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    A time traveler is unable to retro-kill a person who is a... — Carmelics
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    Home/Moral Responsibility
    HistoryEditSee Inverse

    A time traveler is unable to retro-kill a person who is alive at the time of the attempted killing

    Modality & PossibilityMoral Responsibility
    ?Rate how convincing each reason is below to see the overall strength.
    1 reason for
    2 reasons against

    Reasons For

    1 perspective
    Reason for
    ?
    • 1.Retro-killing a person would require changing the past
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    • 2.One is unable to change the past
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    Reasons Against

    2 perspectives
    Reason against 1 of 2
    ?
    • 1.Lewis's 'can' is indexical to a set of facts: the traveler CAN kill relative to their abilities, skills, and proximity to the target.
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    • 2.The impossibility of retro-killing conflates two senses of 'unable': local inability (lacking means) and global inability (logical inconsistency).
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    • 3.A time traveler facing a living target has no local incapacity, so the inability claim must rest on contested metaphysical necessity, not practical constraint.
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    Reason against 2 of 2
    ?
    • 1.Retro-killing does not change the past but rather constitutes part of the original causal history of the target's death.
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    • 2.If the target dies at time T2 after the traveler arrives at T1 < T2, the past is not altered but simply contains the killing event.
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    Topics

    Moral ResponsibilityModality & Possibility

    Connections

    1 topic

    Causation2 linked

    Related

    A time traveler facing a living target has no local incapacity, so the inability...If the target dies at time T2 after the traveler arrives at T1 < T2, the past is...Lewis's 'can' is indexical to a set of facts: the traveler CAN kill relative to ...One is unable to change the past
    +3 moreShow less
    Retro-killing a person would require changing the pastRetro-killing does not change the past but rather constitutes part of the origin...The impossibility of retro-killing conflates two senses of 'unable': local inabi...

    Similar

    A time traveler is able to retro-kill their younger self in one sense ...90%It is assumed to be physically possible for a time traveler to kill so...89%It is physically impossible to retro-kill anyone who is alive in the p...87%A time traveler must always fail to retro-kill their younger self or o...86%

    Source

    AI-extracted1/3 agreementValid
    SEP: causation-backwards
    View source passageHide passage
    In sum, the consistency paradox is no paradox as long as you do not insist on changing the past. You are unable to change the past, and therefore you are unable to retro-kill anybody who is alive when you try to kill them. The paradox seems to arise only because you wrongly believe that you are able to do something you are unable to do.
    Extraction notes

    Validity: Extracted via Max plan + API grounding/validity checks

    Details

    Type
    claim
    Perspectives
    3 (1 for, 2 against)
    Edits
    1 edit