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ok what would you do? how would you mess up time? the corse of history? or would you wimp out and never touch it?
i personaly would do the following:
1) give cavement a bag of bouncy robber balls
2) go back to 1910 and introduce roleplaying games, ccgs, board games and table top wargames to a generation that would (presumably) crave them more
3) travel to mezopotamia and give them modern medicine, science, maths and a much better religon (one that makes sense in a nonsensical way)
4) give the zeplin to the aztecs
5) take a fair amount of species (tho mainly bacteria and plants) from modern age and place it way back before life on earth existed
ok what would you do? how would you mess up time? the corse of history? or would you wimp out and never touch it?
Can we make multiple trips? On a purely selfish level I'd give myself a lot of advice. I'd probably go and look up big lottery jackpots and jot down some winning numbers and dates to hand to myself and various loved ones. (Maybe just one really huge one and then do the rest through investment with insider knowledge from the future like buying a few million worth of Microsoft stock in 1980 or something, right before the big deal with IBM.) I'd also have things to say to various dead loved ones. (Not all bad, not all good.)
After that, eesh, now we get into ethical problems. Bad Guy X is Bad because he killed people for political reasons. So I'll go back and kill him for, uh, political reasons? Having perfect knowledge of the future would resolve a lot of ethical issues here (We know, with absolute certainty that Dude X is going to do Y on date Z.), but not all of them. With multiple trips potentially one could go back and arrange a do-over if one screws up the first time.
Of course as an ordinary person of ordinary means, my actual ability to alter the past by influencing major decision-makers does not exist.
But it would all depend on what time travel rules we were using.
ok what would you do? how would you mess up time? the corse of history? or would you wimp out and never touch it?
i personaly would do the following:
1) give cavement a bag of bouncy robber balls
2) go back to 1910 and introduce roleplaying games, ccgs, board games and table top wargames to a generation that would (presumably) crave them more
3) travel to mezopotamia and give them modern medicine, science, maths and a much better religon (one that makes sense in a nonsensical way)
4) give the zeplin to the aztecs
5) take a fair amount of species (tho mainly bacteria and plants) from modern age and place it way back before life on earth existed
Well, who says that the only interresting events happen in the past?
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Go back about 40 or 50 years, bet really huge on a couple of longshot sporting events, win lots of cash, also invest in some companies that I know are going to take off soon, set up a lawyer to deliver that cash to me when I'm a young man, as an inheritance of some kind from a mysterious and reclusive great uncle.
I'd get the schematics for a PC, go back in time and have it sent to myself (get a dated postage stamp on the enveloppe), then come back here with the unopened enveloppe and proclaim the rights to Microsoft.
Ultradan
I'd go forward in time, see what the next winning lottery ticket numbers are, see who wins the Super Bowl/Kentucky Derby/World Series, come back, make a few good bets, be rich, nice and simple. Though I might also find myself moving into an era where humans have wiped themselves out, the risks would be worth the rewards.
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The problem with going back in time and screwing with stuff is that it is subject to the law of unintended consequences. Say I decide that Stalin has to go because of what he does to the Soviet people. How can I be certain that the person who comes up instead of him is going to be any better? Furthermore, do I have the right to kill someone for a crime that they have not yet commited? Better to go back and set yourself up as the speaker of a Dyonisian cult and spend the rest of your life in hedonistic splendor then to screw with timeline.
Now that I think about it, I might use the time machine to resurrect the 'pretend to be a time traveler thread'. I recall antagonizing KC was fun at the time, though I earned my whacks.
The get rich quick thing is pretty simple. Just sell the thing to somebody. Same gain, but no risk.
Oh, and I'd send Sebastian back to the age of the dinosaurs.
I would go back and gather DNA samples. I would get enough genetic diversity from now extinct and near extinct species to clone and reintroduce them in the future.
Also I might chose a group of people from the past and I would not give them technology but something much more powerful and important. I would give them ideas. Germ theory, math, written language, equality, human rights, periodic table of elements, etc.
I would give them ideas. Germ theory, math, written language, equality, human rights, periodic table of elements, etc.
Ideas about equality and human rights have been an on-again, off-again thing for centuries. You'd probably have a hard time convincing pre-Enlightenment people that they're desirable. The type of person you'd have to talk to in the past for it to have an effect would also be the one most inclined to execute you for breathing a word of it. A Roman aristocrat has devoted his entire life to gaining numerous privileges in the law over other men (woman being property) and he's about as likely to support undermining those as he is to cut his own throat. Pick someone further down the ladder and you have the same problem, since they've done the same thing.
Widespread egalitarianism more or less requires a large, literate, non-aristocratic population to get off the ground. And as soon as those guys are satisfied, they become Roman aristocrats just like everyone else. It sucks like crazy, but that's how power works. Equality appeals to the little guy but it's the very enemy against which all the interests of the privileged are set.
The science and math would be potentially easier sells, provided you could put it in a language that the relevant locals could understand and demonstrate the necessary proofs, run the right experiments, etc. It would be a lot easier to give them the next big breakthrough relative to their own time than it would be to present them the cutting edge 21st century stuff. That wouldn't always be true, but the intellectual and physical infrastructure in situ makes a big difference for a lot of things, especially technological.
Go back and see if Jesus was the real deal, same goes for Mohammad.
Other than that I would go back with the knowledge of how to build modern farm Equipment and stake out a claim on a couple hundred thousand acres of prime farm country along the Missouri/Mississippi Rivers.
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I am glad that it is not just me who thinks about this. Really Glad.
If we are talking about creating sort of alternate timelines with paradox free shenanigans license the to do list becomes very long.
0. Make sure I have a good idea of period customs / dress you cant time-travel if you are being burned at the stake...
1. Give the Roman empire the Steam Engine, Gunpowder and printing press.
2. Attend a Shakespeare play in the Globe.
3. Confirm the tales of Jesus, Mohammad, Buddha, Krishna,etc.
4. Hire a moving company / swat team to steal books from the library of alexandria before burned, stage miraculous return and copying of the texts.
5. All night pleasure feast and lyre lesson with Nero and the gang.
6. Take some forgeries to get Adolf Hitler into art school and out of the german army. Possibly also acquire his baby photos...
7. (I know this will be unpopular but i am a curious,)
Stop the American revolution and observe what British North America is like in 2010.
8. See if biblical miracles actually occurred, and if not, use science to make it appear as if they did.
9. Engineer a communist government in a nation OTHER than Russia Germany or China, and see if it works.
10. Go on a date with cleopatra and take a photo.
11. Can you say Davinci portrait? I can, but maybe not in Italian... (If you can bring people along he might be a good choice.)
12. If Hitler plan is unsuccessful, stage an Inglorious Basterds-esque revenge plot.
13. Buy an action comic's one, get alan moore to autograph copies of each issue of watchmen, rinse and repeat for other popular comics.
14. Fly a jet plane past kitty hawke to show wright brothers who is boss.
15. Use technology from the future to create a highly advance and insular civilization in the Congo to lay the smack-down on the slave trade.
16. See if the stars ever were right... If'n you know what i mean.
17. Be analyzed by Freud and Jung.
18. Meet the classical greek heroes.
19. Changing / removing the major world religions.
20. Lose 1 million dollars in the 1929 stock market crash.
21. Manipulate the market so i Gain a million dollars in 1929...
22. Change the outcome of the seven years war so France wins Canada. (again curiosity)
23-28. Prevent the assassinations of
23. Ghandi
24. JFK
25. Thomas D'Arcy McGee
26. Abraham Lincoln.
27. Julius Ceasar.
28. John Lennon
29. Get together a genius panel of Enstien, Tesla, Bacon, Ford, Davinci, babbage, banting, gates, Jobs and others whom i have forgotten.
30. Open a sandwich shop.
31. Prevent various disasters and terrorist attacks.
32. Draw a "Cigar" on a young Freud's forehead.
33. Angrily storm up to Christopher Columbus and explain to him that he is not in fact, in india, then leave him without explaining who i am.
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Forget about setting myself up for wealth. I have a time machine. I'm freaking Kang the Conqueror. I can have whatever I want, whenever I want provided my machine lets me set the moment and location of my destination. I'd never go back to my original timeline (if it existed anymore at all,) choosing instead to spend the rest of my life creating divergent timelines and then jumping back into the future to witness the mess I've created. At the end of my life, I'd just go back in time and give myself my time machine so I could start all over again.
Obviously, I should probably never be allowed access to a time machine. The temptation to stomp on butterflies would be far too great. Introducing cavemen to birth control would probably be right at the top of my list. I could open Bedrock's first Planned Parenthood. I'm sure transporting invasive species into different time periods would yield all sorts of interesting results and there's no way I could pass up using a flamethrower to greet the first amphibians to crawl from the primordial sea.
Going back to the moment where I first got my time machine and punching myself in the face would be fun too. Then I could chase myself through time in an attempt to get revenge on myself.
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I’d find some dig site where they’ve found dinosaur bones, then go back to the Jurassic or whatever and scratch “God is false! Seven days my ass.” into the rock there, just to mess everyone up.
I’d go back and track down the little bag of plastic monsters that inspired Gary Gygax to put the bulette, the rust monster and the owlbear into D&D, and throw a little Optimus Prime figure into the mix.
I’d go back to ’98 and make sure this certain dubious guy couldn’t make it out on this certain night, then hook up with my younger self and that hot blonde at the pub and have a threesome without the dubious guy involved.
I’d find out the location and time where all these historically important photographs were taken and try to get into the background wearing a Where’s Wally? / Where’s Waldo? outfit.
I’d go back and invent a character called Jar Jar Binks and another character with the exact likeness of the little Anakin, then copyright them, then sue George Lucas after Star Wars Ep 1 comes out and force him to remove those two characters from the film.
I’d go back and try to track down Cleopatra, Nefertiti, Helen of Tro, Joan of Arc, Hua Mulan, the Mona Lisa chick and Anne Boleyn, and report back on ratings out of ten.
7. (I know this will be unpopular but i am a curious,)
Stop the American revolution and observe what British North America is like in 2010.
I'm guessing it would end up looking a lot like Canada. In fact it might be called that. The Southwest would still be Mexican and Alaska still Russian, but I doubt the British would have passed up the chance to grab Louisiana at the end of the Napoleonic Wars.
Not that anybody will ever know, of course.
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You can’t change anything in the past. The great thing about a time machine is that you get to experience different realities. You can never go back or forward on the same stream, but you can split and fragment them endlessly.
This is why it is an excellent and thoroughly cathartic thing to do on a Thursday afternoon... Hypothetically of course...
I'd probably do many of the same things Aberzombie, Archlich, Dalbrine De Viseler, and Lathiira would do but one other idea has been running around in my brain for a while now: If the time travel effect encompassed a large enough area I would cause it to switch all of the areas of earth that were covered in ice during the height of the last ice age (approximately 20 000 to 18 000 years ago), but aren't now and all of the underlying crust down to the top of the mantle and up to geosynch equivalent orbit associated with said areas and actually switch them back to the height of the last ice age, displacing the glaciers ... somewhere. This would also be calibrated to take continental drift into account. This would considerably help with the species conservation issue: since there was only glaciated areas that get displaced the other habitats would be intact as at the height of the last ice age. Kind of borrowed from 1632 but much larger in scope both spatially and temporally. I'd probably also go back to the mesozoic and even palaeozoic and collect DNA samples and even young (or equivalent) from every single species that ever existed on earth (animals, plants, fungi, protozoa, etc.)
ooh oh, i know, give cave men art lessons, show them how to draw mangas!
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1. I'd put a very good surveilance platform and data recorder on the Lunar Surface designed to watch the earth.
2. I'd go back and intercept all those twats involved in changing the future Thereby:
(a) Preventing the guy who shoots Adolf in the Testicle thus preventing Adolf Hitler from becoming a nutter and thus stopping the USA and USSR from Plundering German technologies and thus ensuring Germany's innevitable first man on the Moon landing in 1958 and Rise of the Zeppelin Aviation Agency so that the Zeppelin is a Global Transport System by 1950.
(b) Foiling the US conspiracy to Subvert the Commonwealth State of Palestine and form the state of Israel.
(c) Prevent the Europeans from Manipulating George Washington into taking up Millitary Training in Europe so that the USA is never founded and North America remains intact long enough to become a Commonwealth State.
i'm only a hat... still why not chibi art than the odd looking animals stuff
The problem with going back in time and screwing with stuff is that it is subject to the law of unintended consequences. Say I decide that Stalin has to go because of what he does to the Soviet people. How can I be certain that the person who comes up instead of him is going to be any better? Furthermore, do I have the right to kill someone for a crime that they have not yet commited? Better to go back and set yourself up as the speaker of a Dyonisian cult and spend the rest of your life in hedonistic splendor then to screw with timeline.
Agreed and Stalin is a great example. He was a paranoid dilusional individual who was convinced that one of the capitalist states was planning an attack on Russia at the first opportunity. Most of the dead peasants (maybe 10 million all told) died to essentially provide the state the funds and labour it need to implement extremes like factories in the deep steppe far beyond the area that any European invader could get to and massive, nearly unfathomable, stockpiles of raw resources.
Certainly the maniac did things that harmed Russia, the officer purges for example. But on balance its unlikely that Russia could have held out against the Germans in the first two years if it had not been for some really awesomely brutal and fundamentally asinine policies that turned out to be actually accurate despite how far fetched they must have seemed in 1934 or 36.
A rational government would not be stockpiling resources in unfathomable quantities by slaughtering the peasants in the millions in order to do things like transfer them to new industrial complexes being built in near Siberia or force them into the cities to provide the work force.
In turn it could not have ramped up production of weaponry to 2-3 (or more) times what Germany was able to produce even while its sources of those raw resources where overrun by invading enemy armies.
The guy was crazy - and not just crazy but evil crazy and yet its difficult to see how Russia could have held on without him and if Russia was conquered its unclear how the west would have retaken western Europe.
Go back and see if Jesus was the real deal, same goes for Mohammad.
Yeah - this one strikes a cord with me too.
I would take this list, then go back in time and fix everything your guy's tomfoolery and skullduggery set amiss. Hopefully I am successful and will prevent the universe from being destroyed.
I may even take a small TV film crew with me to document my adventures, and make weekly episodic TV shows to air at a future date. You may be in it.
EDIT: Actually, since we are still here, in the future when I really go back into time to fix things, I must have succeeded. In fact, I guess I do not even need to go now... DOH!
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This is for everyone who wants to travel back in time to meet Jesus. And if you can't afford a flying house, you can always settle for a Bible and what I'm assuming is a veiled reference to hallucinogenic drugs.
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I am glad that it is not just me who thinks about this. Really Glad.
If we are talking about creating sort of alternate timelines with paradox free shenanigans license the to do list becomes very long.0. Make sure I have a good idea of period customs / dress you cant time-travel if you are being burned at the stake...
1. Give the Roman empire the Steam Engine, Gunpowder and printing press.
2. Attend a Shakespeare play in the Globe...
If you did 1, I suspect you could not do 2...
sorry.
I would go back about 50 years and buy stock in Coke and McDonalds and Intel and in 1984; have to check that date; buy stock in Apple then sell it before it crashed a few years later. Since I am about that old; should be easy to make sure I get the money; I would buy a lot of land in several states.
problem with history is we cant speak any of the languages if we go back very far; might be nice to know where a few pirate ships went down or lost civil war payrolls hehe.
big things; i would try to save the stuff in the Great Library at Alexanderia; move it to the new world; would really consider deeply reorganizing the American Indians prior to the colonist arrival; that or make sure this whole mess with reservations didnt happen and the people got assimilated into the US like the rest of us. Be interesting to think what might it be like if the colonist were assimilated instead; many were, but not enough to make it stick. They would have needed codified laws and a flag to be taken seriously. Would love to go back to Ancient Eygpt to see the great pyramids at Giza when they were sheeted with gold; the ancient writings say they were an incredible sight at dawn and dusk.
There are many historical figures I would love to converse with; but I dont speak the language.
lol; being a person with a degree in history of technology and electronic and having grown up on a ranch and having years of experience working with a general contractor and now working in silicon wafer manufacturing; I could change just about every facet of history. The big thing would be to stop the petty and senseless wars and all the pointless destruction and build the naiton of man rather than stupid nationalistic ideas that this group or that group is better than anyone else.
Steam Engine; hehe well the ancient Eyptians had the steam engine; steam turbine really; like 400 BC; they just used it as a toy and could not see any practical use for it.
As for murderous crazies; they have always been with us since recorded history and even farther; so many violent groups; hehe Did you know the real reason for the first crusade was to get all the petty warlords and fueding princes out of Europe so everyone else could get on with living peaceful productive lives?
lol; all the choices and you would give them comics; how cool is that hehe
ooh oh, i know, give cave men art lessons, show them how to draw mangas!
You wouldnt have to steal it; they let you read them if you wanted; and could buy copies; the library was vast though; better to just the policy past to make a duplicate copy and build a secondary storehouse; the library was destroyed by invaders; sigh.
As for Cleopatra; we know what she looked like; she was short and fat; but was one of the most brilliant political leaders ever; the greatest and the last of the Greek children in Alexander's bloodline. She courted two different Roman Emperors and the most powerful Tribune ever.
I am glad that it is not just me who thinks about this. Really Glad.
If we are talking about creating sort of alternate timelines with paradox free shenanigans license the to do list becomes very long.0. Make sure I have a good idea of period customs / dress you cant time-travel if you are being burned at the stake...
1. Give the Roman empire the Steam Engine, Gunpowder and printing press.
2. Attend a Shakespeare play in the Globe.
3. Confirm the tales of Jesus, Mohammad, Buddha, Krishna,etc.
4. Hire a moving company / swat team to steal books from the library of alexandria before burned, stage miraculous return and copying of the texts.
5. All night pleasure feast and lyre lesson with Nero and the gang.
6. Take some forgeries to get Adolf Hitler into art school and out of the german army. Possibly also acquire his baby photos...
7. (I know this will be unpopular but i am a curious,)
Stop the American revolution and observe what British North America is like in 2010.
8. See if biblical miracles actually occurred, and if not, use science to make it appear as if they did.
9. Engineer a communist government in a nation OTHER than Russia Germany or China, and see if it works.
10. Go on a date with cleopatra and take a photo.
11. Can you say Davinci portrait? I can, but maybe not in Italian... (If you can bring people along he might be a good choice.)
12. If Hitler plan is unsuccessful, stage an Inglorious Basterds-esque revenge plot.
13. Buy an action comic's one, get alan moore to autograph copies of each issue of watchmen, rinse and repeat for other popular comics.
14. Fly a jet plane past kitty hawke to show wright brothers who is boss.
15. Use technology from the future to create a highly advance and insular civilization in the Congo to lay the smack-down on the slave trade.
16. See if the stars ever were right... If'n you know what i mean.
17. Be analyzed by Freud and Jung.
18. Meet the classical greek heroes.
19. Changing / removing the major world religions.
20. Lose 1...
would really consider deeply reorganizing the American Indians prior to the colonist arrival; that or make sure this whole mess with reservations didnt happen and the people got assimilated into the US like the rest of us. Be interesting to think what might it be like if the colonist were assimilated instead; many were, but not enough to make it stick. They would have needed codified laws and a flag to be taken seriously.
Don't think this would work. The Europeans won in large part because their diseases completely undermined the North American civilizations. Without that you get India at worst (i.e. a place the Europeans can conceivably conquer but never truly hold or assimilate).
Giving them flags and recognizable culture does not solve their problem - they had symbols and culture. The Aztec capital, with 200,000 people was probably the largest city on earth at the time - much bigger then any European city. But with disease wiping out huge numbers (some estimates are 90%+ of the population their cultures simply collapsed. The same would happen in the United States if a plague came through that killed 90% of Americans. Flags and such simply would not matter as the state would disintegrate.
would really consider deeply reorganizing the American Indians prior to the colonist arrival; that or make sure this whole mess with reservations didnt happen and the people got assimilated into the US like the rest of us. Be interesting to think what might it be like if the colonist were assimilated instead; many were, but not enough to make it stick. They would have needed codified laws and a flag to be taken seriously.Don't think this would work. The Europeans won in large part because their diseases completely undermined the North American civilizations. Without that you get India at worst (i.e. a place the Europeans can conceivably conquer but never truly hold or assimilate).
Giving them flags and recognizable culture does not solve their problem - they had symbols and culture. The Aztec capital, with 200,000 people was probably the largest city on earth at the time - much bigger then any European city. But with disease wiping out huge numbers (some estimates are 90%+ of the population their cultures simply collapsed. The same would happen in the United States if a plague came through that killed 90% of Americans. Flags and such simply would not matter as the state would disintegrate.
Following along the same line of thought going back in time would mean that you would introduce 20th century disease into the world and possibly wiping out most of humanity.