Suppose you just invented time travel. But for whatever reason, it can only take you back a year before you were conceived by your parents, and earlier in Earth’s history to any place & time—but not later.
In other words, if you were born in December 1973, you could only travel to March 1972 and earlier in history.
So, would you take the risk, the Butterfly Effect, causality paradoxes, even possibly spawning an alternate universe/timeline, to witness and/or interact with any point in history you’d love to behold.
Or, hell no! The tiniest change could lead to your non-existence.
Not now no. I’m 66 and I like the health care we have better than what I believe was available then. Also do I get to take assets? I’m getting too old to work for a living as my current profession would almost certainly not be available to me.
Now if I get to be say 25 again, and I have enough of a stake to start over, then I think yes I would
It’s my assumption that as soon as my time machine materializes, it creates a new timeline that is entirely separate from the one in which I was conceived. And if I’m wrong, I have faith that Doctor Who will save me from the dizzying morass of paradoxes I will find myself in. I think I’d prefer Tom Baker or David Tennant, but stranded time travelers can’t be choosers.
For a brief time, before the timelines diverged, you’d be incredibly powerful and knowledgeable. You’d know what stocks to buy. (“What’s this silly ‘Microsoft’ thing, anyway?”)
You could also be a musical genius and “write” a whole bunch of famous songs.
I think I’d go for it - the chance to see living dinosaurs, trilobites, ammonites etc would be unbelievably cool (am I allowed to bring back a triceratops egg?)
I’d be more worried that the butterfly effect would destroy someone else’s life than my own.
I’m trying to think of a way, where I can go back to the upper limit, so as not to incur a butterfly effect where I’ll never be born, and plant a message, explicitly from me, to me, in a place I know I’ll be in 10 years.
And I think I have it. We lived in a small home with easy access to the creepy attic I used to tinker around in when I was a kid. Its door was right next to my room upstairs. I could probably come up with some convincing information that would prove to my younger self that this is for real (names & dates of specific events to come in the early 80s). Then go on and give stock tips and such to make a killing in my later life.
I’d have to break into the house before we would move in about 8 years later, but it was there, and I know a spot I’d be sure was not only well hidden, but I would find and use to stash my kid stuff away from my then nosy sisters.
I would take the mere existence of a time machine as proof that paradoxes do not destroy the universe. It’s a little egocentric to think that I have the first and only time machine ever. If time travel is possible, then someone else is going to do it too, eventually.
So the downside is like worrying about LHC black holes eating up the Earth, while the upside is being able to put to rest just about every uncertainty we have about the past.
Of course another, more straightforward idea of time travel is that you’re not really changing anything, just that your timeline is looping backwards and forwards—you were always there—what happened, happened.
I do suspect that the combination of hygiene and health and parasitic issues that humans lived with way back in the day might well drive me insane.
I would then be placed into a madhouse. Where I would discover dozens of other time-travelers who also went quite mad because of various disconnects and health issues.
Kind of sobering, huh. To find out that the people who are viewed as insane are just normal people from another time who couldn’t hack it.
Of course I would. And were it possible for me to influence things to the French won all of North America in 1761, screw the paradox I’m all for trying.