Paradox Free Timecode?

[on:]

It's supposed to be paradox free but in "Election 3012" a paradox happens and ends up making that president guy never exist. Am I overthinking this?

[Reply #1 on:]

Really wish I hadn't clicked this.  Please put spoilers in the title next time for those of us who haven't seen the episode yet.

[Reply #2 on:]

"Election 3012"

Decision 3012.

It's supposed to be paradox free but in "Election 3012" a paradox happens and ends up making that president guy never exist. Am I overthinking this?

No? The time code erases any copies of an individual, and there were two copies of Chris existing at the same time, him as a baby and the future Chris. The only problem I see is that no one in BBS kind of "disappears", they are erased by a (usually) horrible death. But maybe we never got to see the disappear effect.

[Reply #3 on:]

Or maybe we were brought to a alternate reality, where there wasn't a Chris Travers? And maybe in this one, Nixon didn't do any of that horrible stuff because another candidate made him change his mind about it? And he did something else?

It seems legit to me, but the Paradox-Free time code thing is beating the crap out of my theory. 

[Reply #4 on:]

This episode has created a billion theories and possibilities that are wizzing around my head.

[Reply #5 on:]

A simplification of this post:

• Travers stepped through the timesphere. He went back in time.
• He created a reality in which he didn't step through the timesphere.
  
• He didn't step through the timesphere.
• Therefore he had never actually existed in the past.
• Reality adjusted to compensate, removing Travers from the timeline. This is the paradox correction in action.

Feel free to dispute it, but it's the best I can come up with having only watched the episode once and not thought about it for longer than a few minutes. I mean, it was funny, it was an homage to (amongst other things) the Terminator and Back to the Future franchises, and it was full of good jokes. So I liked the episode enough that I don't care too much about wracking my brain to find excuses for any failures or inconsistencies. For now.

[Reply #6 on:]

I can't find anything major to dispute.  It seems consistent with how the time code has been used already.  As I remember, none of the paradoxes that existed for a while in BBS were of the sort that would create a contradictory situation where the time code was never used in the first place.  If they had been so, then we would have seen an event similar to the end of D3012.  If Travers had gone back in time to 3012 and just tried to live his life without interfering with the election he would have simply been doomed as usual after he was born.

[Reply #7 on:]

If Travers had gone back in time to 3012 and just tried to live his life without interfering with the election he would have simply been doomed as usual after he was born.

Thinking about this, it occurs to me that with the way the time code works, it would have been his younger self who was the duplicate, and would be subjected to the "doom field". Example:

Nudar went back to "yesterday" whilst testing the time code. The Nudar who went back survived. The "original" Nudar was smooshed by the Smell-O-Scope.

The Travers who went back in time would survive, the "original" Travers would have been doomed. The paradox is "corrected" but results in another paradox. I'm thinking that the entire "paradox correction" function is slightly buggy.

[Reply #8 on:]

A simplification of this post:

• Travers stepped through the timesphere. He went back in time.
• He created a reality in which he didn't step through the timesphere.
  
• He didn't step through the timesphere.
• Therefore he had never actually existed in the past.
• Reality adjusted to compensate, removing Travers from the timeline. This is the paradox correction in action.

Feel free to dispute it, but it's the best I can come up with having only watched the episode once and not thought about it for longer than a few minutes. I mean, it was funny, it was an homage to (amongst other things) the Terminator and Back to the Future franchises, and it was full of good jokes. So I liked the episode enough that I don't care too much about wracking my brain to find excuses for any failures or inconsistencies. For now.

That's kind of like what I said. But something else different in this reality, is that one of the other candidates must have made Nixon change his mind about the Alien move-out somehow, and probably made him do something else.

[Reply #9 on:]

The Travers who went back in time would survive, the "original" Travers would have been doomed. The paradox is "corrected" but results in another paradox. I'm thinking that the entire "paradox correction" function is slightly buggy.

Yes, I think you are right.  Thinking back on BBS, it seems the paradox correction favors whichever version of you used the time code last as the "prime" and not be doomed.

• The version of Nudar who went back survived, as the "original" hadn't used the time code at all from his perspective.
• All of the versions of Bender were destroyed except the one who used the code last, in order to rip the tattoo from Fry's ass.
• The version of Fry that survived was the one who used the code last in order to go back for warm pizza.
• Because baby-Travers would never have used the code at all, he would be the one to die.

Seems consistent.

I like it, except it does seem contradictory.  If I know that another version of me exists in my current time frame, it is in my best interest to use the time code again in order to ensure that I am the last version to use it.  If the other version of me also knows this, it would lead to a time code use arms race that would certainly result in the Universe ripping in half from so many uses.  Errrrr.

[Reply #10 on:]

Really wish I hadn't clicked this.  Please put spoilers in the title next time for those of us who haven't seen the episode yet.

sorry. I attempted not to use spoliers.

[Reply #11 on:]

I'm thinking that the entire "paradox correction" function is slightly buggy.

I like this idea. It fits with my theory of the time code being a hack in the programming of the universe.

[Reply #12 on:]

It fits in with Bender's role in "Overclockwise" too.

I guess I should have chose the synthesis ending.