Does Foreknowledge Bring Responsibility

[imfromthepast]

Let's say you have knowledge of a disaster, like the Titanic. If you find yourself in the past during this disaster and you realize that you cannot prevent the disaster itself, since doing so would cause a paradox, but you could perhaps persuade people from getting on the ship, thus potentially saving their lives.

My question is, does that knowledge obligate you to do something if you could?
If you do nothing, figuring that you are merely playing your part in recorded history, does this absolve you of culpability?
Conversely, if you do save one or two people, does this in turn make you responsible for the lives you did not save?

These questions are explored in the current Chapter of TRICKSHOT.

 

[Twighlight]

My question is, does that knowledge obligate you to do something if you could?
If you do nothing, figuring that you are merely playing your part in recorded history, does this absolve you of culpability?

Hmm. The trouble is, one has no idea what the TRUE consequences of one's actions might be.

Let's say, for the sake of argument, that a German scientist died on the Titanic.....and unknown to you, he's someone who would have gone on to create the atomic bomb for Hitler in 1939. You save a ship load of people....but as a result, the Nazis conquer the world.

Indeed.....I myself would be a bit concerned if someone went back and, for example, tried to prevent WW2. Without WW2, I am certain I would not be here....as my dad would not have met my mum. And there must be millions of others the same. Indeed, the number of people who would right now not exist if WW2 never happened is probably similar to the number who died in WW2.

So really.....almost any act of saving one person will screw things up for someone else. And you've really no idea whether helping in the short term causes a worse disaster in the long term

 

[Darby]

IFTP,

I don't believe that you have a responsibility to prevent what you know from your knowledge of history from occuring.

There were 1517 confirmed fatalities on the Titanic. If you alter the known history and save some of those people you have a huge problem. They aren't part of your known history post 15-APR-1912. The "new" survivors don't have to do anything good, bad or indifferent in the now altered history. All that is required is that they exist. They get married, have children, etc. all of which was not part of "your" history. In your known history the people whom they married married someone else and had different sets of children. From your perspective history no longer has any meaning. Many people who were part of your history no longer exist. People who were not part of that history now exist. Given the 97 years between then and now its not likely that you would have any knowledge of the history between 1912 and 2009.

You can't uncreate yourself but the paradox is that you can uncreate the logical events that lead to your existence from the perspective of an outside observer. That you exist isn't in question. Just how you happen to exist, given the lack of historical foundation, is a problem.

The common logic is that time travel is a window to history. The downside is that time travel negates that known history thus making the stated reason for the technology irrelevent. If through time travel you can have any form of contact with events in the past, no matter how insignificant it might appear to be, the result is that the history you know is altered. You have no knowledge about the new events and cannot predict the outcome.

None of the foregoing even touches on the fact that if time travel is possible no matter what you might attempt to do to "positively" change the past it's always possible for someone else, who has the same technology, to alter the same events after your "initial" intervention.

I placed scare quotes around the term "initial" because the term is meaningless in this scenario. It makes no difference from where or when the interference occurs from the future if the affected event is altered simultaneously from an infinite source of future times. The result is total historical chaos from the perspective of the future time travelers. "Go back in time and kill HItler" is a common theme in time travel scenarios. That's a great idea. However there are a significant number of people who still today worship Hitler and his ideas. In a time travel enabled society there's nothing that pervents them for going back and saving, enhancing or otherwise perventing other time travelers from killing him. Chaos. Infinite chaos. No matter what you do; no matter how long it takes; some one will attempt to save him and someone else will attempt to counter that move. Chaos. And pointless.

 

[paladius]

if you save one or two people, you would be responsible for everything they do down the road.... What if one mets your mother when she was young and your mother never mets your dad? What if one crashes her car into one of your ancestors or your future wife? All that, would be on you.

 

[Packerbacker]

The final, best, all-around rule to keep the well-intentioned from totally trashing what order there is in the world would be:

Look--Don't Touch!

(because they're always going to say about their screw-ups: 1. I didn't know! 2. That was not my intent. 3. I'm Sorry 4. It would have worked out if so-and-so hadn't come along and messed up my plan,
5. You've got nerve to accuse me! 6. Why in hell didn't anybody tell me? and best of all: It Wasn't My Fault! ) /ttiforum/images/graemlins/ooo.gif

 

[RainmanTime]

Oh the drama! /ttiforum/images/graemlins/yum.gif

Clearly, this is a commercial to draw traffic to your online fiction site (which may very well be time-travel related).

As such, this is going to be moved to our Fan Fiction forum. And now people who have nothing to do with this post can commence the whining and complaining about me. If it serves to sooth what ails ya, whine away!
RMT

 

[imfromthepast]

of course it is meant to draw traffic to my site, but as it is also meant to stir up conversation and debate in this forum, I see it as a win-win. And yes, Trickshot is very time travel related.

Anywho, to the rest of you, first thanks for responding, but what I was thinking about wasn't about the reprecussions to the time line, butterfly effect and paradox, etc, etc. I was bringing up the oft-overlooked human element. Lets put all the sci-fi aside, and take a self-consistent viewpoint so as to avoid all the typical time travely gobbldy gook.

Using the Titanic, it was mentioned that X amount of people died. I am not suggesting your actions would result in X-1 or X-2 people died, but rather you actions led to someone not boarding and that is why X people died. Your actions were always a part of the historical events that led to the events unfolding as they did. You are therefore free of responsibility for so-and-so going off and inventing an A Bomb for Hitler, or for the subsequent generation of people that result from the copulations that wouldn't have otherwise happened.

That's not what I mean.

X people died on Titanic. That is an unalterable fact. Since it happened before you were born, you are not responsible for any of the deaths. My question is, does this change if you travel back in time and participate in the event. By preventing someone from boarding, thus saving their life, are you responsible for all the people you do not save?

If so, could it be said that the safest, best course would be a Hands Off approach, Look, But Don't Touch as mentioned before, even in the face of Self Consistency, and the inability to change anything?

I submit that in the face of Self Consistency there is still a personal danger in trying to take part in the past.

 

[RainmanTime]

X people died on Titanic. That is an unalterable fact. Since it happened before you were born, you are not responsible for any of the deaths. My question is, does this change if you travel back in time and participate in the event. By preventing someone from boarding, thus saving their life, are you responsible for all the people you do not save?

And this is why this post belongs in Fan Fiction. You talk about self-consistency, and yet you use the power of words (rather than science) to walk your way around an inherent self-consistency problem for the sake of pondering a morality question that may or may not be real. Let me point it out...You start out by stating:

Your actions were always a part of the historical events that led to the events unfolding as they did.

but then you say:

That's not what I mean.

Then you make the claim:

X people died on Titanic. That is an unalterable fact.

Things are already getting confusing, but the way I am reading this (viz-z-viz your wish to be self-consistent) is that it is an unalterable fact that X people died on the Titanic. Because it happened before you were born, you could not have had any influence on it. That part is self-consistent. But then you say:

My question is, does this change if you travel back in time and participate in the event. By preventing someone from boarding, thus saving their life, are you responsible for all the people you do not save?

Self-consistency alert! You have now altered the "unalterable fact". Do you not see the self-consistency error in that?

And my reason for pointing all this out is to continually show how fruitless it is to get wrapped-up in the paradox that is time travel, if even for pondering moral judgments. You simply CANNOT be self-consistent, and have time travel where you are participatory, at the same time (pardon the pun). You are making sweeping assumptions about how time works (or does not work) and not even discussing if there is (as Hawking calls it) a "chronology protection conjecture".

It might make for good fiction (not for my tastes, but certainly tastes vary), but basing conclusions or decisions about morality on fiction is, well, I think Plato might have some problems with it.

RMT