Brief
Grandfather paradox
The claims the writer was given for Grandfather paradox, in the order they were given.
1
Whitley Strieber proposes that a time traveller returning to the past would be constrained by the grandfather paradox to a very limited set of actions, and could evade that constraint by creating beings that never existed in the past, so that the beings reported as aliens would in fact be artificial creations made by future humanity to gain freedom of action in the present.
“something called the grandfather paradox would kick in, and you would have a very limited number of things you could do in the past without changing the present, unless you could deceive the grandfather paradox. ... In other words, the aliens aren't aliens at all. They are something that was created by humanity in the future to give us, them, more freedom of action in the present.”
The Terrible Truth About the Visitors - Whitley Strieber | ep. 96 2026-07-24 01:46:15.9-01:46:55.6 opinion first hand
2
The grandfather paradox holds that a time traveller cannot go back and kill their own grandfather.
“There's something called the grandfather paradox, which we mostly know about. You can't go back and kill your own grandfather”
Whitley Strieber Reveals What 40 Years of Encounters Taught Him | Reality Check Rewind 2026-08-14 00:32:49.6-00:32:54.5 opinion
3
Whitley Strieber considers that a time traveller going back into the past would have almost no freedom of action, because the timeline would stop them accomplishing anything.
“You have almost no freedom of action. Even if you could go back, you do not have much freedom of action because it's going to stop you from accomplishing anything.”
Whitley Strieber Reveals What 40 Years of Encounters Taught Him | Reality Check Rewind 2026-08-14 00:32:58.7-00:33:10.9 opinion first hand
4
Whitley Strieber considers that an entity created in the future that never existed in the past - possibly a complex biological machine - could be sent back into the past with considerably more ability to function than a human time traveller.
“However, if you were to create an entity that didn't exist at all in the past, and it could be a complex biological machine and if you could send it back into the past it might have considerable amount more ability to function”
Whitley Strieber Reveals What 40 Years of Encounters Taught Him | Reality Check Rewind 2026-08-14 00:33:12.4-00:33:37.4 opinion first hand