/sci/ - Science & Math

I think if Novikov self-consistency principle was true and time travel was possible, you would be unlikely to meet yourself. It would be possible as it doesn't strictly require any inconsistency, but unlikely. Because after all, who the fuck would intentionally decide to just say and do the same things you remember the future self doing, once you become him? I would for sure try to do something differently. Now I would by necessity fail to do so, if it really was the future me and there were no alternate timelines etc. but this happening requires further unlikely and contrived things to happen - something random forces me to act the same way every time, or every single time my memory is fucked so bad I remember the interaction which should be memorable as fuck so badly wrong I can't choose to act differently.

The bigger the age gap between the two versions of me, the more likely the interaction is however, because my memory of the interaction will be more foggy so it requires less contrivances to happen. For example me meeting my 3 year old self wouldn't be that unlikely - the 3 year old me wouldn't even recognize the older version of me and would have no idea wtf is going on. After all I'm basically an entirely different person from him at this point.

Novikov self-consistency principle would in general have lots of odd implications. Say you tried to meet yourself one year back in the past, but you have no such memory of interacting with your future self. Now, you would probably just fail to meet yourself. But not for 100% certainty, and by trying to meet yourself you would increase the probability of a bizarre lapse of memory that would've made you forget the interaction entirely. As it would be necessary for the meeting to happen.