I’m just a guest here and have no way of knowing if this has been dealt with before, anyway…if you could travel back in time where would you go and to what date.
…and why?
Wrong Forum.
Apologies, no doubt a mod will shift it ti the right one :smack:
Heh, well, you could go back and fix that, for starters.
As for the question at hand, it has been discussed at length, but it tends to fall apart when analyzed. Are you going back in time to stay? Can you return to the present? Can you make multiple trips? What happens if you create a paradox (i.e. killing your grandparents)? Can you create paradoxes? Can you meet your younger self and influence your own life? Will you have childhood memories of this influence? Does your presence in the past have a “butterfly effect”, where all random events that follow are changed?
If the answer to the last question was “no”, then my choice would be to go back 24 hours (or even just 2 hours), buy a lottery ticket with number I know will hit, and otherwise make a conscious effort to avoid any contact or interaction, however indirect, with myself. This could be as simple as hopping a bus to the east end of my city, buying the ticket, and reading quietly in some restaurant until I know my younger self has hopped into the time machine. Then I head home, lottery ticket in hand. There are no large-scale ramifications to my act (short of making myself extremely rich).
While it might be morally attractive to try to prevent JFK’s assassination, or Archduke Ferdinand’s, or the Sept. 11 attacks, there may not be any way my warnings would be taken seriously. I might get locked up for killing or assaulting Oswald or Princip or the hijackers, and the alternate “present” I create could easily be as bad or worse.
We already had this discussion next week.
Let’s deal with your questions as best I can.
You can return,you go to OBSERVE only and not to attempt to change history by offing Genghis Khan or whoever takes your fancy: no paradox is created therefore.Multiple trips are in order.
You cannot meet yourself,You can remember your visit, you cannot bring anything back to the present from the past other than the clothing you went in.
There must be something I forgot :dubious: I guess I’ll be told about it.
As for myself I’d go back to(as near as I could) the time of Jesus Christs crucifixion…just to see if it WAS true 
What’s the point of witnessing the event when you won’t remember it?
I’d go back with the winning lotto numbers printed on my shirt and leave it where my past self will find it 
I said you CAN remember. :smack:
I said ONLY the clothes you went in :smack: :smack:
Is it still a one-shot deal? If not, I’d be using my observation-only time travel abilities to watch myself closely and find out what happened to all the tools and stuff I’ve lost over the years.
There aren’t really any “historical” mysteries that intrigue me, and even if I wanted to gather info on something really controversial, am I allowed to make video recordings or take photos? Even so, if I come back with a detailed account of the actual events of April, AD 33 (or whatever the relevant period) and announce that the basis of modern Christianity is a sham, what would be the point? Humans will continue to believe whatever they want to believe.
Gawd strewth!!!
You can go to observe ONLY, you cannot bring anything back other than the clothes you went in…how many more times must I say it :rolleyes:
Well, with an attitude like that, I wouldn’t recommending joining permanently. You’ll only end up wishing you could go back in time and save your $15, because this is the kind of place where wacky hypotheticals get analyzed, kicked around, smushed into different shapes, tried on for size, run through the wash and sold as scrap.
So, are you really in the past in some physical way (in which case I don’t see how you could avoid interfering, even slightly), or observing it as an intangible ghost?
Fact is, unless I can use this time-travel technology to either enrich myself or remake the world as I see fit, what’s the point? Were you planning to come back and tell people what really happened to Joshua bar-Joseph (aka Jesus) with no evidence to support your claim? You’ll either be ignored or condemned. You might even be assaulted by someone who devoutly believes the “wrong” version of history.
If time travel was possible, then I would think there would be quite a crowd at the crucifixion. Take their word for it.
Save your trip for something that might not otherwise be witnessed.
Yeah, it sucks when everything of interest becomes a tourist trap. That’s what ruined Paris.
An attitude like what? fer chrissake I already said what you could and couldn’t do/take/bring back and still I get asked. How do you 'spect me to react?
No matter how hypotheticals are treated on this board, all I did was ask a question, kick it as much as you want it aint personal.
- You are in a tangible form, for example you could be part of the crowd at the crucifixion, altho jeans and a T shirt may stand out as rather naff
may be a good idea to take period clothing along. - I guess it’s up to you whether you want to share your travel experiences with others, sometimes it’s better just to keep quiet about things…you never know who you are talking to :eek:
No offense, but you asked a question, specifically
Bryan answered the question you asked. It was after he had already answered that you inserted all sorts of inane qualifications. Don’t blame people for answering the question in the OP and not reading your mind about what exactly you wanted.
Since you cannot interfere with the world, I assume the reverse is true. The example I am thinking of is a lifeboat from the Titanic. If you were there in the lifeboat observing, you would weigh it down and possibly sink it; and as we are expressly forbidden from affecting the world, the world cannot likewise affect us. Similarly, one might imagine oneself immune to heat and cold, because the world is immune to changes caused by our body heat, or that one needn’t breathe, because one could deplete the oxygen in a closed room sooner. I conclude the experience would be more or less like being a weightless disembodied presence.
If so, there might be a way to use an “observational only” time travel to enrich yourself, though it would take some initial outlay of resources (apart from the time machine itself). It wouldn’t be as sure-fire as the lottery, however.
Go back in time armed with the knowledge of several pirate vessels or privateers that went down and whose treasure was never recovered. You could carefully track their movements simply by watching the captain do his navigational charting. Remember where the ship went down and return to the present day, then go claim the treasure.
Go back to the Oak Island money pit and see who made it and what was put there. This is dicier, because there may not be anything there, and even if there were, you’d have to get the rights to dig it out. Still, you could at least see whether it was worth your time.
Go back to the originator of the Beale ciphers and see if they’re real. If so, find out how the ciphers were made and where the money is.
On a criminal note I won’t say much, because the mods frown on that kind of thing, but I will say that a paradox-free invisible intangible observer presence that can be projected anywhere into the past would be invaluable for gathering vital information on security defenses, access codes, and so on — purely in the hypothetical, of course, since no such time machine exists.
With courtesy.
Bryan Ekers did not violate your rules by asking if he could take a video camera with him. You specifically said
Bolding mine. You did not prohibit what you could take back with you from the present to the past, so Bryan asked if he could take a video camera. Instead, you got huffy and started making demands of other posters, telling people “you already said” things you hadn’t, and making angry faces because you didn’t give clear instructions.
Calm down and let people answer what they’re going to answer.
I am not a moderator. As a matter of friendly advice I advise you to check out the first rule on this page.
I would travel back to 1975 and tell myself to put all my money in Wal Mart stock
I’d find a young Bill Gates and Paul Allen and offer to back their venture.
What Fish said in post #18.
If you need to clairfy, that’s OK. Just don’t get huffy about it.
This is more of a poll than a factual question.
I’ll move this to IMHO for you.
DrMatrix - GQ Moderator