Did I Just Say Something Meaningful About Quantum Physics?

"If a person happened to travel to his own past, won't he create a time loop for himself?"

(ANSWERED BY NATHAN COPPEDGE VIA QUORA.COM)
In my own experience (I think I have time-traveled six times), one rarely encounters one's own previous self. One can only encounter one's previous self once, and then something goes weird about the program. It's like one is promoted to a god, except maybe without attributes, with no guarantees of safety, with the same laws of physics, but no other self-manifestations. It's a subtle event, but a meaningful one. One goes a little bit crazy, probably because the earlier self is crazy. One is, in effect, infinitely crazy. But one is only infinitely whatever happened. So, one is finitely-infinitely crazy.

Assuming it has nothing to do with direct contact, the changes only occur once, because the person one travels to see is either one's current self living in the past, or a different self who only appears to be related. In either case, the relationship is finite, because one's body is finite. Granted, there are now two bodies in the past, but that does not mean that there are three, or four, or infinite.


I'll give an example for ordinary particles: a time crystal. These are proven to work under certain conditions, but only when the conditions are met. The particle that travels within the crystal is one particle, not infinite, but it exists continually within the time-stream between the past and the future.


You might say that time-travel only happens once. But, from the perspective of the person (or particle), it could happen again, but only if the same conditions continue to hold. 


Think of it this way: a particle is always looking for the easiest way. In one dimension of time, it's a line. In two dimensions of time it's a circle. But within the circle, it might really have more dimensions of time! It might really be moving (usually) in some form of spiral of the third dimension of time. So, while it looks like a loop, in effect it is usually more of a curve than that.


If the conditions change in any way, it's like living in a different future, but not necessarily a different past. The more the past changes, the more the past self decides to do something different with the future. And the more one travels to the past, the more one's past self is likely to change course and do something different.


A particle, for example, might not have a problem manifesting just once. That might be the way the crystal is designed. Or, it may be that every time it travels, part of the interaction is rejecting a secondary (virtual?) particle, the type of interaction that is familiar to physicists.


So, there IS feedback from the past, but it is not USUALLY infinite.


If the particle in the time crystal traveled in a loop infinite times, that would be infinite. Before that, the best it can do is be in more than one place at a time.


But if I phrase your question differently, as to whether one will then be able to re-live one's life, the answer is YES! Sometimes, if one travels to one's past, the temptation is to do exactly the same things one already did. Other times, there is too much 'time-flux' and one is sling-shot within some time back to a similar place to where one traveled from.


And a lot of other people have to try to explain that time-travel really happened in that world, such as by believing in time travel, thinking weird things happen, pleading ignorance, developing specialized knowledge that ignores the problem, or by believing in miracles.

In the sense that the travel is a semantic technology, the answer tends to be yes, although it is as likely that someone else takes the loop as that oneself does, probably, if it's purely exterior technology. If it's mental technology, it might sometimes turn into a loop if it's perceived as perfect and easy. But if difficulty appears to increase, or if easy means it's too simple to be perfect, then those are paradoxes which create a difficulty in repetition, even if one has the capability. There tends to be some degree of relative free will, so these problems are understandable. It isn't divine intervention without considerable complexity.