On Mon, 1 Jun 1998, Mike "Nelson" wrote:
> Let's take Back to the Future as example. He travelled back to 1955
> and screwed up his Mom meeting his Dad. When he looked at a picture of him
> and his brother and sister, the brother began vanishing first, then the
> sister as that is the order in who was born first. The brother was born,
> then the sister, then Marty. The disruption Marty caused in time was
> slowly changing time in the future by affecting what happened closer to
> 1955 first, thus his brother was the first to disappear.

"First" means to affect one thing at a time when another thing is not yet
affected.  It affected everything in 1955, it didn't do any of them "first".

Besides, there's another flaw.  You're essentially saying that there are
two kinds of time disruption.

If you keep someone's parents apart, then they're never born.  But it doesn't
_immediately_ mean they're never born, it takes a while for things to change.

On the other hand, if you keep someone from being born, they don't exist at
age 20 (or whatever).  But that _does_ happen immediately, it _doesn't_ take
a while.  That's just not consistent.

(If the second case took a while, then Marty's brother and sister would
disappear at the same time, since the shorter time to his brother's birth
would be compensated for by the longer time between the birth and 1985.)