Indeed. Why is The Voice on such a strict schedule, with the “ten minutes” and all? Why is this (apparently) a one-shot (heh) deal?
Well, speak up, Voice!
Exactly. This smacks of a trick. [Picard voice] “We won’t do it, Q. You cannot trick us into playing your little games!” [/Picard]
Oh my God. **Q **is Qin Shi Huangdi!
They can bill me!
No. Don’t fight the OP’s hypothetical, in which Hitler didn’t trap your only child under a burning car.
Assuming eveything in the OP I’d still go for no.
Can all of the people figthing the OP’s premise simply STFU? It’s not clever or anything like that.
Danke schön.
The Voice assures me that the new timeline will be better regardless. So if I trust the Voice, then I can improve the timeline just by doing nothing. So regardless of whether I trust the Voice or not, my decision is the same.
I don’t think the “twenty close friends” I could save would appreciate it. They’d lose too many of their friends. Better to go into the new timeline alone.
Besides, why kill Hitler in 1911? Be much more interesting to kill Karl Marx as a young man & see what happens. Or does Marx get a Messianic exemption from this kind of thing?
I’d shoot.
6 million+ saved…worth it. To me.
I truly understand those who wouldn’t think so.
And I would take on the guilty burden of ‘what if’ without much of a qualm.
We already know ‘what’, and it was shitty.
I’d chance an alternative.
I would love to live in a world where the name Anne Frank means nothing outside the circle of people who personally knew her.
Or…
“If only Chancellor Frank hadn’t gone mad back in the 70’s and started World War Three! Imagine what the world would be like today!”
Can I shoot the dean who rejected Hitler’s art school application?
I am far too genre savvy to even attempt such a thing.
NB - The second link looks whacked-out because of an embedded punctuation character.
Again, why shoot, why not bribe?
'Cause it wasn’t Chekov’s wallet you were given.
Alternative: 'cause the OP said you’d be given an automatic pistol, not an automated teller machine.
Anyway, if Stephen King is any guide (and he is) what’ll happen is you’ll shoot at Hitler and miss, but he’ll brazenly use a young child as a human shield, destroying his future political career.
I’m surprised at the number of people that are butterfly-effect-fearing.
Are you similarly concerned that significant decisions you make normally might have very indirect and unpredictable consequences? “I’d better not take that promotion, because it might result in an earthquake somehow…”.
In fact the OP’s interpretation of the butteryfly effect implies that just about everything we do will ripple out and create a radically different world. Why did you have to put on blue underwear today, you monster.
But yeah, like others I’d have to be sure I wasn’t crazy first, and understand temporal physics better. (In fact, the two go hand in hand: I’d ask the voice to give me novel scientific information that I can use to make testable predictions first).
If all I’m doing is moving 21 people from one timeline to another, in a multiverse where there are infinite realities both better and worse than the one we’re living in…it seems kinda pointless.
Not really. First, because they aren’t that obviously important. And second, a mysterious Voice isn’t telling me to do them.
Both points are talking about my perspective on things, not the underlying truth of the situation. They’re irrelevant.
The reason why we don’t think about very indirect unpredictable consequences is because we can’t. Also it’s not very clear how we can apply chaos theory to the world as a whole.
My point was that the OP does imply a specific view of how chaos theory applies to the world as a whole: that all our actions will “ripple out”, and quickly too, if we accept that Hitler’s death changes all of the world’s births. Me picking different underwear might take longer to affect the rest of the world, but it will, eventually. If we’re going to take this weird, temporal guardian view on things, why should I think about ripple effects in one case, but not the other?
We already live in the timeline in which Mao’s son died in the Korean War, and so we didn’t end up with a sixty-times larger version of North Korea.
Ever play Jenga? Take a brick from the top, and all you’ve done is created a superficial change that doesn’t effect much. Take a brick from the bottom, on the other hand, and the whole thing could topple over.
You can’t get much more superficial than a butterfly flapping its wings, and that’s why it was chosen as an illustration of chaos theory. Superficial differences do have a huge effect on chaotic systems, eventually.
(Of course “eventually” is a key word here…)
I’m not arguing that we should concern ourselves with “ripple effects”. I’m saying quite the opposite: that we should weigh up actions on their predictable effects.
…And if you can’t trust a disembodied voice telling you to kill people, who can you trust?
Can I just give Hitler one of those matchboxes with the “Can you draw Tippy the Turtle” pics instead?