It's funny... every BBS I post on, I eventually end up starting a discussion of free will v. determinism. Yes, it's something that interests me, but I honestly don't try to do this... Next thing you know we'll be talking about this on Vista.
Just one thing here: did either of you (SD, Forrest) here about the recent experiment which proved DeBroglie's theory that massive particles are also waves? They used a single electron and lasers instead of slits but they were able to get the electron to interfere with itself! In your face, Einstein! Quantum theory rocks!
Ok, sorry. As to free will and determinism:
Time travel raises the apparent paradox of changing your own past, but it's my theory that this is not a paradox at all and does not require loops of any kind. We see it as problematic because we're used to thinking of material objects as being stuck in the spacetime we perceive--unable to move through time, unable to exist in two place at once, etc. However, if you could step outside of time and look at it as just another dimension of space, you would see that this is like saying water can only run downhill--which is true except that sometimes water is carried uphill by an outside agency.
So, if you travel back in time and change your past, all you're doing is fulfilling something that has already happened. There was never a time-line when you DIDN'T exist at that past moment. It's the way the universe was set up from the beginning. There is no change, and therefore no loop. Wow, I hope that makes sense. The time machine doesn't break the time-line; it's part of the time-line.
I'm actually collaborating on a novel about this very subject right now. A bunch of people turn themselves into antimatter so they can go into the past (in your face, P.A.M. Dirac! Thank you, Dr. Feynman!). When they arrive they find an entire civilization of time travellers who have developed a society based on perfect predestination--every person has a laptop that tells them what they're going to eat for breakfast, who they're going to marry, when and how they're going to die. The book is really about how this would change the human race in truly profound ways--these people are aware of the entire time-line, not just their limited perception of it, and therefore every last one of them is like that theorized alcoholic regarding every single "decision" they make in their lives--they know that their past will determine (utterly) their present actions and that their present actions will determine (utterly) the future and as a result they have no need for free will.
Anyway, that's my take.
My favorite quote on the subject: Saul Bellow, when asked if he believed in fate, said, "You have to have free will. You have no choice in the matter."
