> In other words, a time traveler could make changes, but the original outcome would still find a way to happen — maybe not the same way it happened in the first timeline but close enough so that the time traveler would still exist and would still be motivated to go back in time.

> "No matter what you did, the salient events would just recalibrate around you," Tobar said.

I'd love to see how this works when you go back in time and kill your toddler self.

> "The universe is deterministic and attempts to alter Past Event X are destined to be the forces which bring Past Event X into being,"

But WHICH events? If things change around you when you change the past, then by definition some events will have happened, and others not (otherwise NOTHING would change, including your arrival in the past, and therefore time travel cannot occur). After all, a single breath you took at a specific point in time is an event. Waking up 2 seconds later is an event. Using your left foot first as you walked out of the house that day instead of the right is an event. So who decides which events are "important" enough that "forces bring Past Event X into being"? You'd need some kind of omniscient, omnipotent intelligence in order to accomplish that.

The very logic behind this idea is a contradiction.