Switchy Posted February 20, 2011 Share Posted February 20, 2011 Once time travel to the past is accomplished, do we let the planes hit the towers on 9-11? Or will the towers have to fall? why? Switchy Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Darby Posted February 21, 2011 Share Posted February 21, 2011 Switchy, I don't really have any skin in the game. So let's play "jes 'spose". So, let's jes 'spose that a year or so after 9-11 you married the widow of a 9-11 victim. Over the past 10 years you've had three children, now aged 9, 8 and 7. Now that you have skin in the game, ask yourself the same question. After that ask the real people who have the same skin in the game. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TimeLord Posted February 21, 2011 Share Posted February 21, 2011 What would be your motivation? To save lives? To prevent invasive laws? To avoid war? I think you'll find that the things that led those individuals to engage in such activity would simply be redirected toward another event which could be far worse. The moment you try to control everything is when you really lose control of what little you had in the first place. Do the best you can with your own choices and the universe will surround you with like minds and amplify your efforts. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Darby Posted February 22, 2011 Share Posted February 22, 2011 TimeLord, As we tend to discuss on the forum there are two general views of how the world really works and both refer to quantum physics - the Copenhagen Interpretation and Many Worlds Interpretation. Neither view satisfies the desire for time travel if affecting history's "bad acts" is the point. If Copenhagen is correct, there is but one universe and my first post applies. If Many Worlds is the correct answer then the point is moot. Saving the Twin Towers has already been acted out in countless unverses as that was included in the wave function. TIme trave travel to save the towers only results in a similar wave function and results - in some universes they are saved, in other they are not. It's pointless. This was part of Titor's silliness. He said, boldly, that Many Worlds was correct. Why did he come here? In part to warn his family about what was to come. Say what? Warn who? One doppleganger family among an infinite number of dopplegangers from doppleganger worlds? The point was...? And then there's the fact that if time travel is possible, and Copenhagen is the correct answer, and the definition of "bad acts" is relative based on what side one is on (certainly in the Middle East there are a substantial number of people who view that act as a gift from God) then changing the past can be unchanged by some other time traveler based on righting a bad act. Again, it's pointless. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TimeLord Posted February 22, 2011 Share Posted February 22, 2011 Well I certainly disagree with the many worlds view. I do think the past can be changed, however, but you'd only know it happened if you were involved in changing it. Something a lot of people don't think about is that one "event" like 9-11 is one in a series of events leading up to it, and simply changing that one event doesn't change all the ones preceding it. So instead of planes hitting buildings you might get some other catastrophic event to take its place. Only by identifying and changing the initial cause in the sequence of events can you really prevent a terrible (whether subjective or not) outcome. In this case, you'd basically have to go back and prevent islam and/or judaism from forming. Then again, who's to say if different religions wouldn't take their place? It's difficult. Another thing I think of is the fact that a lot of would-be time travellers seem to feel obligated to make changes to another time. It's kind of a like a tourist going to another country and trying to convert them to their own ways, like trying to americanize other countries for instance. The truth is that cultural relativism extends not only through space but also time. Of course, this gets into philosophy, which tends not to mix well with science, so I'll leave it at that. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TimeCrime1986 Posted February 22, 2011 Share Posted February 22, 2011 "Once time travel to the past is accomplished, do we let the planes hit the towers on 9-11? Or will the towers have to fall? why? Switchy " Your assuming that it will be the same time-line and that events can be controlled. That is a false assumption. The very act of time-travel creates a new time-line that is different from the first time-line. In doing so a new chain of events is created that is as un-predictable as the first chain of events. So say we do stop the 911 they attack something else instead. Again, a new chain of events is created that is as unpredictable as the first. Good Day. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TimeLord Posted February 22, 2011 Share Posted February 22, 2011 philosophy, which tends not to mix well with science That's actually a completely false statement. lol What I meant is that morals (a subset of philosophy) and science are distinctly different. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TimeLord Posted February 22, 2011 Share Posted February 22, 2011 TimeCrime, that's basically what I was trying to say, but I tend to ramble. If you change one thing, you change everything. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Darby Posted February 22, 2011 Share Posted February 22, 2011 TimeLord, If you change one thing, you change everything. Exactly. And it goes back to the basics of thermodynamics and absolute determinism. Thermodynamics is a statistical science, time doesn't take a "time out" for a researcher to stop and actually count the number of elements and fully determine the state of all of the elements in the thermodynamic system. Thus even in classical physics there's no possible way of having a complete knowledge about the entire system. In our case the system is every causal event leading up to the effect. The farther one goes back in time to find the originating causal event the more total information the system contains. Simply stated, there's no way even in theory to actually determine each and every cause of an event, carefully prep the scenario, prevent the event and determine the consequences of the change. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Skarpz Posted February 25, 2011 Share Posted February 25, 2011 Once time travel to the past is accomplished, do we let the planes hit the towers on 9-11? Or will the towers have to fall? why? Switchy If it was already accomplished that time travel into the past already happened and you knew about the 9/11/01 attack and it couldn't be stopped. The only thing to do would be to make it as safe as possible with the fewest number of casualties and warn as many people as you can or even set off fire alarms in the Twin Towers. I think some major events just can't be stopped but they can be worked around even if we had the Time Travel Technology. Some things cause another to happen and some things unfold other events. Airport security has tightened up since then I've seen and I wonder what else came out because of that event. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Donald_Patterson Posted April 18, 2011 Share Posted April 18, 2011 I really don't think you could stop it even if you wanted to I mean what you going to do? run to a nearby cop and say planes are about to hit it? they'll think your nuts and/or a terrorist and sling your ass in jail. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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