What would you change?

[Princess Ivy]

I've always been fascinated by time travel and time paradoxes. I love how things interweave and connect with each other (i also love dirk gently for this reason). How changing even one tiny thing, can affect the future, and in some bizzare cases even the past (StarTrek started this one, but boy did they mess up their continuity with it). So, if you could, what would you change in the past? would it be something huge and significant, affecting the entire world? or something big in your past, some event that you wish hadn't happened? or something small and trivial, a horse shoe nail if you will, that seriously messed things up for you later on. Or do you believe that we are the sum total of our experiences, and that to change anything would be the ultimate paradox as it would change everything with unforseable consequences to the fabric of existance?

[The Master™]

I always fancied sorting out a lottery win for myself - go forward, get the numbers and return to now... But that is future events...

Backwards - now, I think I would have gotten myself back to the dawn of human evolution and stopped Homo Sapiens travelling out of Africa, just to see what happens with the Neanderthals without the Homo Sapiens to be a threat...

I would also like to have saved Wolfgang Amadieus Mozart from dying as he did, and see what else he could have accomplished in his life...

I might also have stopped Alexander the Great from dying so young, to see what else he could have accomplished...

Just a few personal interests...

[dwndrgn]

I wouldn't mind having Hitler 'accidentally' sent to some uninhabited island before he could become such a magnetic icon. Although, then he might have become some sort of weird martyr. Nah, I think I'd probably be too scared to ruin the rest of history by changing something that big. Maybe I'd just go back to my own history and tell myself a few things to pay more attention to...

[polymorphikos]

As to Hitler, I'd avert WW2 by bribing the art school to accept him. He'd just be an obscure landscape artist then.

Actually, I've always liked the idea (and this sounds very shifty of me) of going back to the 14/1500s and becoming an enlightened ruler of England who was nice to people, made Hadrian's Wall bigger, and used secret immortality drugs from 2314 to ensure a lengthy fiddling with history. Electronic instead of coal-fuelled industries, no bear bating, an elite squad of robot ninja pirates (thus melding the three forces whose only weaknesses are one another) to ensure no coups, and a death-faking every few years.

I know, this is how despots get started.

[zorcarepublic]

To stop WW2? Simple. Alter the minds of the Allies so that at Versailles they don't screw the Germans too hard, and allow them to keep their dignity. After all, the reduction of both their army and the navy, plus huge reparations, meant that the Germans were bound to follow ANYONE who said that they would lead the Germans to greatness.

[The Master™]

What people fail to realise, is that WWII produced an awful lot of technological advances... And that without the funding from the various "war efforts", there may have been no way to get these proposals off the ground...



If you wanna talk about stopping attrocities, how about:

Giving the Aztec's guided missiles to destroy the Spanish before they could get a foothold...

Giving the various African leaders advance knowledge about European visitors, and the slave trade...

Giving the Australian aborigines advance knowledge about the English using their homeland for a prison colony!!!

Giving the Native American Indians information about the European "invasion"... And give them some advanced weaponry...

Just a few that bother me!!!

[Princess Ivy]

as TM so rightly pointed out, progress follows conflict. so changing huge events in the past, could throw us back to the middle ages, socially and technologically. without ww1&2, women would still be at home in the kitchen. not valued as members of society.

[Morning Star]

I believe all things happened for a reason, like my previous peers said. I would rather change little personal things...but I'm so in love right now...I'd be afraid that those changes could effect that.

Butterfly effect and all that jazz.

[Sirathiel]

I can see why you would want to change certain events in history... On the other hand, you could screw that up terribly, so that you'd never be born, and in turn wouldn't be able to go back in time and so would create one hell of a paradox.

I often thought, in hindsight, that I could have handled things better if I'd known how things worked right from the beginning. It would be tempting to try to change that. On the other hand, I would be terribly afraid to change by this who I am. I firmly believe that I am the person I am because of all that I've experienced in my life. Sure, there are things I'd rather had never happened, but then I'd not be me... And like Morningstar, I'm too much in love to risk have anything change that.

[The Master™]

Now there are some intriguing possibilities... Going through your own life, and looking at what would happen if you took different "avenues"...

But I would hate to lose this "present" and not have my wife and son...

[polymorphikos]

Giving the various African leaders advance knowledge about European visitors, and the slave trade...

Weren't a lot of African kingdoms selling their own people to the Arabs and Europeans anyway, thus renderiung prior warnings moot?

[Lacedaemonian]

Encourage the Japanese to invade America following Pearl Harbour. Just out of pure interest. Strangle the baby George Bush in his cot....

[Princess Ivy]

Originally Posted by polymorphikos

Weren't a lot of African kingdoms selling their own people to the Arabs and Europeans anyway, thus renderiung prior warnings moot?

No
Slaves were captured by raiding parties all along the african coast. Slaves were however sold by european and turkish colonial leaders. that may be what you are thinking of.

[The Master™]

Originally Posted by Lacedaemonian

Encourage the Japanese to invade America following Pearl Harbour. Just out of pure interest.

Now THAT sounds like a damn good idea... Purely out of personal interest...

[polymorphikos]

Originally Posted by Princess Ivy

No
Slaves were captured by raiding parties all along the african coast. Slaves were however sold by european and turkish colonial leaders. that may be what you are thinking of.

I'm going to look into that. I didn't mean to say they were all sold, just that a lot of tribes would raid their neighbours and such and sell the captives. I read it in a book.

Also, I'd like to make Napoleon have invaded Britain immediately instead of going for Russia. Every single megalomaniacal war lord seems to forget that Britain is a large island with guns and a fair army.