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Would you change things if you a time machine?

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I don't think I would dare to change anything but I would love to observe the dinosaurs.... maybe take a video to show that they all have feathers...
 
I would only ever go forward in time so I could take advantage of technology in the future to become superhuman. Going back in time just feels pointless to me, especially knowing how fickle causality can be.
 
As long as there is some way to undo actions that I make when time traveling and return to my original timeline/point in time, I'd stop Hitler, win the lotto, give the western hemisphere better animals, have my mother eat more vegetables, all kinds of dumb shit, just to see what the consequences are.

But if I can't roll back the effects of my time travelling, I'd be way more reserved.
 
I'd go back 10 years and play the stock market with insider information from the future and become a billionaire.
 
Yeah, for sure.

Even if it's just me.

I know how things played out when I did them one way, I'd go back and get myself to do a few things differently.

Oh and go back even further in time before I existed just so I can observe how things were at different periods.
 
I wouldn't want to go much further in the past than 1964 or so. You start going further back than that and you end up in Jim Crow America or Mao's China and it only gets worse for human rights the further you go back, and the music sucks, and there's no internet. I would absolutely take the entire Harry Potter series back and publish it a few years before Rowling did, however.

Now, transporting my current brain back in time to my body in elementary school? I would seriously consider it. On one hand, I'd have to spend over a decade being around insufferable children, so I'd have a complete lack of friends and romantic interests. On the other hand, the foreknowledge of the challenges I'd face would make navigating life a million times easier and more successful.
 
Pluto said:
But what makes you think getting rid of Hitler would lead to a better world? Facism was kinda popular back then not just in germany, if not Hitler someone else might have started a war, maybe a few years later with different participants.
You might save millions of the nazi victims but condemn millions of others to death that would have lived if it wasn't for you meddling with history.
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And let's not forget Stalin, without Hitler WW2 might've still occured.
 
I would be there for a certain someone four years ago, when they needed it most.

Or I would make sure I was never born. Would probably solve a lot of problems, including the above.

Trying to change the grand arc of history, however, sounds like a terrible idea.
 
Would warn people about recent-ish tsunamis and earthquakes, but I wouldn't go back more than a few years or change anything major in fear of what could happen.

Would go back 2 weeks and grab that 150 million jackpot lotto.
Then probably realise life becomes like playing games with cheat mode on, just not much fun when everything you want is within reach.
 
It would depend on the theory. Do I travel in time in my own universe, or because of the paradox that would cause, travel through dimension to another point in that universe space and time?

Because if it is the latter, than sign me up. I'd do anything just to see what would happen. (Just realised that puts me into uncaring God area)
 
I would go back in time and tell Hillary that she should not use her own email server.
Then go win the lottery.
I would also go eat cheaply at nice spots in history.
 
I would convince myself as a kid to chose this cool lego set over this stupid Swamp Thing toy that ended up being sucky.

Lol, being serious I would tell my younger self to not eat so much and excercise more so that I wouldn't become overweight : /
 
Of course I would. I would try to change the course of history to make the world a better place for everyone.

I'd have infinite chances too because of the time machine, so fuck it.
 
StayDead said:
Killing Hitler likely wouldn't make a very large difference on the timeline. Hitler was nothing but a leader and figurehead for the far right in Germany which rose to power because of the mess the Allied nations made in Germany after WW1.
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That's the thing that people always miss. If you really want to try to avoid WW2 you at the bare minimum have to fix the Treaty of Versailles. But I still really don't think that altering the economic, political, social and technological landscapes of the world on such a massive scale is a wise idea.
 
StayDead said:
Killing Hitler likely wouldn't make a very large difference on the timeline. Hitler was nothing but a leader and figurehead for the far right in Germany which rose to power because of the mess the Allied nations made in Germany after WW1.
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Kill and replace by by taking a body-double with you, or by using your time machine to convince the madman that you're god and forcing him to mend his ways.

Shit, I would go fucking crazy if I had access to this thing. You should all be glad I don't.
 
Barry taught us time and time again not to mess with the timeline lol. But yeah, I would do something to make me rich. I'm not messing with world changing eventns though.
 
I would go 100 years into the future and go full Biff, taking all the lottery numbers,sports almanacs and stock market reports I could find back to my time.
 
DJwest said:
Barry taught us time and time again not to mess with the timeline lol. But yeah, I would do something to make me rich. I'm not messing with world changing eventns though.
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Except this could be a world changing event via the butterfly effect.

Not many things would be insignificant.
 
aliengmr said:
This could lead to a worse outcome and maybe even more lives dead.

Who we are personally and as a society are defined by both good and bad events in our history.

The "greater good" doesn't actually apply here. The Dark Ages led to the Renaissance. A lot of people dying altered society for the better. The extinction of the Dinosaurs is another point where mass death was progress.

But, the biggest problem here is it creates a paradox. Taking Hitler out of the timeline means you won't know about him and won't have a reason to travel back in time to kill him in the first place. Also, taking out Hitler might mean you wouldn't even exist at all. No WW2, likely means no Baby Boomer generation, which means a lot of missing grandfathers and great grandfathers.

I can't even fathom what the world would look like if there was no WW2, the changes are too far reaching and significant. Suffice to say the entire world was affected by it.
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Not to mention there would be no Geneva, UN, and WHO. The atrocities of WWII led to a globalization and collaboration that spurred many human right organizations as well as technological advancements (computers, rockets, medicine).
 
I'd probably go back and visit myself and try to get hypnosis or something to dislike pizza, crisps and chocolate so I don't get fat.

I'd also visit myself aged 18 (I think) and make sure I let Vicky down a bit more gently. Didn't do anything wrong; it's just she was really nice and I wasn't interested so I was a bit of a heartless prick.

And if we're really cheating the system I'd go back and win a bit on the lottery - not massive amounts, but enough to pay off my mortgage so I would be much more financially comfortable nowadays.

EDIT - oh shit, people talking about killing Hitler and so on. Damn; that makes my choices look really selfish then. I wasn't thinking on that big of a scale.
 
Dryk said:
That's the thing that people always miss. If you really want to try to avoid WW2 you at the bare minimum have to fix the Treaty of Versailles. But I still really don't think that altering the economic, political, social and technological landscapes of the world on such a massive scale is a wise idea.
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As a matter of fact, to properly avoid WW2 the easiest thing would be to stop WW1 from ever happening. It was the complete mess that war caused that led to the whole world being stuck in a massive depression. Empires fell, people were starving and millions of family members lost their livelihoods and families due to a stupid conflict over territory. WW1 from the ground up was a total farce and really should never have happened; It was such a huge loss of life for nothing. There really was no true winner in WW1. Everyone suffered just as much as each other merely for participating.

I think if you took a time machine back stopping WW1 from happening, while it would change the worlds political landscape it would likely have saved a hell of a lot of lives overall. WW1 led to WW2 directly, which led straight into the cold war. The past centuries worth of terrible history can most likely all be directly attributed to WW1 and what happened during and straight after. The trouble however, is we don't know what the world would be like if that had changed. We could all be worse off for all we know. We exist because of every minor and major event in our ancestors history. Every little detail has built up to create the society we have now. Changing any event would change everything entirely and we have no idea if it would be for good or not. Stephen King wrote 11/22/63 which is a really good novel about going back in time to save JFK. It put a bleak look on a possible negative of changing history.
 
Even if you could change the timeline signficantly without leading to paradoxes, I don't think it would be a good idea. History could have unfolded a million different ways thanks to small quirks here and there, missed opportunities, strokes of luck that changed the fate of nations.

While overall it disagrees with my view, I always thought Orson Scott Card's Pastwatch was an interesting novel in that the future humans of our timeline realize that the damages of the Columbian Exchange was actually caused by other future humans changing the timeline to prevent the Tlaxcala from basically running roughshod over the world.

And as some here have alluded to, even if you could remove Hitler, the Holocaust was a pretty defining moment in the course of history. I doubt you'd have the modern state of Israel, for example, and lower-key persecution of Jews would have probably continued much longer than it did. We think of ourselves as the "present" but you're still dramatically changing the course of human history, however many years that goes on after us—whether 100 years or 10,000 or more.

I suppose you could probably change your own life via time travel without any real damage to the wider course of history, because most of us aren't that important, and even with the whole butterfly effect you'd still probably not change a whole lot. But then you run into a "Tapestry" situation where you'd be robbing your past self of necessary if painful experiences that inform who you are, and fundamentally changing yourself in unforseen ways.

All this said, if I had a time machine I'd damn be sure to use it. Go see the dinosaurs, the lost wonders of the old world... who wouldn't want to do that?
 
If you fuck something up you can just go back in time and kill yourself before you fuck it up.

ezpz
 
StayDead said:
I think if you took a time machine back stopping WW1 from happening, while it would change the worlds political landscape it would likely have saved a hell of a lot of lives overall.
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80 million people being alive when they weren't before could also be negative outcome. The impact of those lives and their descendants would be enormous regardless of the wars not happening!

Yeah I've also read too much time travel fiction to be blase about the idea of fucking with history.
 
Yes, but for more personal reasons. I'd probably go back and attempt to alter my childhood. That and encourage different decisions.
 
Yeah! I'd totally go back and be a nicer and more confident person. I'd also try harder to keep more friendships intact and not enter any of my previous relationships.
 
I'd make D the second letter and B the fourth letter of the Latin/Roman alphabet as well as make periods look like exclamation points and vis versa.

I wonber how biffernt the worlb woulb de with such simple changes.
 
As much as I'd like to kill Hitler, due to the big technological advancemnt made in war times, it would probably destroy modern civilization.
 
The World Wars were pretty shit, but based on what I know about the circumstances that led to them, it's really hard to have avoided them altogether. The fact WW2 was so horrible is exactly the reason why a war between France and Germany seems so inconceivable in 2016. And when you consider various countries have had nukes for around 70 years and they've only ever been used to cut short the war with Japan (possible saving lives rather than killing more), our timeline is actually pretty decent. That's my European perspective, of course. I'm not saying nothing bad happened since WW2, but I think it's fair to say things could've been a LOT worse. We tend to forget most people were half expecting the world to end not too long ago.

So, I would appreciate what we have and worry about our own future, which isn't looking better than our recent past. As I said, I think we're in a pretty good place right now, and I'd work on changing many detailed events in order to keep things from turning to shit. As one poster suggested, telling Hillary Clinton not to use a private e-mail server is a start. :P I'd also definitely give us a head start on global warming.

edit:
Just thought of something I would definitely consider changing: the founding of the state of Israel. Sensitive topic, I know, but let's be honest, the existence of Israel hasn't done much good in terms of conflict for the past few decades. Providing Jews with a safe haven after WW2 seemed like a great idea, but to me post-Nazi Europe didn't seem like a great breeding ground for new anti-Jewish sentiment anyway. Why move them out of the part of the world where anti-semitism was forever tainted by Nazism? The horrors of WW2 might've guaranteed the safety of Jews as well as these horrors have guaranteed the unity of Europe for the last 70 years. I truly believe that most of the world's Jews staying in the US/Western Europe or moving there would've been better than moving them to a Middle-Eastern shore. For everyone.
 
If I had a time machine I'd be Forrest Gump. I'd just be standing in the background of tons of famous historical photos looking like a total goober.
 
Also I'd not jerk it all the times I did, and jerk it all the times I didn't.

As you can see, I'm really interested in very small changes and how they would affect things and to what degree. I say jerk it because it involves only myself and I feel that not having sex would be too big of a change.
 
I wouldn't change anything up to the point where I got access to the time machine to ensure I didn't cause a butterfly effect that prevented me from getting it. After that i'd use it to go back a few days before any major tragedies happen in the future & try to prevent them, the chances of anyone believing me though would be very low so i'd also grab the lottery numbers to throw money into any particular problems to ensure they're prevented. So i guess i'd be 25% corrupt, 75% helpful.

It's only a hypothetical thread and i've already gone corrupt. Great.
 
I'd give George Washington some gold chains so he could be fuckin flossing in all those portraits
 
Change a few things in my past for a brighter tomorrow. Also get lottery numbers. But no way in hell am I going anywhere past the 70s, fuck that. I know what's there, I still see that shit even today.
 
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