# Grandfather Paradox
**URL:** https://forums.speedlife.net/t/grandfather-paradox/49580
**Category:** NYSpeed Off Topic
**Created:** [June 5, 2008, 10:08am UTC](https://forums.speedlife.net/t/grandfather-paradox/49580 "2008-06-05T10:08:25Z")
**Posts on this page:** 18
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@Dr.Stevil](https://forums.speedlife.net/u/Dr.Stevil)
#### Post date: [June 5, 2008, 10:08am UTC](https://forums.speedlife.net/t/grandfather-paradox/49580/1 "2008-06-05T10:08:25Z")
found this via stumbleupon, thought it was interesting enough to share
> Grandfather Paradox :
> Time travel is impossible as exemplified by the famous grandfather paradox. Imagine you build a time machine. It is possible for you to travel back in time, meet your grandfather before he produces any children (i.e. your father/mother) and kill him. Thus, you would not have been born and the time machine would not have been built, a paradox.
> Perhaps the craziest of the time travel paradoxes was cooked up by Robert Heinlein in his classic short story “All You Zombies.”
> A baby girl is mysteriously dropped off at an orphanage in Cleveland in 1945. “Jane” grows up lonely and dejected, not knowing who her parents are, until one day in 1963 she is strangely attracted to a drifter. She falls in love with him. But just when things are finally looking up for Jane, a series of disasters strike. First, she becomes pregnant by the drifter, who then disappears. Second, during the complicated delivery, doctors find that Jane has both sets of sex organs, and to save her life, they are forced to surgically convert “her” to a “him.” Finally, a mysterious stranger kidnaps her baby from the delivery room.
> Reeling from these disasters, rejected by society, scorned by fate, “he” becomes a drunkard and drifter. Not only has Jane lost her parents and her lover, but he has lost his only child as well. Years later, in 1970, he stumbles into a lonely bar, called Pop’s Place, and spills out his pathetic story to an elderly bartender. The sympathetic bartender offers the drifter the chance to avenge the stranger who left her pregnant and abandoned, on the condition that he join the “time travelers corps.” Both of them enter a time machine, and the bartender drops off the drifter in 1963. The drifter is strangely attracted to a young orphan woman, who subsequently becomes pregnant.
> The bartender then goes forward 9 months, kidnaps the baby girl from the hospital, and drops off the baby in an orphanage back in 1945. Then the bartender drops off the thoroughly confused drifter in 1985, to enlist in the time travelers corps. The drifter eventually gets his life together, becomes a respected and elderly member of the time travelers corps, and then disguises himself as a bartender and has his most difficult mission: a date with destiny, meeting a certain drifter at Pop’s Place in 1970.
> The question is: Who is Jane’s mother, father, grandfather, grand mother, son, daughter, granddaughter, and grandson? The girl, the drifter, and the bartender, of course, are all the same person. These paradoxes can made your head spin, especially if you try to untangle Jane’s twisted parentage. If we drawJane’s family tree, we find that all the branches are curled inward back on themselves, as in a circle. We come to the astonishing conclusion that she is her own mother and father! She is an entire family tree unto herself.
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### Author:  [@BuickGN](https://forums.speedlife.net/u/BuickGN)
#### Post date: [June 5, 2008, 10:13am UTC](https://forums.speedlife.net/t/grandfather-paradox/49580/2 "2008-06-05T10:13:27Z")
too hot to read all that
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### Author:  [@bracketracer](https://forums.speedlife.net/u/bracketracer)
#### Post date: [June 5, 2008, 10:14am UTC](https://forums.speedlife.net/t/grandfather-paradox/49580/3 "2008-06-05T10:14:57Z")
Heh…I read a LOT of Heinlein when I was a teenager, and remember this one fairly well.
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### Author:  [@JayS](https://forums.speedlife.net/u/JayS)
#### Post date: [June 5, 2008, 10:17am UTC](https://forums.speedlife.net/t/grandfather-paradox/49580/4 "2008-06-05T10:17:25Z")
Isn’t it obvious Fry? You are your own Grandpa.
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### Author:  [@sureshot](https://forums.speedlife.net/u/sureshot)
#### Post date: [June 5, 2008, 10:17am UTC](https://forums.speedlife.net/t/grandfather-paradox/49580/5 "2008-06-05T10:17:56Z")
I read about all the different paradoxes the other day. I personally like the paradox personified with this:
This sentence is false.
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### Author:  [@Dr.Stevil](https://forums.speedlife.net/u/Dr.Stevil)
#### Post date: [June 5, 2008, 10:20am UTC](https://forums.speedlife.net/t/grandfather-paradox/49580/6 "2008-06-05T10:20:29Z")
> [@bracketracer](#):
>
> Heh…I read a LOT of Heinlein when I was a teenager, and remember this one fairly well.
Is all of his stuff that twisted? I’ll have to check out more of his work.
can you recommend any decent books/stories of his?
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### Author:  [@97FormulaWS-6](https://forums.speedlife.net/u/97FormulaWS-6)
#### Post date: [June 5, 2008, 10:23am UTC](https://forums.speedlife.net/t/grandfather-paradox/49580/7 "2008-06-05T10:23:36Z")
Butterfly effect…
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### Author:  [@Dr.Stevil](https://forums.speedlife.net/u/Dr.Stevil)
#### Post date: [June 5, 2008, 10:29am UTC](https://forums.speedlife.net/t/grandfather-paradox/49580/8 "2008-06-05T10:29:09Z")
[http://www.heinleinarchives.net/upload/index.php](http://www.heinleinarchives.net/upload/index.php)
pretty cool :tup:
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### Author:  [@bracketracer](https://forums.speedlife.net/u/bracketracer)
#### Post date: [June 5, 2008, 10:34am UTC](https://forums.speedlife.net/t/grandfather-paradox/49580/9 "2008-06-05T10:34:32Z")
> [@Dr.Stevil](#):
>
> Is all of his stuff that twisted? I’ll have to check out more of his work.
>
> can you recommend any decent books/stories of his?
Try the following:
The Cat Who Walks Through Walls
Starship Troopers - _(wiki info) - likely the most controversial work in science fiction and his personal riposte to leftists calling for President_ [_Dwight D. Eisenhower_](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dwight_D._Eisenhower) _to stop nuclear testing in 1958. “[Heinlein] called for the formation of the Patrick Henry League and spent the next several weeks writing and publishing his own polemic that lambasted ‘Communist-line goals concealed in idealistic-sounding nonsense’ and urged Americans not to become ‘soft-headed’. … Critics labeled Heinlein everything from a Nazi to a racist.”_
Glory Road
Stranger in a Strange Land
I believe I’ve read more of his stuff, but that’s what sticks in my mind.
And yes, he can be pretty out there (which is ironic, or not, since he was a nudist)
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### Author:  [@Dr.Stevil](https://forums.speedlife.net/u/Dr.Stevil)
#### Post date: [June 5, 2008, 10:39am UTC](https://forums.speedlife.net/t/grandfather-paradox/49580/10 "2008-06-05T10:39:37Z")
thanks man :tup:
for anyone wanting to read the whole “all you zombies” short story, I found this
[http://ieng9.ucsd.edu/~mfedder/zombies.html](http://ieng9.ucsd.edu/~mfedder/zombies.html)
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### Author:  [@Fry](https://forums.speedlife.net/u/Fry)
#### Post date: [June 5, 2008, 10:51am UTC](https://forums.speedlife.net/t/grandfather-paradox/49580/11 "2008-06-05T10:51:54Z")
That’s not the grandfather paradox, that’s how Chuck Norris dates.
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### Author:  [@justa4door](https://forums.speedlife.net/u/justa4door)
#### Post date: [June 5, 2008, 11:02am UTC](https://forums.speedlife.net/t/grandfather-paradox/49580/12 "2008-06-05T11:02:18Z")
good read
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### Author:  [@ImportMuscle](https://forums.speedlife.net/u/ImportMuscle)
#### Post date: [June 5, 2008, 2:29pm UTC](https://forums.speedlife.net/t/grandfather-paradox/49580/13 "2008-06-05T14:29:03Z")
> [@Dr.Stevil"](#):
>
> If we drawJane’s family tree, we find that all the branches are curled inward back on themselves, as in a circle. We come to the astonishing conclusion that she is her own mother and father! She is an entire family tree unto herself.
So what your saying is shes just like every person who lives in the state of West Virginia?
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### Author:  [@Bovice](https://forums.speedlife.net/u/Bovice)
#### Post date: [June 5, 2008, 7:32pm UTC](https://forums.speedlife.net/t/grandfather-paradox/49580/14 "2008-06-05T19:32:13Z")
fuckin trippy shit…
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### Author:  [@zwarbyt](https://forums.speedlife.net/u/zwarbyt)
#### Post date: [June 6, 2008, 4:58am UTC](https://forums.speedlife.net/t/grandfather-paradox/49580/15 "2008-06-06T04:58:20Z")
multiple worlds, multiple possibilities, double slit and all that shit…
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### Author:  [@sureshot](https://forums.speedlife.net/u/sureshot)
#### Post date: [June 6, 2008, 7:47am UTC](https://forums.speedlife.net/t/grandfather-paradox/49580/16 "2008-06-06T07:47:43Z")
Just picked up “Stranger in a Strange Land.” Hoping for the best, but I have backups just in case.
Side note, the following sentence is also a paradox: “Everything in moderation”
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### Author:  [@bracketracer](https://forums.speedlife.net/u/bracketracer)
#### Post date: [June 6, 2008, 7:58am UTC](https://forums.speedlife.net/t/grandfather-paradox/49580/17 "2008-06-06T07:58:45Z")
> [@sureshot!](#):
>
> Just picked up “Stranger in a Strange Land.” Hoping for the best, but I have backups just in case.
Post a followup here if you don’t mind. I haven’t read it in quite a while, but I think you’ll dig it.
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### Author:  [@drvnkd](https://forums.speedlife.net/u/drvnkd)
#### Post date: [June 6, 2008, 9:23am UTC](https://forums.speedlife.net/t/grandfather-paradox/49580/18 "2008-06-06T09:23:49Z")
that far into the future, a hospital would have recognized the baby as a hermaphrodite
and genetically corrected it before birth.