time travelling fun

[Morm]

So here's the deal: Imagine you get given the power to travel through time. There is a catch, however- you can either move forward or backward, not both. You must decide whether you want to see the future or the past. After each instance of time travel, you return to the same time you left (aka the present) to plan your next journey, frolic or do whatever the hell you want. BTW no assuming time is cyclical and being lame by saying you go so far ahead you loop back.

So which would you choose to visit and travel through? Past or Future?

For me, this is a hard question. Do I go back in time to the start of the life and the start of the universe to end the debate about creation once and for all? Do I go back to see a Tyrannosaurus ruining the shit of some other dinosaur of less repute, or check out the Cambrian explosion? How about hanging out with our early ancestors, getting to know my family more than anyone ever could or see all the awesome battles of the past? Do I go back and meet Jesus (assuming he existed)?

Or do I go to the future, check out where evolution will take us (since I have a decent idea of where we've been)? Do I travel to the end of our species, the next ice age or the end of time itself? Do I witness the technologies and warfare of the future, witness how standards of beauty change or even see which species get nixed and don't? Perhaps we'll travel to other planets, that would be fun too!

Surprising to most, I would most likely go forward. It's far too tantalizing for me to see all the technological goodies and even where evolution will take us. For me, the future seems limitless where as the past is limited (though like 10 billion years is pretty vast, to be fair).

What would you do? Please explain answers and have fun with it.

 

[Lelouch]

It depends on whether or not I'm allowed to stay in the time of my choosing. If so, I'd go way ahead until medical technology has improved to the point where we can modify our bodies easily and cheaply: presumably I'd also have to travel far enough past that point that all the retards and moral guardians will have been told to shut up and sit down so humanity can enjoy said technology.

Alternatively, if I'm only allowed a finite period in each time zone, I'd choose the past. First, I'd obtain pieces of art which can be proven as being by a certain artist and sell it to become rich. Then, I'd obtain the resources I'd require in my trips to the past: munitions, hazmat gear, oxygen tanks, first aid kit and basic medicine, etc. Also, a copy of http://cache.gawker.com/assets/images/gizmodo/2009/04/qw-cheatsheet-print-zoom.jpg

With these things, I'd exterminate people/halt events I consider to have been hindrances to human advancement:

1. Save as much knowledge and philosophical work as possible, which I would peruse and after achieving my other goals re-distribute what I consider safe (i.e. no Aquinas)
2. Prevent Judaism from spreading - and by extension, the other Abrahamic religions. It'd push science and society forward by millennia.
3. With some research, I'd tactically prevent from being born a few people I consider to have negatively contributed to society: for example, based on twenty seconds of googling, I know I want Pope Innocent VIII unborn (he contributed to the anti-cannabis fad) - though that'd have been achieved by #1.
4. Stop the anti-eugenics fad, though before doing so I'd obtain as much information as possible on technology from 1940 onward and make it available to certain Western universities; this in case the continuation of eugenics programs prevents the birth of, for example, Oppenheimer.
5. Alert (and prove to) the public, anonymously, that I have the power to affect such change, request suggestions, and finally dictate what changes I can't bring about by time travel by threatening to unmake entire nations who disobey, thus controlling the present, too.

 

[ginganinja]

Its very easy for me but firstly.

Its rather Ironic that you say that we can only back in time or foward in time (for tis senario) since to get back to our time we must foward in time if we went tothe past or back in time to return to out time from the futute.

The main issue with going foward in time is that I may be unable to adjust to the huge advances in technology and be unable to enjoy the new technology. Als I feel that if I returned I would feel unhappy with my current life and would want to remain in the furure of obvious reasons.

So I would like to go back to the past. any things wrong with the world today can be fixed by going bck to the past. Also I would love to see influential people such as Alaxander the Great and such like. Also Time is always going forward and therefore we get closer to a possiable future (figatively speaking since when we move forward the future also moves forward) everyday. However we can never fix the past.

Have a Nice Day!

 

[Adm. Empoleon]

I would like to back to the past.

Why?

The present is the result of actions done in the past, so by going back to the past, I can fix the shit that we have now. Like killing Osama bin Laden before 9/11 (damn asshole gave Arabs a bad name), I could see how Petra was built, I could participate in some wars, I could see how Arabs were 5000 years ago (no, i don't want to see Muhammad, although that would be a bonus).

I could see if the Hashashins (the guys from Assassin's Creed) were real, and if they were, I could join them for fun.

I could alter the present by fucking the past.

 

[Parallel]

Realising that changing the past would yeild uncertain results, (Stopping WWII would lose us masses of technology, and consequentially may also prevent the Cold War from ever occuring, meaning we'd never want to invest the money to land on the moon in such a short timespace).

So i'd have to go to the future, i really want to see how it all turns out. What we do, what we don't. What we solve, what's inevitable. Seeing the last days of humanity has a poetic feel to it.

 

[Alan]

I would go back in time first. See all the shit that used to be there. Find out what the fuck happened to Amelia Erheart (sp?). Discover where the mafia put Jimmy Haffa's body. All that trivial shit. I wouldn't really mess with anything really big, such as stopping Franz Ferdinand from getting shot, preventing 9/11 or changing the outcome of the Civil War, etc. Messing with that stuff is just a very bad idea. I would help my family out by dropping them lines about where to invest money, what becomes popular and all that jazz. But I really wouldn't want to alter the course of history, even for the better. Too much chance to ruin everything (and theoretically prevent me from existing). I would only go to around the time of the Cuban revolution and stop castro from winning. Because he is a massive asshole. And I hate him.

but if time is cyclical.....

 

[cantab]

This isn't the first time the topic has arisen, and previously I rambled. I'll be more concise this time.

Firstly, I believe changing the past is impossible. One can observe, and one can even make what happened happen, but one cannot change history. For example, you couldn't stop Guy Fawkes being caught and therefore get James I blown up, but you could be the person who sent the letter that tipped off the authorities thus saving the King's life.

Secondly, scientific consensus is that you cannot travel back in time to before you built the time machine. This would appear to rule out travelling to the past, but there is a way around it - discover an existing natural time machine, and make it usable. An example might be finding a natural wormhole with a time difference between it's ends that's existed since the early universe, and making it traversable by humans. (The time difference need not be big, since you can simply go through it repeatedly to go back further).

An "only backwards" restriction does not seem plausible scientifcally, but could always be imposed legally.

With that all out of the way, I'm going to say backwards. My degree is in Geological Sciences, and travelling to Earth's past would change the field IMMENSELY. One might fear it would kill off the science as we know it - why figure things out from present rocks when you can study them in the past? But deducing geological history from observations made at one time would still be invaluable in figuring out where and when to time travel to. It would become like the equivalent of reading a travel guide before going on holiday.

In terms of specifics, well there's two goals - science and sightseeing. (One trip can quite easily fulfill both). For sightseeing, we've already had some of the obvious ones, so I'm going to say something less obvious - the Messinian salinity crisis. A time when the Mediterranean Sea was cut off from the Atlantic and almost entirely dried up. The resultant basin was up to 5 km below sea level in places, absolutely dwarfing the Grand Canyon and giving the Valles Marineris a run for its money. From the hillsides which are now the coastline, the sight would surely have been incredible. In the basin itself, Death Valley seems like a cool spring day compared to the 80 Celsius / 176 Fahrenheit temperatures at the bottom.
And of course, when the sill at Gibraltar was breached - Niagara Falls, eat your heart out.

If I can travel beyond Earth, then another massive highlight would surely be the young Mars. A world of rivers and seas, clouds and rain, volcanism - and just maybe life.

 

[Morm]

Yeah I'd say strictly as an observer but you can stay where you go if you want and join their society etc.

 

[THE_IRON_...KENYAN?]

Id travel into the future. The prospects of hyper advanced technology are far too tantalizing to resist.


Specifically, I would like to see if there is a way to become physically immortal.

 

[cantab]

I suppose one point to consider: are you the ONLY time traveller, or is it relatively common?

If we do ever develop time travel, and it becomes widespread, the world will change so much. Essentially we'll instantly "jump" to the highest possible technological level, at all times. Time will become more like space, and humanity* will have a region about a hundred trillion years in time (the duration when there will still be decent numbers of stars - even if not essential, stars are very useful for life) and however big a space we occupy. Society may well cease to "change", since any "new" idea can just be sent back in time. But that doesn't mean society would be homogenous, any more than global society in the 21st century is homogenous.

* Actually even without time travel I think humans will become irrelevant, superseded by robots with strong AI. I'm not expecting terminator-style wars - rather, the AIs will lead in technology and likely governance, and advance as far beyond humanity as we are beyond bees. We'll likely continue living on Earth, while the AIs roam the galaxy - and barring aliens, rule it.

 

[Brain]

I would visit the future, from which I would extract the specifics of most significant technological advancements. From there, I would plan out a "fast track" through which some of these advances could be achived within a few decades. I would start a company, and I would start rolling them out, locking them down to ensure exclusivity, and slowly but surely I would become one of the most powerful men in the world. Through the exclusive dissemination of life saving technology, revolutionary means of entertainment and all the best the future has to offer in terms of methods of propaganda, the whole world would eventually become dependent upon me. From there, it's consolidation, consolidation, consolidation. If future AI beats human intelligence while being provably safe and trustworthy, it would of course become a priority, and I would put it in charge of everything critical or top secret, to ensure that my interests are always met. Priority would also be given to building a private robot/drone army, controlled by AI and fully dedicated to protecting my assets. With good planning and some luck, I would go from a simple time traveler, to rich and powerful, to indispensable, to invincible. Also, if anything was to go wrong, traveling a short while to to the future would give me foreknowledge, allowing me to adapt my strategy.

If this works out, the planet would essentially be mine, and this is where the fun would start. I would first make technology regress to a non-threatening level, then I would curb the population by making most of it infertile (or perhaps there are better ways to do it - in any case I would repeat the procedure whenever the population seems too high). While the numbers go down and the population is manipulated into looking forward to the next step, I would engineer various types of societies and environments, like a primitive society, communist villages of various sizes, or cities where all basic needs are met and people are encouraged into doing any activities they enjoy. Then, I would watch what happens and travel around. I would try to maximize humanity's cultural output for my own enjoyment.

And while I enjoy the world I would have made, I would leverage all future space travel technology in order to spread my empire as far out as possible, establishing robotic colonies everywhere they can thrive. If alien societies are known in the future, I would take over as many as I can and I would curb their technological advancement, while making sure they stay comfortable. If possible, I would make a place (maybe Australia) where humans and all alien species I find would be put together. It would be fun.

 

[Morm]

Interesting take on things, Brain. Taking things beyond my narrow scope of pure curiosity to take advantage of things whilst not interfering with the future directly (but interfering with it from its past). Best answer yet :D

Cantab, Bees are actually beyond us in many ways. To travel the scaled-up distances they do in one day we'd need to move at like mach 15 on our daily commutes. Also, their pherimones and communication is pretty complex. Just their dances are crazy enough and hyperspecific. Infact, they prune out bad genes- if more than about 15% of members in a colony don't possess the Altruistic gene, they turn on them and the queen, effectively killing themselves and the hive in the process. I wouldn't say we are beyond them, just different. Though, there is evidence that CCD is caused by cell phones. UGH.

 

[cookie]

Provided I don't go all megalomaniacal (which, given the power at my disposal, could well happen), I would:
1. go forward in time, lap up the medical advancements the future has to offer for me (anti-ageing drugs, metabolic enhancers for avoiding obesity, all sorts of goodies like that) and hopefully get myself an indefinite lifespan and a body that won't fail me for centuries.
2. Money. Find some technology/resource that valuable to one timeline and procure it for lots of money. This might be in the form of a rare painting that will have been destroyed, a mineral resource that will have been depleted or some tech that will obviously make me really rich in the present.
3. Well, being able to go into the future gives you pretty much a blank cheque, doesn't it? Gene therapy, nuclear fusion (practically limitless energy), teleportation, super-powerful computers, interstellar/galactic travel, all juicy. Even if I didn't leverage my huge advantage like Brain would I would still use it to give myself an extremely comfortable and care-free life, going around doing as I please. Although, I would probably strike some deal with national governments to grant me some sort of diplomatic immunity in exchange for technologies/resources, so I can continue to do stuff as I please without being bound by the law.

I could, if I felt like it, instead use my leverage to guide governments in my vision, getting them to pass certain laws etc.

 

[cantab]

I would start a company, and I would start rolling them out, locking them down to ensure exclusivity

That would fail. Your products would be reverse engineered, and reproduced. I very much doubt you could even maintain a monopoly on time travel, or indeed because of the nature of it ever have one in the first place.

(I'm singling out your post for this criticism because the idea of controlling knowledge in the fashion you describe is an absolute anathema to. Further discussion on that is perhaps a matter for another thread though.)

Cantab, Bees are actually beyond us in many ways. To travel the scaled-up distances they do in one day we'd need to move at like mach 15 on our daily commutes.

Scaling speed and distance like that is fallacious though.
More to the point, think of it in terms of knowledge. I think it's reasonable to believe that we know much more about bees than they do about us. The AIs would be beyond our comprehension in a similar manner.

 

[Brain]

That would fail. Your products would be reverse engineered, and reproduced.

Sure, except that it would be illegal to do so in most places and that reverse engineering can be a large and time consuming investment, if not outright impossible. If the innovations are split into enough discrete steps, each made difficult to reverse engineer, and that each step is released at a small enough interval, reverse engineering is not worth doing, as it will always leave you behind. There are much greater risks on the inside - people in the know could very well leak critical information. Essentially, the strategy is to move fast enough to grab market share and thwart attempts from competitors to catch up, and slow enough not to raise suspicion.

I very much doubt you could even maintain a monopoly on time travel, or indeed because of the nature of it ever have one in the first place.

Oh, I agree. The monopoly was assumed for the purpose of the thought experiment.

More to the point, think of it in terms of knowledge. I think it's reasonable to believe that we know much more about bees than they do about us. The AIs would be beyond our comprehension in a similar manner.

I think bees are a somewhat misleading example, as they are eusocial, and in my conception, the AIs would likely be eusocial as well (it's a more efficient and better focused system, so we're likely to make them that way to begin with). As for being beyond our comprehension, this is also misleading. In all likeliness, AI will pursue extremely well defined goals in ways that we could not figure out. So in a sense, while bees don't know what we aim to do and how we do it, AIs are likely to be such that we would know what they aim to do (in fact, we would define it), but would be unclear on how they figure out how to do it (in any case, we couldn't do it ourselves). If asked why they are doing X, though, they would tell you what the end purpose is, and you'd likely understand it.

That is, unless we just let AI loose without a clear game plan, but I'm not sure that's likely. It is more likely to be reined in so that it does precisely what we want it to do.

 

[MrIndigo]

I'd go to the future.

Note, you could go to the past but not to steal things to sell in the present. In fact, you wouldn't change the past at all, because it would be impossible for you to do so.

If you travel back in time, then by definition everything that you do there had already happened (in the past) at the time that you left. Consequently, you could not possibly do anything that would change time from what it already was.

Similarly, (assuming there is only one timeline, which is the only way time travel is meaningful) if you travel into the future, you would not be able to change what you saw when you went back to the present. Anything you did would only serve to create the future you saw.

 

[Jack Jack]

On one hand, the past was aldready changed (that's why it's called "the past") so it is perfectly safe to go around gleefully massacring history in the past.

On the other hand, time travel sucks.

 

[Aura Guardian]

Possibility one: travel to the past

Scenario: create alternate realities
My response: kill the tyrants (ie, Hitler and people of similar caliber)

Scenario: cannot change the past, nor cause it
My response: Meet the importaant people in history (do I need to list any?), witness great events.

Scenario: cannot change the past, but can cause it
My response: stop Guy Fawkes, research other events that I could cause

Of course, if I can't travel to before I could time travel, then who cares?

Possibility 2: travel to the future

Scenario 1: I give a response you don't like
My response: Well, we are all traveling to the future at a rate that only changes negligibly.

Scenario 2: The future is changeable; all I can do is travel to a possible future.
My response: do what Brain would do, make sure to avoid the disasters.

Scenario 3: The future is fixed
My response: Who cares? Well, maybe cause the future to happen. Also, the forewarning would be good for me.

So, what I do depends on the constraints. However, I'd rather bring the future to the present. Failing that, I'd like to create alternate realities where the evil leaders died earlier.

 

[Jack Jack]

You can't change the future, because your time travel are taken into account when you arrive in the future.

Much the same way your travel in the past is taken into account in the future of that past (which is our present)

 

[Morm]

unless you go back in time and off yourself

 

[Jack Jack]

It will somehow fail, as you were still alive to go back in time.

 

[MrIndigo]

unless you go back in time and off yourself

If you were to try this, you would fail to kill your past self.

If you went back in time to meet your past self, you would have to have already experienced the meeting before you left.

The overall timeline would be:

1) Your future self arrives in the present.

2) You meet your future self.

3) You travel back in time to meet your past self.

 

[TheAmazingFlygon]

If you could bring back items with you in time, I would probably travel in the past, more precisely during probably Tiberius's reign. Then, I would use some weapons that I brought with me, take over the Roman Empire and crown myself Emperor. I would also meet with Jesus for I could. The End.

 

[cim]

I believe enough time travel paradoxes exist that the discovery of time travel will be prevented by others using it years later thanks to these paradoxes.

 

[HolyChipmunk]

Travel to future, steal technology, go back to present, sell stolen technology, become multimillionaire.
This technology also includes Pokemon Chrome and Titanium version, availiable on 4OS (4-D Octuple Screen) and a beta release version of the iPod Smell 5g.