# Time Machine Question



## MA-Caver (Sep 12, 2008)

Just for the hell of it this question popped up in my head (watching some sci-fi movie) ... 

If you had a time machine which would you prefer? 

A: The ability to go back to any point in time in the past and return to the present or the time that you left?

B: The ability to go forward to any point in time in the future and return to the time that you left? 

There is no C: both. You could only do one or the other... why?


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## arnisador (Sep 12, 2008)

Curiousity drives me to the past, to better understand the present!


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## Drac (Sep 13, 2008)

I'd go back.. There are a few things I'd do different..


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## tshadowchaser (Sep 13, 2008)

Providing all we can do is observe and not change any thing I would like to go back in time.  Observing some of the events in history ( the building of the pyramids, the crucifixion, etc.) might give a better understanding of the world today.
If  I went ahead in time it would be to find out the lottery numbers


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## stickarts (Sep 13, 2008)

I would go back, especially if I could make changes that would improve the future!


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## MA-Caver (Sep 13, 2008)

tshadowchaser said:


> Providing all we can do is observe and not change any thing I would like to go back in time.  Observing some of the events in history ( the building of the pyramids, the crucifixion, etc.) might give a better understanding of the world today.
> If  I went ahead in time it would be to find out the lottery numbers


Going back in time would definitely provide understanding as the old quotation of failing to remember history is to repeat it, but it would only be our individual understanding... unless you could record the history as it happened (via video camera) and bring it back for study. But even then you'd have to be careful so to not be observed while doing so, else you might end up as a BBQ. But go back far enough say to the pyramids and they'd probably think you as a God. 

Going ahead in time would be educational but potentially dangerous because you see things that will be; terrorist attack or nuclear war or whatever and try to forewarn and be changing that, or prevent the death of a friend who is destined to die. 
But definitely getting Lottery numbers is the way to go... I had the same thought :lol:


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## kwaichang (Sep 13, 2008)

I'd like to see if the Myan Prophecy is true.


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## elder999 (Sep 13, 2008)

kwaichang said:


> I'd like to see if the Myan Prophecy is true.


 
Don't worry-you will! :lol:

I'd go into the future, take notes, and come back and make ome investments-as well as bet on the lottery a few times. It'd be nice to look around, but I'd probably be content to spend a few days in the library, looking _back_ over the last few years (our "future"). 'Course, you don't really say _how far_ forward or back one can go, so I'd have to go with 10 years-though one would be enough. 

Which brings up another head bender-what would the temptation be after 10 years had passed to go and have a chat with my past self at the library? Might it in fact happen the "first" time I made the trip, since I'e already had the idea? :lol:

If I didn't get met by that future me, would that mean I'd died in the interval?

A trip to the past would be nice, but it would just be sightseeing-there's no value added except for the expansion of knowledge-and you couldn't prove anything new or thought-provoking that you discovered first hand. The highest margin for profit is in going to the future, and I'm a greedy bastard!:lol:


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## kwaichang (Sep 13, 2008)

elder999 said:


> Don't worry-you will! :lol:
> Which brings up another head bender-what would the temptation be after 10 years had passed to go and have a chat with my past self at the library? Might it in fact happen the "first" time I made the trip, since I'e already had the idea? :lol:
> .


 Well I've alwarys felt that going either way you have a problem meeting yourself.  With most writings involving time travel this is nearly always avoided at all costs because of the major effects it has on the Space Time Continuum.


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## MA-Caver (Sep 13, 2008)

elder999 said:


> A trip to the past would be nice, but it would just be sightseeing-there's no value added except for the expansion of knowledge-and you couldn't prove anything new or thought-provoking that you discovered first hand.


Sure you can, find out once and for all who killed Kennedy and Hoffa and all of that... Heh and go to Roswell and SEE the UFO crash take pictures and then see if the government can deny it all... bwah ha ha ha ha haaaa 
But I'd definitely would go back to Washington and watch the MLK "I have a dream" speech, just to be there, along with other pivotal moments in U.S. history as well as other significant points in time around the world.


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## elder999 (Sep 13, 2008)

MA-Caver said:


> Sure you can, find out once and for all who killed Kennedy and Hoffa and all of that... Heh and go to Roswell and SEE the UFO crash


 
Or even watch them building the pyramids, or take photos of the crucifixion, but could ya eat it? :lol:

(There was no UFO crash at Roswell-it was a weather balloon ....:lol: )


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## Rich Parsons (Sep 13, 2008)

MA-Caver said:


> Just for the hell of it this question popped up in my head (watching some sci-fi movie) ...
> 
> If you had a time machine which would you prefer?
> 
> ...



From "testify by Rage against the Machine:


> Who controls the past now controls the future
> Who controls the present now controls the past
> Who controls the past now controls the future
> Who controls the present now?


With time travel to the past and then back to present or point of leaving allows one to control the future as it becomes the present or past.


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## Xue Sheng (Sep 13, 2008)

Why go back in time of course and get the jump on the DAMN tree that jumped me and beat the hell out of it :EG:


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## Bob Hubbard (Sep 13, 2008)

Toss up for me, but I'd go forward.  
I want to see when MT buys up AOL, ya know.


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## MA-Caver (Sep 13, 2008)

Bob Hubbard said:


> Toss up for me, but I'd go forward.
> I want to see when MT buys up AOL, ya know.


Hopefully sometime soon but pray that it's not the other way around.


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## qwksilver61 (Sep 13, 2008)

I would go back in time to make things right,start Wing Tsun at an earlier age.......


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## arnisador (Sep 13, 2008)

kwaichang said:


> Well I've alwarys felt that going either way you have a problem meeting yourself.



You could wear a disguise.



Bob Hubbard said:


> Toss up for me, but I'd go forward.
> I want to see when MT buys up AOL, ya know.



The way they've been going...would you want it?


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## Bob Hubbard (Sep 13, 2008)

MA-Caver said:


> Hopefully sometime soon but pray that it's not the other way around.



I dunno. 



arnisador said:


> The way they've been going...would you want it?



Depends on if I can send out MT signup cd's to the world 



I dunno, I do like the idea of time travel though.  Read a story once where someone kept traveling back in time, killing famous people, their parents, etc, but only managed to erase themselves from the time-stream. Otherwise, time was unchanged.

Course, going back and seeing history as it happens, famous battles, crimes, mysteries, etc. The historian in me would love it.


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## MA-Caver (Sep 14, 2008)

Bob Hubbard said:


> I dunno.
> 
> 
> 
> ...


Well I know you'd love to visit the battlefields of Gettysburg, Antieam, Shiloh, Fredricksburg and so on as they happen ... but might want to think about bringing wearing full body kevlar armor so you be able to come back. Though of course... you'd be making yourself a rather conspicuous target at that... 
Make sure your time machine doesn't get blasted by an errant scatterball.


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## celtic_crippler (Sep 15, 2008)

Forward ...so I could see what stocks to buy.


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## teekin (Sep 18, 2008)

I'd go back to turn of the 1500 hundreds when Luther and the Pope when at it, Paris for 1700,  London for the Industrial Revolution, Europe for WWI and WWII, GB to steal Ribot, USA to steal Swaps and back home. ( Northern Dancer was allready here) I assume I get to bring things/animals/people back with me? And yes I would be buying Apple stock at .10/ share. 
Lori


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## Xue Sheng (Sep 18, 2008)

Whichever way you go just watch out for the Morlocks and the Eloi... Especially the Morlocks


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## MA-Caver (Sep 18, 2008)

Grendel308 said:


> I'd go back to turn of the 1500 hundreds when Luther and the Pope when at it, Paris for 1700,  London for the Industrial Revolution, Europe for WWI and WWII, GB to steal Ribot, USA to steal Swaps and back home. ( Northern Dancer was allready here) I assume I get to bring things/animals/people back with me? And yes I would be buying Apple stock at .10/ share.
> Lori


Hadn't thought of bringing back animals that are now extinct... because of man's intrusion/decimation. The Dodo and others... but probably you'd just want to get a fair sampling of each's DNA instead of the whole animal. At least you can get them cloned and THEIR genetic pool can carry on. Probably might want to get DNA samples from various animals that are already ON the endangered/threatened list so that it'll broaden the variety of the gene pool that is present right now. So many are close to inbreeding that it'll be a threat to the future population (if any). 
People? No, leave 'em be. It IMO messes with that sticky time-line paradox. What if you nab Kennedy or Lincoln on the day that they was shot and bring them back to our time... how then could the course of events that their assassinations effected take place if they wasn't ever assassinated? Not to mention Oliver Stone wouldn't have a movie to bore people with. 
Definitely buying stock in Apple AND Microsoft when it was dirt cheap would be a good move but again the ramifications of it have to be weighed. BUT there is a "loophole" of sorts in that time line. 
Take "Blast From The Past" example where all those stocks that the father had bought were "buried" with them for 35 years now brought to life thus still worth millions upon millions. So buying the stock and literally burying it someplace that you KNOW won't get built upon, razed or anything else and "WOW lookit what I found"  
These things have to be carefully thought out. :uhyeah:

For Martial Artists take on this .... going back in time and taking private lessons from say... Ed Parker Sr. or Bruce Lee or Yip Man or Remy Presas  and so on... to them you'd just be one more (paying) student wouldnt' you? As long as you keep your mouth shut and don't mention the future you'd be okay. Heh. That way you'd have DIRECT linage with those masters.


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## teekin (Sep 19, 2008)

Just to be able to bring some of the minds of the later day to this century. DaVinci, oh baby, what could that mind do if he was raised from a baby now. Kennedy as a politician now, Luther, Bell, Newton, There are so many who's lives have been cut short or who's genuis I would love to have live again. Do we need the Dodo? Ummmm maybe not, but a Quaaga I'd bring back. The racehorses I'd bring back just because they are the ultimate form=function=beauty=god.
Lori


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## Xue Sheng (Sep 19, 2008)

Could always bring 

John Adams 
Samuel Adams 
Josiah Bartlett 
Carter Braxton 
Charles Carroll 
Samuel Chase 
Abraham Clark 
George Clymer 
William Ellery 
William Floyd 
Benjamin Franklin 
Elbridge Gerry 
Button Gwinnett 
Lyman Hall 
John Hancock 
Benjamin Harrison 
John Hart 
Joseph Hewes 
Thomas Heyward, Jr. 
William Hooper 
Stephen Hopkins 
Francis Hopkinson 
Samuel Huntington 
Thomas Jefferson 
Francis Lightfoot Lee 
Richard Henry Lee 
Francis Lewis 
Philip Livingston 
Thomas Lynch, Jr. 
Thomas McKean 
Arthur Middleton 
Lewis Morris 
Robert Morris 
John Morton 
Thomas Nelson, Jr. 
William Paca 
Robert Treat Paine 
John Penn 
George Read 
Caesar Rodney 
George Ross 
Benjamin Rush 
Edward Rutledge 
Roger Sherman 
James Smith 
Richard Stockton 
Thomas Stone 
George Taylor 
Matthew Thornton 
George Walton 
William Whipple 
William Williams 
James Wilson 
John Witherspoon 
Oliver Wolcott 
George Wythe 

and George Washington

To the current time and see what they had to say about this mess


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## MA-Caver (Sep 19, 2008)

Xue Sheng said:


> Could always bring
> 
> John Adams, Samuel Adams, Josiah Bartlett, Carter Braxton, Charles Carroll, Samuel Chase, Abraham Clark, George Clymer, William Ellery, William Floyd
> Benjamin Franklin, Elbridge Gerry, Button Gwinnett, Lyman Hall, John Hancock, Benjamin Harrison, John Hart, Joseph Hewes, Thomas Heyward, Jr., William Hooper, Stephen Hopkins, Francis Hopkinson, Samuel Huntington, Thomas Jefferson, Francis Lightfoot Lee, Richard Henry Lee, Francis Lewis
> ...


You sure you'd want to subject those poor bastards to today's world/USA? I mean they were happy, they were patting each other on the back saying "good show!" to each other.  The trauma would kill 'em. They'd probably give up the idea of "a more perfect union" seeing how messed up it is. :lol: 
But then again, if you return them to their time prior to the signing of that sacred document perhaps they'd add a few amendments to keep all this crap that's been happening today. Making certain parts un-changeable no matter what.


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