eli5: What is the bootstrap Paradox?
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It’s from a Robert A. Heinlein story called [“By His Bootstraps.”](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/By_His_Bootstraps) There’s a college student trying to write an essay and his future self appears and explains that he shouldn’t listen to anything any future selves tells him to do. Then a second future self appears and tells him not to listen to the first future self.
This adventure begins with a loop. The character appears from the future, telling the present day character not to travel to the future. If you went back in time and told yourself not to go to the future — and presumably ignored that advice — why would you again travel into the past to tell yourself not to go?
The catalyst for you doing the thing you immediately regret is yourself. You create and perpetuate a time travel loop that you don’t want to happen.
In the story the character travels into the future discovers this weird guarded palace and is trying to track down the owner of the palace (for a reason I don’t recall). Eventually we learn that >!all of the characters were the same character at different stages in the future.!<
TL;DR: If you are wearing a pair of Doc Martens with the little loop in the back, you cannot pull on them and lift yourself up. The bootstrap paradox examines how time travel can create impossible situations when a character interacts with themselves.
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