I have often thought these same thoughts...
I read this blip on www.nfl.com under the Tuesday Morning Quarterback... and I couldn't help but to a) laugh, and b) think to myself the number of times I have thought these same thoughts, and finally c) laugh again...
"Using Time Travel, I Went Back to That Party in 1980 and Still Didn't Get Lucky:
Last spring, students from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology staged what was billed as the first convention for time travelers. Cleverly, they declared it would be the only time-travelers' convention ever needed, since anyone who missed the event could just travel backward in time to attend.
The chances of time travel are vanishingly small. First there is the problem that there would have to exist an infinite number of interwoven universes, each representing an instant in time, in order for there to be destinations to which time-travelers could journey. No one can prove there are not an infinity of universes each forever locked in an instant of time, but what are the odds? Second are the obvious causality paradoxes. If you went backward in time and prevented your parents from meeting, you would cease to exist; but if you ceased to exist, then you could not have traveled backward in time to prevent the meeting. Third is the already-altered problem -- if a future person went into the past and altered history, this would have already happened from our perspectives; history would already be altered and thus the current condition would be the normal condition, that is, not altered. The clincher is the free-will problem. If any future person with a time machine is debating whether to travel into the past, he or she would have no free choice in the matter, because from the standpoint of the past the journey has already either occurred or not occurred. For the theological flip side of this argument -- God cannot know the future because if the future is already determined then God has no free will -- see my favorite philosopher, Charles Hartshorne (or here) [I need to check him out].
Can Quantum Leap predict the final scores of games as well?
Back to MIT. When the New York Times put a whimsical story about the time-travel conference on Page One, the affair immediately sold out, and people were turned away at the door. This appeared to solve a delicate problem for the organizers, namely: Why didn't anyone from the future attend? People from the future tried to attend but when they got there, the tickets were sold out! But if there really were time travel, people from the future would have known the conference would sell out and would have come backward to the day before the New York Times article ran, when tickets were easy to get. Football argument that there really is time travel: Reader Kristy Scott of Bellevue, Wash., asserts that in a 1990 episode of the sci fi series Quantum Leap, a character used time travel to glimpse the 1996 Super Bowl and declared the Steelers were down by three. The Steelers did in fact play in the 1996 Super Bowl, and in the fourth quarter trailed by three."
- Gregg Easterbrook from TMQ
"Using Time Travel, I Went Back to That Party in 1980 and Still Didn't Get Lucky:
Last spring, students from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology staged what was billed as the first convention for time travelers. Cleverly, they declared it would be the only time-travelers' convention ever needed, since anyone who missed the event could just travel backward in time to attend.
The chances of time travel are vanishingly small. First there is the problem that there would have to exist an infinite number of interwoven universes, each representing an instant in time, in order for there to be destinations to which time-travelers could journey. No one can prove there are not an infinity of universes each forever locked in an instant of time, but what are the odds? Second are the obvious causality paradoxes. If you went backward in time and prevented your parents from meeting, you would cease to exist; but if you ceased to exist, then you could not have traveled backward in time to prevent the meeting. Third is the already-altered problem -- if a future person went into the past and altered history, this would have already happened from our perspectives; history would already be altered and thus the current condition would be the normal condition, that is, not altered. The clincher is the free-will problem. If any future person with a time machine is debating whether to travel into the past, he or she would have no free choice in the matter, because from the standpoint of the past the journey has already either occurred or not occurred. For the theological flip side of this argument -- God cannot know the future because if the future is already determined then God has no free will -- see my favorite philosopher, Charles Hartshorne (or here) [I need to check him out].
Can Quantum Leap predict the final scores of games as well?
Back to MIT. When the New York Times put a whimsical story about the time-travel conference on Page One, the affair immediately sold out, and people were turned away at the door. This appeared to solve a delicate problem for the organizers, namely: Why didn't anyone from the future attend? People from the future tried to attend but when they got there, the tickets were sold out! But if there really were time travel, people from the future would have known the conference would sell out and would have come backward to the day before the New York Times article ran, when tickets were easy to get. Football argument that there really is time travel: Reader Kristy Scott of Bellevue, Wash., asserts that in a 1990 episode of the sci fi series Quantum Leap, a character used time travel to glimpse the 1996 Super Bowl and declared the Steelers were down by three. The Steelers did in fact play in the 1996 Super Bowl, and in the fourth quarter trailed by three."
- Gregg Easterbrook from TMQ
the Omnipotent... Everybody loves SuperInsignificantBoy wrote this at 10:10 PM
10 Feedback:
I was just thinking about time travel the other day, and really, when you get down to it there's no way in hell it could ever work. It's disappointing, since it would be a lot of fun. I know all kinds of fun stuff I could do with a time machine. I'd have to go see the dinosaurs for sure, just to see how close all these reconstructions and artists' depictions really are. It would be funny f we got it all completely wrong. Ha.
Of course, I don't know if I would go into the past or not...
I definately wouldn't go see dinosaurs... too much could go wrong with that...
and if I went too far back in time, seeing as I am not a scholarly man with languages, I highly doubt I would be able to communicate with anyone from those time periods before the 16th century... Right, so that leaves only the future, and hell that proposition could be really scary... cause what if the world blew itself up, or worse yet something even more drastic than the chance of radiation poisoning, occured? Um, I don't know about time travel, even if it was plausable, I would probably use it in a short time/jump a week to the future sort of deal as so I could find out stuffs and make money off of it... All that discovery bullshit, not that it is bullshit, seems a little bit too risky...
ha ha ha where's my sense of adventure??? Well I left it back in the past, in the 1430's France, as I was about to be executed for being some sort of evil and wretched freak thing....
A Connecticut Yankee I am not...
(Besides, Twain's character would have been shish-ka-bob'ed on a lance in reality... or at least would not have been taken to the court of a mythical or not king... the time traveler would have at the very least been left alone...)
Well I was thinking of what I would do if going back in time didn't change anything, like you were just an observer or something. Obviously if you could change the future by visiting the past, the simple fact that you went back in time would be enough to cause some little change which would probably unravel the fabric of the universe or something.
I'd go back to the 1400s and be an explorer, discovering new lands, or an Apothocary in Elizabethan times.
If I was just an observer, then...no - wait - that's exactly what my life is like anyway...
again, back in the 1400's would be difficult to do nothing but observe... there could be no real interactions unless you speak fluent dead languages...
I think making money off the future is still the best way to go...
Yeah...but to the 1400s/Elizabethan times the 2000s are in the future.
I'd either be like Nostradamus or they'd burn me for being a witch; probably the latter...
Yeah, but could you speak well enough for them to understand you??? Either vulgar/venacular old english or the tongue of the nobility, french (old french that is)?
Hmmm...maybe, maybe not. I minored in languages at college (French and Italian), so it's possible I could muddle through. And hell, I loved Chaucer -grin-
whatever man...
I still say no, it's not a good idea, but you can do what you like... first come up with a way to time travel, then I guess it wont matter what I think...
Post a Comment
<< Home