(Gasp)
Vsauce, I’m Jake….and where are we?
I honestly have no idea how we got here or where here is.
Hello?
Maybe the person in the house has some information...What?
On my arm?
Loop...YES! OKAY!
Ok, we were talking about time travel weren’t we and in pop culture there are different types
for example Mental Time Travel.
Mental Time Travel, in pop culture, is when you physically don’t go back in time...that
is to say, that your body doesn’t travel backwards in time but your mind does.
This can be seen in movies like Groundhog’s Day or Edge of Tomorrow where they remember future
events, even though, they're in the past.
Hmm I wonder, maybe if I throw some of these rocks up there we can get somebody's attention.
Hello?!
Nothing. Now, Mental Time Travel, or MTT, is very curious because it avoids a lot of potential
paradoxes, by also allowing you to potentially influence the future which a loop does not.
I wonder...It's open! Come on!
One of the problems with MTT is The Cassandra Dilemma which is when
correct future predictions or warnings are ignored.
If you could see the future and you decided to tell everyone about it, who would believe you?
You probably would just be dismissed.
Footnote!
The Cassandra Dilemma originated from a Greek myth about the aforementioned Cassandra, the Daughter of the
King of Troy.
The Greek God Apollo fell in love with her and gave her the gift of prophecy, but when
she did not reciprocate his feelings, Apollo made it that no one would ever believe the
prophecies she’d seen even if they were true.
And speaking of seeing, I wonder if from up here we can better see where we are.
Uh okay let's come back inside.
So that was definitely me down there but I'm also up here.
Which means that this can't be mental time travel. But the loop thing does make a lot more sense now.
I mean there's also another type that you might have seen before called VHS Time Travel or Videocassette
Time Travel, where the present is analogous with a play button and the past with rewind.
As you go backwards through time you see everything that has happened on that timeline without
being able to interfere or be seen.
And fast forward would bring us into the future or to the present time where we originally started.
What we are currently experiencing isn’t VHS time travel either, because I was able to interfere
by writing this note, a very poor note that didn't really tell me what was going on. I probably should have written something better
like it's a loop.
Yes okay do we have a pen? In my pocket.
Alright, it's a loop.
Okay! Ya know I should have remembered about those rocks. That was my bad.
But it's alright, we'll just go, we'll wash this off. I'll write it again.
This door is now open, strangely. Actually
This is all pointing to a time loop.
Now we have to be very careful to avoid running into our past
or future self.
I mean I don't really know what happens but according to pop culture it's not good.
All of space and time could disappear, all reality as we know it might vanish.
Your mental state might just be even worse than mine and it's not good.
Let's check.
As I was saying before, what we are currently experiencing is a kind of time loop.
It is an isolated sequence of events where one action is the cause of the next
and it just continues on forward until we reach the final event which is generally the cause of the first event.
If not the first itself. And then we just go around and around.
This brings up an interesting philosophical dilemma, which is that if everything
that will happen has already happened, if everything is just a complete copy of the
previous sequence...can anything be changed?
If I were to stand up right now, and walk out that door would I be making my own choice,
or would it be the same choice that the previous version of me made?
How many times has this happened?
How would you ever know what was your own decision or one already decided for you?
The dilemma becomes knowing you don’t have freedom of choice but still acting like you do.
The causal loop is unchanging. There is no free will there is no origin.
It resets every time so you can't learn from your mistakes because you can't remember them.
We should move though before Bathroom Jake gets out.
So how did the loop begin?
Well that's the problem. That's the paradox.There is no beginning and there is no end.
There is no escape. Ask yourself, if you're watching this video are you also in a loop?
How do you know you’re not reliving the same moment in time again and again and again.
You can remember the past but you can’t remember the future.
Ya know this reminds me of a quote by author Douglas Adams, “This is rather as if you
imagine a puddle waking up one morning and thinking, 'This is an interesting world I
find myself in — an interesting hole I find myself in — fits me rather neatly, doesn't it?
In fact it fits me staggeringly well, must have been made to have me in it!'
This is such a powerful idea that as the sun rises in the sky and the air heats up and
as, gradually, the puddle gets smaller and smaller, frantically hanging on to the notion
that everything's going to be alright, because this world was meant to have him in it, was
built to have him in it; so the moment he disappears catches him rather by surprise.
Ya know we always try to hold on to the past.
This is the last door.
Might as well give it a try.
There is another kind of time travel, a wormhole.
Something that takes you from one point in space and time and places you
somewhere else.
It acts as a time bridge, connecting one place to another, continuing my Causal Loop.
And, as always, thanks for watching.
(Gasp)
Hello again! I just wanted to thank timeless on NBC
for not only co-producing this video
But also, sponsoring this video, and supporting Vsauce
If you're into time travel and the butterfly and things like that
I would highly recommend checking out timeless
There's a link right here, a little cards gonna pop in
and a link in the top of the description.
Okay, I'm gonna try to get out of this causal loop.
But uhh, thanks- thanks for watching, you know? Thanks!
(Laughter)