If you had to get sent back in time to fix something,what would you do

[RJDiogenes]

Re: If you had to get sent back in time to fix something,what would yo

Unfortunately, there are still many Archie Bunkers out there.

 

[Davros]

Re: If you had to get sent back in time to fix something,what would yo

I would save the lost Hartnell and Troughton Doctor Who episodes that were foolishly destroyed by the BBC.

 

[Trelane]

Re: If you had to get sent back in time to fix something,what would yo

Save certain family members from themselves by planting evidence and having them jailed rather than flagrantly allow them to kill themselves & hopefully get them substance abuse withdrawal/treatment in jail, stop 9/11 and then the Patriot Act by taking out the terrorists before they arrive at the airports that the planes were seized from. I'd go back, seconds before JFK was shot, calmly walk up to the grassy knoll and annoy the shooter with "hey man, can you spare some change?"

 

[Mr Silver]

Re: If you had to get sent back in time to fix something,what would yo

Learning exactly what you can and can't do in order to prevent screwing up your timeline would probably be harder than learning how time travel actually works.

The first thing that most people say if posed the question, is that they would go back in time and kill someone that the world could have done without (usually Hitler). But you have to think what would be screwed up should this occur. It might not even work, because had Hitler been killed a chain of events that branched out into trillions of scenarios would not have happened and just one tiny event could be paramount to your existence. For example, if Hitler was killed prior to WW2 your grandmothers first husband wouldn't have died in the war and she would not have me your grandfather. Therefore your existence would never have happened and the "Grandfather Paradox" would apply in that any attempt you made to kill Hitler, would result in a failure. You have people getting in the way of bullets, guns failing to fire, poisoned drinks being spilt, assassins failing to carry out their work, bombs failing to detonate and of course since the past in this case is your present, an attempt to directly kill Hitler could result in your death (a'la Bruce Willis' character in 12 Monkeys).

 

[doubleohfive]

Re: If you had to get sent back in time to fix something,what would yo

Let's see:

2000: Don't get drunk on New Year's.
2001: Bring a swimsuit with you to the campus car wash.
2002: Stop procrastinating and write the damn letter to your grandmother before she dies.
2003: Say 'fuck it' and go to every last damn graduation party/celebration/event you can.
2004: Get organized and finish making that damn movie.
2005: Go to California. Consider New York again.
2006: Make a move on Claire. Plan the move to California better.
2007: Move on. Don't substitute one failed relationship with an even worse, toxic one.
2008: Warn your uncle and aunt that their real estate agent is a crook and that within six months they'll lose the house they spent their lives saving to buy. Don't let a minor quibble escalate in to a terrible, months-long fight.
2009: Don't be a douche.
2010: Tell her you love her, that you forgive her and you love her before she dies. Also, but not as importantly, don't turn down pilot after pilot because LOTS gets cancelled in the end.
2011: Get out after the first month instead of trying again and facing the same problem in the sixth month. Tell yourself that the eight months of hell on the job will be worth it because it leads to an even better gig.

 

[captcalhoun]

Re: If you had to get sent back in time to fix something,what would yo

I would save the lost Hartnell and Troughton Doctor Who episodes that were foolishly destroyed by the BBC.

that's on my list.

 

[Asbo Zaprudder]

Re: If you had to get sent back in time to fix something,what would yo

I would pee in the Primordial Soup.

 

[Myasishchev]

Re: If you had to get sent back in time to fix something,what would yo

2009: Don't be a douche.

For the whole year? You're a better man than I, Gunga Din.

 

[Vendikarr]

Re: If you had to get sent back in time to fix something,what would yo

I would save the lost Hartnell and Troughton Doctor Who episodes that were foolishly destroyed by the BBC.

Don't save them. Instead go back with a TiVo and rent a flat with good television reception. Stop back every week and record the episodes and once you have them all, return to the present. That should be a minimal disruption to the timeline, and current audiences can enjoy the eps as you release them onto youtube and drive those searching for them insane that they have all surfaced.

 

[JarodRussell]

Re: If you had to get sent back in time to fix something,what would yo

Learning exactly what you can and can't do in order to prevent screwing up your timeline would probably be harder than learning how time travel actually works.

The first thing that most people say if posed the question, is that they would go back in time and kill someone that the world could have done without (usually Hitler). But you have to think what would be screwed up should this occur. It might not even work, because had Hitler been killed a chain of events that branched out into trillions of scenarios would not have happened and just one tiny event could be paramount to your existence. For example, if Hitler was killed prior to WW2 your grandmothers first husband wouldn't have died in the war and she would not have me your grandfather. Therefore your existence would never have happened and the "Grandfather Paradox" would apply in that any attempt you made to kill Hitler, would result in a failure. You have people getting in the way of bullets, guns failing to fire, poisoned drinks being spilt, assassins failing to carry out their work, bombs failing to detonate and of course since the past in this case is your present, an attempt to directly kill Hitler could result in your death (a'la Bruce Willis' character in 12 Monkeys).

It would be fun for historic debates.

"Hiroshima wasn't necessary to win the war!" - "Prove it!" - "Done."

 

[Asbo Zaprudder]

Re: If you had to get sent back in time to fix something,what would yo

I would save the lost Hartnell and Troughton Doctor Who episodes that were foolishly destroyed by the BBC.

Don't save them. Instead go back with a TiVo and rent a flat with good television reception. Stop back every week and record the episodes and once you have them all, return to the present. That should be a minimal disruption to the timeline, and current audiences can enjoy the eps as you release them onto youtube and drive those searching for them insane that they have all surfaced.

Of course, depending on the year and the TV region, you''ll probably need a TIVO that's capable of recording 405-line VHF signals or a modulator to convert from the video from 405-line VHF to PAL 625-line UHF and the sound from AM to FM. PAL broadcasting in colour on BBC1 first started in 1969 in the Home Counties. However, if you're capable of building a time machine, it should be a no-brainer to knock up the necessary hardware using stone knives and bear skins.

 

[scotpens]

Re: If you had to get sent back in time to fix something,what would yo

well, shit, just go back and kill Moses. or Abraham. get rid of all three Abrahamic religions and done with it.

Even if you killed those guys (that is, assuming they even existed as historical figures), some form of monotheism would surely have arisen and become a dominant world religion. Maybe today we'd be worshiping the Sun like Akhenaten.

 

[Asbo Zaprudder]

Re: If you had to get sent back in time to fix something,what would yo

At least we have some confidence that the Sun exists. As Napoleon put it: "The Sun gives all things life and fertility. It is the true God of the Earth."

 

[Davros]

Re: If you had to get sent back in time to fix something,what would yo

I would save the lost Hartnell and Troughton Doctor Who episodes that were foolishly destroyed by the BBC.

Don't save them. Instead go back with a TiVo and rent a flat with good television reception. Stop back every week and record the episodes and once you have them all, return to the present. That should be a minimal disruption to the timeline, and current audiences can enjoy the eps as you release them onto youtube and drive those searching for them insane that they have all surfaced.

Before I put them on Youtube I would see how big of a check the BBC was willing to write me.

Another thing I would do with time travel is see what various extinct animals taste like.

 

[Myasishchev]

Re: If you had to get sent back in time to fix something,what would yo

well, shit, just go back and kill Moses. or Abraham. get rid of all three Abrahamic religions and done with it.

Even if you killed those guys (that is, assuming they even existed as historical figures), some form of monotheism would surely have arisen and become a dominant world religion. Maybe today we'd be worshiping the Sun like Akhenaten.

Some say we do, i.e. that Judaism is a mutated version of Aten worship, stamped out in and expelled from Egypt.

Pretty bogus, historically, but it's fun to pretend.

For want of a nail (or four), we'd maybe be stuck with Mithraism. But maybe not.

 

[JarodRussell]

Re: If you had to get sent back in time to fix something,what would yo

What if you travel back in time, trying to kill Moses, and God actually strikes you down?

 

[SicOne]

Re: If you had to get sent back in time to fix something,what would yo

There are some things it would be nice to fix, like 9/11, but how do you do that without getting yourself locked up as a conspirator? And any fix would have to be on the order of mitigation, like getting people out of the buildings----you can't risk stopping the event entirely or the changes to the timeline become too significant to predict at all.

What kind of time travel is this? Replay style, or bodily time travel?

If the latter, it would be trivially easy to prove you're a time traveler from 2011. "Hey, see that guy? He's either my clone, or I'm his future self. Work out for yourself which seems more plausible, but bear in mind I evidently have some future knowledge."

Even then, since I like the indirect results of 9/11, I'm not sure I'd try to stop it. Sort of like a smaller scale version of killing Hitler. Sure, evil is evil and all, but I suspect that the rise of liberalism in the late 20th century is in part, perhaps in large part, thanks to the argument to absurdity against authoritarianism that was Hitler's Germany. Plus, it's not like killing Hitler would stop German militarism any more than stopping the September 11th attacks would stop Islamic terrorism.

If it's the former mode of time travel, having my old body but my present-day mind, I'd do basically what the protagonist of Replay did, and simply make myself wealthy, use my education to make myself appear to be smarter, and my maturity and experience to get myself laid.

***

As for fixing stuff, if I could inhabit my old body, I could do it, but I was/remain a moron, so I doubt my past self would listen to me if I only got to physically travel back and talk to him, or--at best--he'd manage to find some way to fuck up the advice I gave him.

The solution would be to kill him and replace him, but I think I could only manage that if the time jump was five years back at most. I mean, I'm not aging poorly, but I can't pass for 15.

With that in mind, I would kill my previous self and take his place and go to law school. I imagine I'd do spectacularly well, redoing it for the first time.

I'd go back and keep those sleeping pills away from Marilyn Monroe / or tell her to stay away from the Kennedys (whichever way that worked out...)

And, while I'm in the past, I'd go back a little further (farther?) and tell Jimmy Dean to stay out of that Spyder.

Yeah, fuck Martin Luther King.

Read the two related short stories that bookend Harry Turtledove's "Counting Up, Counting Down", if no one else has recommended that.