Nature of the timestream & related vocabulary?

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Caution: Philosophical rambling

I am interested in various views on the timestream from philosophy, religion, literature, etc. However, I can't find words to describe the different types of timestream theories (I listed two theories below). I personally like the phrases "mutable timestream" and "immutable timestream," and I did get a few hits on google for those phrases. Are there any other words/phrases in standard usage for these concepts?

Two types of timestreams in theory:
"Mutable" - Events in the timestream are changeable; the future either does not exist yet or can be changed; destiny or fate may exist but cannot be changed; time travel would create the possibility for a grandfather paradox.
"Immutable" - Events in the timestream are already set and cannot be changed; the future is already set, even though we may not be aware of it; we cannot change the future- we can only life our lives to discover what the future holds; time travel would not create the possibility for a grandfather paradox.


While we are on the subject, which theory to you hold to, if any?

Personally, I am a fan of the immutable timestream view. I like the Tralfamadorian illustration of time from Slaughter-house Five. (Basically, the Tralfamadorians say that the timestream is like a landscape, already set in place, and humans are tied to a train car with a telescope attached to our faces so that we can only few a small section of the landscape at a time, seeing different parts of the landscape as the train moves, but not realizing that the whole landscape is there the whole time.) I am also a Calvinist (aka Christian believing the theological teachings of John Calvin). The conflict between destiny and freewill has never bothered me because, since humans can only live in one moment at a time, we do kind of get to make our own decisions (at least from our point of view), and by making certain decisions we prove that we were destined to make those exact decisions.

I like the idea from quantum physics that the future and past is always there and all possible pasts and futures exist. In that way I believe we are travelling on our own routes and the route we take is dictated by our decisions. Whether we have free will or not there is only one route we ultimately take so we only experience one particular history. But all the other histories still exist its just that we cannot see them or remember them because that was not the route we took.

I think the future is not set, but our path through it is. But who knows?

I think that belief in a future creates a future of your own choosing (of available choices). Take away the frontal lobe and you take away both belief and the brain's ability to make sense of time and space, if I understand correctly. The ability to plan in any sense.

I will probably have to look into this more.

I think the quantum physics way of thinking suggests that the future is not set until we make a decision, or a decision is made for us. The way I see it is that if the quantum world is random until measurement is made then the future is random until we reach it. So measurement made = now, the present moment, and the future is the random uncertainty before the now moment. Perhaps.

'Ok Kid' said Grandpappy one sunny afternoon under the boondock, 'You aksed fer it!' Then rambled on into one of his famous all day meanderings.

Time is not as linear and causeandeffecty as most folk seam to think. It has wrinkles and bumps and knots of twisty timey wimey sort of....Yeah, well, anyway. First of all I like your question. It is, has been and will be an important one if and when time travel becomes popular and cheap enough for everyone to play because the syntax and grammer will need developing so that we can talk about the things we did will have been going to have done after we get back from trying to kill our grandfathers.

Quantum tum tum te tum, time. Humm ? ! Ok. In the beginning there was nothing, there was endless potential and the probability of something happening was one, and then something happened, which conveniently proved that the probability had been one. Once one thing happened something else could happen after it, and it could have been anything except for what had already happened because that had already happened so now the potential is infinitesimally less and the probability inversly more for the particular second thing.
The second thing could not happen as the second thing until the first thing had happened and the instant that the second thing happened (no I don't know what it was. It's not important) that is when time began. Before anything had happened there was no time.
Still with me? (no not you. you already know all this stuff. eat your cornflakes)
Ok so as each tiny event followed the one before a finite quantity of possibility collapsed so that the probability of a future event became more and more limited and dependent on the history of the things that had already come before it. (yes predictable. put that down. it's not for playing with)
In that way stuff kept happening and time kept lolloping along side, watching stuff happening at the front edge of the ever broadening wave and not looking where it was going.
Skip some other interesting but not quite relevent keys to the secrets of time travel and we find ourselves herenow wondering why Quantum super states exist with apparent duality until a very limited potential collapses.

All that just to say that you can't go back and kill your Grandpappy because if you did then you have and you are not here which you are so you didn't so you can't, no matter how hard you try. (yes he could) Junior wants me to point out that Grandpappy could still kill you so if you run into him back thenwhen try to be nice.

Hope that helps