My favorite explanation: since causality tries to avoid paradoxes, most time-travellers get squished by large rocks or natural disasters before they can act, because they would have tried to change things. Even if they were going to try and avoid changing the past, they would have inevitably made mistakes, so the only consistent result is either ignorance and co-incidence or dyeing almost immediately. Or the time spell failing due to unforseen problems, if you’re feeling generous.
As far as I understand it, causality is just the relationship between cause and effect. If I’m right, saying it tries to avoid paradoxes is like saying gravity acts whenever someone falls off a cliff to prevent them from flying.
If I really needed to explain away time travel in this fic, I’d probably have a future Twilight show up and say “Whatever you do, do NOT use time travel. I don’t care how bad it is. Even if Equestria is going to be destroyed if you don’t. DO. NOT. MESS. WITH. TIME.”
Fortunately, I don’t see any situation in this fic where Twilight would even want to use time travel. Arguments aren’t one-time only things, you can always come back with another counterpoint later against a rational opponent who’s arguing for the sake of finding out who’s right, rather than to win social status or something. And any losses of social status that may occur in the fic are nowhere near worthy of time-travel to fix them, it’d be like cleaning a house by burning it to the ground and building a new one.
As far as I understand it, causality is just the relationship between cause and effect. If I’m right, saying it tries to avoid paradoxes is like saying gravity acts whenever someone falls off a cliff to prevent them from flying.
That was a somewhat anthropomorphic allusion to the Novikov self-consistency principle. But yes, it is.
Fortunately, I don’t see any situation in this fic where Twilight would even want to use time travel.
Fair enough.
EDIT:
If I really needed to explain away time travel in this fic, I’d probably have a future Twilight show up and say “Whatever you do, do NOT use time travel. I don’t care how bad it is. Even if Equestria is going to be destroyed if you don’t. DO. NOT. MESS. WITH. TIME.”
You realize the canonical example of time travel was a stable loop, right? As was that pinkie-sense business.
My favorite explanation: since causality tries to avoid paradoxes, most time-travellers get squished by large rocks or natural disasters before they can act, because they would have tried to change things. Even if they were going to try and avoid changing the past, they would have inevitably made mistakes, so the only consistent result is either ignorance and co-incidence or dyeing almost immediately. Or the time spell failing due to unforseen problems, if you’re feeling generous.
As far as I understand it, causality is just the relationship between cause and effect. If I’m right, saying it tries to avoid paradoxes is like saying gravity acts whenever someone falls off a cliff to prevent them from flying.
If I really needed to explain away time travel in this fic, I’d probably have a future Twilight show up and say “Whatever you do, do NOT use time travel. I don’t care how bad it is. Even if Equestria is going to be destroyed if you don’t. DO. NOT. MESS. WITH. TIME.”
Fortunately, I don’t see any situation in this fic where Twilight would even want to use time travel. Arguments aren’t one-time only things, you can always come back with another counterpoint later against a rational opponent who’s arguing for the sake of finding out who’s right, rather than to win social status or something. And any losses of social status that may occur in the fic are nowhere near worthy of time-travel to fix them, it’d be like cleaning a house by burning it to the ground and building a new one.
That was a somewhat anthropomorphic allusion to the Novikov self-consistency principle. But yes, it is.
Fair enough.
EDIT:
You realize the canonical example of time travel was a stable loop, right? As was that pinkie-sense business.