Moral Imperatives and Time Travel

[Chernobyl X1]

How could you have no identification or documented history if...

It is possible. Most states did not start the mandatory issuing of birth certificates until the 1910's. For example, in Illinois, birth certificates were not required until 1916 statewide. Many people in the 1940's had no identification.

 

[Ladewig]

Or does your knowledge of the future exempt you from making that moral choice?

I do not think it makes one exempt.

Bottom line for me: I'd go live in the woods as a hermit, because if I were in the military or in civilian life, I would be too tempted to steal popular songs and books and claim them for my own.

 

[Loss Leader]

I don't see how knowing the future equates with moral freedom to do anything. Murder isn't wrong because it disrupts the timeline or something like that; it's wrong because you're taking the life of an innocent person. That's still the case if you're killing a person in the past..

I disagree. Murder is wrong because a human life has value and it's impossible to know if ending that life will be good for society. On balance, it's almost always bad. However, if you knew for certain that a single act of murder would save ten thousand lives and that those people would go on to be poets, inventors and captains of industry who provide loving homes for their children - if you knew all that to an absolute certainty, then what moral justification is there NOT to murder the individual?

 

[marplots]

It's really not. Most of the time, one grunt, so to speak, doesn't really affect the course of a war by much. That said, your proposition is much, much more untenable than the possibility that you illustrated after, in general. Even if the timeline didn't really change, you very easily could die long before you were born or even after you were born, without significantly affecting your life up until the time that you time travelled. In short, all you really know is that you were born and lived in the future, but don't know your personal future and when you will actually die or what will happen next, except in a very broad sense, unless you're adding a number of assumptions that were not included in the scenario.

What you describe may be marketable. It could compete with the ego-boosting idea that I'm reincarnated and once lived as a nobleman in France. Only in this new version, I'm pre-incarnated and will someday be a famous asteroid miner who works directly under the emperor.

But yeah, what you say is so and would be so in any set of circumstances where I was unfamiliar with the surrounding context in enough detail to matter. So, for example, if I move to Bangladesh tomorrow and cut all ties with my current life, it would be much the same.

 

[Akri]

I disagree. Murder is wrong because a human life has value and it's impossible to know if ending that life will be good for society. On balance, it's almost always bad. However, if you knew for certain that a single act of murder would save ten thousand lives and that those people would go on to be poets, inventors and captains of industry who provide loving homes for their children - if you knew all that to an absolute certainty, then what moral justification is there NOT to murder the individual?

My morality holds individual rights to be supreme, so I can't deliberatley kill someone on any grounds other than "they were attacking me/an innocent person." So for me it's immoral to murder an innocent person, even if doing so will save other lives. To paraphrase Picard, I don't believe in solving moral issues with arithmetic.

But even if I were to subscribe to your morality, I still wouldn't have the freedom to "do anything" (your claim from the previous post). As I said earlier, I don't actually know if history will play out the same way the second time around. It's not just that my presence in the past changes things* but that I don't know if events always unfold the same way when no new elements are added, or if there is a degree of randomness that could change things. So I don't know, with any degree of certainty, that my one act of murder will result in a net gain for society.

Further, you claimed (or the writer of the article claimed) that knowing the future gives one the freedom to do anything. "Anything" and "anything that you know will result in a net gain for society" are not the same.





*Of course, my presence might not change things. Maybe history played out the way it did specifically because I was there, and I just don't realize it because, from my perspective, I haven't gone there yet.

 

[Brian-M]

I disagree. Murder is wrong because a human life has value and it's impossible to know if ending that life will be good for society. On balance, it's almost always bad. However, if you knew for certain that a single act of murder would save ten thousand lives and that those people would go on to be poets, inventors and captains of industry who provide loving homes for their children - if you knew all that to an absolute certainty, then what moral justification is there NOT to murder the individual?

But that's not the situation here.

Would a person from the future know for certain whether or not killing a person to take their car instead of taking more time to steal a car without harming anyone would make the difference between the success and failure of their mission?

If not, then they can't argue that killing the owner of the car is saving any lives.

 

[bruto]

ETA: I cannot see how adding one soldier to all of World War II is going to have any noticeable effect on the war. You'll change destinies of all sorts of people with your butterfly effect, but you'd be doing that anyway even if you stayed home.

Does that differ much from the situation for non time travelers? So little difference is made by one here or there anyway, why is the time traveler exempted from the the unfortunate paradox of society needing large numbers of non-individuated people?

In any case, how easy would it be for a person of draft age and eligibility to choose for himself during that time? It was possible with the right job connections, perhaps, but there was a draft. And assuming that one is stuck in the time, one is also stuck with the existing social environment then and at the time after. You presumably cannot explain your moral choice not to participate, so for all intents ant purposes you differ in no visible way from anyone else. You could, perhaps, find a vital wartime job, but nothing in the stated scenario suggests that you would have either the ability or the connections to do so.

Given that you can't predict your butterfly effect, you might as well do what is best for yourself (including your own moral well being if it's a concern to you) and the society you're condemned to live the rest of your life in, which might turn out not to be that different from what a reasonably optimistic non-time-traveler would have done.

You might be able to plan your participation a bit better than some, knowing where the greatest dangers are, and you should be in a pretty good position for investment given the chance. A little bird says IBM and Warner Brothers might be pretty good, Berkshire Hathaway a sleeper; Tucker, Dumont and Woolworth, not so much.

 

[SpuriusMaximus]

You know, I have to wonder why everyone comes up with violent solutions for if they had a time machine. Actually, given even minimal knowledge of history, it would be easier to tug a string here or there and watch it all unravel without any violence or showing everyone that an intervention just happened.

E.g., take Hitler, yeah... Why bother shooting him or enlisting or whatever, when he can be taken out of the equation gently before it even started? E.g., go back to right after WW1 and pay for some serious art lessons for the dude, so he doesn't get rejected by the Vienna arts academy, or at least can be a celebrity artist even if they reject him anyway. Or help him go to America and find a job with Disney, since he was a big fan of that and did have some talent at drawing.

He'd probably be happy enough and not end up blowing his brains out in a bunker, so, hey, everyone is happy.

ETA: Of course, things would probably still go downhill in Europe in some way or another, but probably more in a communist way than nazi.

 

[Akri]

Sounds like someone's been reading SMBC.

 

[SpuriusMaximus]

Actually, I do have a post along the same lines on Slashdot, which pre-dates that strip by almost three years. Unless you want to believe that I actually do have a time machine and deviously used it to steal a joke before it was written...

And if you do, then shut up or I'll make sure your parents never meet

(But, mind you, I expect the idea to be rather common, so it must have occured to other people before 2010 too. In fact, expecting it to be rather common kinda is the reason I'm surprised I only hear about people wanting to go back and shoot the dude instead of something like that.)

 

[tsig]

You know, I have to wonder why everyone comes up with violent solutions for if they had a time machine. Actually, given even minimal knowledge of history, it would be easier to tug a string here or there and watch it all unravel without any violence or showing everyone that an intervention just happened.
E.g., take Hitler, yeah... Why bother shooting him or enlisting or whatever, when he can be taken out of the equation gently before it even started? E.g., go back to right after WW1 and pay for some serious art lessons for the dude, so he doesn't get rejected by the Vienna arts academy, or at least can be a celebrity artist even if they reject him anyway. Or help him go to America and find a job with Disney, since he was a big fan of that and did have some talent at drawing.

He'd probably be happy enough and not end up blowing his brains out in a bunker, so, hey, everyone is happy.

ETA: Of course, things would probably still go downhill in Europe in some way or another, but probably more in a communist way than nazi.

Maybe there are entities that do this and Hitler was the best alternative.

 

[icerat]

On the one hand, it is a just war and you'd be fighting against some of the worst tyranny our planet has ever seen. On the other hand, you know that the allies win in a reasonable amount of time and your presence on any battlefield isn't going to change the outcome of the war.

Except of course that bullet that kills you when you decide to fight? It was going to kill the guy behind you, and after seeing his friend die, he goes on a shooting frenzy and kills the guy who was destined to be snuck in to England where he successfully bombs Bletchley Park. The allies never break the axis codes and England is overrun.

All of which didn't happen because you travelled back in time, fought in the war, and took the bullet for the other guy.

May I be the first to say, thank you for your service!

 

[icerat]

all of which reminds me of this ...

 

[Arcade22]

Are you a citizen of 1943, morally bound to defend your country?

No. No one is "morally bound" to defend "their" country any more than they are bound to follow Gods law or Papal decrees. No one is "morally bound" to anything.

 

[PGH]

Ah time travel. I've already got a headache and a nose bleed will likely follow, but darn if it isn't fun to think about!

Good thing it's not possible. It's just SO complicated to consider. I think the tv show Lost did it best (one of the few things they did right in their later seasons) with their concept of "Whatever happened, happened." If you end up stuck back in time somehow that's what ALWAYS happened. You already did fight in WWII, you just didn't know it because it hadn't happened to you yet. Nothing you do will affect your future because your future played out the way it did with your time hopping activites already included.

*trickle of blood from nose*

Plus the idea is that killing Hitler is without question the right thing to do. How could it not be? Scores of millions died at the hands of his Nazi machine. How could it be wrong to prevent that?

Easy. Think of what the horror of WWII did to the conciousness of the planet. Lessons that still impact society today. Eugenics? After Hitler it became a dirty word. Anti-Semitism? Well seeing the end result of that sure put a sober face on the notion of hating the Jews. The U.S. rose to prominence on the world stage and abadoned isolationist practices to TRY to be a benevolent force in the world (in theory at least).

In short every thing we know about the world is because of every thing that went before. If you change any part of that...all bets are off.

So if you CAN change history that's a Pandora's box I personally want no part of. And if you CAN'T change history you're off the hook, because whatever you choose to do you already chose and that's the way history worked out.

Personally? I try to enlist as a paratrooper to fight alongside my own grandfather, Cpl William Stanley. Being a POW a couple times over doesn't sound like anyone's idea of a good time, but I'd be honored to endure it at his side.

 

[Hercules Rockefeller]

You are transported back in time and you are a guard at Birkenau. What is the moral thing to do?

 

[Chernobyl X1]

For those using the kill Hitler proposal let me ask you this.
Would you want to be responsible for reversing the fate of 60+ million people worldwide?
Look at it this way. The ramifications of saving that many individuals worldwide would have a huge impact on your very existence. Imagine the baby boom not happening in the U.S. The urbanization and suburbanization of the country was a direct result of the war. Maybe the technology that was spawned from WWII was deemed not necessary in a peacetime setting. Imagine Israel not becoming a country. All the wars, fights, and deaths resultant from that event would have never happened. Your very existence is most likely possible because of the events of WWII.

Now the question becomes, would you deem it moral to change the fate of 60+ million people. Since only you would be the one that would see the results of your actions.

 

[Pulvinar]

FNow the question becomes, would you deem it moral to change the fate of 60+ million people. Since only you would be the one that would see the results of your actions.

I'd work to cultivate more Hitlers. Just think of all the additional good things that could be created by each new world war!

 

[kellyb]

I'm totally unable to conceptualize this without time travel spawning alternate universes. So, no, I wouldn't feel "responsible for changing fate" any more than I feeled compelled towards inaction now in this life.

 

[Tony]

Something else that no one has considered, suppose you do go back and fight. You kill either a couple dozen Nazis or Japanese. It stands to reason that you will kill some people that otherwise wouldn't have died in the original timeline. There is a chance that some of these people, or their decendents, were important people in the postwar period that were key in keeping Japan and Germany prosperous and free of Nazi influence. For this reason, I would not fight, but I would invest in IBM.