The Legend of Zelda and time loops

[pikachamp]

In Oracle of Ages you do a lot of time traveling, leading to countless pardoxes ignored in the game. But one in particular really bugs me.
At some point you find this goron door guard in the past and he says he wants some to pass down to his descedants, later you find another goron doorguard in the same place, he says he's hungry. You get him food, he gives you a vase, saying it was passed down from his ancestors. You then give the vase to the goron door guard in the past.
Doesn't this create some sort of time loop? Is a time loop even possible?

[rlp]

Theoretically, yes, it is possible. Provided time travel is possible.
You get the vase, the vase gets taken back in time, given to the goron who wanted something, right? It is a loop, but one that closes/is closed. The moment you took the vase back in time, it ceased to exist in the present, and existed in the past. At no point in time is the vase accompanying a moment where two of it existed, so I don't see a problem.

[This message has been edited by rlp (edited 07-15-2003 11:49 AM).]

[groza528]

I've got what is, AFAIK, a unique perception on time loops.
Let's use your example.
Let's say that the "first" time this happened, the second goron guard simply found the vase somewhere. Then when you give him food, he said, "See this pretty vase I've found? Maybe you can find some use for it."
So then you go back in time and give the vase to the ancestral goron. At this point time completely rewrites itself, so the timeline in which the vase was just found ceases to exist altogether. The Link that gave the goron this vase will die and a different Link will be born that meets the future goron; he doesn't know what happened the first time. The descendent goron thinks the vase was passed down, so Link does too; the ancestral goron thinks you gave it to him as a gift to pass down. Now, if NOBODY knows the truth (because the truth is just gone, ceases to exist) the situation is exactly how you described it in the game.
This is a very simple example, I don't expect this would happen so cut-and-dry. Most likely there would be several iterations before time settled into a loop that didn't change.

[groza528]

OK, maybe not so unique thanks rlp

[casinopete]

I agree with you completely, groza (had typed out much of the same myself), except that the "ceases to exist" is in a rather Schroedinger's Cat sort of way - there's no reason to guess those branches would actually obliterate themselves, but since they can never have any more influence on your branch, they might as well have ceased to exist.

I think the game would be much cooler if you'd had to play through several layers before it solidly looped.

[This message has been edited by casinopete (edited 07-15-2003 12:01 PM).]

[Death Mage]

If you played through enough layers, would the vase fianlly b worn down to the point of not existing? I mean, it's reliving the same time period over and over and over...

[Samadhi]

But here's a problem I have with that loop. It's an infinite loop so the vase would be infinitely old. So it would disintegrate and there would be no vase.

A way out of the 2 doctors is to assume that one of the ancestor's kids broke the vase when tossing around a football or something and then surreptitiously replaced it with itself.

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A One that isn't cold, is scarcely a One at all.

[Samadhi]

@ DM

[casinopete]

What a deliciously wonderful point.

[Death Mage]

This is why I dislike bothering with time travel stuff. Even when I was writing stories etc, I only messed with time travel on VERY rare occosians.

Although, when done right, time travel stories can be the best.

And @ Samadhi

[What if...]

I don't like iterations. Lets just say the whole event is from particles suddenly and randomly leaping into the shape of a vase. Then the vase's unimaginably unlikely beginning could be prevented by its turning into itself at an earlier/later time. Since magic is allowed in the world of Zelda, the vase could be magically indestructible. However, since it would exist for an infinite time, it would spontaneously destroy itself at some point. Therefore, you must destroy by any impossible means at your disposal, anything as weird and unlikely as the above.

O.K. Got that out of my system for a while. I was just being weird, and sharing with you all.

My view is simply, that either the past has already taken into account the future, so any changes we make only influence it to make the present more likely, or that we will fail to influence it at all if we try to do something which could make a paradox.

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O.K., so how did I screw up this time?



[This message has been edited by What if... (edited 07-15-2003 01:44 PM).]

[Navigator]

Or maybe the two Gorons aren't related! That would mean, when Link gets the vase in exchange for the food, he gets it from Goron Family A, after it has been passed down through many generations in Family A. Then he takes it back in time and gives it to a Goron in Family B, and that Goron begins passing it down through Family B. Then there's no paradox.

The only problem with this is that, during the period of time after Link gives the vase and before he recieves it, there are two "copies" of the same vase in existence. But i think that's less of a problem than the infinite loop thing.

[Samadhi]

[What if...]

What I think is more likely, is that in another Zelda game, you learn a song from a particular man, go back in time, and teach the same song to his former self. I don't think there are as many problems with paradoxes as far as a vase breaking down or anything, because no particles are required to go back in time and become themselves (though they might do it anyway, just to make you mad).

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O.K., so how did I screw up this time?

[What if...]

I like Gott's Time Travel in Einstein's Universe, because there are a couple of pages devoted to items or particles with no beginning, looping back on themselves. Admittedly, most of the references in that section are to movies/books written about it, but according to him, many virtual particles are expected to loop back on themselves in the same way, so on a microscopic level, at least, a song or "mini-vase" could be without origin. That sort of thing, therefore, could also happen to a real vase or song, but in all likelyhood with vanishingly small probability. And the vase, of course, would disobey the second law of thermodynamics if it didn't wear down, unless someone smashed it and made a new one, which would make this whole thing kind of pointless.

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O.K., so how did I screw up this time?