The 2007 indie SF film Timecrimes shows the horror & metaphysical implications of stable time loops: over a single day, the protagonist commits escalating crimes while trapped in a 3-iteration loop enabled by a time machine-or rather, caused by it.
The 200717ya film Timecrimes shows the horror & metaphysical implications of stable time loops: over a single day, the protagonist commits escalating crimes while trapped in a 3-iteration loop enabled by a time machine, or rather, caused by it.
Stable loops require events to be self-consistent, unlike serial loops. The outermost loop has priority to manipulate earlier ones, as long as perceptions match. More observations by early loops constrain later ones, creating an entropy conservation law. Successive loops compete to precommit or remove degrees of freedom, like Stackelberg games or Nim.
The final Timecrimes plot has no logical predecessor plots, raising issues around origination and sufficient reason: the time-loops appear to operate on a logic that if something is logically-possible, then it becomes actually possible. The protagonist is capable of evil, so the time-loops create an impossible but logically-consistent equilibrium in which he gives into his moral weakness.
Because of the temptation of power, and the ability to cover up crimes by going back in time repeatedly, because time machines can be abused, they must become abused. A time machine becomes a “damnation machine” mass-producing crime and empowerment, with immorality increasing the chances of an individual being trapped.
Conflicts spread time machines spatially and temporally as iterations try to persist. Stable time loops likely evolve convergently towards maximal scope. Inventing them may end humanity’s autonomy, warping causality irrevocably.