Determinism and Time

The grandfather paradox points to a deeper question: is the future fixed? If time travel to the past is possible and self-consistency is enforced, then the past cannot be changed — which means the future was already settled when the past occurred.

This connects to the ancient debate about fatalism. If the future is fixed, do your choices matter? The compatibilist answer is that your choices are part of the causal chain that produces that fixed future. You are not bypassing the script — you are performing it. Your will is one of the factors doing the determining.