Kyle wasn't always John's dad. He was always the father. It's called a paradox. It's exactly the same thing with how the Terminator is responsible for Skynet's creation. How is this conversation sill happening in 2021?
share"It's called a paradox."
It's unclear if u being ironic, or making this comment seriously.
By definition, a paradox is an impossibility. "a statement or proposition that, despite sound (or apparently sound) reasoning from acceptable premises, leads to a conclusion that seems senseless, logically unacceptable, or self-contradictory."
Acceptable premises: Kyle is John's father. Skynet arose from the ashes of the T800.
Logically unacceptable conclusion: Skynet always existed. John's father was always Kyle. But where did they FIRST come from to get the loop started?
There's no 'solution' to a paradox so I agree with you about 'How is this conversation still happening?'
My own personal take is that there is no true loop. Each loop changes incrementally by small degrees. Kyle may be John's father for a million or a billion loops, but eventually there will be a loop where John's father is someone else. Or maybe John never comes to be born at all. Or Skynet never comes about.
I don't think Cameron gave it that much thought, but it at least allows for T2 and subsequent movies.
Why would I say something if I didn't mean it?
"Skynet always existed. John's father was always Kyle. But where did they FIRST come from to get the loop started?
Its. A. Paradox. A hole in time, so to speak, that allowed something impossible to happen. An anomaly, fluke, etc. Think of it as a highway or tunnel that connects to things that cannot be connected. Not a direct route, but like a worm hole. You go in one in Philly, pop out in the Netherlands. Impossible, but it's there.
Paradox:
"a seemingly absurd or contradictory statement or proposition which when investigated may prove to be well founded or true."
Like a causal loop!
The thing with terminator is that we are watching an instance of an unalterable timeline in every next movie. You can't escape causality therefore every different universe is just that: a different universe. You can't change the past but (in the movie) you can jump to a different universe, as that is what those time displacements actually are. (not much choice doing other than that BTW, don't forget everything is causal ;-)
""Skynet arose from the ashes of the T800.""
Which movie was the T800 in?
Um crazy, the year is 2022 duh.
shareExcept that's impossible. Paradoxes don't just materialize out of thin air, they don't just exist. Something has to trigger one first. That is the power of time travel. It's the power to alter and shape the past and the future as you please.
Somewhere in the past there was another timeline, the prime timeline where time travel didn't yet happen. No Terminator arriving to 1984, so the punks, the gun store clerk, the Tech Noir patrons and the West Highland police officers all survive to live out their mundane lives, because the Terminator's violent attacks never happen. Likewise, Kyle Reese never travels back, so John Connor in this timeline has a different father, and he's probably a slightly different looking guy from the one we see in the opening of T2. My guess is the Porsche dude, who stood Sarah up on the night she went to Tech Noir. They later kissed and made up, followed by the obligatory make up sex that got her pregnant. Very plausible, since both girls are shown to have boyfriends and be sexually active.
So in the meanwhile, Cyberdyne did its thing with Skynet's developement. The prime timeline Skynet, possibly slightly less advanced compared to the T2 Skynet (because Cyberdyne didn't have the T-800 CPU yet) becomes self aware, starts the war and finally invents time travel in an effort to save itself when it realizes it can't win. Now things start to change. The T-800, in this timeline the most advanced model, is sent back to 1984 and it immediately interferes with the timeline. People that originally would not have died die now, and there's destruction that would not have occurred otherwise. Kyle Reese likewise interferes when it's he who gets Sarah pregnant, and not the Porsche dude. So John Connor comes out slightly different, it's now the guy from T2's opening, but nevertheless the outcome doesn't change: he's still a competent leader because now, thanks to Kyle, Sarah teaches everything he needs to know.
My point? Terminator Genisys, while a so-so movie, then demonstrates how time travel can be used to break this cycle, when Pops interferes with the 1984 Terminator and fights it. Suddenly the punks survive again, and T1 and T2 are all but erased from ever happening. This is how time travel can alter things. Time loops aren't these permanently fixed things that never ever change. If you go back even further and change/alter things, you can break a time loop. And for a loop to exist in the 1st place, something has to trigger it first. In fact, the T2 ending was meant to imply that the future war never again happens, thus again breaking the loop. If you know what must be changed, you can break a time loop.
shareA time travel paradox is impossible? You don't say...
And I shouldn't I have to explain this to an adult, but you're a byproduct of your parents. Sarah sleeps with someone else, that isn't John Connor. You don't simply swap out one parent and get the same person, LOL.
Honestly, from what I can tell, a lot of people get confused by time travel. I never realized this until Tenet came out, and I realized that even trying to explain something simple like T1 to ppl confuses them. They can't process the concept of an internal time loop.
There was a point where I thought Kyle wasn't John's Dad, but I was a young guy. Then I grew up and realized that's the point: it's a paradox. Plus, you're a byproduct of your parents. Sarah sleeps with someone else, that isn't John Connor. You don't simply swap out one parent and get the same person, LOL.
shareIt was tricky for me as a kid too cause T1 and T2 were both out there. T2 kills the entire paradox idea and suggests that truly "there is no fate but what we make", even though T1 was clearly doing the 12 monkeys thing before 12 monkeys did it lol.
share"T2 kills the entire paradox idea"
I think it does the opposite - it reinforced it even more. We find out the chip and arm from the first terminator was actually responsible for the creation of Skynet.
But the events of T2 didn't already exist in Kyle Reece's past in T1, so yeah they added that tidbit but they also focus on the idea that you can in fact change the future.
shareHow do you know what events exist in the past (present in the movie)?
The creation of Skynet and Kyle being John's dad is the paradox. I don't think that means you can't change ANYTHING just that those two things are always going to happen.
""We find out the chip and arm from the first terminator was actually responsible for the creation of Skynet.""
Someone said this in T2? Who said it?
"Honestly, from what I can tell, a lot of people get confused by time travel."
... he sez, unironically.
"They can't process the concept of an internal time loop."
An internal time loop can't exist.
i. It violates the Law of Thermodynamics, where the universe continually resets its entropy in contravention of everything we know about physics.
ii. A closed time loop renders free will everywhere across the universe meaningless.
iii. It effectively 'ends time' because the future beyond the time machine can't come into existence until the past has been firmly established which it never is.
These are scientific and philosophical principles, but I think many people understand them at an intuitive level. It's not that they can't visualize it. They just can't accept it because it can't and doesn't happen in real life anywhere.
Furthermore, even within the movie, it doesn't make sense. Picture it...
The human resistance breaks into the time machine room, just in time to see the T800 disappear into the past. They quickly strip down Kyle to send him back after the T800.
But then one of them sez: "Wait, whatever the T800 did back then didn't change anything. We're all still here. If we can wait a minute or two to send Kyle back, what's the rush? Why not wait an hour or a day so we can come up with a good plan? Why don't we wait a decade to see if we can come up with some weapons that can make the trip?"
Another one sez: "Yeah. I mean if nothing changed after the T800 went through, do we even need to send Kyle back at all?"
John: "Dammit he'll kill my mom. Kyle's wife!"
Kyle: "Wait, wut? Your mom died a decade ago of old age just after she gave you that photo. I never met her."
John: "Uhhh... yeah. I see where you're all going with this. Okay, put your clothes back on Dad. It's getting weird here."
---
You start to see the problem with time travel paradox movies. They render the movie meaningless.
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I thought you were criticizing me at first, but you're saying a lot of interesting things here actually. I'm not entirely sure what your closing point is exactly (criticism of time travel stories? defense of people who don't readily accept time travel stories?).
But I'll give some quick thoughts:
An internal time loop can't exist.
The human resistance breaks into the time machine room, just in time to see the T800 disappear into the past. They quickly strip down Kyle to send him back after the T800.
But then one of them sez: "Wait, whatever the T800 did back then didn't change anything. We're all still here. If we can wait a minute or two to send Kyle back, what's the rush? Why not wait an hour or a day so we can come up with a good plan? Why don't we wait a decade to see if we can come up with some weapons that can make the trip?"
but I think many people understand them at an intuitive level. It's not that they can't visualize it. They just can't accept it because it can't and doesn't happen in real life anywhere.
I was responding to your observation that people can't figure out how time loops work in time travel movies. My point was that even ignoring the fact they can't exist in reality, they break down even within the context of the movie no matter how much moviemakers try to hide the paradox.
Most people who see T1 defend it as an airtight time loop movie. It's not, can never be. Not just for the real world reasons, but even within the context of the plot the logic breaks down.
" it doesn't mean that we assume that the resistance knows that you can't change the past."
That's the heart of the paradox. They DO KNOW that THEIR PAST can't be changed by the fact that they exist at all. You -- at this moment asking this question -- know only one past... the one that led you to be here. YOUR past can't be changed because it already happened.
If someone sent a cyborg back in time to kill your mom before she had you, the very fact that you exist now tells you that they failed. No need to send anyone back after them to save your mom, right? You remember growing up with your mom, your kid brother who grew up with you, your mom retiring, all the family holidays you shared... The cyborg failed to kill your mom.
So, it's irrelevant whether John sends Kyle back or not. The past is fixed.
In fact, the Kyle that is standing beside John in 2029 can't be the same Kyle that was John's father in the past. How do we know? Because if it makes no difference whether John sends Kyle back after the T800 -- AND HE DOESN'T SEND HIM -- then WHO was the Kyle that was John's father in the past?
It had to be a Kyle from a DIFFERENT future in order to make the movie work. Cameron's script does a good job of papering over the obstacles that would create an impossible to solve paradox and everyone just ignores the them for the sake of a good action movie.
I think you're edging into a deeper conversation about the nature of time travel. But I'll try and reply without overcomplicating this.
Most people who see T1 defend it as an airtight time loop movie. It's not, can never be. Not just for the real world reasons, but even within the context of the plot the logic breaks down. They DO KNOW that THEIR PAST can't be changed by the fact that they exist at all. You -- at this moment asking this question -- know only one past... the one that led you to be here.
If someone sent a cyborg back in time to kill your mom before she had you, the very fact that you exist now tells you that they failed. No need to send anyone back after them to save your mom, right?
In movies, film makers use all sorts of tricks to disguise the gaps in logic that would prevent a closed-loop time travel story from working. I've heard people claim that Primer is air tight. I've seen Primer. It's very complicated involving time travel within time travel which I suspect was the writer/director's attempt to obfuscate the breakdown in logic that an analysis would reveal.
Another one is Presdestination... again the overly complicated story is meant to disguise the logic flaws that would be revealed under analysis.
The best time travel model that I've encountered is the one used in Looper. There is only one timeline, but changes to the past ripple up and down the one timeline to maintain internal consistency. Bruce Willis travels into the past, but the changes he makes also affect HIS memory of the past, so he can never really be sure if he was successful in changing the past.
In the Back to the Future movies, as Marty tweaked his parents' past, he still remembered the future that he was trying to get back to. When he returns to 1985 he's amazed to see all the changes between his memory of the future and the future that he created by tweaking the past.
Under the Looper model though, he perhaps messed up the timing of the day that he was conceived by a day or a week. As a result, he instantly disappears in the past at a particular moment because he never comes to exist in the first place.
-- cont'd below --
This leads to some bizarre possibilities. Imagine a scientist who invents a time machine, the first one ever. He goes back in time one month to meet himself. While he is there talking to himself in a coffee shop, he accidentally spills a bit of his very hot coffee on the hand of his younger self. Instantly, a healed up burn appears on the hand of the future traveller and he 'remembers' when he was talking to his future self in a coffee shop a month ago and was burned on his hand.
Neither man -- past version or future version -- would ever be aware that there was a time when they didn't have that burn on their hand. The timeline was changed but neither man knows it.
Now imagine if that traveller traveled to the past and killed his younger self accidentally. The younger man would die, the future traveller would instantly disappear, bystanders would tell the police a story about a strange murder in which the killer promptly disappeared...
And TIME TRAVEL WOULDN'T BE INVENTED. The time travel was a self-destructing phenomenon.
I believe it was Carl Sagan who offered up this hypothesis as a reason for why we haven't seen time travellers among us. The further back you travel in time, the greater the chances that you will create a future where time travel never gets invented.
Weird, eh?
This is way to confusing. Lets just say time travel in movies is a plot hole
shareThe closed loop theory certainly does have it's flaws, but there are problems with the opposing school of thought too. I mean, supposing there was an original timeline where John was fathered by someone else. Then in the first time-loop, the T-800 and Kyle Reese are sent back, and Kyle fathers John. In the second time-loop, unless they were sent back to an earlier time, wouldn't there be two T-800's and two Kyle Reese's in 1984? Or if that isn't the case, then why send Kyle Reese #2 back in time to replace Kyle Reese #1 if they already knew that Kyle Reese #1 could defeat the Terminator (assuming there even WAS a Kyle Reese #2, since events in the first time-loop would've thrown everything off kilter)?
shareOf course, it is the same paradox with the creation of Bible and its battle with Satan, if there was no Bible there would be no Satan or Satanism controlling the banking system, governments and most corporations around the world. This kind of paradox was something that absolutely blew me away in the recent months, and not many people may be ready for this truth, and this kind of shock though. There goes that saying that what we fight we feed it too. Maybe the best solution at the end is not joining either side of the resistance, and transcend that duality in our world. Our observation creates a reality from the perspective of quantum mechanics, so it is good to be wise and step out of such paradoxes.
shareOkie dokie artichokie.
share