If you could change anything in your past, would you?

If you could change anything in your past, would you?

  • Yes

    Votes: 3 50.0%

  • No

    Votes: 3 50.0%
  • Total voters
    6
Cosmo

Cosmo

Owner
Staff member
This poll is modeled after a thread originally created by Mop back in October 1999:
Mop

Thread 'New poll! Woo-hoo!'

This touches on something that was being discussed yesterday:

If you could change anything in your past, would you?. Be honest!

Mop

Is there something in your past that, given the ability to time travel, you would change? Why or why not? For the sake of argument, assume time travel works like it does in Back to the Future, where changes in the past create the alternate timeline in the future that you’d be returning to:

1693848668458.webp

For me, I say no. I’ve got plenty in my past I’d like to prevent or undo, but all of those led me to where I am, and helped me create the people I created. To change the past would be to unmake all of that, so I think given the opportunity, I would relive all of the negative again to experience the positive I have now.

What about you?
 
I voted yes. There are a bunch of things I desire to change in my past as well as the past of other things. For instance, I want to change where I went to school during when I was in 6th to 12th grade. I desire being educated in a private school during those years.

The government-run public elementary schools are quite OK around that time period, but the public middle, junior high, and high schools are a disaster. This is intertwined with history outside my past, since in my history, which I plan on converting to a reality, there’s a much stronger Reagan Revolution taking place during the 1980s, severely crippling the relative dominance of public education over society.

Also, I’m from New York State, and I have a Republican governor serving there from 1983 to 1991. This governor, whose name I will not reveal right now, is a Reaganesque politician who first wins the governorship in 1982 with more than 62% of the popular vote, riding the coattails of Ronald Reagan, who wins the U.S. Presidency in New York with over 63% of the vote, as well as nationally with close to 67%! The New York governor transforms the state into one with a perfectly happy, healthy economy, weakens the power of public schools in the state, and even plays a chief role in causing the Regents exams to be discontinued, ending the role of those exams being a requirement for graduating high school.

And so, since the middle school and high school in my school district are not a good fit for me, I attend a private school (one of which its name will not be revealed in this thread) until I graduate from it and transition to college.
 
Interesting. What outcome or change do you think that would have on your present life? Would you have a different job, a different home?

What life lessons would you have missed out on going to private school from 6-12th grade? That period forms a lot of who we are and how we think later in life, so I imagine you’d have turned out quite different.
 
There’s one thing I’d like to point out first: there’s the saying goes “With God, all things are possible.” As for my 6th to 12th grade education itself, I’d guess I’d be better off with my changes, since in my current past, I can’t think of a major breakthrough that occurred during those years. I’m also guessing I’ll learn the major lessons of life in different ways, but I do suppose without much doubt that I’d have a different, better job, and a different, better home. I think I’ll be able to work something out. I believe I’ll find plenty of loopholes, that’s why I plan on communicating with ETs and working with them while changing the past, including my own.
 
Mhm, I voted no, @Classicalfan626 has an interesting point of view.

But I’m satisfied with the point I’ve reached and even if the problems I went through were hard, I would have been a completely different person if I had avoided them and not seen that side of people.
 
I voted yes. First of all i would prevent my parent of my childhood depression, then to convince them to put me in a private school because of my attention/concentration difficulties; and then it will save me suffering, trauma experienced in public school, and will keep myself away from certain associates. I wrote myself a letter, with the idea of sending it to me.

I will direct my career towards professional sport, which will make my parents and mine proud.
 
Cosmo said:
This poll is modeled after a thread originally created by Mop back in October 1999:

Is there something in your past that, given the ability to time travel, you would change? Why or why not? For the sake of argument, assume time travel works like it does in Back to the Future, where changes in the past create the alternate timeline in the future that you’d be returning to:

View attachment 922

For me, I say no. I’ve got plenty in my past I’d like to prevent or undo, but all of those led me to where I am, and helped me create the people I created. To change the past would be to unmake all of that, so I think given the opportunity, I would relive all of the negative again to experience the positive I have now.

What about you?
Click to expand...
Yes. I would change things in my life absolutely. I understand that it would have its own consequences persay but yes I would change certain things.
 
I’ve thought about this a lot.

I’ve always come back to the conclusion of no.

Firstly, I am only typing this because I carry the knowledge and intellect to bring me to this point in my life at this exact time.

If I were to change my past, I would be risking the person I am today, and who I could and will be in the future.

The question in its simplicity is more about asking yourself if you’re proud of the intelligence, experience, and challenges you’ve overcome today.

If you aren’t, then traveling in the past would be an option…. but most people on this forum are probably in the right place at the right time in their lives, and to change that would risk finding this question and experiencing the question of time travel in the first place.
 
Cosmo said:
This poll is modeled after a thread originally created by Mop back in October 1999:

Is there something in your past that, given the ability to time travel, you would change? Why or why not? For the sake of argument, assume time travel works like it does in Back to the Future, where changes in the past create the alternate timeline in the future that you’d be returning to:

View attachment 922

For me, I say no. I’ve got plenty in my past I’d like to prevent or undo, but all of those led me to where I am, and helped me create the people I created. To change the past would be to unmake all of that, so I think given the opportunity, I would relive all of the negative again to experience the positive I have now.

What about you?
Click to expand...
Absolutely yes. Why not. I have experience this life so far. With all the good and the bad but there are a couple of things I would definitely change especially some very bad decisions that have caused me great heartache. Two marriages- I would not marrying them.
 
I would change a lot of things in my life, but by doing this I would be making some minimal changes that would only affect my future, since I was very young I always had the idea that if I were to change in time I would take important events in my life
 
Who we are right now, is the result of so many choices we've made. I'm not sure I'd want to lose that. But like you said, minimal changes could be done, so that not everything changes, but just some specific points. See it as fine-tuning if you will.
 
I would, but it would not be for self gain. John titor said people were closer in his world and he did not like this timeline. Kinda felt like a projection. Its one thing i agree on. Growing up ive noticed this change and disdain for some things that where not there in the past. I'm not sure how i can explain the thing but one of my thoughts is that it was caused by technology itself, Raising both the standard bar of average people and makes it a haven for overpowerforming individuals getting a bigger presence, since contact can be made all over the world with todays internet. Experiencing that raise is hell and you are always running behind it.
 
I've given this a lot of thought over the years. For me it always come s down to my asking what does it mean to have minimal contact or make minimal changes?

I return to this thought experiment that I relate to fluid dynamics: It's New York downtown Manhattan. The sidewalks are crowded with thousands of pedestrians virtually toe to toe. Unlike the street there are no lanes on the sidewalk. People are walking up and down the street, entering and exiting from the side from various buildings. In the end everyone on that sidewalk traveled from their personal Point A to their personal Point B and left the sidewalk. Along the way they bumped into other people, had to move left or right to avoid bumping into people, etc.

And then I enter the fray as a time traveler and we re-do the same random walk. I don't talk to anyone or communicate with anyone in any other way. I just join the walk going from my personal Point A to my personal Point B. This time, however, I bump into people. This time people have to move left and right to avoid bumping into me. They now arrive at all the intermediate points between A and B at different times and at different locations on the sidewalk. Because of this they are bumping into and/or avoiding a completely different set of people. Likewise all of those people become out of sequence with the original random walk. By the end of my walk there may have been close to a million new encounters among the thousands of people that did not occur before. During the rest of the day these random encounters spread throughout Manhattan because people had these "minimal contacts" that caused "minimal changes" that exponentially evolved. One of those minimal changes could be your parents, who accidentally ran into each other on that sidewalk which started their relationship instead pass without touching. No them - no you. You're married with children today. Nope. The children don't exist. The person you married is married to someone else. They have children that didn't previously exist. This alone would result in a world with a completely different set of people within about 7 generations.

Maybe almost all of the changes will attenuate out. But almost and all are vastly different terms. Just being there and having any contact at all can result in changes that could devastate Manhattan and beyond.
 
Darby said:
I've given this a lot of thought over the years. For me it always come s down to my asking what does it mean to have minimal contact or make minimal changes?

I return to this thought experiment that I relate to fluid dynamics: It's New York downtown Manhattan. The sidewalks are crowded with thousands of pedestrians virtually toe to toe. Unlike the street there are no lanes on the sidewalk. People are walking up and down the street, entering and exiting from the side from various buildings. In the end everyone on that sidewalk traveled from their personal Point A to their personal Point B and left the sidewalk. Along the way they bumped into other people, had to move left or right to avoid bumping into people, etc.

And then I enter the fray as a time traveler and we re-do the same random walk. I don't talk to anyone or communicate with anyone in any other way. I just join the walk going from my personal Point A to my personal Point B. This time, however, I bump into people. This time people have to move left and right to avoid bumping into me. They now arrive at all the intermediate points between A and B at different times and at different locations on the sidewalk. Because of this they are bumping into and/or avoiding a completely different set of people. Likewise all of those people become out of sequence with the original random walk. By the end of my walk there may have been close to a million new encounters among the thousands of people that did not occur before. During the rest of the day these random encounters spread throughout Manhattan because people had these "minimal contacts" that caused "minimal changes" that exponentially evolved. One of those minimal changes could be your parents, who accidentally ran into each other on that sidewalk which started their relationship instead pass without touching. No them - no you. You're married with children today. Nope. The children don't exist. The person you married is married to someone else. They have children that didn't previously exist. This alone would result in a world with a completely different set of people within about 7 generations.

Maybe almost all of the changes will attenuate out. But almost and all are vastly different terms. Just being there and having any contact at all can result in changes that could devastate Manhattan and beyond.
Click to expand...

It's a good thought exercise. It may not really bring comfort, but in the multiverse those universes tend to spiral off like fractals for pretty much the same reason. Every single jump introduces foreign entropy to a universe. Too much entropy (remembering we're small potatoes) introduced from one universe creates an imbalance in the other. Imbalances just tip universes towards one ultimate end.

In the grander scheme of things, the summation of most people's entropy + potential entropy are not enough to make a measurable difference. I've come to find that the universe (much less the multiverse) doesn't really care what you do, so long as you play by its rules. Numerous ways to play the game without breaking the rules.

It's a stupid game. The only proper reason I could find is to undo the changes of others, and even THAT has implications (in the event said changes had already been made, those universes would then exist & so on & so on)
 
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