Time Travel

By: J.-M. Kuczynski

Narrated by: John-Michael Kuczynski

Length: 20 mins

Publisher's summary

In this brief but rigorous examination of the concept of time-travel, it is clearly stated what time-travel would be, were it possible. It is thereby shown that the very concept of time-travel is incoherent.

©2016 John-Michael Kuczynski (P)2016 John-Michael Kuczynski

the truth about time travel!

Would you recommend this audiobook to a friend? If so, why?

yes, discussions of time travel tend to be dominated by illiterate self-(un)taught losers who jabber nonsense about quantum physics. Kuczynski breaks it down.

What did you like best about this story?

The part where Kuczynski was discussing how the non-existence of an optical test of motion entails the framework invariance of physical law

Would you be willing to try another one of John-Michael Kuczynski’s performances?

Yes, but this was not a particularly good performance; he was nervous and spoke too fast

If you were to make a film of this book, what would the tag line be?

the direction of time

Any additional comments?

this book is a litmus test. people who can think will like it. people who want to live in a bubble of convenience-store slogans won't.

Utterly cogent and definitive

Where does Time Travel rank among all the audiobooks you’ve listened to so far?

#1 among all the time-travel books known to me

What other book might you compare Time Travel to and why?

Our Knowledge of the External World, by Bertrand Russell, since they are both commonsense-based but also scientifically and philosophically informed.

Would you be willing to try another one of John-Michael Kuczynski’s performances?

Yes.

Did you have an extreme reaction to this book? Did it make you laugh or cry?

Yes. The author is making it clear what a complete fraud most discussions of time-travel are. He reduces the issues to a few tautologies, successfully showing the palaver that passes for alternatives views to be the pseudo-intellectual death throes of impotence that (deep down) everyone knows them to be.

Any additional comments?

Yes. The author is a master of his craft and he proved his point 100 times over, but he needs to learn a thing or two about sound-engineering. Great voice thought, but he needs to relax. Also, the discussion of Relativity Theory was mind-blowingly brilliant. The author can expect to get some flack from the convenience store intellectual crowd. Which only affirms his position.

finally a substiantial book on time travel

Would you recommend this audiobook to a friend? If so, why?

only for people who are actually interested in getting to the heart of the matter. the usual self-described physicist-philosophers will not be able to follow the reasoning, and will resent being called out on their pseudo-intellectual posturing.

What did you like best about this story?

the clarity and cogency of the reasoning, the silky prose

What about John-Michael Kuczynski’s performance did you like?

the earnestness of it

Did you have an extreme reaction to this book? Did it make you laugh or cry?

yes, I was so glad to hear something written about this topic that wasn't rank nonsense.

Any additional comments?

people who are not so bright will not like this book; people who are bright will.

Self Published, Short, Well Intentioned Philosophy

I am interested in time and causality, so I gave this and a few other of this series a listen.

This is quite short (20 min) and self-produced (echoes due to bathroom acoustics?) Certainly don’t use a credit for this title (pay the $2.76).

This is not science but instead academic analytic philosophy, and weak at that. The author does not rigorously define key concepts (like time, object, or event), this makes what follows vague at best. Basically he defines and object as a causal sequence, then concludes that any form of time travel must either be disintegration and pure identical creation or not time travel but normal existence (forward or backward), thus time travel is a logical fallacy. Of course this is just definitional mumbo-jumbo.

Clearly forward time travel could (conceivably) be implemented by preventing any interactions (for some time) between and object and its environment and itself. This might not seem like real time travel, but suspended animation, yet it might get the job done. Such considerations also could illuminate exactly what we mean by time and object and time-travel.

General Relativity seems not to disallow stable time-like loops where an object interacts with past objects in a consistent way. This could conceivably cause a consistent causal loop. This is very boring time travel, but is interesting to consider. The author don’t not review any such cases.

I found this an enjoyable, if not enlightening, 20 minutes, but I could not recommend this series to others, unless they already have a firm science background, a light-hearted amusement with philosophers, and an appreciation of the absurd.