One-Way Time Travel

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If you had a one-way ticket on a time machine, where would you go and why?

I haven't decided yet...

 

If i could, to a post-nucler future. Going to take care of the Anarchy there. Let me at 'em. Otherwise; Around 1400. No guns, cars or internet. When the world was real.

 

I agree with you there Ivanji. It would be really cool. Fighting with swords and bows instead of guns and grenades...

 

Something that big and important can hardly be said by anyone at this point. If you really had to think about it as a fact that you're GOING to be able to travel back in time, once, then I'd imagine the ultimate choice might be something quite else than one would think.

Lay that aside though, as it has nothing to do with the question directly.

If it would be your present personality in your present body into the past with your complete status unchanged, then I can't tell. I'd give myself an advice in my past if I didn't know I was so stupid it wouldn't help any. I'd save it for the future if I could, otherwise I'd get back to some rather crucial event in the past of me or my friend, and change the outcome.

If I could move my mind, with all it's information and present personality back into my own body in my childhood, then I would probably pick the age of... say 13 or something. That's old enough to not completely make me insane what with the apparent social environment of that time, and yet young enough to completely change what I am today. Not that I'm unhappy with what I am, just that an opportunity to finetune and make some improvements is certainly welcome.

Yet, I'm still mostly on the side of saving that ability for a day I might really need it.

Edit: Definitely not y1400 or something. I couldn't possibly live with people that stupid, prejudiced, ugly and dirty. I'm realistic about my own needs for hygiene and modern easy lifestyle.

And compliments on a good idea of a thread Rallymama.

[ February 20, 2003, 15:03: Message edited by: Foradasthar ]

 

Question, if I did go back in time, would the present still be here? Or would everything now be completely erased and free to develop? While I may be in the past at some point in time, everything else would still be in the present at that time. I'd have to make my choice very carefully then because anything I do while I am in the past would be directly affecting the present and everything leading up to that point.

 

Some interesting considerations, Foradasthar!

I don't think I'd go back into my own past and change anything. While there are definitely some things I regret or would do differently, given the chance, I'm rather enjoying my present and I wouldn't want to risk messing that up.

As for history, there are so many crucial moments that I wouldn't know where to begin meddling. Stop the concentration camps and WWII? Cancel the Crusades? Prevent obliteration of Native Americans? Give Osama bin Laden a happier childhood? If all I could do was watch and learn, I'd love to know who built Stonehenge and why, or maybe eavesdrop on the Continental Congress, or be on the grassy knoll in November, 1963.

If I had to choose some other time or place in which to live, I'd like to find some pre-Christian society where women weren't considered property or second-class. I think that means *way* northern Europe or the American Southwest.

 

I refuse to go back in the past. Past means disease. It means a life expectancy of 40 years at best. It means more wars, which means that all those kewl swords and arrows will be pushing through your gut. And most importantly, it means altering the future (which is actually the present in our context) to ways we can't even imagine. You could end up killing your grandmother, which would cause you to cease to exist, which would cause a weird paradox that Stephen Hawking would love to study.

So I refuse to assassinate Hitler, Osama bin Laden, George W. Bush, or whoever. I refuse to liberate the poor Communists and Gypsies and Jews from Auschwitz. I refuse to go back and wreak righteous vegeance on all those Christian people who deserve it soo much.

And the future is looking dim. Global warming, overpopulation, pollution, and rap are all making the world spiral further down. And a post-nuclear war holocaust isn't fun either.

I'll stay in the present, thank you very much.

Rallymama: I don't think that you'll find any social class in the past that didn't treat women as property or second-class people. But c'mon! You live in the 21st century, where women are more equal than men! Isn't that enough?

[EDIT: when I say past, I mean a historical past. Not past as in the 80s.]

[ February 20, 2003, 15:44: Message edited by: C'Jakob ]

 

@C'Jakob: Even if the ticket were in my hand, I wouldn't board the time machine unless there was a REALLY BIG GUN pointed right at my head!

 

I would take several artifacts back with me. Things that show what the world is like now - current problems with the world, environment etc, and some things that would allow me to grab the attention of the whole planet (assuming that it's not like back to the future, where photos from the future fade to show nothing.

Then, i would 'preach' as it were, to the world, telling them all the things that go wrong if they carry on regardless, giving them a second chance to not screw up this planet, world peace, etc.

That way, i would be using the ability for the good of everyone.

I'm not saying the outcome would be better than what we have now. But at the end of the day, there is always room for improvement, especially when war looms.

 

That's one helluva paradox there, Intentioner of the Damned. Let's suppose this is what happens:

1. You board the Time Machine. To the year 1950!

2. You take along pictures of the devastated Amazon rainforest, the wars conflicts ensuing over North Korea and Iraq, the massacres in Bosnia, etc.

3. You show this to the Presidents, Prime Ministers, Premiers, etc. of the world.

4. This grabs enormous attention. Everyone resolves to preserve the rainforests. Nuclear weaposn are all destroyed. The automobile is banned to preserve the air.

5. So there wouldn't be all that stuff that happened in the future (present in our context). The pictures of Saddam Hussein gassing the Kurds and the photos of the trees being made into toothpicks would never have existed. Which means that events 2, 3, and 4 can't occur.

There was an entire RPG based on this sort of paradox. It's called Chrono Trigger.

[ February 20, 2003, 16:11: Message edited by: C'Jakob ]

 

Hm i'm happy about my time.I don't want a one way ticket...

 

Not into the past, because I'd be discriminated, as I'm female. They still discriminate women. LOWER WAGES, for example. Anyways, maybe into the future, to see what I look like in 20 years.
If I have a husband and kids then *shudders in terror*, I'll shoot my future self and my present self.

Kapish.

My current mood:

 

To 1980's so I can see my grandad...

 

What I'm about to say is a little confusing (or most likely completely confusing). If you go back in time and change something, your present self will learn about it instead of the thing it erases, so as you change it your mind will change and you will have no idea what you are doing or why you are in the past, and will probably become insane. Impossible to explain.

 

I wouldn't go back either although it would be tempting. I think I wouldn't be able to live with myself if I did something and changed the present. If you've seen Frequency or watch Star Trek, you might get a glimpse into the risks involved in time travel.

And Elios, nice avatar.

 

Let's think about this:

I'm 15 years old now. I constuct a time machine. I use it to go 5 years back in time. Then I shoot my 10 years old self. Thus, I wouldn't be creating a time machine and I wouldn't be able to kill my 'past' self. But if my 'past' self lives, I would create a time machine, but then my 'past' self would be killed and no time machine would be created. Geez, my head hurts.

 

I'd go back a couple of years, buy some dotcom stocks, sell them before they crashed, be rich. Or I'd leap twenty years into the future, just so I could come waltzing back into the lives of the people I knew, being eighteen instead of thirty-eight. Just to freak people out.

 

Putting all thoughts of paradox aside, I'd take as much relevant wealth as I could to someplace like India, set myself up as a sultan, and have the biggest honking harem the world has ever seen! Juvenile and horny, I know, but that's my mood right now.

 

Yes, and putting all the paradoxes aside is what you should do. I've talked about this with rather talented people for a decade and I'm so filled with theories of this and that possible paradox that it's far better to just dump them and assume that nothing will change save the things you want to save.

If you're going to assassinate Hitler in a way that no-one will take his place, then indeed everything in the modern world will be just as it is with a few changes, including a lot more jews.

 

I suppose I should have known better than to raise a topic like this around a bunch of SF/F fans!