MovieChat Forums > Safety Not Guaranteed (2012) Discussion > Going back in time to 2001...

Going back in time to 2001...


Why not stop 9/11? Foil their Zionist plans.

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I made a similar comment (Prevent the tragedy of 9/11 & save 10K American lifes & untold Billions of dollars) to my G.F. while watching this movie. Perhaps it was an attempt by the film maker to show that even if the opportunity presented itself to time travel most would be selfish and pursue individual gratification instead of pursuing something for the greater good.

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[deleted]

who cares about 9/11 we had it coming. i would rather go back a couple years before the first european migrations and bring science to the natives. a chance to find a new balance without the sick mindset of settling cultures and empires. i dont need any weapons, a solar charger and a loaded... phone with information will suffice.

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if they killed Mohammad ppl would just find another figure to justify their ridiculous. Christianity was barbaric in its adolescence too. just human nature to find justification and group think means people shut off critical thinking skills. it will always be present.


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you shouldn't really do anything. if you do something significant like prevent 9/11 for example, you will also prevent just about every child that was conceived after 9/11 from ever existing due to the butterfly effect (chaos theory). there would still be children, just different ones.

let's say 9/11 doesn't happen. that will lead me on a series of slightly different events which would result in my 406th sperm cell fertilizing my wife's egg as opposed to my 403rd. this then creates a different person and my original child will never exist.

if you go back to before you were conceived, you wouldn't exist (grandfather paradox).

the only thing we could use time travel for is to invisibly observe the past. interacting with the past in any way would be illegal and unethical as sh!t. likely the worse crime that one could commit. you would wipe out millions of people, kind of like what hitler did.

also, we wouldn't be allowed to interact or observe with the future for the same reason. it would likely result in many many people not existing. (this is more debatable since you could argue the future doesn't technically exist and therefore, you cannot change the future.)

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> you shouldn't really do anything.

Read Stephen Hawking's theory of time travel. It allows for all this stuff that you call a paradox.

The idea is that time is continually sprouting off parallel timelines, much like branches on a tree. You can travel forward along your timeline back to any point, just like climbing down your branch of the tree. And when you stop and begin moving forward, you sprout off a new timeline.

In that new timeline, you may indeed kill your grandfather and prevent yourself from being born. Or you may meet yourself and hand out all the advice you want. Neither is a problem since this is a completely new timeline.

Most things in your timeline will be approximately the same, but many will be different, like the butterfly theory predicts.

You can never travel forward along the first branch to the exact place and time in the future where you started. Sorry about that.

> interacting with the past in any way would be illegal and unethical as sh!t. likely the worse crime that one could commit. you would wipe out millions of people, kind of like what hitler did.

No. While you may be wiping out millions of specific people, millions of other people will be born to take their place. They will have happy and fulfilling lives that never would have existed otherwise.

It's like trying to kill cockroaches. You can kill ten or a thousand or a billion and it won't matter. That just leaves room for the remaining ones to repopulate and soon you'll have exactly as many as before you went on a killing spree.

Further, all those people that you thought you were preventing from being born are alive and well over in your original timeline. You haven't killed anyone (except the person you went back in time to kill).

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>Read Stephen Hawking's theory of time travel
well, that's just a theory for one. we are not going to prove or disprove that theory the same day we invent time travel. for that reason, i think at the very least, you would have to take my side until we prove the multi universe theory is true (if we ever do) because if it's not true, time travel would cause mass eliminations.
i personally do not like that particular theory for a few reasons.

for example, if you go back in time for 1 minute. you are not spawning 1 additional universe. you are spawning an infinite amount of universes. there is no 'smallest amount of time'. a new universe would be created every nano-mini-micro-mili-second in that minute. just the simple fact that you are displacing the air around you changes the future and requires an additional universe to spawn.

it comes down to two outcomes.
1) there is only 1 universe
2) there are infinity universes.

i think 1 universe is far more likely.


>You can never travel forward along the first branch to the exact place and time >in the future where you started. Sorry about that.

you could, it would just be different. you might have red flowers in front of your house instead of yellow flowers, OR your neighbor may have had a miscarriage as opposed to a healthy 6 year old OR your friend who died in a car accident in 2005 may still be alive.

things would be similar on a large scale, but very different on a small scale.
all of the 10 year old and younger kids you knew would be gone and replaced with different ones but the world population would be pretty much the same.

i couldn't live with that. knowing that my time traveling would eliminate every child conceived after a point in time.






>No. While you may be wiping out millions of specific people, millions of other >people will be born to take their place. They will have happy and fulfilling >lives that never would have existed otherwise.

in my opinion, that would be a very very very bad thing to do. i wasn't exaggerating when i compared that to the holocaust. i think the two are equivalent.

>It's like trying to kill cockroaches. You can kill ten or a thousand or a >billion and it won't matter. That just leaves room for the remaining ones to >repopulate and soon you'll have exactly as many as before you went on a killing >spree.

so if i kill someone and then make a baby the next day, that makes it okay? no, that's ridiculous. i still go to jail even though i 'replaced' the life i took.

i could even argue that the holocaust made room and freed up resources (like food) which allowed people that otherwise would not have been born, to be born in the future.

do you think the total world population would be basically the same with or with out the holocaust today (or at some point in the future)? i think so. if you agree, your logic here implies that the holocaust was a 'break even' or 'neutral' event. not bad or good.

i think we would all agree that the holocaust was a bad thing, which is why i disagree with your conclusion...a lot

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> i think at the very least, you would have to take my side until we prove the multi universe theory is true

Actually, the fact that we exist is proof that there are no paradoxes and that the multi-universe theory is correct. Think of it. If time was just one long string, someone would eventually invent time travel. It might take a million years, but someone would do it. And, despite the best efforts of the time police, someone would manage to go way back in time and change something, causing everything to change, including not inventing time travel and all sorts of other paradoxes.

> for example, if you go back in time for 1 minute. you are not spawning 1 additional universe. you are spawning an infinite amount of universes.

Correct. In every instant of time, an infinite number of new universes are spawned. Going back in time and sprouting one more isn't going to change anything.

> i think 1 universe is far more likely.

Why would you think that? You have no way to see or communicate with those other universes. Why do you think that they are not there. That would be like living in a 2-dimensional universe, like an ant. You can't see or even imagine what a third dimensional looks like. For us, living in a 3-dimensional universe, we can't see or imagine what a 4th dimension would look like.

> i couldn't live with that. knowing that my time traveling would eliminate every child conceived after a point in time.

For every one child that never existed, a different child would exist. How can you live with yourself knowing that all those kids who could have been created in the second universe never were? If you worry about all the kids in Universe A, you should also be worrying about the kids in Universe B.

> in my opinion, that would be a very very very bad thing to do. i wasn't exaggerating when i compared that to the holocaust. i think the two are equivalent.

Really? You equate preventing a child from being born with murder? I assume that you also think that condom use is murder, right? Think of all those children that could have been born if people would just stop using protection.

> so if i kill someone and then make a baby the next day, that makes it okay?

It makes things balanced.

> i could even argue that the holocaust made room and freed up resources (like food) which allowed people that otherwise would not have been born, to be born in the future.

Correct. Would you feel bad for murdering all the unborn children that would never be born if you somehow stopped the holocaust?

> do you think the total world population would be basically the same with or with out the holocaust today (or at some point in the future)? i think so. if you agree, your logic here implies that the holocaust was a 'break even' or 'neutral' event. not bad or good.

Yes. It would basically be the same as it is today. While the holocaust was awful for the individuals involved, as far as the universe is concerned, it was a 'break even' event. Some people died and that left room for more children to be born.

That happens after every war. Some soldiers die and then there is a baby boom.

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What Would Jesus Do For A Klondike Bar (WWJDFAKB)?

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>Really? You equate preventing a child from being born with murder? I assume >that >you also think that condom use is murder, right? Think of all those >children that >could have been born if people would just stop using protection.



i didnt say that at all. i say creating a life DOES NOT make up for taking away a life. you are the one that said that. you are saying it is okay to take away life from these million people as long as they are replaced with another million people. on a small scale, that suggests it is okay to murder someone if you create an additional baby to replace that person.
i used this example to point out how ridiculous and wrong that is.


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> so if i kill someone and then make a baby the next day, that makes it okay?

>It makes things balanced.

yea, that's what a robot would say, not a human.



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> i could even argue that the holocaust made room and freed up resources (like food) which allowed people that otherwise would not have been born, to be born in the future.

>Correct. Would you feel bad for murdering all the unborn children that would >never be born if you somehow stopped the holocaust?

yes i would. thats why i would not go back in time and mess with anything.

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> do you think the total world population would be basically the same with or with out the holocaust today (or at some point in the future)? i think so. if you agree, your logic here implies that the holocaust was a 'break even' or 'neutral' event. not bad or good.

>Yes. It would basically be the same as it is today. While the holocaust was >awful for the individuals involved, as far as the universe is concerned, it was >a 'break even' event. Some people died and that left room for more children to >be born.

ok, maybe this is why we disagree. i am speaking as a human, you seem to be speaking as an alien onlooker.

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this conversation turned into "mel gibson takes on quantum physics"

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> you are saying it is okay to take away life from these million people as long as they are replaced with another million people.

I am not. Taking away someone's life implies that they had a life. If I go back in time and millions of specific people are never born, they never had lives to take away. That's just the way time paradoxes work.

> on a small scale, that suggests it is okay to murder someone if you create an additional baby to replace that person.

Your example fails because the person who was murdered had a life to be taken away. That is wrong, I agree.

> yes i would. thats why i would not go back in time and mess with anything.

But then you'd feel bad for having the ability to go back and stop the holocaust and then doing nothing about it.

That's the problem with time travel. If you are going to take the blame for every bad thing that happens in every timeline, you'll go nuts with guilt. The only thing you can do is change what you think is best and hope that more good happens than bad.

> i am speaking as a human, you seem to be speaking as an alien onlooker.

Quite true. I look at the big picture and you just look at your own small corner of the world. We are absolutely going to disagree on most things.

I'll leave you with a quote from Mr. Spock, "The Good of the Many Outweighs the Good of the One."

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What Would Jesus Do For A Klondike Bar (WWJDFAKB)?

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>I am not. Taking away someone's life implies that they had a life. If I go back >in time and millions of specific people are never born, they never had lives to >take away. That's just the way time paradoxes work.

they had a life and then you preformed an action which ended or canceled their life. that is taking away someone's life.
if you just invented a time machine and told me you were going back to 1800, i would not allow you to do that. if you did, i would no longer be alive. not being alive is the same thing as being killed from my point of view.


>Your example fails because the person who was murdered had a life to be taken >away. That is wrong, I agree.
from the "victims" (in this case me, if you had the time machine) point of view, both are the same.
i would not be alive in either case. it doesn't matter much how i stop being alive, my main concern would be that i am not going to be alive anymore.



> yes i would. thats why i would not go back in time and mess with anything.

>But then you'd feel bad for having the ability to go back and stop the holocaust >and then doing nothing about it.

no, i wouldn't because of the implications of doing so, which i explained. if you try to do anything, the results would be horrific. the only way to not do something bad is to completely stay out of it all together.




>The only thing you can do is change what you think is best and hope that more >good happens than bad.

no robot. that's a neat thing to say until it means that you loose your life.



>Quite true. I look at the big picture and you just look at your own small >corner of the world. We are absolutely going to disagree on most things.

your 'big picture' is irrelevant. if the only things that mattered were population size, average life span in the year 3,000 ect... than it doesn't matter if we time travel or not. it doesn't matter if we jump off a bridge or not and it doesn't matter if countries go to war or not. because on the large scale, things will likely work out the same in the end.


would you be okay with it? would you take trip to 1900 knowing that your parents would never exist in this replacement world your trip would create?

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> they had a life and then you preformed an action which ended or canceled their life. that is taking away someone's life.

No. When you pull the lever on your time machine and arrive in 1936, people born in 1960 have no life. They haven't been born yet and, likely, their parents haven't even been born.

Look at it this way. People in our future, say in 2050, haven't been born yet. But if they are born, they would have wonderful lives. If you use a condom today, you are preventing them from being born. In your terms, you'd be murdering them.

I assume that you do not grieve for all the future children that you prevented by using condoms. Similarly, you can't grieve for children who are never born because you went back in time and stepped on a butterfly.

This is not like the time travel you see in the movies where people just slowly fade away in old photographs. They never existed.

> that's a neat thing to say until it means that you loose your life.

And that would create a paradox. That's why time is like Hawking's multi-universe model.

> your 'big picture' is irrelevant. if the only things that mattered were population size, average life span in the year 3,000 ect... than it doesn't matter if we time travel or not. it doesn't matter if we jump off a bridge or not and it doesn't matter if countries go to war or not. because on the large scale, things will likely work out the same in the end.

Sorry to shock you, but that is the big picture. The earth, the universe, and time itself really doesn't care about you specifically. Time goes on before you and it will go on after you. Have fun while you're here.

It's like ants or bees. If one or a hundred are killed, the colony goes on.

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What Would Jesus Do For A Klondike Bar (WWJDFAKB)?

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>Sorry to shock you, but that is the big picture. The earth, the universe, and >time itself really doesn't care about you specifically. Time goes on before you >and it will go on after you.

as far as i am concerned, i am the most important thing in the universe. you may not realize it, but you also hold that same opinion about yourself. it does matter to me if my life is canceled because you want to say hi to george washington. the thing that does not matter to me are the statistics of human kind in the year 4,000. you know, the big picture.

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> as far as i am concerned, i am the most important thing in the universe.

And that's why this country, and the world, are going to Hell in a hand basket. When everyone's top concern is themselves, the community around them suffers and dies. It is a good thing for everyone to think about others.

> it does matter to me if my life is canceled because you want to say hi to george washington.

Actually, it wouldn't because you would then never exist and there would be no "you" to worry about it.

And, if you happen to believe in religion, your soul would simply be shipped to a new body on Earth at some different time and place.

> the thing that does not matter to me are the statistics of human kind in the year 4,000. you know, the big picture.

That's really sad. I assume that you don't have kids or that you don't care what kind of cesspool your descendants live in.

Spock: "The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few ... or the one."

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What Would Jesus Do For A Klondike Bar (WWJDFAKB)?

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you are missing every point i make. this is getting annoying. please try to read better.

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> you are missing every point i make.

No. I understand every point you are making. The problem is that they don't quite make sense.

You seem to be saying that you object to someone going back and, accidentally or on purpose, preventing one or millions of people from being born and allowing one or millions of different people to be born and live new lives. You equate this with murder.

And, you seem to be very concerned that you would be one of those millions that is never born.

Yet, you have no problem with doing things today, such as using a condom, that would prevent specific people from being born in our future.

I, on the other hand, have no problem with that. I exist today and, therefore, nobody in the future ever will go back in time and keep me from being born.

Think carefully about that. It will never happen, not in a million lifetimes. NEVER. So, there is no point in worrying about it.

And, the bonus point is that, if someone does go back in time and, for example, causes your spouse to never have been born, you would never even know about it since she will never have existed and you will probably have married someone else. You would experience no loss since you never had it.

But, this all points to the multi-universe theory that if you go back in time, you follow a new timeline forward and the parallel timeline that you left goes on unchanged and without you.

Don't worry, you are safe in either case.

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What Would Jesus Do For A Klondike Bar (WWJDFAKB)?

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>You seem to be saying that you object to someone going back and, accidentally or >on purpose, preventing one or millions of people from being born and allowing one >or millions of different people to be born and live new lives. You equate this >with murder.

correct


>And, you seem to be very concerned that you would be one of those millions that >is never born.

yes. all of us would be.


>Yet, you have no problem with doing things today, such as using a condom, that >would prevent specific people from being born in our future.

correct

>I, on the other hand, have no problem with that. I exist today and, therefore, >nobody in the future ever will go back in time and keep me from being born.

not true. the future hasn't happened yet. we didn't get to the point in which someone had the ability to change the past


>And, the bonus point is that, if someone does go back in time and, for example, >causes your spouse to never have been born, you would never even know about it >since she will never have existed and you will probably have married someone >else. You would experience no loss since you never had it.

me: "hey, i just made a time machine. im going to go back to 1900 to check it out."

you: "ok, cool"

me: "oh and by the way, going back will erase your existance from the universe as well as your parents, siblings, children and all your friends but don't worry, you will all be replaced by other people."

you: "hmm, ok cool"


REALLY? is that how that conversation would go?

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> not true. the future hasn't happened yet. we didn't get to the point in which someone had the ability to change the past

This is where your whole argument falls apart. If I use a time machine and go back to 1900, then the future, looking forward from that point in 1900, has NOT happened yet.

If you believe that the future does already exist, when in 1900, then you also must believe that the future also exists when in 2012.

I mean, what if a person from 2150 returns to 2012? You'd have to admit that the future (at least between 2012 and 2150) already exists and that using a condom would be the mass murder of hundreds of people that this person may know and love.

> REALLY? is that how that conversation would go?

No. One of two things would happen, depending on which time-travel theory you believe in. In the Parallel-Universe theory, nothing much would happen. You go back and a brand new timeline begins. You may accidentally cause yourself not to be born in that new timeline and that sucks. But the timeline you left remains unchanged. Your friend will see no difference except that you and your machine are gone.

If, as you apparently do believe, there is only one timeline, and you did go back in time and prevent yourself from being born or inventing time travel, then everything relating to that period just never exists. So, you'd never have this discussion with your friend in the first place and you'd never even know anything stopped existing. Time would begin the timeline over from the earliest point of disturbance.

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we are talking in circles. lets agree to disagree on this.

i want to ask you a different question that doesn't have anything to do with are argument.

my question is: say the multiverse is wrong. there is only 1 universe and there is only 1 timeline. we could rewind and fast forward just like we would with a VHS tape.

also, assume we have a working time machine.

in that situation, would it even be possible to travel forward in time? in this scenario, the future has not been created, right? what do you think?

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> lets agree to disagree on this.

Fair enough. The instant someone uses the phrase, "Let's agree to disagree," they have forfeited the debate.

Good day, sir.

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What Would Jesus Do For A Klondike Bar (WWJDFAKB)?

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you've been dodging my questions, spinning what i say to fit the answer you want to give, bouncing us from topic to topic, using random theories as evidence and best of all, you have repeated some of the things i have said and posed it as if i said the opposite. that's why i don't want to bother with this anymore.

ps. i believe you were the first to propose that we agree to disagree

"Quite true. I look at the big picture and you just look at your own small corner of the world. We are absolutely going to disagree on most things. "


Good dizzle, my nizzle.

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I still don't understand people believing that the future hasn't happened yet so you could never go forward in time. Past, present and future are happening simultaneously so you could jump to any point in time you wanted, it would just be part of the timeline, i don't believe anything can be changed by going back, i believe you'd end up being part of the past like killing someone you tried to save, so in my opinion you'd never cause millions of people to die or save millions cause it never happened, therefore it won't happen

"sir, sir, i gotta check and see if you've soiled yourself, I'll get to you in a moment, sir!"

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Bing is relying on a practical logic. You on the other hand, sound like an over emotional mess of a time traveller.

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'we are not going to prove or disprove that theory the same day we invent time travel.'

We could with a time machine.

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who really cares about 9/11, just have to take care of yourself. know what i mean

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as soon as i heard him say 2001 i knew a bunch of idiots (yes, idiots) were going to have to bring up 9/11. they should have chosen another year.

"in this world there's two kinds of people ... those with loaded guns, and those who dig."

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As a 9/11 survivor who was there that day, the biggest idiot has to be the Original Poster, who threw in a totally unnecessary, anti-semitic comment in an effort to stir up irrelevant hatred, which the board thankfully ignored.

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Yeah, me too.

I think 2001 was chosen as a reference to 2001: A Space Odyssey .

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I'm glad the majority of people in this thread don't possess the ability to time travel.

It's very easy to say "go back and stop this or that" but to do may put not only the world in jeopardy but your existence as well, there is no way of telling how far the ripple effect would reach and what it would effect.

I've read theories that by even setting foot in the past alters it because your feet are disturbing ground that was not previously disturbed, by merely kicking a pebble as you walk you're altering the timeline.

I for one hope that we never achieve time travel, I hate to go all Doc Brown here but it is actually far too dangerous a thing to toy with.

"Mr. Treehorn treats objects like women, man."

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*beep* you, I'm muslim

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How are you going to stop 9/11 anyway if you traveled from the future? Tell people you are from the future and you know what is going to happen, probably doesn´t work out so well.

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