Time travel part 1

So I was listening to a podcast about time travel and it noted that people over the age of 50 more than likely didn't want to time travel quite as much as the under fifty crowd. The reasoning that made the most sense for this, even it sort of fatalistic sounding, is that it wouldn't make a difference.

I can see where that would be the issue considering that most people would want to time travel to change something about the general past (kill Hitler, stop 9-11, etc...) or change some regret about their individual past (past relationship you messed up, spend more time with a loved one who passed, etc...) The changing of world events is hard to conceive of because how would that change the future or how would you accomplish it.

Say you kill Hitler before he commits all those atrocities and plunges us into World War. At that point in time, you are a murderer of an innocent man. He hasn't done these things that you are killing him for so you go to jail for killing a nobody. Good thing is you have saved millions of lives. Bad thing is nobody will know who you are or how great your sacrifice was. You will be the only one to know. I don't know many people not of the military persuasion who would make that sacrifice.

Say you go back in time to stop 9-11. How would you do that? How do you get people to believe you? Not only believe you, but act as well? People talk about the butterfly effect when referring to time travel. That's the idea the effect of one butterfly wing flap can effect big changes when multiplied through the ages. And that does make sense, but it leads to the question, How far back must you go and what small thing can you change to cause something like 9-11 not to happen? And what would be the unforeseen side affects? Could you do something like rewrite the Koran in the past so the religion doesn't go down it's current path? Would that cause things like Algebra to not exist or delay it's existence by 100 or 200 years? How far back would that put our own culture let alone math and science?Would it cause another more violent religion to come to prominence?

Time travel is an interesting topic that I can't cover in one post, because I have to get back to work.

Put some comments below and we'll discuss it.

To be continued...

Welcome

Hi all! I'm Steve and this is my blog to talk about whatever comes to mind during a day, week, year, etc...

I have no plans to make this political or religious other than in passing so I welcome the discussion!