If time travel became reality

[Mark_Robson]

Dr Who is pants at examining the issues around time travel. If you want to get serious you have to study Startrek. Voyager examines in detail the complexities of maintaining the time line.

There was also some patent clerk who reckoned that it wasn't possible, but what did he know?

 

[Red Light]

If Time Travel (into the past) became a reality would it be moraly wrong to use the ability to prevent great wrongs such as genocide?

Ah, Stephen King's "The Dead Zone" question. Watch the next episode of Dr Who and find out

 

[Angelfishsolo]

Dr Who is pants at examining the issues around time travel. If you want to get serious you have to study Startrek. Voyager examines in detail the complexities of maintaining the time line.

There was also some patent clerk who reckoned that it wasn't possible, but what did he know?

We could also study the three Butterfly Effect films.
Yer what did that Albert gizza know

 

[Night Train]

If Time Travel (into the past) became a reality would it be moraly wrong to use the ability to prevent great wrongs such as genocide?

I already did and now look where it got us!

 

[buddha]

I went to Lundun (init ) last week.
All the student types were wearing thick-rimmed glasses and slick hairstyles. I thought I'd travelled back to the 80's/90's

 

[colly]

Morally would it be wrong? How can we know?

Maybe the past was altered so that the likes of Hitler, Pol Pot etc actually came to prominence to prevent catastrophies vastly worse than what has happend because of their existence.

Anyway if the past WAS altered it would make no difference to the world as we know it. We know the world and it's history and if it WERE changed we would know THAT history.

Therefore we would actually be none the wiser.

And that would stand for all the paradoxies (is that a word?) of time travel.

For instance: I go back and kill, say, my father. (I wouldn't but just for the sake of argument)
If I did then the future from that point means I would not exist and would not be able to go back to carry out the deed. Therefore my father will not die at my hand.

 

[Angelfishsolo]

Morally would it be wrong? How can we know?

Maybe the past was altered so that the likes of Hitler, Pol Pot etc actually came to prominence to prevent catastrophies vastly worse than what has happend because of their existence.

Anyway if the past WAS altered it would make no difference to the world as we know it. We know the world and it's history and if it WERE changed we would know THAT history.

Therefore we would actually be none the wiser.

And that would stand for all the paradoxies (is that a word?) of time travel.

For instance: I go back and kill, say, my father. (I wouldn't but just for the sake of argument)
If I did then the future from that point means I would not exist and would not be able to go back to carry out the deed. Therefore my father will not die at my hand.

Who is to say we would be none the wiser. That theory has been propogated through film and TV but we just don't know. Maybe we would retain memory of multiple realities.

 

[longers]

I saw this earlier and thought of something useful to change but have forgotten it so would go back in time and see it if was a good idea or not.

 

[Mark_Robson]

For instance: I go back and kill, say, my father. (I wouldn't but just for the sake of argument)
If I did then the future from that point means I would not exist and would not be able to go back to carry out the deed. Therefore my father will not die at my hand.

And that's the paradox. Wot appens in the past stays in the past......innit!

 

[aberal]

Dr Who is pants at examining the issues around time travel. If you want to get serious you have to study Startrek. Voyager examines in detail the complexities of maintaining the time line.

Voyager is the great underrated TV series. Though the first series or two are a tad average, it really does (at its best) explore all avenues of science and its potentialities. A lot of people out there still think its a stupid programme about Klingons.

 

[Andy_R]

sod morality, i'd go back and tell me the euromillions numbers.

 

[colly]

I saw this earlier and thought of something useful to change but have forgotten it so would go back in time and see it if was a good idea or not.

It was a bad idea anyway.

 

[colly]

And that's the paradox. Wot appens in the past stays in the past......innit!

Yeah but no but......it's a false paradox.

 

[marinyork]

Dr Who is pants at examining the issues around time travel. If you want to get serious you have to study Startrek. Voyager examines in detail the complexities of maintaining the time line.

There was also some patent clerk who reckoned that it wasn't possible, but what did he know?

Plenty of bad Star Trek ones too. For example Year of Hell Parts I and II were some of the few good episodes of Voyager ever made. Some of the doctor who ones were written an awfully long time ago.

 

[Dayvo]

Some of the doctor who ones were written an awfully long time ago.

Yep, and I remember them!