Moral Imperatives and Time Travel

[icerat]

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.

except - you didn't.

 

[SpuriusMaximus]

Depends on how time travel actually works, and more importantly if you believe in predestination. As in 100% predetermined everything.

I mean, suppose you are in WW2 and happen to be the soldier who shot my grandfather in the elbow in the dark. Is it predetermined that you'll take that shot in exactly that direction, down to seconds of arc? As in, 100%, it couldn't happen otherwise? You couldn't pick another target, you couldn't have loaded the bullets in a different order, the minute sway of your hand couldn't be just a little more or less in that second? Especially since you'd probably not even see him and are just laying cover fire. Would you absolutely have to take exactly that shot, in exactly that direction, although there is no compelling reason to aim at that one particular spot?

If you said "yes", then, yeah, you can go with "it already happened." Unfortunately, you also just said then that QM is completely and utterly false. Because a lot of historical stuff depends on random quantum-level stuff. E.g., the mutation that gave the descendants of Queen Victoria haemophilia.

And more importantly, today is also the past for the next generations. So there is no reason your actions in the next 24 hours wouldn't be equally set in stone from THEIR point of view.

Otherwise, there is no real reason why going back to a point in time means things are set in stone from there. All the quantum fluctuations that haven't happened yet, some of which will be in stuff like DNA break that gave some important figure a cancer, and some which will be in synapses and influence decisions or the hand sway of a gunner, haven't happened yet. The wave function can still collapse in any other way.

That's what it would really mean to BE there again, and with the universe still working by the same laws of physics.

And if you think about it, if you treat time like any other axis, which is the fundamental premise of time travel, no other axis has such a setting stuff in stone if it happened there once. Just because I got drunk once in pub X, doesn't mean I HAVE to get drunk every time I am in that spot. So it's not clear at all why, if the time axis becomes equally possible to go back and forth on, and be several times in the same spot, it would force a certain outcome.

 

[GlennB]

It strikes me that the o/p is a fun thought experiment regarding morality and that we've mostly wandered into a debate about the possibilities and practicalities of time travel.

Given that I'm sent back to that time then, no, I don't fight as the outcome was OK in the end and adding my suffering to the stew makes no difference. But that's probably a flimsy rationalisation to avoid suffering.

But I also wouldn't kill or divert Hitler's progress back in 1920 for the same reason. Without him a form of Naziism might have developed anyway but under much better leadership. They might, say, have developed nuclear weapons ahead of the rest and zapped their way to total dominance over Europe.

I might be tempted to do something about the Osmonds, mind. For the sake of all mankind

 

[SpuriusMaximus]

Actually, probably not. It was very unlikely that a right wing loopy would come out on top, and it took a lot of maneuvering to present oneself as a socialist to the unwashed masses while assuring the industrialists of the exact opposite... and then do something about the millions of left-wing brown shirts who actually expected some kind of socialism.

ETA: basically, just to make it clear, the big risk I see in taking the dude out of the equation is the possibility that an actual far left loopy comes to power instead, aligns himself with the USSR, if not immediately, then at least when the internal fighting begins, and then, well, good luck allying with the USSR against that one.

 

[icerat]

If you said "yes", then, yeah, you can go with "it already happened." Unfortunately, you also just said then that QM is completely and utterly false. Because a lot of historical stuff depends on random quantum-level stuff. E.g., the mutation that gave the descendants of Queen Victoria haemophilia.

No, because the QM stuff happened, then

And more importantly, today is also the past for the next generations. So there is no reason your actions in the next 24 hours wouldn't be equally set in stone from THEIR point of view.

Sure, but it's not from your perspective. You, in your time, have free will to decide what to do, and your choice affects what they see from their point of view (ie looking at history).

Otherwise, there is no real reason why going back to a point in time means things are set in stone from there. All the quantum fluctuations that haven't happened yet, some of which will be in stuff like DNA break that gave some important figure a cancer, and some which will be in synapses and influence decisions or the hand sway of a gunner, haven't happened yet.

Only from our perspective now. They did happen, then. You go back in time, you're now part of then, not now.

The flaw I see with the determinism thinking is that it assumes an individual travelling the past is still living in their "future", that their personal timeline travels with them. I'm not sure that's a valid assumption.

The flaw I see in my thinking is that relatively implies that things do have their "own" timeline (eg the twins paradox). Whether that applies to travel in the past or not is another question. I would think not, since at best it's information that is travelling into the past, not actual particles, who still have their local frame of reference.

 

[tsig]

Depends on how time travel actually works, and more importantly if you believe in predestination. As in 100% predetermined everything.

I mean, suppose you are in WW2 and happen to be the soldier who shot my grandfather in the elbow in the dark. Is it predetermined that you'll take that shot in exactly that direction, down to seconds of arc? As in, 100%, it couldn't happen otherwise? You couldn't pick another target, you couldn't have loaded the bullets in a different order, the minute sway of your hand couldn't be just a little more or less in that second? Especially since you'd probably not even see him and are just laying cover fire. Would you absolutely have to take exactly that shot, in exactly that direction, although there is no compelling reason to aim at that one particular spot?

If you said "yes", then, yeah, you can go with "it already happened." Unfortunately, you also just said then that QM is completely and utterly false. Because a lot of historical stuff depends on random quantum-level stuff. E.g., the mutation that gave the descendants of Queen Victoria haemophilia.

And more importantly, today is also the past for the next generations. So there is no reason your actions in the next 24 hours wouldn't be equally set in stone from THEIR point of view.

Otherwise, there is no real reason why going back to a point in time means things are set in stone from there. All the quantum fluctuations that haven't happened yet, some of which will be in stuff like DNA break that gave some important figure a cancer, and some which will be in synapses and influence decisions or the hand sway of a gunner, haven't happened yet. The wave function can still collapse in any other way.

That's what it would really mean to BE there again, and with the universe still working by the same laws of physics.
And if you think about it, if you treat time like any other axis, which is the fundamental premise of time travel, no other axis has such a setting stuff in stone if it happened there once. Just because I got drunk once in pub X, doesn't mean I HAVE to get drunk every time I am in that spot. So it's not clear at all why, if the time axis becomes equally possible to go back and forth on, and be several times in the same spot, it would force a certain outcome.

There's the rub, if you get there the same laws of physics are not applying.

 

[tsig]

It strikes me that the o/p is a fun thought experiment regarding morality and that we've mostly wandered into a debate about the possibilities and practicalities of time travel.

Given that I'm sent back to that time then, no, I don't fight as the outcome was OK in the end and adding my suffering to the stew makes no difference. But that's probably a flimsy rationalisation to avoid suffering. But I also wouldn't kill or divert Hitler's progress back in 1920 for the same reason. Without him a form of Naziism might have developed anyway but under much better leadership. They might, say, have developed nuclear weapons ahead of the rest and zapped their way to total dominance over Europe.

I might be tempted to do something about the Osmonds, mind. For the sake of all mankind

Why would you need to rationalize avoiding suffering?

 

[SpuriusMaximus]

There's the rub, if you get there the same laws of physics are not applying.

1. There is a fine line between liking SF and liking magic. The premise of SF is that the laws of physics will still apply, it's just not those we know. Magic is more like just believing you can bend or suspend them as you wish.

So basically there kinda is a difference in whether, say, the Enterprise's warp field is magic or advanced enough technology. The difference is that you can have SOME hope that the latter will still happen.

2. SF has some constraints. Magic doesn't.

What would you do in 1943 if you could completely suspend or rewrite the laws of physics is kinda boring, because, well, then I would just make up more magic I could do. I'd say the sky's the limit, but even that isn't the limit.

3. Not related to the laws of physics, but it becomes a pretty pointless exercise if you can't actually do any difference, no matter how minute.

For something to be a moral dillemma, or really have any connection to morals, it must be at least theoretically possible to choose something else. Otherwise, you never actually had a choice, and your morals aren't in any way relevant to the outcome.

If you have the choice to flip a tram junction so you save a tram full of 20 people from running into a wall or off a cliff, at the cost of making it run over 1 guy who's on the other branch of the tracks, that's a moral dilemma. Do you actually think it's ok to kill one person to save 20? But if the switch is programmed to automatically flip itself one way or the other, and you can't change it, then it never was your choice in the first place, and your morals are irrelevant.

Similarly, the thing in this scenario is that it kinda matters whether you can actually change the past, and to what extent. If you're just a spectator, then your morals don't really matter more than when you're watching a movie (based on WW2 or not) on DVD. You can decide to yell at Romeo to not take the poison and wait for Juliet to wake up, or you can stay idle, or on the contrary yell at him to take the poison already, but the movie proceeds just the same. Nothing you CAN choose makes any difference, and you know it, so you bear no responsibility in the tragic outcome. It doesn't reflect your morals in any way.

 

[bruto]

It seems to me ultimately that, if you're stuck in the new time frame with no exit, and if your actions have the potential for changing the future as they do now in ways your lost future self cannot know, then you're in essentially the same boat you are in now, except perhaps (we hope) a little wiser than most. Might as well just do your best.

The more anomalies you take out of time travel, the duller it seems to get.

 

[marplots]

Maybe time travelers are already here, changing what would have been our future, but in ways largely invisible to us. Like this: http://news.msn.com/us/nuclear-bomb-nearly-exploded-over-nc-in-1961-paper

 

[SpuriusMaximus]

Only from our perspective now. They did happen, then. You go back in time, you're now part of then, not now.

That is actually the point. All the determinism scenarios don't actually have you living in the "then" at all. They make you at best a spectator, but otherwise still anchored to the "now".

The flaw I see with the determinism thinking is that it assumes an individual travelling the past is still living in their "future", that their personal timeline travels with them. I'm not sure that's a valid assumption.

Bingo. They're not in the "then" by any definition. Everything from physics to decisions is anchored by the "now".

The flaw I see in my thinking is that relatively implies that things do have their "own" timeline (eg the twins paradox).

Which is a priori deciding that you can't change anything in the past, once you made that analogy. The thing about the twins is basically, you can look but you can't touch. Here we're talking about bringing them into the same frame, not about them observing each other from afar.

Whether that applies to travel in the past or not is another question. I would think not, since at best it's information that is travelling into the past, not actual particles, who still have their local frame of reference.

I'd REALLY like to hear about how could you transmit information without transmitting particles.

And as a sub-case, how do you plan to transmit information without at least affecting particles? Because even the synapses in that guy's head are material stuff.

It seems to me like the only way to not change the past is really to not do transmit information at all. You can't make a scenario where you violate causality WITHOUT violating causality. You basically propose that something gets changed in the past, based on information from the future, yet at the same time hold that the past can't be changed.

Then how does a guy appear in 1943, having the same cells in the same places and the synapses wired like some guy from the future, if the same guy in the future can't effect a change in 1943?

It seems to me like actually in your scenario even information still flows in the normal direction. Information isn't something that just exists in a vacuum, by itself. If none of the particle states in 1943 is changed by that information from the future, then there simply is no transfer of information from the future to 1943.

In fact, I'd think it should be pretty obvious that a scenario in which a guy from 2013 can see and feel the world of 1943, but can't change the state of the world in 1943 in any way, is a clear case of information transfer from 1943 to 2013, not the other way around.

 

[Darth Rotor]

Loss Leader: the formally US entered WW II in 1941. The draft started in 1940. Why did you pick 1943?

 

[Ladewig]

"City on the Edge of Forever" 1967, Star Trek: TOS

Kirk time travels to the late 1930s and lets the woman he loves die rather than save her and let her go on to organize a strong anti-war movement in the U.S.
Kirk: "She was right; peace was the way."
Spock: "She was right...but at the wrong time."

.....................

The two things I learned from science fiction movies are (1) light and sound travel at the same speed in outer space and (2) timelines are way, way more complex than anyone imagines. (see James Burke's Connections for examples too numerous to mention).


....................

Now. I'm off to YouTube.
All this Hitler talk has made me thirsty for Downfall-parody videos.

 

[JoeMorgue]

I think a lot of people latch onto the "Butterfly Effect" concept with a degree of... well ego.

I'm more of the mind of Q when he sent Picard back in time.

Picard: Q, even if you have been able to bring me back in time somehow, surely you must realize that any alteration in this timeline will have a profound impact on the future.

Q: Please, spare me your egotistical musings on your pivotal role in history. Nothing you do here will cause the Federation to collapse or galaxies to explode. To be blunt, you're not that important.

 

[Ladewig]

I think a lot of people latch onto the "Butterfly Effect" concept with a degree of... well ego.

I'm more of the mind of Q when he sent Picard back in time.

Picard: Q, even if you have been able to bring me back in time somehow, surely you must realize that any alteration in this timeline will have a profound impact on the future.

Q: Please, spare me your egotistical musings on your pivotal role in history. Nothing you do here will cause the Federation to collapse or galaxies to explode. To be blunt, you're not that important.

Well, I wasn't worried about causing a government to collapse or a planet to explode. Also, we were talking about killing Hitler before 1945. Hitler is a rather pivotal figure in history.

Also, it is possible that Q was lying. How far back did Q take him?

Also, we are talking about trying to change the timeline. If Picard sat down and said, I will do everything I can to make the future a better place, then I speculate that there would be unmistakably large changes in the timeline.

It is possible that we are somewhat of a similar mind in that we both believe the name for the effect is horrible. Too many people take it literally and believe that hurricanes can arise from something so small as a butterfly flapping its wings.

Lastly, I would like to say "Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra"
No specific reason, just wanted to say it.

 

[SpuriusMaximus]

I think a lot of people latch onto the "Butterfly Effect" concept with a degree of... well ego.

I'm more of the mind of Q when he sent Picard back in time.

Picard: Q, even if you have been able to bring me back in time somehow, surely you must realize that any alteration in this timeline will have a profound impact on the future.

Q: Please, spare me your egotistical musings on your pivotal role in history. Nothing you do here will cause the Federation to collapse or galaxies to explode. To be blunt, you're not that important.

You must realize though, that it was

A) rather unclear whether it actually happened. A (temporarily) flatlining Picard hallucinating (or confabulating) an afterlife where Q is God, is no different from people hallucinating (or confabulating) seeing Jesus when their brain goes south.

Especially since it's made clear in Voyager that the Q are not really omnipotent, and they don't seem to run an afterlife for anyone.

Also, the Q can make people perceive things that aren't like that at all. If they can make people perceive the Q continuum as a boring rural village, or a cosmic war that's detonating stars as a reenactment of the secession war with black powder muskets, I'm not sure that what Picard is perceiving there actually involves time travel.

B) a rather constrained scenario. Just because one student's getting into a fight in a bar isn't pivotal for history, doesn't really refute the notion that other events CAN have wide reaching consequences. After all, it only took one exact mutation in one sperm cell to give half the royal families in Europe haemophilia, which in turn was a factor in the Russian revolt that got us the USSR.

So, yes, chaotic systems are still chaotic, even if not every single state change has effects that are completely out of whack.

C) under the supervision of a God (or close enough) at that (IF it happened.) There is no telling whether the same would happen without such divine intervention to constrain the effects.

D) fiction.

 

[Frozenwolf150]

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.)

I had a short story based on that premise published in my school's literary journal back in 2011. An art student befriends an old Jewish professor who lost his family in the Holocaust, and after hearing his story, steals the university's prototype time travel device. However, instead of going to Berlin in 1933, he goes back to Vienna in 1908 and teaches young Adolf to be a better artist by looking beyond his obsession with superficial beauty. History changes and Goebbels becomes the chancellor of Germany until a disgruntled Himmler assassinates him, causing the premature collapse of the Third Reich under the Allied assault in 1944. Adolf drops the surname of his drunken abusive father, taking on his mother's maiden name Polzl, and marrying his love Eva Braun. The moral was that the protagonist didn't slay a monster, but rather taught a lost young man how to feel.

I would add that Hitler wasn't the most evil man in WWII. I'd rank Hideki Tojo above him, for starters. So if I'm going to kill anyone, I'd start on the Eastern front.

 

[SpuriusMaximus]

It's still arguable how much of the blame was really Hideki Tojo's and how much should have been taken by the Emperor.

After all, one thing everyone agreed about him was his blind obedience to the Emperor, including such quotes as "If the Emperor said it should be so, then that's it for me. One cannot recite arguments to the Emperor." Essentially, that guy didn't even need to be killed to stop it all. All that would have been necessary were that the Emperor tells him to stop. Which the Emperor actually did several times, just not on the topic of war atrocities.

On the contrary, and more crucially, people forget how much stuff had to be personally approved by the Emperor, including atrocities like the biological attacks on China. Which the Emperor approved again and again.

In fact, some would even doubt whether some of that stuff was even Hideki Tojo's ideas, or he was accepting the blame and a death sentence to protect his Emperor with his life. Japanese loyalty to the end, and all that.

But be that as it may, even though Hideki Tojo was no good guy by any definition, I doubt that shooting him would change history much. While I can see an alternate path for Germany, because it took some extraordinary maneuvering to get a dictatorship here AND support for the Nazis was dropping like a rock when the crisis started to settle down, I'm not sure Japan would be as easy to solve by taking one guy out of the picture. And especially not while the same evil Emperor is still in place. Some other guy would just rise to fill the hole, either by coming up with the genocidal ideas that the Emperor wanted to hear, or by being willing to carry them out just the same if they were the Emperor's ideas.

 

[Frozenwolf150]

I did hear that there was contention about how accountable Hirohito was for the war, and the reason MacArthur didn't try him was to avoid antagonizing the Japanese people. Still, Hirohito signed off on the atrocities while Tojo carried them out. Is the brain or the body of the criminal responsible for the crime?

 

[Crow T R0bot]

Much like Frozenwolf, I wouldn't kill Hitler either. The Holocaust was a horrible, awful thing, but if one good thing came of it, it's that it was the wakeup call Humanity needed to realize how evil racism and elitism is...It took its time, but now being an anti-semite (or a racist in general) in the west instantly discredits you in the eyes of every sane human being who hears about you.

Stalin, on the other hand...I think I'd spare the Soviets a few years of special suffering by assassinating him instead, and Levrantiy Beria for good measure too. Just to be safe, I'll kill them just before Berlin falls so they won't see their Glorious Socialist Victory. Just so he doesn't get any dignity, I'd probably cut out Stalin's tongue, disfigure him, and then turn him in as a conspirator against the revolution named "Ivan Dovich" and let his own System take care of him.