Your time machine will only go in one direction. Which way do you go?

In My Humble Opinion
61

You guys are forgetting one important thing…if you travel back to the past…YOU will be there. You can’t just do things over as yourself because there already is a you there.

The only way out of it would be to travel a year (or so back) with lottery numbers/stock tips etc) and give the machine to yourself so that he could go back a year and do the same thing.

However, the younger you runs into problems. First is maturity and understanding of the world. Would you really trust your 14 year old self not do do something stupid with the machine and therefore ending/severly changing your life?

One way around this would be to go back a year and make a deal with yourself…that you both will live as yourself for that 1 year, then the other self has to invent and take the time machine back. However, there is a possible paradox here because he has to invent the machine without your input or where does the invention come from?

I suppose you could go back and not reveal you to yourself…but then you have to live in a world where you are a non-person, and that could be very rough.

62

I won’t be anywhere in 1929. I wasn’t born till '66. That gives me 37 years to figure out what to do with myself.

63

Ah, but I would already know that I would lose it if I put it in the bank, so I would just put it all under my mattress.

OK, I don’t get it.

64

Slypork had the best plan to avoid violating causality.

Write down the winning number for the latest lottery drawing. Make sure it’s still unclaimed. Tell your wife “I’m just popping out to get the mail, be right back.” Go back a week in time and buy those lottery numbers. Take enough cash with you so that you can go stay in a fancy hotel under an assumed name for a week. When the week is over and you’re back to current time, you walk back in the door and tell the wife and kids “Hey I just found these lottery tickets that I bought on a lark at the gas station last week, let’s check to see if I won something.” Voilà.

65

If you go back in time only the one week like in my scenario there will only be duplicates for that time. Hole up in a hotel until time gets back to your starting point. No paradox. When you go back one year with the additional funds you will be creating accounts in your own name but your earlier self will not be aware of them so again there is no paradox. Hide out in any place that you hadn’t visited in the previous year and you won’t bump into yourself.