If you had the ability to travel back in time, would you prevent certain events from occuring?

Question

For example, prevent JFK from being assasinated, prevent Judas Iscariot from turning in Jesus, prevent the hijackers from crashing into the WTC, prevent Hitler from rising to power, alert the US Navy of the Pearl Harbor attacks, prevent Lincoln from assasination, prevent Africans from becoming slaves, prevent Mohammed from spreading Islam, prevent the assasination of Martin Luther King, prevent the spread of HIV/AIDS, prevent the great fires of Chicago and London, prevent Jack the Ripper from killing, prevent Jeffrey Dahmer from killing, prevent the Russian work camps of Stalin, prevent the rise of Communism, etc.

Please remember the consequences of what rewriting history can do to mankind.

Kal-El - You moron. My question is about going BACK in time only not the future.

Answer 1

If you changed any of those things you could prevent yourself from being born. Then the space/time continuum would explode, and we'd all be in a world of hurt. Thanks a lot for screwing things up, just when everything was going great!

Everything that has happened throughout history, has happened for a reason. We don't know the reasons behind them, regardless of how bad that we see those things, they occured for some reason. It's part of a grand scheme.

Who's to say that it would even be possible to change any of the outcomes of those events, possibly they were set in stone and any efforts you made would be met with failure.

Answer 2

I would say NO. I also believe that everything that happens, does so for a reason. I beleive that no matter what you were to try to "delete" from history the outcome would come out the same, because for instance the spread of HIV/AIDS. I beleive that if you were to stop that disease from spreading there would just be a different one that fomred to take its place and spread to the same number of people. If my destiny is to die on March 18, 2050 by means of a plane crash and I decide that day to not get on a plane, I would probably end up getting hit by a bus or suffer a massive heart attack and die.

I realize that my beliefs probably do not mirror that of everyone who is reading this, that is just the way I feel.

Answer 3

The Butterfly Effect must always be remembered when dealing with the past. Nothing is ever as simple as it seems. The repercussions of an action go on further than they can ever be traced. Changing history is a very bad idea. Things have a way of balancing in the long term, and we need not worry about the outcome as long as we do the best we can. Don't change history change the future.

Answer 4

would go to the distant future and speak with people who perhaps allready have the time machine so I could understand how to use it carefully without disrupting the continuum. I would be careful on going to the future to get reports on sports games and the stock market because each future you visit is only one particular future, and with each passing second it creates a completely differrent future. I also might take christians and other religeous fanatics to the far distant past to prove to them that evolution occured once and for all and their bible thumping is basicaly meaningless. However this could also be dangerous because any foreign disease on us, or exhaled by us that was exposed to the primordial world could totaly change what we know to be current history. Every invention created by us happens very carefully, we make nothing before we are ready. If (in total speculation) a future time traveller visited the past he would have all precautions accounted for, such as disease, mistakes, and keeping a low profile. In our century we have no such precautions. So if I ever did get a hold of a time machine, I would return it to whoever it came from. Another problem with using a time machine to change the past or "the grandfather" paradox is Richard Feynmans theory of "a particle will take every possible path in space time" meaning if I went back and changed a past, I would change the past in a totaly differrent time frame then the temporal continuum I am used to, so when I returned everything would be the same. However I would be still messing with the universe. Theirfore if I ever found a empty time machine I would indeed leave it alone, or return it to the big temporal lost and found. We are not ready for such technology, and probaly wont be for a long time.

Answer 5

No
whats done is done- even though the tragedies are so heartbreaking
I'd hate to change something in my past to only find that my future is altered drastically in a bad way

Answer 6

I would go back and stop Eve from giving Adam the apple.

Answer 7

oh heavens yes.. i would prevent eve from eating that dreaded apple..so we'd all be in Paradise!