I have a theory about that, actually. If the experiment had gone just as Harry expected, would he have been able to avoid the temptation to write something different on the paper, just to see what happens?
Quite possibly the only stable time loop was one which involved a sufficiently creepy experimental result.
My pet theory was that Harry wrote “Don’t mess with time” to himself because in a previous iteration, he had succeeded in using Time Turners to quickly factorise, and then parlayed this capability into a money-making scheme; shortly followed by a world takeover-cum-ascension to godhood, realised it was overall a bad thing, had one of his “this is that moment twenty years from then where I look back and point to exactly where it went wrong” moments, and used his power to return to that time, complete with the knowledge that he shouldn’t mess with time. Which leads to him writing “DO NOT MESS WITH TIME” down, which leads to him seeing that, realising none of this, but writing down “DO NOT MESS WITH TIME” with the same level of fear and thus the same hand-shakiness, and thus we get a stable loop.
I would like to point out that this theory is both more consistent with the evidence available to us from the story, and more consistent with what we know about Eliezer: that a world that simply cheats is aesthetically unpleasing; and that it would amuse him to hide this from us.
The same place where “Don’t mess with time travel” came from.
I have a theory about that, actually. If the experiment had gone just as Harry expected, would he have been able to avoid the temptation to write something different on the paper, just to see what happens?
Quite possibly the only stable time loop was one which involved a sufficiently creepy experimental result.
My pet theory was that Harry wrote “Don’t mess with time” to himself because in a previous iteration, he had succeeded in using Time Turners to quickly factorise, and then parlayed this capability into a money-making scheme; shortly followed by a world takeover-cum-ascension to godhood, realised it was overall a bad thing, had one of his “this is that moment twenty years from then where I look back and point to exactly where it went wrong” moments, and used his power to return to that time, complete with the knowledge that he shouldn’t mess with time. Which leads to him writing “DO NOT MESS WITH TIME” down, which leads to him seeing that, realising none of this, but writing down “DO NOT MESS WITH TIME” with the same level of fear and thus the same hand-shakiness, and thus we get a stable loop.
I would like to point out that this theory is both more consistent with the evidence available to us from the story, and more consistent with what we know about Eliezer: that a world that simply cheats is aesthetically unpleasing; and that it would amuse him to hide this from us.