Okay, here’s the sitch. The US government announces that it will be licensing some long-classified technology that allows time travel, which the US and its closest allies (Canada, the UK, and Israel) have been covertly using for the past decade. Partly they’re doing this in an attempt to raise revenue, but just as important is the fact that time travel is somewhat less useful than one might think. Here’s why:
The tech can only be used for travel into the past and back to the origin point; both the theory behind the tech and many thousands of attempts confirm that.
The trips back in time are all subject to the Novikov self-consistency principle. The past cannot be changed, no matter how hard one tries; several hundred Mossad agents have demonstrated that in trying to assassinate Adolph Hitler and his top aides before the Holocast. All failed. Those who kept at it longest all ended up dead without any change of history.
The Big-Brother applications of the device are also limited. For one thing, the tech allows time travel, not time viewing; if you want a visual or audio record of something that happened in the past, you’ll have to send somebody back with a camcorder or whatnot. In addition, there is a minimum time travel jump possible: sixty years. Again, both the basic theory and innumerable failed attempts confirm that no jump of fewer than sixty years is possible.
The time-travel process is linked to to the Earth’s gravitational field. This has the obvious plus that the traveller doesn’t have to worry about winding up in outer space when he or she goes back to 1880 or whatever; it has the downside that they’ll end up in the same spot relative to the Earth’s center of gravity as you left from.
Okay, those are the stipulations. How should this time-travel tech be regulated, if at all?
If you really can’t change the past, then the risk of bringing disease back to the present might be the real issue. Smallpox is eradicated now - but sixty years ago, it was just rare. Five hundred years ago, it was widespread. Our time-travelers would probably have to be innoculated against a lot of diseases that are now extinct or so rare we no longer immunize the population. If someone’s going so far into antiquity that we aren’t entirely sure what the epidimiological environment is like, a mandatory quarantine on return might be prudent.
Beyond that, I suppose we’d probably either require or very strongly encourage time-travelers to have certain basic survival skills, depending on how far back they’re going. If I’m a white American male going on a sixty-year jump to New York City, I’ll probably only need limited training - if I break my leg, hospitals of that era are perfectly capable of treating me. If I’m a black male jumping to rural Mississippi of that era, I’ll probably need some cultural training, and self-defense as well.
Jumpers to antiquity would need quite extensive skill-sets - linguistic, medical (you don’t want the locals treating you), and self-defense.
So, much of the regulation required would depend on the time of jump contemplated. I can imagine a sort of sliding-scale similar to that we have in aviation today. It isn’t that hard to get a sport pilot’s license - but getting to fly a 747 requires years of highly specialized training, and most still never get to do it.
Simple. When writing up the by-laws for the Board of Directors of Time Travel, Inc., you simply stipulate, “59 years from the execution of this document, the CEO of Time Travel, Inc. will travel back to the moment before the final signature is written to tell us exactly what needs to be changed in this document.”
You’re assuming that the guy from the future is trustworthy. How do you verify that? Maybe it’s the future version of Polycarp or Qadgop. Then again, maybe it’s the 2070 equivalent of yours truly.
ETA: Now that I think on it, what useful information will the future CEO be able to provide? S/he can’t change his/her own history.
I guess most people would want to see some major historical events. Imagine dozens of millions of people wanting to be present on the Golgotha. You can’t let everybody go. And if the past can’t be changed, I wonder how the “time frame” would handle that. Those 100 millions people in Jerusalem in 33 AD would have a hard time going unoticed and not changing anything.
There’s the issue of the “butterfly effect”. Not being able to murder Hitler is one thing, but what about stomping on a butterfly, or even walking on the grass? This changes the past too, and probably the future. So, I guess that time visitors would need to be invisible and immaterial for the past not to be modified.
What about issues of privacy (when you travel only 60 years ago, for instance)?
What about breaking laws (either laws of the era you visit or laws of the time you’re coming from)?
I’m sure that will be handled by the “incredibly freaking expensive” element. I admit I didn’t include that in the OP, but I thought it was obvious.
My thought here is that there is only one past; that is what the Novikov principle implies. (Well, that and that you cannot access other universes by means of this tech.) So anyone who goes is destined to go, and their actions are part of history; just part of history we didn’t know about.
Let’s say, for example, that I decide to ignore the testimony of the experts and previous time travellers, and decide to try to save Lincoln from Booth. The techs running the time travel machine try to dissuade me at first, then somebody does a little research and says, “Yeah, let him.” So I go back, try to track down Booth, and get killed in the process. The researcher who gave me the go-ahead will probably have found an old record indicating that someone fitting my description was murdered by Booth & his cohorts in the lead-up to the assassination.
If it’s going to be self-consistent, as posited in the OP, I’m not really sure that a whole lot has to be done in that respect. Perhaps in many of the historical events that have large crowds, we’ll end up finding out that many of them were, in fact, time travellers, or we’ll find out that some well intentioned person who was trying to change some historical event was actually a major part of the cause.
The part that concerns me most is the sort of thing that won’t change history but could be used for nefarious reasons today. For instance, even with the 60 year minimum, chances are we could go back, somehow spy on someone, and use that information for extortion or other nefarious purposes. So I think there’d have to be a very strict set of rules governing what can and cannot be taken back, and what events can and cannot be witnessed. Considering the high cost, I don’t think it would be difficult to get those sorts of rules put in place.
For instance, I could imagine some sort of government panel of historians and scientists that would have to approve all requests for time travel including details about when, where, and why and a detailed itenerary. They’d have to take extreme considerations to ensure not just their safety, but that of everyone else because of diseases or contaminants they might bring back. In fact, I could very well see travelling being limited to professional Chrononauts in the same way space travel has been limited.
Further, at least at first, I think the trips should be limited to the most useful trips. For instance, it might be neat to witness Columbus landing in the new world, but I’m not sure how much useful knowledge we’d glean from it compared to countless other historical events and eras. I think there might be a lot more useful information to be gleaned from visiting some major religious and/or mythical events and seeing what parts that were recorded were and were not accurate. More particularly, I think finding events where major bits of knowledge have been lost, like before the library of Alexandria burned down, the building of ancient monuments, etc.
Well, there would have to be prohibitions against carrying large amounts of precious metals or jewelry. Currency would be useless, but someone could conceivably barter with the gold/jewels, stick that money in the bank and when they come back to the present, voila! A jillionaire!
There’s almost no way to prevent someone bartering with the knowledge in their head, though.
Yeah, you’d need something to combat this. Maybe forcing people to disclose all known assets, and somehow legally binding them to those upon return. Dunno how’d youd prevent them from setting up an account in a friend’s name, though. (I thought about putting it in a parent’s name, but that would have affected my past life.)
I can only imagine how many major religious and/or mythical events turn out to have been due to the misunderstood influence of curious time travellers from the far future…
Would we allow videotaped evidence of past events to be admissible in a Court of Law?
Suppose I wait until November 22, 2023, then grab my camcorder and then jump back 60 years and head for the Grassy Knoll in Dallas…where I shoot video of Joe DiMaggio firing a sniper rifle toward the Presidential Motorcade…what happens then?
In the interest of justice, should we *require *court-appointed personnel to travel to the past to obtain evidence, as part of the appeals process?
You think the interests of justice are to wait SIXTY YEARS for every prosecution, when, in many–maybe most–cases there is ample evidence available from other sources, and also when it’s likely that we won’t be able to get the evidence you desire?
Because it destroys the economy? You were the one talking about setting prices for going back in time - why make this a profit-making enterprise for other people when it’s a profit-making enterprise in and of itself for the operator (speaking nothing of the entertainment value)?
Why are you sure the scenario slitterst describes would destroy the economy, or even work?
If I go back in time to 1900 and deposit $10 in a savings account at First National Bank, intending to return to 2010 and take advantage of 110 years worth fo compound interest, I will return to find that the account is long since gone, evaporated by escheat. To avoid that I’ll need to periodically have some activity on the account, which will require being there in person until at least, oh, the mid-90s. Do I make multiple time travel trips (surely expensive) or just stay in the past? If the former, how is that any better than making investments in the present? You have to treat paying for each time-travel trip as part of the initial expenses, after all.
Afraid I got to fight the hypothetical here, Skald.
Not buying the no changing history rule. I dunno what the Mossad agents were trying, but if I want Hitler dead, I’ll do it long before he rises to power. Possibly when he was an art student. Make it look like a mugging, double tap in the head, hollow points, then poof back to my own time to see how it worked out.
Even if Hitler is off the table, if I kill anybody while time traveling, history will be changed. Whoever I off did not die that way in the original timeline, and will not be around to do whatever else he was gonna do. Say I accept a hit from Red Sox nation, and go back in time to kill Bill Buckner’s grandfather before he had any children. In all probability, the BoSox win the World Series in that infamous Game 6…
