The Mind-Boggling Bootstrap Paradox Explained Have you ever heard of the bootstrap paradox? It sounds like something out of a science fiction movie, but it’s actually a real phenomenon. The idea behind the bootstrap paradox is simple, yet mind-boggling: something can exist without ever having been created. The paradox is used in many time travel stories, where the hero obtains knowledge or an object from their future self in order to change their present. In this blog post, we’ll take a deep dive into the bootstrap paradox and explain it in easy-to-understand terms. What is the bootstrap paradox? The bootstrap paradox is a strange and confusing concept in time travel. It is based on the idea of circular causality, or “causality loops”, which occurs when an event is both the cause and the effect of another event. To put it simply, the bootstrap paradox is a situation in which a person or thing travels back in time and then causes themselves to exist, without any other source of origin.