User:SOTO/Forum Archive/The Panopticon/@comment-4028641-20151011010956/@comment-1783865-20151013105001

Um... It's not that hard. He's explaining the bootstrap paradox to Clara on how it works, but tells Clara that his hypothetical example is just that, an example. It didn't "really" happen. He's telling her to "imagine" that it happened, but that to not give her a new impression of Beethoven, to not change what knowledge she had ever had of him, he's telling her that it didn't really happen. That this "time traveller" didn't really become Beethoven, that a real Beethoven does exist. It's just an example. How should such a sentence not make sense?