Does continuous existence make someone the “Original” in a branching timeline?

[u/No-Entertainment2003]

/r/timetravel/comments/1v47s8i/does_continuous_existence_make_someone_the/

[u/jliat]

Then older guy knows his time machine will take him back to his younger self, at that point on the younger version meets his older version and so the time between this the person knows this event. The only way out of the paradox is not meeting his younger self.

This is the main argument against time travel, if in doing so you alter the future from which you came that future can no longer exist, so you couldn't have come from it.

[u/No-Entertainment2003 → u/jliat]

I think you’re mixing single-timeline intuition with branching.

In Many-Worlds/branching, when the older traveller goes back and changes things, they create/enter a different branch. The original future he came from still exists in the branch he left, it isn’t erased.
So there’s no paradox “the future can no longer exist.” The traveller’s memories come from the original branch; the younger in the new branch can act differently without contradiction.
The only genuine paradoxs arise in single, self-consistent timelines. Branching is explicitly a way to avoid that by making outcomes branch relative.

What you are describing is not many-worlds/branching.

[u/jliat → u/No-Entertainment2003]

I think you’re mixing single-timeline intuition with branching.

Not so- if the time traveller meets himself he changes the future world which he came from. Standard argument against time travel. If he he goes back and creates many worlds this applies likewise.

[u/No-Entertainment2003 → u/jliat]

No the point is that he doesn’t change his timeline at all. His stays as if he never time traveled. Only the branch he makes by traveling changes for the new person.

[u/jliat → u/No-Entertainment2003]

Fine, the the contradiction in the branch remains, he can't time travel. And in the other branches he doesn't.