I believe the phrase you're looking for is 'wishful thinking'.

This isn’t exactly what I was looking for but it references what I’m talking about

https://blog.scienceborealis.ca/time-travel-is-possible-but-its-a-one-way-ticket/

You aren't making a lot of sense with your question but the link you posted above refers simply to special relativity

But you'll want into what we astrophysicists call "light cones" or "null cones". This will help point you in the direction that UQ student went with his study on chaos-free time travel. This study also assumes closed time curves, which is still just a hypothesis at this point

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At the end it says “A recent study at the University of Queensland may have the answer to this baffling paradox. In this study, the researchers prove mathematically that paradox-free time travel is possible, showing that the universe will self-correct to avoid inconsistencies.”

I read the study. It's from the same uni I did my Masters in Astrophysics at.

It was a purely mathematical hypothesis paper.
There is no evidence of close time curves being any more real than multiversal theory. The publication is a mathematical approach to if Einstein-Rosen Bridges actually exist within the physical world.

If a CTC is physically proven to exist, then yes, this study has some merit. But as far as current human knowledge goes, this is on the same wavelength as string theory, multiverse theory, or the death of the universe.

I like the version where instead of altering the future when you go to the past and alter things, you snap off an entirely new independent timeline. AKA Nothing you do will affect the timeline you came from when you hit the "Return to Point of Origin" button. AKA Dragonball Z time travel.

You can totally go one day backwards and kill the past day version of your own self and you will continue living because you clearly did not die in your timeline, yet. Then you could go another day further back and grab you from the past and bring yourself to the future. Multiple you would be fine because, although you were never recruited by yourself, you gained the ability to recruit yourself later.

Splitting timelines might make some of them collapse, dunno if it's possible in the first place, but I like this version for storytelling.

You can have your cake AND eat it. But you can never change mistakes from your own time, you have to live in an always-moving-forward way.

What you're saying doesn't make much sense but it sounds like you're very trying to describe the Novikov self-consistency principle. To be clear, this is a conjecture with no scientific basis. Time travel to the past is theoretically not impossible in certain spacetime geometries but that doesn't mean it actually is possible, and even if it is, we certainly don't know how to do it, so we have no way of saying how something that might not even be possible might potentially work if it were possible.

have you read the book 'pathfinder'? and it's sequels. it goes all crazy with this exact kind of scenario. it's by orson scott card. it does have the annoying parts of his writing style tho.

it seems like lately every post i see from this sub is just some person asking a question based on total misunderstanding of some fundamental thing. same reason i unsubbed from eli5. and pretty much why i'm gonna unsub from this one right now. so long!

I haven't read as many books as I want to. I used to read more. But the focus to do that is no longer available to me.

Nah, I haven't.

I just like how Dragonball Z handles time travel.

You do realize that asking questions is the only way to correct those total misunderstandings? ;)

Well, Stephen Hawking proposed a Chronology Protection Conjecture. In it he speculated that nature would prevent time travel. Does not align with your statement that an action in the past is fixed in the present by the universe, but it is the closest to nature (or a natural process) preventing you from messing with the past.

Here is a link: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chronology_protection_conjecture

I understand what you are referring to - one of the proposed mechanisms that prevents time paradoxes in hypothetical time travel scenarios.

The only phrase I can think of is temporal censorship, although I'm not sure if this is the coreect philosophical phrase for the suggested mechanism.

Hello u/Far-Counter-1319, your submission "I can’t remember what it’s called" has been removed from r/space because:

• Such questions should be asked in the "All space questions" thread stickied at the top of the sub.

Please read the rules in the sidebar and check r/space for duplicate submissions before posting. If you have any questions about this removal please message the r/space moderators. Thank you.

Yes but if you don't have the most basic understanding of science, you could just start by reading up on it and getting a more general education. Then you might have more well thought out questions instead of the stuff i see here all time.

I know the feeling. I haven't read anything in the last year or more. Hard to find time