The Bootstrap Paradox is a theoretical paradox of time travel that occurs when an object or piece of information sent back in time becomes trapped within an infinite cause-effect loop in which the item no longer has a discernible point of origin, and is said to be “uncaused” or “self-created”.

A time traveller who was a big fan of Beethoven goes back in time to 18th century Germany to search for Beethoven for an autograph. Upon reaching the destination, the time traveller cannot find Beethoven anywhere, not even Beethoven's family have heard of him. Not being able to bear the thought of a world without Beethoven's music, the time traveller coincidently has all of Beethoven's sheet music, he copies it up and publishes it. The time traveller has become Beethoven and the timeline resumes as usual, this is what we call a Bootstrap Paradox.

Bootstrap Paradox by Driptual November 17, 2019

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Bootstrapium

What you earn by working hard for success like all your favorite Billionaire crushes tell you to.

Keep mining for bootstrapium, serfs

Blackrock's forever rentals won't build themselves

Bootstrapium by Cerebrex April 13, 2022

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Bootstrapping

The action of lifting yourself out of poverty through sheer skill and force of will. It is about as plausible as the name suggests.

More billionaires exist now than ever before. If we all started bootstrapping, every American could become a billionaire!

Bootstrapping by Sitbear April 9, 2021

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bootstrap

(v.) to cause a system (usually a computer system) to build itself; to build something complex by giving a simple instruction. From the concept of "pulling yourself up by your own bootstraps."

That virus crashed (def. 6) my Solaris box (def. 8), so I had to bootstrap it from the CD.

bootstrap by heikediguoren September 14, 2006

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