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Thought Experiment

Patrick

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Jul 3, 2004
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Suppose you get access to a time machine. It could take you back to any historical time and place in say the last 4000 years. It takes you back in time, and brings you back to 2004 when you wanted to come back, but it can only be used for one round trip. Your mission in going back in time is to change the course of history for the better. You can only take the clothes on your back, as much money as you want in a form recognizable in the time and place you want to go back to, and the clothes on your back, and of course your knowledge of how history evolved. You can stay for up to a year. What would you do?
 
I would save all the inhabitants of Atlantis by sending them in great ships to Mexico. That way when people sneaked across the Rio Grande today they'd know all the cool Atlantean science. I think it would be cool if 500 people went home from work in the evening and a small cleaning staff came in - and the sum of the IQs from both groups were equal.
 
The poster above needs to find a hobby.

Anyway, to answer the question, I would....

hmmm

well,

I guess I don't know enough about ancient history to decide, but I've always wondered if changing Hitler's mind to go into politics would have made any difference.

I believe that European, Russian and American history could have been very different.

And, I would have advised Emperor Valens of the Eastern Roman Empire, in AD 376, to refuse to allow the Visigoths into Roman territory. A few years later, they would fight the Roman army in the battle of Adrianople and defeat it. The Roman Empire then ended. I think that the Roman Empire would have continued, and Europe of today would not be fragmented into tiny countries trying to join up again.
 
jay gw said:
The poster above needs to find a hobby.
Click to expand...
C'mon Jay - even thought experiments sometimes go bad.

I thought about it and came up with 3 broad classifications; Hitler, war, disease.

That's really just 2 classes but Hitler is a special case. Oh yeah, I thought about American slavery. I don't think you could stop all slavery. But I couldn't think of a way to stop it from happening here.

Then I wondered what would Europe be like without the Black Plague. Is the vaccine even manufacturable back then?

And war has done more than trade, or at least as much in spreading customs and products and ideas. Would we be more distrustful if we had kept to small states. Your answer is ancient superstates that last forever.

It's tough changing history. You can't really expect good outcomes. At first, I was just going to build floatation around Atlantis. But I knew it'd leak over time. Better to save them, but send them where? Why not the Americas. But I didn'twant the pilgrims slaughtering 2 races of people so I sent them to Mexico. Then I had to consider what I'd see when I got back to 2004. And I wanted it to be positive.
 
Um the Visigoths were akin to the later Vikings and Vandals ...he had no choice.

Va Va Va Very similar to Pax Americana.

I'm not sure where where I would inject myself , but the issue I would address would be the creeping misapplication of " Christianity" that I believe was a primary cause of the dark ages.
("She turned me into a newt!.... I got better tho. ) Galileo was pardoned by Pope John Paul in 1992 A.D.


gee I wonder if there's any analogs in todays reality...... Na couldn't be.
Take it away Muqtada Alsadir ...what tortures do we have in mind for these infidels?.. Well Jay thanks for asking our contestants will be playing for their lives! ( big cheers LALALALALALALALALALALA!)
 
Patrick said:
Suppose you get access to a time machine. It could take you back to any historical time and place in say the last 4000 years. It takes you back in time, and brings you back to 2004 when you wanted to come back, but it can only be used for one round trip. Your mission in going back in time is to change the course of history for the better. You can only take the clothes on your back, as much money as you want in a form recognizable in the time and place you want to go back to, and the clothes on your back, and of course your knowledge of how history evolved. You can stay for up to a year. What would you do?
Click to expand...

I thought the topic meant you were going to try thinking as an experiment. It could be worth a try.
 
I thought the topic meant you were going to try thinking as an experiment. It could be worth a try.

Never let an opportunity for a snotty remark pass, huh? :D
 
I'd travel back to the week before the big bang and tell God what was going to happen. I bet the selfish barsteward would carry on regardless.
 
In an italian film, back in the late 80ies, (I think its name was "1492"), Roberto Begnini`s character is driving on a country road with a friend when all of a sudden there`s an accident, and (probably from the chock) they both get trapped in the past - although it takes them quite long to realize that because environment and even local people haven`t changed much since the 15th century... well they land in 1492.
Begnini`s friend wants to take whatever advantage he can get for all the future technology they can sell, but Begnini thinks that if they ended up in 1492... well that must be for some reason... there should be a mission, some job they should do... and he figured out that there could only mean one thing: they should go to Genova and try to prevent Columbus from discovering America - because America was in the root of most of the world`s problems ever since.
.....
just a thought!
 
TillEulenspiegel said:
There is no grandfather clause--Thus spake Kip Thorne.
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Wrong. "There isa noa Sanity Clause."
And this thread has violated the Nazi rule.
Just like "Enterprize" tonight.
 
Patrick said:
Suppose you get access to a time machine. It could take you back to any historical time and place in say the last 4000 years. It takes you back in time, and brings you back to 2004 when you wanted to come back, but it can only be used for one round trip. Your mission in going back in time is to change the course of history for the better. You can only take the clothes on your back, as much money as you want in a form recognizable in the time and place you want to go back to, and the clothes on your back, and of course your knowledge of how history evolved. You can stay for up to a year. What would you do?
Click to expand...

I don't think that any change I could make would balance the risk of it going wrong, and changing the world for the worse.

What's so bad about the world now?

Suppose Hitler didn't exist. WW2 would probably still have happened. The outcome might have been different, but not neccessarily better. Anybody read Stephen Fry's book "changing history"?
 
Atlas said:
I would save all the inhabitants of Atlantis by sending them in great ships to Mexico. ...
Click to expand...

I already did that.

Rather than do the obvious and go back and kill Stalin and Hitler, I'd go back to 1,507,302,111 BC and step on a certain newly evolved cucaracha. :p :D
 
Jeff Corey said:
Wrong. "There isa noa Sanity Clause."
And this thread has violated the Nazi rule.
Just like "Enterprize" tonight.
Click to expand...

That was a jest armed with real info.
As Ive sited many times:
<snip>
.....Kip Thorne, who had his interest piqued in time travel when he received a phone call one day from Carl Sagan. Sagan was looking for a way to get the heroine of his novel Contact--<snip>


www.nd.edu/~jglazier/Physics442/ Pseudoscience/Past_reports/time_travel_2001.doc - Supplemental

That was his first serious consideration about time travel. The outcome has hard science and maths involving wormholes, Einstein-Rosen bridges.( which Hawking agrees with).
Later Novikov,Thorne, Hawking Et.Al. went on to try to define the mechanism behind "The Grandfather Paradox".
The outcome is that the universe will not allow causality to reverse , that their has to be temporal consistency.
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?articleID=000D46D3-E187-1D2C-96D7809EC588EEDF

Both articles are topical in nature , but the physical review letters and abstracts are available on the net


Chico Marx to Groucho: " There aint no sanity clause".
 
Atlas said:
Wasn't that already tried?
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I would get him much younger. The Romans were too late. By that time, his "love your neighbor" philosophy had already got out, and doomed the world to millennia of war, genocide, and terror.
 
I'd teach the Native Americans about antibiotics and vaccinations. Let the Eurotrash die of Smallpox.

Although, I'm not sure I'd change anything. I'd probably try to rescue the contents of the Alexandria Library.

ETA: or the Mayan Codices destroyed by the Spaniards.
 
I would kill Julius Ceaser. And prevent rome from conquering most of europe.


To bad I can't take nukes with me. If so I would vaporize rome and the ME.
 
I think it would be interesting to pop back to the 1920s and try to explain to Lenin that communism as Marx envisioned it just wasn't going to work out for Russia, and that he really should set the place up as a socialist constitutional republic.

While I was there, since I get a whole year, I'd also try to explain to people that they shouldn't overdo the crushing of post-WW1 Germany.

Finally I would clean up by betting on horse races whose outcomes I knew, and arrange for the proceeds (in gold bullion) to be buried out the back of a particular patch of land in Tasmania. :)
 
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