What event would change history the most?
- Thread starter edisraf
- Start date
Are you talking about new events that happen in the present?
Or going back in time and changing existing events?
Or going back in time and changing existing events?
I would have to say a big asteroid impact. Not enough to kill everything, but still causing massive damage and casualities.
Yes this is what I meant. The post about the asteroid and the volcano are also good examples.
raf
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First contact with aliens would be a transformative change I believe. Yeah the Yellowstone super volcano going off would be a game changer.
I would say a nearly unlimited supply of energy. It would have to be a stable, renewable and clean source of energy, like Blue Energy featured on "V" or aluminum cans shown in Back to the Future. Just consider the political, social, economic, and cultural repercussions it would have on humanity. It could drastically alleviate or put an end to poverty and many other world problems. This could also usher in a new era of scientific advancements, e.g., faster-than-light travel, cures for many diseases, matter replication, transporter technology, among a few.
Nowhere Man
Commodore
Things that could change history? Let's see, America making it into Berlin in 45 instead of the Russians. Stonewall Jackson not dying in battle and the Confederacy having more resources. The Industrial Revolution either not happening at all or happening a thousand years earlier or happening some time later. Kennedy not getting shot and dismantling the CIA and pulling out of Vietnam. Rome doesn't fall and the Roman Empire lasts another thousand years and the dark ages never happen. Britain puts down the rebellion in America. Lincoln is never shot. Washington is shot. The steam engine, telegraph, telephone, internal combustion engine, cotton gin and the internet is never invented. Bush pays attention to the memo entitled "Bin Laden Determined to AttacK" and decides to act. That's about all I got.
I was thinking of future events, but these are cool too! Let's open it up to either past or future.
raf
How about Franklyn D. Roosevelt doesn't die, goes on to more presidential victories?
or Germany develops the Bomb first.
raf
How about Franklyn D. Roosevelt doesn't die, goes on to more presidential victories?
or Germany develops the Bomb first.
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How can you 'change' something that doesn't exist?
By using your imagination?
My answer would be if mankind created an intelligent artificial being. How would we treat such a being? How would basic human rights would it have etc?
Nowhere Man
Commodore
Star Trek dealt with it in an idealistic sort of way. I don't think it will end up being as easy as they suggest.
I can hear the screams of ten-thousand traditional historians who have an innate distaste for counterfactual history.
My suggestion is finding contemporary records of the radical Jewish teacher, Yeshua bar Yosef, and subsequent discovery of his tomb still containing his body.
My suggestion is finding contemporary records of the radical Jewish teacher, Yeshua bar Yosef, and subsequent discovery of his tomb still containing his body.
And...?
Well, that's going to cause problems for at least one major world religion. Contact with aliens otherwise, especially if they're religious fanatics or xenophobes.
I just hope to Mothra that whenever there is a legal contest to determine the rights of an artificial intelligence, they don't permit an untrained layperson to be its lawyer. Or, for that matter, an also-untrained personal associate as its adversary.
Fact: "Measure of a Man" is actually dumber than "Spock's Brain."
Anyway, yeah, singularitarian artificial intelligence would be the game ender for homo sapiens. Not necessarily extinction, but we'd be rendered redundant, and probably kept alive only out of a combination of gratitude, threat, and inherent programming, not because we were useful for anything any more...
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