It's funny...Like it's all one guys fault? What about his millions of followers? How many Jews did Hitler actually kill himself?
Corporations have taken over this country but do I blame corporations? No, they are doing what corporations do, they act in their own self interest, I do however blame brainwashed Republicans followers for not acting in their own self interests as human beings..
Jim Wright
made 2 posts about this, yesterday and the day before yesterday, on Facebook and he nailed it on the head.
If you could, would you go back in time and kill Hitler as a baby.
That was the question posed by my previous post.
The resulting comments are informative. I see at least ten, maybe fifteen, ideas for good speculative science fiction stories in there.
But as I noted in the comments under that post, some of you are taking this WAY too seriously - which is informative in and of itself. Several commenters took the question personally and got pissed off, angry at the idea that anybody could even consider such a thing, as if we were considering killing their child - and again, that's informative. Another decided everybody must be stupid for discussing such a silly and impossible subject. At least one person unfriended me over it after sending me a nasty IM.
Folks, guess what? There are no time machines.
There are NO time machines.
It's a thought problem. What would do if you won the lottery? What would you do if you were president for one day? What would you do with a time machine?
There are no time machines. But what if there were? If a time machine exists, if the past can be changed as implied by the nature of the question, then by definition, time and causality are mutable. A time machine gives you virtually unlimited power. Godlike power. Literally godlike power in that gods are not men, they are often capricious, and power has side effects. That power may be used for good or for ill - and what's good and ill for a god is not necessarily what's good and ill for a mortal. Follow?
In this problem, you've been given unlimited power, but NOT unlimited knowledge - in other words, while you can change the past, you can't predict the future with any certainty.
THIS IS THE ETHICAL DILEMMA SCIENCE WRESTLES WITH EVERY DAY.
1) it's not really about Baby Hitler, is it? It's about YOU. What are YOU prepared to do should technology offer you the choice? (and now you know how to write a science fiction story). Would you? Why? or why not?
"Now, more than ever, the illusions of division threaten our very existence. We all know the truth: more connects us than separates us. But in times of crisis the wise build bridges, while the foolish build barriers. We must find a way to look after one another as if we were one single tribe.” -King T'Challa, Black Panther
The truth is incontrovertible. Malice may attack it. ignorance may deride it, but in the end, there it is. ~Winston Churchill
