."  I see 2 different sub-categories of answers here, if GRRM and the show runners were to disagree. Basically, though, my point is that in the world of "fiction," the creator makes the rules, so that would be GRRM and the showrunners. To my knowledge, none of them have spoken on this issue, and to my knowledge neither the books nor the show answer it, either.  So, whatever GRRM and the showrunners say is canon, BUT, I will offer this opinion:  If they claim that only one reality exists, it is immutable (cannot be changed), no alternate realities exist, and no timeline split ever occurred, then I think their opinions are very contrary to modern scientific ideas, but hey, it's their world, we just play in it.

The second major category would be 'the probable answer in the real world."  This category, i think, has five possible sub-categories.  (1)  Time travel into the past is not possible, and thus we don't need to worry about or try to explain any of this, (2) time travel into the past is possible, and would create a timeline split, so there is no paradox problem, (3) time travel into the past is possible, but an infinite number of possible pasts,  futures, and alternate realities ALREADY exist, so there is no paradox, (4) some other explanation can resolve an apparent paradox, or (5) paradoxes are not a problem cuz actually it IS possible for a thing to both "be" and "not be" at the same time, all in our single universe and timeline.

Now...which of these 5 is correct?  I don't think we are 100% positive.  Different people believe different things.  In my opinion, the weight of current scientific theory seems to be in favor of No. 3, but to my knowledge it has not been 100% proven yet, and certainly I am not skilled enough in math or physics to claim I know the answer from personal experience, knowledge or reasoning.

Now, if all of that is unsatisfying to you, I'm sorry, and I wish I knew "THE" answer so I could tell it to you, but I just don't.

Hopefully there's at least something in what I wrote worth thinking about, though. 

 

Thankyou Cron, Ill agree to accepting no 3 ! Lol. My problem is I like things to make sense, and for the purposes of time travel I know there are several possibilites as you stated above. I mean Back to the Future makes total sense for me. I do hope this gets addressed in the books, I dont have much hope it will in the show. Its fun to discuss though so thanks again. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

On 9/1/2017 at 3:03 PM, SerJeremiahLouistark said:

I think Meera is right. And what's worse is he seems to be connected to the the Night King somehow.  It can't be because of the touch because the Night King saw him before the touch, somehow or another the Night King can detect Bran through his greenseeing ability.  I don't buy that Bran is the Night King, but I do think that the Night King was potentially a 3 eyed Raven once, or a greenseer, or perhaps it was just the Children's magic spilling over into the Night King but, we have now seen Viscerion's powers convert, which leads me to believe that the Night King had these powers to an extent before he was turned, and him being turned twisted his powers or made them stronger or modified them in some way.  

I have wondered if the Night King is using Bran.  Bran thinks he is spying on the Night King but in actuality he is using Bran to locate everyone else and basically using him as a means of spying.  Bran is the Night King's wierwood, until Bran becomes the Night King himself.  Crackpot, the 3 eyed Raven used Jojen to bring Bran north because he knew this would all happen, and the 3 eyed Raven is actually the Night King in training.  But the Night King passed over Bloodraven because Bran is a better candidate.  Sort of like the Sidius passing Vader for Luke, now Bran is being used to spy on everyone south of the wall until he himself is turned into the Night King.  

So they took a plot point out of the Harry Potter series? Well that's easily solved. Just get someone who isn't Snape to teach Bran some occlumency and we're good.

Back to the thread general, I don't think Bran is "dead." I think he's in shock and temporarily numb. Who wouldn't be after getting all of history dumped into your brain at once? There's no way he can deal with and process all of that and continue to learn and improve his powers enough to beat NK and have time for emotions too. Besides which, we must all remember that if he can't feel any emotions that means he can't feel fear and fear is the path to the ice side...er, dark side.

I think the weirwood ex machina, at least in the case of 7ep7 was a necessary result of them monkeying with the story. They took a really great anti-LF witness out of play to give Sansa a better screen story. So they have to get damning info about him from somewhere else. They've made Bran into a living encyclopedia with instant replay of all of history's major events, so why not use him to fill in the massive plot holes? I'm just annoyed that they didn't have him mention LF talking Joff into executing Ned. Of course if he had, Arya might not have let LF die so quickly.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

25 minutes ago, princess_snow said:

Thankyou Cron, Ill agree to accepting no 3 ! Lol. My problem is I like things to make sense, and for the purposes of time travel I know there are several possibilites as you stated above. I mean Back to the Future makes total sense for me. I do hope this gets addressed in the books, I dont have much hope it will in the show. Its fun to discuss though so thanks again. 

Well, I don't know how helpful I've been, but it is fun to talk about for sure.

I don't know if you're a big fan of science fiction or not, but these issues are addressed in sci-fi pretty frequently, even more than fantasy fiction (although often the two genres are basically the same thing, or at least have a lot of overlap)

By the way, did you see the movie Interstellar, with Matthew McConaughey a year or two ago?  Great movie, and it addresses some of this stuff, too.

Back to the Future movies are awesome, SO much fun!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

19 hours ago, Cron said:

Actually, time travel IS possible.  In fact, it's been known for a very long time that time travel into the future is, theoretically, very simple and very easy:

Simpler, just sit there. Even ignoring the fact that everything is already traveling into the future at one second per second: Where you're sitting is on a planet, in the middle of a gravity well, which means you're accelerating, which means you're doing the exact same thing as that guy in the rocket. It may only have a tiny effect when compared to his whizzy rocke, but it's a measurable nonzero effect—in fact, big enough that our GPS satellites have to deal with it. We're all time traveling into the future right now, at very slightly different rates depending on where we are on the planet.

19 hours ago, Cron said:

Now, what about time travel into the past?  For a long time I thought that was not possible, but no, actually, modern science seems to indicate that can be done, too

That's not really true. General relativity inherently allows for time travel, and that was discovered very early on. The only thing recent is that the generation of physicists who grew up on Doctor Who and Star Trek have tried to work out technological ways to create time travel and then try to prove them impossible, which nobody bothered to do before them.

19 hours ago, Cron said:

Also noteworthy to this discussion is that "time"is just another dimension.  Indeed, my understanding is that in a VERY real sense, "space" and "time: are ACTUALLY just aspects of the same thing, sometimes called the "space-time continuum" or the "fabric of space-time."  As such, it thus stands to reason that we SHOULD be able to travel through the "time dimension," just as we DO travel through time itself every day (living our lives)

Not the way (I think) you're thinking, because that requires traveling faster than light (or going through an infinite gravity well), and the same theory that tells us that doing so would let you travel back in time also tells us that you can't do so in the first place.

That's why you need things like closed timelike curves—regions of space where the curvature is finite everywhere, and you can travel without locally ever exceeding the speed of light, but from a distant vantage point your total trip is faster than light anyway.

7 hours ago, Cron said:

The second main theory that can resolve apparent paradoxes from time travel into the past says that ALL imaginable and conceivable realities ALREADY exist,

Your second explanation is basically the same just a sounder version of your first—if many worlds makes sense, it makes more sense with many worlds always existing than many worlds where time travel physically causes them to split.

There are alternate explanations that have nothing to do with many worlds, however.

The simplest one is predestination. If you take GR seriously, the entire universe is predetermined. Hodor isn't a paradox because Bran reaching back from the future always happened. Lots of time-travel stories are written this way; usually the hook is that the characters think they're changing the past only to discover their actions are actually creating exactly the events they wanted to change.

A more subtle idea is what's sometimes called the Novikov self-consistency principle. Oversimplifying a bit, even if the universe isn't predetermined, time travel only works in predestined loops. This is how a lot of Larry Niven's stories work. And this may be what GRRM intended with Hodor.

7 hours ago, Cron said:

all Bran did was travel through a space-time dimension (the 5th or 6th dimension) to an alternate reality destined to proceed as we saw on t.v. screens.  (This relates to 11-dimensional theories of the multiverse, which hold that ANY and ALL "universes" or alternate realities you can imagine already DO exist.  This is not just science fiction, by the way.  MANY leading scientists on our planet right now believe it is true, although the math and physics are beyond my ability to even fully understand, much less explain here.)

No, this doesn't relate to 11-dimensional theories at all. M-theory doesn't have any additional dimensions of time. And the alternate realities (if you take many worlds seriously) aren't arrayed along any of those dimensions; each one is its own 11-dimensional universe. The extra dimensions are basically just more normal space dimensions, except that they're curled up into a tiny circle. Which is cool, but hard to explain, and probably not relevant here, so I won't try unless someone asks.

Of course you can actually try to treat the "pseudo-dimension" of many worlds as an actual dimension, but the simplest way to do that doesn't work at all. Of course that hasn't stopped some sci-fi from doing it (such as some Doctor Who spinoff novels and audios). But anyway, there is a cool way that might really work:

You can reformulate general relativity with no time in it at all. There's just 4 dimensions of space, and time emerges as an approximation from the fact that there are more things that can be taken as accurate records of things that can become if you slice the universe in some directions than in others. Sorry if that's hard to understand; it's hard to explain, but if you're interested, look up Julian Barbour. Anyway, if you expand that to a 5-dimensional universe, it seems to work just as well, but that leaves you 2 dimensions that approximate time instead of 1. And there's no reason there couldn't be more records along one of those directions than the other. In which case you get a universe where you, if can travel into the "past", you can also travel into the "meta-past" to see what the universe was like before you time-traveled into the "past" and changed stuff. (Although this is one of those models that takes GR seriously, so the universe is predetermined and you're not actually changing anything, it has room in it for what looks like changing history to any reasonable observer, which is good enough.)

7 hours ago, Cron said:

Final note:  For anyone reading this who would like to learn more about this stuff, I would recommend Googling "einstein's theory of special relativity," "how to think in 10 dimensions" (there are some GREAT short videos that explain some of this stuff), and "11-dimensional theories of the multiverse."  

You need general relativity, not just special relativity, to think about time travel in any interesting way.

But if you're going with many worlds, that has nothing to do with relativity; it's from quantum physics. I think Max Tegmark does a great job explaining how all the different kinds of multiverses, including this one, fit up with each other.

Also, if your "how to think in 10 dimensions" recommendation is the YouTube video and book that I think it is, it's complete nonsense. If it helps you visualize the basic idea of higher dimensions, great—use it as a scaffolding to get that visualization, and then throw away everything you think you learned along the way, because it's all misleadingly wrong. And honestly, I think Flatland and its various quasi-sequels (even if they only go up to 4 or 5 dimensions) do a better job of getting you that visualization without misleading you into thinking the rest is anything but fantasy.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

5 hours ago, Megorova said:

I had a different understanding of 'Hodor situation'.

Bran served a role of a bridge/conductor between Wyllis and Hodor, because he was simultaniously near both of them, in past and in present. And it has nothing to do with Bran's warging. It wasn't caused by warging, it was caused by what happened to Horod's body during that warging.

Wyllis became damaged because he experienced moment of his future death. And what he felt was so horrible, that he lost his mind.

Hodor in present was stabbed multiple times, and torn apart by wights, and Wyllis in past felt all that pain, and damage, and fear. And that experience changed him forever. He suffered severe psychological trauma, NOT brain damage.

This is my take too. Wyllis mental connection with the moment of his future death is what caused the damage and turns him in "Hodor". So, the ink is certainly dy, in the sense that nothing that Bran does or sees can change the past and lead to a different present.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Archived

This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.

×
×
  • Create New...