When you take this theory to it's logical conclusion, you end up with some strange outcomes. The strangest is the idea of going back and killing baby Hitler. When you attempt to do that, the universe, in it's self righting ways makes the assassination attempt not work. Since Hitler is a pretty big enemy for a lot of people, many people over time try to go back and kill Hitler.
Hitler, on the other hand is just living his life as an Austrian child and young adult suffering from constant attempts on his life from people who he has no way of knowing. He gets the idea that people are always out to get him (because they are) and becomes evil, and uses the assassination attempts to justify creating the Holocaust.
This is all just a bunch of nonsense, but I enjoy discussing it regardless.
Why bother going back so far? Let's think of what would happen if you went back 30 seconds. As soon as you arrive in the past, take a baseball bat to the time machine. What then?
And then let's take the article's scenario at face value. If you went back 5 minutes and somehow events always led back to you successfully using the time machine, your consciousness would be stuck in a permanent 5-minute loop. Maybe you could spice up those 5 minutes but you'd be right back where you started soon enough. Wouldn't the same be true if you went back 5 seconds? That would be hell.
But that's not the end of it. If you went back in time, why would we assume you'd displace to a new location? One of two things would need to happen: A) you'd need to teleport AND erase a blank area of space perfectly sized for your arrival, or B) you'd rewind like a tape playing backwards.
I like to think of the B scenario. If it were true we would never know it. The effects of the time machine would never be observable. We could have working time machines all around us right now for all we know. As I sit in this chair I could be at the destination of a trip through a time machine which I will one day invent. And when I finally enter the machine and flip the button, nothing will seem to happen. A pointless device.
But the article reads like some sci-fi bs tbh. What's considered the 'same outcome'. If I kill baby Hitler, would the universe create another just like him? Or someone else will do same things? If someone else does them, surely it won't (for example) kill as much people. So someone dead would now be alive in the future (or vice versa). And now the outcome isn't the same yeah?
I find the concept absurd as well. If you do something like go back in time and murder Hitler, you're going to be impacting the actions of every single human being alive. Within a few generations there's going to be an entirely different set of people alive than the set of people alive in the universe in which Hitler was not murdered. This idea that you would still have to go back in time because the universe corrects itself makes no sense because there's just no way you would still exist. I'd be willing to entertain the idea that someone else would go back in time for the same reason, but it's all just wild speculation.
Pratchett: “Shoot the dictator and prevent the war? But the dictator is merely the tip of the whole festering boil of social pus from which dictators emerge; shoot him and there'll be another one along in a minute. Shoot him too? Why not shoot everyone and invade Poland?”
Perhaps it’s the paradox that makes the travel
impossible rather than the physics with the infinite loops settling/converging on the scenario where time travel is not discovered / possible.
This is assuming you will be successful in assassinating Hitler and that the timeline is mutable as opposed to the idea that time travel was always 'meant' to happen.
Hitler, on the other hand is just living his life as an Austrian child and young adult suffering from constant attempts on his life from people who he has no way of knowing. He gets the idea that people are always out to get him (because they are) and becomes evil, and uses the assassination attempts to justify creating the Holocaust.