Ethics and time travel go together like flux capacitors and DeLoreans. Let’s see what you make of this scenario.
You’re travelling through time, in ancient Africa. 1.5 million years ago. You have an invisibility field and phaser which shoots on stun setting. You’re see an 8 year old Homo ergaster go about his business. You then spot a large bird of prey circling. It’s clear that the bird is about to kill the boy.
What do you do?
(We don’t know how he died, so I cribbed his death from the Taung Child.)
Heavy choice. Changing the past risks changing the future, and I’d hate to be responsible for something horrible, like Hanoi Jane becoming POTUS, the Saints not winning a Super Bowl, or the SEC not being the most awesomely glorious conference in college football.
Plus, I’m considering turning heel in general. Babyfaces tend to get the short end of the stick. So I won’t interfere this time.
Bam and Oakminster ceases to exist, because in the original history of the world, he had saved this little boy who it turns out was his great[sup]n[/sup]grandfather.
If a time traveler in the past can affect the future, then my simply being there will be more than enough to change the future into something unrecognizable. Not shooting the bird won’t change that, so the effects on the future are irrelevant.
Anyway, I probably zap the bird; both are animals, but one’s a hominid and the other isn’t so there’s a certain tribal loyalty thing going on.
I don’t buy this theory at all.
I could sail the world in a hot air balloon 1.5mil years ago and I seriously doubt it would change the world into something “unrecognizable”.
Say you scare a bird, which causes its sperm to be slightly jostled such that it produces a different offspring, which cascades into affecting predators offspring as they try to catch this bird, Which in turn affects the offspring of any creatures they come in contact with, and so on and so forth until there is an entirely different set of humans walking around 1.5 million years later, with entirely different history and culture. Some things would be the same as I suspect certain technologies and cultural norms are too useful to remain undiscovered, but it would be a very different place indeed.
As to the OP I’d probably go ahead and shoot the bird. What’s the point of time travel I you don’t screw around with history. There is no reason to believe that the alternate time line would be more likely to be bad, who knows it might even rain doughnuts every afternoon at 3:00.
(:smack: