in your scenario, you have no clue who sent it or when. it could have been sent after your died or it could have been stolen.

Ok - i signed and dated it before i apparently placed in the time machine and left myself a note attached to it.

your scenario can't happen then, if you don't send it then you don't send it.

But yet i still end up with a painting that i painted in my time machine that ive apparently never painted and havent sent back. Hence the paradox.

no, you don't. it isn't possible

But why not? If you follow all the steps that is what would happen.

 

If not, where am i going wrong?

follow it in cronological order. moments do not change. either you sent it or you didn't.

I am. I send the painting to myself from the future but the me that receives it doesnt send it back at all when it becomes time to. We either have to sacrifice free will or a single future for it to work.

you either send it or you don't, you can't do both.

Exactly...

and it therefore isn't a paradox

Hmm i dont think you fully understand where im coming from.

i think i do.

 

here is how your cronology occurs:

1)you send the painting back in time

2)you get the painting

3)the first event again, but you decide not to send it

 

since time does not repeat and moments cannot change, here is how it goes:

 

A:

1)you get the painting

2)you send the painting back in time

 

or, B:

1)you don't get the painting

2)you don't send it back in time

Even if i do send the painting it still doesnt work. I send back painting1 and receive it 5 days in the past, if i have the painting i cant paint it again in order for it to be sent back in 5 days time. So now i have a painting, already painted, of which i need to paint in order to send back. If i dont paint the painting the second time, how does it come into being?

you are looking in the wrong order again. you had to paint it BEFORE you sent it

But then that jumbles up the thermodynamic arrow of time. The future cannot happen before the past or the present.

that is my point. you have to take it in order cronologically.

I am:

 

20/3/05: I paint a painting and send it back to myself 5 days prior to this.

15/3/05: I find the painting in my time-machine

 

If on the "second" 20/3/05 i send the painting back then no-one painted the painting cos i already had it in my possession.

Or on the "second" 20/3/05 i dont send the painting back then it came from nowhere.

 

The time MUST flow from the 15th to the 20th, therefore causing the paradox.

There is no "second" 20/3/05.

So if i have the painting that i sent back on the 19th, then what happens on the 20th?

 

*I cant find anything on Google about this paradox but it was thought up by someone at the IoP.

moments cannot repeat and they cannot change. they certainly cannot do both.

 

edit: what is the IoP?

But if i sent the painting back to myself, then what happens when i get to the 20/3/05 from my reference as the receiver of the painting?

 

IoP = Institute of Physics

i do not understand what you are asking

I get the painting in my time machine on the 15th with a note saying i sent it on the 20th of that month. What happens when I (the person finding the painting) gets to the 20th of the month?

you send the painting