Time Travel

[Enderman]

A few weeks ago I thought of making a time travel thread, so here it is. What would your machine look like? Where would you go? What would you change? What would you hope to see in the future?

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

I'm not big on time travel stories, largely because they tend to be used in SF series to do horrible things to the main characters and then have everything return to normal at the end of the episode.

Probably the most interesting tweak would be to have John Smith perish and be unable to browbeat the investors of the Virginia Company into sending a better equipped Third Supply mission to Jamestown.  It might well lead to the abandonment and/or total destruction of the Virginia Colony.

[Enderman]

Though I would probably just visit the past and see my future (actually go to 2050 and see how America and the rest of the world is) I would make this one major tweak to history:

Convincing the Continental Congress to make a balanced budget amendment to the Bill of Rights even though they already know that the leaders should not waste more than they have and to not steal from any other peoples' money.

[Mr. Morden]

I assume that even the slightest change in the world from before I was born would result in a timeline in which I never existed.  I mean, even if my parents still met, married, and had kids, my existence depends on a very specific sperm cell meeting a very specific egg.  Wouldn't the tiniest change in the past have resulted in a different combination?

So assuming that we're dealing with time travel rules in which when you go back in time you can "change" history and create a new timeline, if I went back in time 50 years, did something as simple as go to a local restaurant to order dinner, then return to the present, wouldn't I return to a world in which none of the people I know today exist?  That would be because the people I briefly interacted with at that restaurant would have had days that unfolded slightly differently, leading to some of them having kids at a slightly different time, with a different DNA combination, cascading through the lives of everyone around the world.  What do you think?

[Oldiesfreak1854]

Maybe go to 1990 or so and make it so that George H. W. Bush doesn't raise taxes so he wins reelection in 1992 and prevents the Clinton realignment.  I would probably mostly just visit various time periods in the past, though.

[Warren 4 Secretary of Everything]

I'd visit Gore in Septwmber 2000 and tell him to make a stealth-pullout in Florida and then to push his money in New Hampshire & Tennessee. And then get him to give Ron Paul a cabinet position.

[Starbucks Union Thug HokeyPuck]

Maybe go to 1990 or so and make it so that George H. W. Bush doesn't raise taxes so he wins reelection in 1992 and prevents the Clinton realignment.  I would probably mostly just visit various time periods in the past, though.

Could you tell NJ not to vote for McClellan? 

Since even the slightest of changes in the past would have unbelievable repercussions... I can't go into the past unless I'm guaranteed my presence could and would not be noticed.  I'd just opt for the time dilation route and wind up thousands of years in the future.  I want to see if humanity "makes it".   

[MATTROSE94]

I do not know if I would change any political events if I had a time machine. I would most likely use the time machine for personal gain such as traveling into the future to get winning lottery numbers and stock information.

[Antonio the Sixth]

I don't know if time travel will ever be invented, but what I know for sure is that if it ever comes to exist, it will need to be EXTREMELY tightly regulated, or else we might well see disasters far exceeding anything that has ever happened to the human race.

[morgieb]

Give my granddad one of these...

[Citizen (The) Doctor]

I'd definitely want to see different points in history. The moon landing maybe, the signing of the Declaration of Independence, the signing of the Magna Carta, etc. But I feel like if time travel were to ever exist, the technology should only exist to observe, not to actually step into the moment.

Give my granddad one of these...

Will you own a courthouse-themed casino at the end of that venture? Or will you end up in a pile of manure?

[Starbucks Union Thug HokeyPuck]

I don't know if time travel will ever be invented, but what I know for sure is that if it ever comes to exist, it will need to be EXTREMELY tightly regulated, or else we might well see disasters far exceeding anything that has ever happened to the human race.

I'm fairly certain there's no way to go back in time so don't you worry too much.  Backward time travel would require fast than light travel... which we can't seem to crack.  I doubt we ever will... it's a law as fundamental as gravity. 

[Paul Kemp]

Though I would probably just visit the past and see my future (actually go to 2050 and see how America and the rest of the world is) I would make this one major tweak to history:

Convincing the Continental Congress to make a balanced budget amendment to the Bill of Rights even though they already know that the leaders should not waste more than they have and to not steal from any other peoples' money.

Yes, of all the misdeeds throughout human history this is certainly the one to be corrected by the momentous opportunity that time travel would present.

[muon2]

I'd definitely want to see different points in history. The moon landing maybe, the signing of the Declaration of Independence, the signing of the Magna Carta, etc. But I feel like if time travel were to ever exist, the technology should only exist to observe, not to actually step into the moment.

It was a special moment as I watched it live on TV, but I wonder if it would have the same emotional pull going back to see it without the suspense and anticipation that led up to it.