Time Traveler Bug
Outlander -- even if time travel worked, were I flung back in time, would I try to change the then-past's future? The idea ...
I've thought about, what if I were alive in Hitler's Germany in the 1930s, and, I'd tried to be a progressive gay poly green etc., would I have been able to stop the aggression from breaking out? Or would I have been another of the millions of victims who tried and died.
What if you could? What if you could have avoided WW2 in Europe?
But, then, what about now? What am I doing now to avoid the horrible future of 2025? Nothing. But if I knew the horrible future of 2025, what could I do about it?
Stories of time travel are filled with paradox, but I usually think the solution is that we do not have free will. What we describe as free will is how we make our decisions in each moment, but these decisions are determined by our circumstances and histories and we would not have made different decisions, the decisions we make are the decisions we would always have made,
like Connie Willis' Doomsday Book -- the main character went back in time but she couldn't change anything, she just couldn't, because the only reason she was allowed to go back in time was because she couldn't change anything if she did --
Heinlein also played with time travel and multiple universes in his later works ... his take on it was that if you can change the future, so can they, and the game becomes --> which group can change the future first, taking out the other groups before they can change the future instead,
OK, what am I doing to change the future right now? What am I doing to change the past right now? What am I doing to change the present right now?
I've thought about, what if I were alive in Hitler's Germany in the 1930s, and, I'd tried to be a progressive gay poly green etc., would I have been able to stop the aggression from breaking out? Or would I have been another of the millions of victims who tried and died.
What if you could? What if you could have avoided WW2 in Europe?
But, then, what about now? What am I doing now to avoid the horrible future of 2025? Nothing. But if I knew the horrible future of 2025, what could I do about it?
Stories of time travel are filled with paradox, but I usually think the solution is that we do not have free will. What we describe as free will is how we make our decisions in each moment, but these decisions are determined by our circumstances and histories and we would not have made different decisions, the decisions we make are the decisions we would always have made,
like Connie Willis' Doomsday Book -- the main character went back in time but she couldn't change anything, she just couldn't, because the only reason she was allowed to go back in time was because she couldn't change anything if she did --
Heinlein also played with time travel and multiple universes in his later works ... his take on it was that if you can change the future, so can they, and the game becomes --> which group can change the future first, taking out the other groups before they can change the future instead,
OK, what am I doing to change the future right now? What am I doing to change the past right now? What am I doing to change the present right now?