Question:
If you could time travel to the past to correct major errors, would you?
M
2010-05-08 03:05:32 UTC
It's a real quandary... although we've suffered huge injustices and catastrophes, if we could go back and stop them, wouldn't we just be setting ourselves up for a worse expression of the same error?
What do you think?
-e.g. going back and spooking/warning the pope that tormented Galileo to buzz off, killing Hitler or Stalin before they were born, or killing the assassin that started World War I, or correcting/stopping McCarthy, or maybe not even killing but just taking the rifle from the assassin of Martin Luther King Jr.

All these things and more would be highly desirable, but in doing so, wouldn't we merely push the error to a later (and possibly more virulent) expression?

String theorists suggest that doing so would cause the birth of a parallel universe and that such parallel universes exist now - e.g. there's a planet Earth somewhere in another dimension where Napoleon won the battle of Waterloo. But if you could go back and initiate such a change, for the sake of the error learned, would you? Would you be prepared to accept responsibility for the possibly worse criminal/catastrophe arising as a result of passing over that error?
Nine answers:
Jim
2010-05-08 03:36:37 UTC
Very good! You and I think a LOT alike on this subject.



The answer for me is, that if I altered the future by removing a causality, all I would do is create the conditions for some other causality to occur.



For example, if I went back in time and killed Hitler, thus averting 50,000,000 people from dying in WWII, how would I know that there wasn't another far more demonic human being who would have ended up killing twice that number that would have come to power? How do I know, that there wasn't another nation besides Germany considering world conquest, like France, for example, who would have caused WWII to happen anyway?



By changing the course of events, there is the possibility you could have a whole series of unknown consequences occur, sort of like dominoes falling one after the next in a long string of consequences. Since you don't know what affect removing an important causality would do, you cannot predict what other factors would come into place that would be equally horrible if not worse.

Maybe if Hitler had died, the Germans would peacefully have figured out nuclear weaponry and then gone to war and caused a world holocaust of unbelievable magnitude when an unknown OTHER dictator finally came to power - who knows? Its all speculation.



Maybe, if Martin L. King had not died, he would not have had half the impact he has had on society. In fact, he was killed in a motel, where he was having an affair with another woman. Even though he died this way, doing something morally wrong like that, did not change the essential nature of all the good things he did - but making him a martyr made him immensely more powerful as a historical leader.



The answer is, I would not go back and change things because it could have had seriously repercussions for the future. Maybe YOU end up not being born i the alternate time line.



Yes, I have often speculated on parallel universes. I believed in the existence of parallel universes long before people like Stephen Hawking thought they exist...you don't have to be a cosmologist or a genious to figure out what is potentially possible. I considered the possibility of parallel universes over 45 years ago, long before any cosmologists were talking about it. I also thought about parallel computing long before Intel or any other company starting doing parallel computing. It just occurred to me many years ago that if you ganged a bunch of CPU's together in parallel, you could multiply the data output...I talked about it 30 years ago and people looked at me with a blank stare - they had not taken the possibilities to the next level in their minds yet. This has always been my problem, I have always been ahead of the game in my thinking process...I call it, Future Vision.

It is NOT like being a psychic...I am not predicting the future. I am just merely, looking at what is possible.
2010-05-08 03:21:48 UTC
Your question assumes that there have been major errors.



Many people do not see it that way.





Hitler for example is a scapegoat for everything negative that happened in the war.



The winners get to write the history and they always absolve themselves of any wrong doing by creating a Demon.



Hitler was just a man who got in way over his head. He was not responsible for most of the things that were blamed on him. I doubt that he ever even knew about or would have condoned much of it.



I'm not making excuses for him. I just have a problem with any story that blames one side for everything bad that happened and proclaims the other side as the well spring of all that is noble and good.



The world just doesn't work that way.



Love and blessings Don
small
2010-05-08 03:17:16 UTC
I have a feeling that if you gain the power to travel in time, you may lose the power to act (create any event) while undertaking such a travel..... and no sooner you get back to your original slot in the time dimension, you would perhaps lose all experience that you had when you travelled in time...... this is the only way that time travel can be compatible with normal existence in the time dimension.
burnside
2016-11-03 16:52:23 UTC
i think of that purely blew up my recommendations. it quite is a mind-blowing theory that i don't think of all and sundry has each performed in that way in the previous. you're genuine which you probably did not clarify it completely yet i don't think of all and sundry could desire to without writing out the full tale. That aside i think of I understood the elementary theory and it sort of feels to paintings nicely, additionally that's form of complicated whether that's purely that form of tale. i've got not quite observed any flaws in that concept. not sounding harsh yet i might have enjoyed to be supplying you with effective criticism yet there quite isn't any i will supply. desire all of it is going nicely writing it.
I love you too!
2010-05-08 03:12:50 UTC
I would have loved to hinder what happened in the Nazi times. I would had liked to prevent the horror and injustice in this regard. I would had loved to observe what would had come instead if somebody wiser would had led the German people at this time who experienced economic crisis.
2010-05-08 03:13:29 UTC
hmmm...good question.i think i would do it just to see where it would lead us.also i have read that in parallel universe there is earth where apocalypse already happend.it was huring the WWII.and all people there are extinct.but how scientists know this?it sound like someone been there...
magpiesmn
2010-05-08 03:18:19 UTC
Did this. The universe was terrible once just be thankful you dont know about it.
2010-05-08 03:08:01 UTC
no leave the past as the past... one hopes that humanity learns from the mistakes of the past generations.....
Miss Ineffable.
2010-05-08 03:06:50 UTC
No I wouldn't. :D


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