This is just a random idea I had for one of the possible uses of Facebook’s new Timeline feature. When I first saw it, I wondered if it would be able to show the future as well as the past, (I know it’s a retarded idea, but Facebook has a lot of money, so I wouldn’t put it past them.) but soon realized that wasn’t the case. But let’s just say for a moment that Timeline did show the future, up until your death. One of the first problems we would have to deal with is what kind of time travel model are we working with.

(For a detailed explanation of what the different models mean, head over to http://qntm.org/models)

Fixed History: This would be the worst case scenario, as it would mean we have no free will. Let’s say there is a Party next week that are thinking of going to, but you aren’t sure whether it will be good or not, so you scroll up in the timeline one week, seeing if you made any post about it. In this post you apologize for getting drunk and vomiting on someone else.

You cannot change that. It is fixed. In fact, the reason it will happen is because you read that status. No matter what you do, you will end up going to the party and vomiting on someone, so simply trying to avoid it would cause it to happen.

Hit the jump to see how all the other models would have played out

Malleable History: You have a bit more flexibility with this model, but ultimately the results would be the same. Taking the same example as above, you will try to avoid going to the party, but ultimately end up going anyway. The key difference between Malleable History and Fixed History is that with Malleable History, it doesn’t matter how you get to the party, as long as you get there. Here are two stories of the same party, but with different models. Hopefully this explanation will make things clearer

Fixed History Party: your future status is very explicit in trying to warn you:

It mentions the friend you got a lift with, the conversation the two of you had in the car and exactly what kind of alcohol you had to drink, before vomiting on someone.

You read this status and decide not to go, yet somehow you end up going anyway… with the same friend, having the same conversation. You try to fight it, but there is no point. Everything has to happen. And after it has happened, you make a status about it in hopes that your past self will be able to do things better. It fails; he goes to the party, vomits on the same person, makes a status… etc. If you somehow manage to avoid the party altogether, it would create a paradox and the Universe would shit itself to death.

Malleable History Party: Things play out slightly differently here. Again, your future status is very explicit in trying to warn you.

It mentions the friend you got a lift with, the conversation the two of you had in the car and exactly what kind of alcohol you had to drink, before vomiting on Jess. You read this status and decide not to go, yet somehow you end up going anyway. HOWEVER, the way in which you get there could be different. You could take the bus this time. Then you could avoid alcoholic drinks, but someone has spiked the punch bowl, or something like that. You end up getting drunk, but in a different way from before. You end up vomiting on the same person, despite your best efforts, so you write a status in hopes that your past self will do things differently.

…and then writes a status to his past self, who doesn’t go to the party at all, but 10 years later at another party, ends up vomiting on Jess.

These example are ways in which the universe would “course correct” itself to get back on track. How far the universe has to go to course correct would depend on the significance of the event. Vomiting on someone isn’t a significant event, so the universe wouldn’t really care how it happens. Take something like preventing the 9/11 attacks, and the universe would go out of its way to fix things, (arguably) even going so far as to alter your free will.

Multiple Histories: Same story as before, you see a status about a party a week from now, and decide not to go. The status will vanish. Because simply by observing the future, you change it. Looking at that status caused the timeline to branch off into a new reality, in which you didn’t (or wont) go to the party. (I am unsure whether or not the status will vanish/change in the Malleable History example.) Using this model would be similar to the time machine in the movie Paycheck in which the main character uses it to get the Lottery numbers. Unfortunately the machine predicted a nuclear war, and in their efforts to prevent it, the government ended up causing it.  But then again Paycheck is an example of Malleable History (despite the fact that the main character does end up changing things, so it’s not the best example.) The point of that example is that the system would throw the world into chaos. The stock market would crash, (or something, I don’t actually know how the stock market works) people will break up with their partners because 20 years from now they cheat on them, children would be aborted because in 40 years they become a rapist… so on and so forth. But each time they do something differently, it creates a new universe, with new problems to solve. It would all be a lot like the movie Minority Report.

Simulated Histories: This is the only way in which Timeline could realistically look into the future, or even alter the distant past (as I will explain later.) This model works almost exactly the same as Multiple Histories, except it’s just a guess, in the same way that the weather report “guesses” that it will rain tomorrow. It’s very likely that it will rain, but ultimately it’s just a (very well thought out) guess. In this model, there won’t be any literal time travel, only simulated experiences, though it would still wreak havoc similarly to the multiple histories model. One of the benefits of Simulated Histories would be the ability to make changes before Timeline even existed. You would be able to leave a comment on your wall from 8 years ago, warning you not to go to a certain high school (for whatever reason.)