Can You Help The Detective ? - Part 2

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Welcome back folks, this is the final part of this episode of our game, you can find the other part here. In this article however, we shall be reveal the answers with explanations and also announce the winners- if they exist..

In the previous post (first part of this episode) it was stated that a certain detective needed your help figuring out a crime mystery. Unfortunately the detective didn't get the help he needed from you guys - hence, no winner(s). It seems the riddle was very difficult but that's why it's called a riddle. However, the detective did get help, thanks to my expertise - and please i'm not feeling myself. 😉

So, what's this riddle all about, no need to think much as the riddle is given below or you can find it here.

There was a certain man whose existence is to be caused by an act he himself performed. However, two generations back from this act, a detective discovered the body of another man who was murdered and also the murder tool. After thorough investigations, it was discovered that the killer/murderer was a relative to the murdered man but does not exist. Interestingly, shortly after the murder, the girlfriend to the murdered man got pregnant.

There are two questions on the mind of the detective and they are

  1. Who is this mysterious relative to the murdered man
  1. How was the murder possible ? - the act

The riddle isn't that difficult, except for some few parts which requires knowledge outside of science fiction and would be explained later.

To answer the first question, let's first look at the first and last sentence in the riddle, as seen below

There was a certain man whose existence is to be caused by an act he himself performed. However, two generations back from this act, a detective discovered the body of another man who was murdered and also the murder tool. After thorough investigations, it was discovered that the killer/murderer was a relative to the murdered man but does not exist. Interestingly, shortly after the murder, the girlfriend to the murdered man got pregnant.

Since the unknown man (in the first sentence) is responsible for his own existence, we should expect the child in the girlfriend's (of the dead man) womb to be the same man (in the first sentence) and also, we should expect him to be the murderer too. With this line of thinking, we can conclude that the murderer is a descendant of the murdered/dead man. However, we are right in suggesting that the man in the first sentence is both the murderer and descendant of the murdered man but wrong in suggesting that the child in the girlfriend's womb is the same person (the man in the first sentence), the reason for this can be traced to the part of the riddle where the murder took place two generations back from an unknown act. A descendant coming two generations front from the murder is actually the grandchild - notice the word "generation".

Our killer/murderer is thus a "grandson" of the murdered man while the child in the womb is a parent to the murderer.

The second question is the trickiest but also very simple. The unknown act couldn't have been impregnating the girlfriend as @irivers suggested, how can you impregnate a girl and still give birth to yourself either in the first or the second generation?
Also, the act couldn't have been the murder, the act according to the riddle took place two generations front from the murder. The only plausible act that suites this scenario is "time-traveling to the past" and it's also the means by which the murder was possible, that is, the grandson time-travelled to the past to kill his grandfather.

The explanations however isn't over, i'm pretty sure that there are still questions on your mind. The questions i personally think maybe bothering you would be those related to the ones below

  1. how the time-traveling act is responsible for the grandson's (murderer) existence.

  2. why the murderer didn't exist from the detectives investigations despite knowing that the murderer was a relative to the murdered man - through the murder tool.

The first question is kinda technical and you're very less likely to find explanations in science fiction. Theoretically in real science, which is based on the current understanding of how our physical universe operates, time-traveling to the future is believed to be possible because it appears not to raise paradoxes but time-traveling to the past seems impossible and it's because certain actions done in the past after time-traveling from the future can raise certain paradoxes, an example of such paradox is the "grandfather paradox". The riddle we just discussed about is an adaptation of the grandfather paradox - with the paradox apparently gone.

According to the grandfather paradox, consider a situation where you time-travelled to the past and killed your grandfather before any of your parents existed, this would imply that one of your parents won't exist and you shouldn't exist too. But pay very close attention, killing your grandfather before one of your parents existence doesn't actually wipes away your existence, what you've done is simply wiping out your history from existence and a question arises which is, the you that killed your grandfather where did he/she come from ? - remember that you no longer have a history (of origin). This question is indeed a paradox and there are different ways of resolving this paradox and they are classified under two main principles. We have the "self-consistency principle" and the "multiverse principle - a variant of the many world's interpretation of quantum mechanics". The former (self-consistency principle) involves only one timeline while the later (multiverse) involves multiple timelines.

A variant of the self-consistency principle is what was used in the riddle, hence requiring that the grandson's action should lead to his own existence. To clarify this, let's first look at experiences in our everyday world, time appears to be moving only in one direction - from the past to the future, and it kinda brings into account "causality" - cause (past) and effect (future). According to this variant of the self-consistency principle, a symmetric and reversible flow of time is also possible, for example, from our riddle, the "time" when the murder took place is normally considered the past while the "time" when the grandson just began to time-travel is considered the future (hence time-travel to the past). If we reversed the process symmetrically, the "time" when the grandson just began to time-travel becomes the past while the "time" of the murder becomes the future, that is, when the grandson just began to time-travel the effect was the grandfather undergoing events that would eventually lead to the grandfather introducing sperm into his girlfriend (through intercourse). With this line of thinking, the grandson would always arrive at a point in the past just after sperm (responsible for the parent of the grandson) has been introduced into the girlfriend (his grandmother). This explanation suggests that the grandson is creating his history instead of destroying it (as with the case of the original grandfather paradox). This variant of the self-consistency principle is predicted by the theory of general relativity - as closed timelike curve, and another formalism of quantum mechanics - as retrocausality which can be found in the delayed choice experiment.

For the second question

  1. why the murderer didn't exist from the detectives investigations despite knowing that the murderer was a relative to the murdered man - through the murder tool.

It is very obvious that the grandson had to time-travel back to the future to prevent being caught but there's a problem if he does this and it's that he would get trapped in between the time of the murder and the time where he began to time-travel to the past but not in physical reality - this is to prevent further paradoxes. As matter of fact, generally speaking this explanation (variant of the self-consistency principle) requires a closed timelike curve or causal loop, that is, past becomes future and vice versa, just like a point along the circumference of a circle can be both the beginning and the end. A consequence being that the grandson is always trapped in this time loop and it suggests a predetermined universe - a down fall of the explanation for those who believe in the existence of free will.

Lastly before i forget, the self-consistency principle used here was also used in the movie "Tenet", as time-traveling to the past was involved and also, the grandfather paradox was mentioned. @irivers, i would have preferred you watched the movie not going to Wikipedia, Wikipedia won't give you full detailed informations about the movie.

I shall thus conclude this episode of our game at this point, have a thoughtful day and see you next time.

For further reading

Time travel

Novikov self-consistency principle

Wheeler's delayed-choice experiment

Gödel metric

Thank you all once again for stopping by to read my jargons and also thank you @juecoree, @lemouth and the @Steemstem team for your valuable supports.

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