The Power of the Time Machine: Would changing history be the best use?
I've been pondering off and on the concept of a time machine. I came to some slightly different thoughts about time machines than I've had before.
So often the thought is "If I had a time machine, I'd go back and change X and the world would be better." We've had numerous science fiction novels, TV Shows, Movies, and even games around this topic. One of the things that is popular to talk about is how changing the past in any way can have ripples and impact the future in ways that could not be foreseen. Perhaps the change might even eliminate the creation of the time machine itself in the future. It changes the concept of future to dynamic and unknowable.
Would this then be the best use for a time machine?
I don't actually think it would be.
The best use of a time machine would to be able to go back and invest, and make decisions based upon things you know are coming in the future. For example: Traveling backwards and buying a bunch of bitcoin when it was less than $0.01 per coin.
There could still be a ripple as there would be someone or several someones with more wealth than they had in the past. It wouldn't need to simply be wealth.
It is also important to consider that even doing this could still have ripples and would be changing the future. So it may not be as extreme as assassinating Hitler, but could we truly predict the ripples and changes that acquiring wealth and information we otherwise would not have had may have on the future?
I don't really need to write much more lengthy a thought on this. It is a simple thought, but it is one that it is easy to spend quite a bit of time chasing rabbits down rabbit holes.
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The problem here is that humans think linearly. And so, our idea of time is linear. Which makes actually talking about time very difficult.
Time is in a loop, and thus infinite.
It is also not fractionable. One part affects all parts, past and future.
Also, our cause and effect models are linear. With the same problems.
Einstein - One cannot solve a problem with the same mindset that created the problem.
Thus, if you go back in time to "fix" a problem, it will remain broken with almost the exact same results. The exact scene may be radically different from an old man with a gun to little green aliens with blasters, but the end results will almost be identical so as the ripples go almost no where.
Further, investing through "knowing" the outcome will not make you rich. If I told you today, that bitcoin will be $1,000,000 a coin... how many people still haven't purchased a hardware wallet?
If you work on yourself, and your relationship with money. Allowing yourself to be rich, then you will become rich. Almost magically.
If you do not work on yourself, no matter what you do, you will still be as broke. Lottery winners have proven this over and over again.
This is a hypothesis. It is unproven.
This is true. It also makes it entertaining to think about for those of us that like to think about challenging things. :)
This is an observation.
Everything is an observation.
A hypothesis is when you state an interpretation of that observation. ;)
Still quite a few steps left to go in the scientific method. All we can do is observe. Then we can speculate (aka hypothesize) and it takes testing, refinement, verification to potentially invalidate the hypothesis, refine it, or prove it (until some better explanation is found).
The way you stated it was a hypothesis.
EDIT: I used an absolute here when I said EVERYTHING (and I don't like using absolutes so I am correcting myself). There are cases where people make statements about things they have not observed. So I suppose people do make statements about things they have not observed. In fact, they do it quite often.
I understand
But, you don't say the tree over there is unproven.
Or that gravity is unproven.
And, I believe it is in an area that is unprovable.
As you cannot be outside the system in order to understand it while simultaneously be inside the system in order to validate it.
Of course one could get much better idea of how it worked. Just no proof.
Sure that is vastly different from stating time is a loop without any way to observe that. Very different.
I challenge you that you CANNOT observe time being a loop.
So you are speculating and trying to pass it off as reality.
This is how religions start.
It is fine to speculate. It is even good and necessary. It is naive to push speculations/hypothesis as truth.
I said, its an observation, and I meant its an observation.
And there is no way I can prove that. I have my perceptions, and all of my life have had difficulty talking to people. I always just thought I was bad with words. However, I seem to have perception abilities that you do not, and visca-versa. And so, it wasn't my failing in words, it was entire concepts that I just take for granted.
If you would like some evidence to look at you can look at the Mayan Calendar. It clearly shows cycles and cycles. And the reason it ended in 2012 is that all the cycles ended there.
You can read Time and the Highland Maya for more information.
If you have six sense of some type then perhaps. IF not then I challenge you have not observed time looping. IF you have then you need to qualify HOW you observe it since as far as I know there are no senses that enable such an ability. I have also seen no documented cases of time looping other than in fantasy and/or science fiction stories. Which yes, I can make up a lot of interesting things in stories. That does not mean they are real.
As I said in the other reply. History is not time. It is a record of events that occurred in time. Furthermore, even events that repeat in history are not actual repetitions. They each are different. They are not proof of time looping.
They are proof that people repeat things, and events repeat and are similar but not exact.
Much like I said in the other post. Simply because you are driving down a road passing the dotted line in the middle of the road does not prove a loop. The dots/dashes are not proof of a loop. Furthermore, if you were to examine each of those dots/dashes they are not precise duplicates.
They are simply features on the road.
I have seen no documented cases of time looping.
That would also imply it is finite in direction so at some point you should be suddenly visiting Pangea as time moves forward and loops back around...
You could go so far as things suddenly vanishing as we return to the moment of the big bang if the big bang is part of your cosmology.
Time doesn't appear to loop. IF you are basing your observations on events that are near repetitions, that is not time. That is simply history. History does often loop to some degree, for good or for ill. We build upon past successes as the foundation to a good structure. We repeat mistakes if we don't know our history. We repeat what appear to be mistakes when instead we just have assholes who like to control things and are building upon the foundations of how previous people manipulated/controlled people. Yet none of that is time. Time keeps moving forward as far as I have been able to find. I've not seen any evidence of any kind of looping or coiling. If you want to talk about history then the statement/observation makes more sense. Yet that is not time. That is but the dashes on the road of time.
Cycles are events in history. They are not time itself looping. VERY different things.
Also just in case I am not clear. I am not saying you are wrong. I am just stating it is a hypothesis which you were stating as truth. That may not be your intention, but the way you stated it appears that way to me.
What you say could be true. It may not be as well.
It could also be partially true. :)
The next step in the scientific method is to come up with an experiment to test the hypothesis. Document it and do it. Then let others try to repeat an corroborate it.
Without those steps it remains a speculation/hypothesis.
The place where it IS wrong is I have not defined loop. You probably think I meant that we just keep playing out the same thing over and over. A better explanation would be a coil of wire, and each time we go around, we add another coil to the overall coil.
In the case of time it still could be wrong. You haven't proven anything, just made a statement. You have not stated it is an opinion, speculation, etc. You have stated it is an observation as though some how you can observer time looping. You have not qualified that, but I challenge you that you cannot see that. Perhaps you can, but that burden of proof is on you.
Though it is a FUN mental exercise. Stating it is an observation hasn't actually clarified. How you define loop or don't define loop won't change much. I mean if you want to define ANY word some other way it can change things, but you can't realistically expect others to just casually communicate with you with any understanding if you are using your own interpretations of words and expecting people to read your mind. :)
I have seen no indication of a loop, or going around. In fact I haven't seen any indication yet that time is not infinite. It could be finite, but I've seen no indicators of that.
Also history (which can have repetitions that are NOT precise repetitions) is not time. It is events that occurred within moments in time.
Much like the dashes on a road as you drive simple passing similar events does not prove any kind of loop.
Have you ever read Slaughterhouse Five? What you're talking about reminds me of that book. When I read it in high school it made me question everything I understood about time. After reading it I realized that no one really understands it (that I know of anyway).
Yes, I have read slaughter house five.
The aliens and the notion of how the universe ends was really disappointing.
Time, and cause/effect do not work that way. It could work if, at that moment the scientist tested that fuel, that everyone was done with the universe.
We are trained at a very young age that cause/effect are all physical, deterministic happenings. In a chain from the past to the future.
But, take this into account.
There was a doctor who did open brain surgery. He found the spot in the brain, stimulated made the impression of pricking the finger.
Now, "modern science" would have you think that the prick of the finger, enters the nerves, then travels up to the brain to tell you that the finger was pricked. And that if you stimulated the area of the brain, it would be instantaneous, because there was no distance to travel.
However, what he found was the opposite.
When you pricked the finger, the person felt it instantly.
When you stimulated the brain, it took a bit before the person felt it.
So, according to linear science. Prick the finger, causes a signal that goes back in time so that it arrives at the brain at the moment of the pricking. (this is not what happens, but gives you an idea of what causal effect loops aren't in the direction we think.)
All healing comes from your future self.
If you can't change the past, I'd travel to the future, study the stocks and the crypto charts. Then when I returned to the present, I take my portfolio to the moon. :-)
If you can return to the present then you should be able to travel to the past. Also would it really be much different where you make the change if you change something? The future is the future when in the present, and the future is the future when in the past. Really all that changes in time travel is where PRESENT currently is. :)
So many theories, so little time. :-)
Have you read the book "The Time travelers wife"? It has a nice twist on the "reality" of time travel. There is a movie about it (I have not watched) as well.
Nope I haven't read/seen that one.
It's not a theory yet. Just a hypothesis. :)
That's what you think ... and what you used to think ...
:-).
No. What I think would be a hypothesis.
It must be tested, repeatable, etc to become a theory.
Even theories can be challenged.
Until that is present it is a hypothesis and has nothing to do with what you or I think.
That's how the scientific method works. You don't just get to skip all the intermediary steps and state something is a theory.
I was making a Back to the Future joke.
Heh. I saw hints that you might be trying to joke, but I wasn't completely sure. It's sometimes easy to miss that stuff in writing. Sorry. :)
If man changes a critical moment in his past, then the purpose, or impulse, for invention of such devise for time transcendence would no longer exist, thus negating said invention in the first place.
My instinct when I saw your headline was "I would use it to make money." It's completely selfish but that's where my gut tells me to go. Thinking a little more about it, I think it's because I believe that if you went back in time and killed Hitler, you'd have some other Nazi asshole there to take his place. Hitler was a symptom of a societal shift at the time, not the cause. I think saying otherwise gives a little too much credit to the "leaders" of such movements. I think they're just lucky. Looking out for your own interests would be the only way to control the future you want to see. It's just like that saying from Gandhi, "Be the change you wish to see in the world."
great share
Perhaps more than changing things, even if the mere presence of one in the past already has an impact, I would learn from history, Rome, Greece, even the countries of the Middle Ages, I would see how distorted is the history we know today.