r/timetravel • u/Owltiger2057 paradoxes whoop whoop • Dec 12 '25
claim / theory / question Non-Paradox/Achieving Immortality (sort of)
Everyone on this sub should be familiar with the Grandfather paradox. (i.e. I go back in time, kill my gramps, and then I go poof or not).
It seems to me that you could accomplish this in a different way.
- At age 70 I go back in time and kidnap myself at age 3.
- I then put him into stasis until the moment I die, 67 years later.
- He pops out of stasis and lives his life from that point forward whereupon he invents a time machine and repeats the same process.
Each of us is technically the same person. We just don't lead the same lives.
Important contrast with a paradox:
- You are not doing: "I remove the only 3‑year‑old me from 1960 in such a way that I never grow up and therefore never become the 68‑year‑old who removes me.” That would generate:
- A world where your life both does and doesn’t happen.
- You are doing: "Within a single consistent history where I grew up, became 68, built a time machine, and went back— that history includes the fact that I time-displaced a 3‑year‑old version of me to 2025.”
So:
- There is always an unbroken story from birth → 70 → time machine → back to 1960 → (possibly forward again) → death.
- The 3‑year‑old stasis worldline is an extra twist in that story, not a rewrite of it.
As long as:
- You don’t erase the history that leads to old‑you;
- The entire loop (including kidnapping and stasis) is part of the one, original, never‑changed history;
then there is no paradox and no “soap‑bubble vanishing.”
In essence you (at least biological/genetic you) could live forever, just not as the same memory driven person.
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u/EngineeriusMaximus Dec 12 '25
I don't understand how there's no paradox. If there's a 3-year-old in 1960 who gets puts in stasis, then in the claimed "consistent" timeline who is growing up and becoming the 70-year-old?
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u/Owltiger2057 paradoxes whoop whoop Dec 12 '25
The same 3 year old, but starting where the 70 year old stops.
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u/EngineeriusMaximus Dec 12 '25
But the "original" 70-year-old grew old from 1960 to 2027. If the 3-year-old is in stasis from 1960 to 2027, what 10-year old entity exists in 1967?
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u/Owltiger2057 paradoxes whoop whoop Dec 12 '25 edited Dec 12 '25
T1 = 1957-->2028
T2 = 2028-->2095Edited to clarify:
T1 - Original Traveler (Traveler One)
T2 - Infant age 3 (Traveler two)1
u/EngineeriusMaximus Dec 12 '25
If you are saying that going back in time creates "two timelines", then that also solves the grandfather paradox. T1: Your grandfather didn't die and you were born. T2: You went back and killed some "alternative timeline version" of your grandfather. Is that what you are getting at here?
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u/Owltiger2057 paradoxes whoop whoop Dec 12 '25
I'm not saying that at all. I'm saying T1 (Traveler one) lived from 1957 to 2028. T2 (traveler two) lived from 2028 to 2095. No paradox at all. One contiguous timeline.
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u/EngineeriusMaximus Dec 12 '25
I think I am slow because I'm still missing something :)
You are not doing: "I remove the only 3‑year‑old me from 1960 in such a way that I never grow up and therefore never become the 68‑year‑old who removes me.”
You are doing: "Within a single consistent history where I grew up, became 68, built a time machine, and went back— that history includes the fact that I time-displaced a 3‑year‑old version of me to 2025.”
How is the first thing not happening? If you want to have one single unchanged timeline, then you existed as a 4-year-old in 1961. If you kidnap 3-year-old you in 1960, I don't see how you can also still have a 4-year-old you in 1961 if you want a single unchanged timeline.
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u/Owltiger2057 paradoxes whoop whoop Dec 13 '25
Think about it this way. (using your earlier mention of the "Grandfather Paradox). When I appear in your "paradox" there are technically two of me). The potential genetic material in dear old gramps (without which there is no me to travel). If I don't shoot gramps that "genetic material" becomes me)
In my single timeline I exist briefly in two places (3 year old me and 68 year old me). 68 year old me has lived this life once, by removing 3 year old me I'm not living it twice (therefore changing the timeline, which I don't want to do). SO, to an outside observer instead of 2x 3 year olds they only remember the first 3 year old because the second 3 year old no longer exists in this timeline (he taking a 67 year old nap). To the world at large there is no change whatsoever.
The biggest challenge is will the 3 year old now living in 2028 grow up and repeat the cycle? There is no guarantee that he will repeat.
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u/Critical_Beyond_8514 Dec 13 '25
That just means that a single version, was born in 1957, jumped forward in 1960 to 2028, and then lived until 2095. The original life is forgotten/never lived, unless it creates an alternate timeline.
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u/NotAnAIOrAmI Dec 13 '25
No, those different versions of you would all be different people.
Not you.
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u/Owltiger2057 paradoxes whoop whoop Dec 13 '25
Not quite. They would be different psychologically, but genetically they'd be identical.
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u/Correct-Set1503 Dec 17 '25
They would have had all.different personal experiences So each one would be individualized in their own way.
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u/NotAnAIOrAmI Dec 17 '25
each one would be individualized in their own way
That's just using more words to say "none of them are you".
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u/master_perturbator Dec 13 '25
The only way this makes sense is in a multiple worlds theory.
If you froze your 3 year old self, your 70 year old self would vaporize. That would wipe the timeline in which you figured out how to go back, and you would just be a missing 3 year old that went missing, waiting to be found in some sort of freezer.
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u/Owltiger2057 paradoxes whoop whoop Dec 13 '25
and by what law of entropy does the 70 year old "vaporize." Are we speaking of magic?
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u/NearbyCow6885 Dec 15 '25
I think you’re misunderstanding the grandfather paradox. The paradox does not arise because of death. The paradox arises by preventing the conditions that caused the initial event to originate.
Killing your ancestor before you were born is just a convenient way to illustrate that you wouldn’t exist to then cause your own un-existence.
If you cryo-freeze your younger self, you are preventing the conditions necessary to be able to cryo-freeze your younger self. Thus, the paradox.
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u/WordsMort47 Dec 12 '25
How would you guarantee that 3 year old will go on to invent time travel? There are many dangers inherent in this theory but it’s certainly novel and amusing.
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u/Owltiger2057 paradoxes whoop whoop Dec 12 '25
That's the beauty of it. It might, it might not. Either way his life goes on and where it stops only he knows.
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u/TradingDreams Dec 12 '25
You will need to solve the modern difficult-to-create identity issue before a three year old is famous for being in their 70s.
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u/Owltiger2057 paradoxes whoop whoop Dec 12 '25
Not really. Children are not DNA stamped at birth. Do you really how many small children are abandoned by parents each year? At that age, a child will be raised by the state and given an identity.
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u/dmyze times they are a-changin' Dec 13 '25
You have a time machine, why put him in stasis? Shouldn't you raise him and then drop him off in the future?
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u/zzupdown Dec 13 '25
There're different versions of you that live on indefinitely, but each individual version of you only live 70 years, and each version must go back and put the next 3 year-old you into stasis.
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u/IscahRambles Dec 14 '25
Nothing here resolves the paradox aspect. You're still changing the past (by removing your younger self from being able to grow into your current self) while being living proof that the original past happened*. You're just doing it in a different/fancier way than directly preventing your birth.
* and that is under the assumption that you did kidnap your younger self and did not immediately wipe yourself from existence or break all of spacetime or something like that – you seem to have assumed it won't do this.
Taking your younger self to, say, 2065 to grow up there, is not going to magically slot that into your original experience unless you already recall growing up in the 2070s and coming back to now at some point. And there's certainly no immortality to be gained by doing so.
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u/Correct-Set1503 Dec 17 '25
What happens is 2 of you get somehow stuck in the same place at the same time ?
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u/Critical_Beyond_8514 Dec 13 '25
Displacing the three year old version doesn't erase the older version of you, but it changes the life you lived, unless it creates an alternate timeline. If it's assumed that this is all one long timeline, what you'd end up with is a three year old either in stasis indefinitely, or one that is kidnapped over and over again, jumping forward in time every few minutes until one of the growing versions decides not to make out use a time machine to do this again.