Bootstrap Paradox

Posts here have been more scant than initially expected. My writer's block has forced me to just pick a topic and run with it. So if you have no interest in theoretical time travel phenomena, this post may not be your cup of tea.

The bootstrap paradox has always been fascinating to me. It is a staple of the sci-fi genre and when done correctly, can be an extremely satisfying and gripping plot. However, the concept itself can be quite trippy.

The bootstrap paradox is essentially a set of dependent actions that form a time loop with no discernible external origin. The episodes rely on each others existence. Here's an example:

I wake up this morning and open the new book I just got in the mail. I begin to read and realize the main character is having the exact same morning that I had. Eerily similar. Too similar. And the scariest part of all, when the main character takes the metro to work, she accidentally gets pushed onto the tracks by the crowds and dies.

I try to brush it off but little details of the book keep coming true. This continues happening until I accept that my future has been foretold and I hang back just in time, avoiding the dramatic situation that surely would have led to my death.

Inspired by this episode, I devote my life to quantum mechanics and theoretical physics and end up being part of a group that discovers time travel. After going to back to meet George Washington and getting into a heated argument on whether killing Hitler would create a reality-ending paradox, I get permission to investigate my clairvoyant savior.

I go back to the day the book was published only to discover that the author doesn't exist! Panicked, I resolve to publish the book myself. In fact, I brought my own life-saving copy and transcribe it and insure it gets published. I then arrange events so that 2018 Katie orders the book and gets it in the mail on the exact day of my almost death.

I thus save my own life. Just as my life was saved by a previous me.

This begs two mind-bending questions.

One, who originally wrote the book? I was the one that published it but I used the copy that I had received in the mail. Which was theoretically published by a former Katie who was transcribing from her copy. The book has plot and characters and dialogue. Whose mind did those ideas originate from?

Two, how did it become known that I would die that morning? I was saved because a future me (that had already been saved) lived to go back in time to create the events that would save me.

Essentially, I published the book that saved my life so that I could go on to publish the book that would save my life... and on it goes. The two points in time play off of each other. Like two boards that lean towards a middle point and support one another.

Now that I think about it, the bootstrap paradox is similar to a self-fulfilling prophesy. Ancient mythology purports that merely knowing future events, locks those events into place. The information you get ahead of time leads you to act in a way that ultimately makes the prophesy come true.

The bootstrap paradox is more complex because it is not just knowledge at play. Future events affect past events. And past events always affect future events- this is true of our current reality. So when past can affect future and future can affect past, events on a timeline (or a string of related events) become a loop.

Additionally, while you may want to escape a bad prophesy, a bootstrap paradox generally serves a purpose. You are following your own lead, after all. Self-fulfilling prophesies cannot be escaped. Bootstraps paradoxes should not be escaped.

Interestingly, Harry Potter contains both time phenomena. In Order of the Phoenix, we learn that by assuming Harry was the wizard to defeat him in a prophesy, Voldemort ends up giving Harry the power that would ultimately defeat him. This was a self-fulfilling prophesy: the knowledge of future events reversing to affect past events. In Prisoner of Azkaban, Harry gets the confidence he needs to complete a difficult defensive spell because he already saw himself (a future version who traveled to the past) do the spell. He saves himself so that he can live a few more hours to go back in time and save himself. This is a bootstrap paradox- actual future events affecting past events which will in turn feed into those future events.

So, why does all of this matter? It doesn't. Time travel doesn't exist and it's fairly safe to say it never will. If time travel exists anywhere in history, it by nature would exist in all of history. And even if it did, time may be way more linear and brittle than all of this.

Paradoxes may be too complex to hold their shape or may reset naturally. For example, I invent time travel, go back in time, step on a butterfly, accidentally divert the series of events that would lead to my birth, and so I (and the invention of time travel) wink out of existence. The Marty McFly effect, essentially.

Anyway, now you know about the bootstrap paradox. You're welcome.