Internal Inconsistencies about Time Travel

Over the past two weeks, I've been getting into Steins;Gate which is an interactive fictional story game about time travel. Most of it is presented like a novel but there are also some slightly branching paths.

Within the world of Steins;Gate, time travel works in two ways. Fundamentally, time follows the Many-worlds interpretation where every choice splits into two new timelines: One where Choice A was made and another where Choice B was made. Perhaps there is even a third where the absence of committing to a choice was made as well.

The way that it's presented though, is that every minor choice does little to actually change the nature of the world. Small things may be different but all of the big events will still occur. The only way to truly change the future is to basically identify crucial turning points in history where you can entirely change the trajectory of things. Imagine JFK surviving for example compared to someone in the crowd deciding to buy a sandwich instead of a hotdog. The latter would have minimal impact on whatever comes after.

Beyond that, our protagonist actually does make lots of small changes that make reality worse and then has to work to undo them all, just in order to return to the original timeline where the story kicked off.

On top of all this, there is also linear time travel along given timelines, where you can go back and forth. Well, you as a player don't actually do that but the rules of the world support it on paper.

It got me thinking though: if you were to go back in time, where does "the past" get stored exactly? In my mind, I imagine it a bit like rewinding a VCR where people and objects return to where they were at a given point in time. If that were to happen though, it would seem to suggest that past states were stored or encoded in the universe.

Anyway, this very quickly got me thinking that reality is probably only ever just a snapshot of the present that is constantly updating. Not exactly moving forward into the future because that suggests there is a future to actually traverse through, but just always in the present.

That brings me to the actual reason I'm writing this though. It did occur to me that while I believe this, to some degree I do actually act as if time travel is possible, or at least the many worlds interpretation.

On some level, I do think I can get anxious about approaching a given task in front of me, not because I'm concerned I can't do it but rather because I imagine that there is some perfect combination of moves that will give the best possible outcome and what if this isn't that timeline.

Further, you might be a good fit for a given position but it occurs to you that there could be someone who would do even better and from an objective point of view, could the role being fulfilled be executed to an even higher level with some theoretical many-worlds alternative timeline as supposed evidence.

If, however, the many-worlds interpretation is dumb and everything is actually just a singular timeline with only one continuous snapshot of the present, the whole argument becomes stupid.

It becomes true that while you can imagine some perfect combination, such a combination never existed at all because no alternatives ever existed in the first place, and whatever happened is in fact the perfect combination by virtue of being the only combination that ever was and will be.

Further, no one else can be better than you in the role you're fulfilling because no one else ever was and will be filling the exact spot that you are, despite what your fantasy draft might have looked like.

There never was another alternative besides whatever has happened.