One of my favorite movies, Back to the Future, is about having a time machine and going back in time and forward in time. Possibly the only time travel fiction I can get behind. The reason for that is because it has consequences.
When Marty disrupts the meeting of his mom and dad, he faces the challenge of being erased from history and when George McFly punches Biff he wins the love of Lorraine, Marty and Doc return to a changed future, when Biff steals the time machine and they return to 1985 to find a changed past, at the end of the third one we never really know what was changed except for Marty's belief that he could change the future himself because no ones future is written.
The important thing to remember there is that actions in the past and future had consequences on their present.
A new show on Fox, Making History, is coming out soon about time travel, the time machine itself is a duffel bag, but in the promo they do one of those things everyone says they would do with a time machine out of the two things everyone says they would do if they have a time machine:
Kill Hitler
I haven't seen any of the show Making History, so I don't know how killing Hitler effects the future in the show, but when we think about if those two things happened, what would the consequences be?
Remember all actions have consequences that will effect the future in a good way or bad way.
Scenario
Congratulations you have invented a time machine! You decide to do the thing you always said you would do, kill Hitler.
You travel to the past and find Hitler painting in his room before he ever gave his first speech. Holding piano wire between your fingers, you walk up behind him and wrap it around his neck. He struggles and puts up a fight, but you prevail and strangle the life out of him. You escape the scene and return to where you left your time machine, but its not there! Not only that you begin to be erased from history. In your last breath you ask, 'Why God? I did the right thing.'
What happened?
Think about Back to the Future for second? When Marty altered the past, he was in danger of not existing in the future. In each scenario, the same thing happened.
By killing Hitler, you altered the history of people; those who would of died, survived, fleeting emotions of soldiers going off to war and returning resulting in less marriages and children being born during what we call the baby boom. More people led to more options in partners, leading to different marriages resulting in different people being born who were not your grandparents thus never giving birth to your parents thus you. Even if your grandparents did meet and your parents were born, a non-world war 2 America could of resulted in a longer Great Depression with less jobs, less food meaning families had to move more often, children didn't go to school regularly and certain cities wouldn't of been development and the chances of your parents meeting becomes less and less thus again you are never born.
This raises a very altruistic question. Who's life is more important? Yours or theirs? Did you in fact do the right thing?
Alternative Timelines
In an episode of The Big Bang Theory, the guys watch Back to the Future II. In that episode, they explain how old Biff could of stolen the time machine to give young Biff the sports almanac, but returns to present future the Doc and Marty are in to return the time machine, but when they return to 1985, it is the alternate 1985 with billionaire Biff. How did old Biff return to 2015 and not an alternative 2015 where he is the billionaire Biff?
Marty and Doc go back to 1955 to destroy the sports almanac thus the future of billionaire Biff never exists for old Biff to return to. Thus is my conclusion.
But, the writers at The Big Bang Theory had a different theory involving alternate timelines. Old Biff could go back on the original timeline to give himself the sports almanac, then return on the same timeline as if nothing happened, but he creates an alternative timeline that Doc and Marty can cross over to be on that timeline. By that reasoning, I think they could of just gone back and forth until they arrived back on the original timeline where everything was safe. But they would always know the Dead Limb timeline was out there and alternative versions of themselves were living a life of despair and pain.
The Dead Limb Timeline
The theory is we are living in one reality while a million other realities (also known as dimensions) are happening all around us. Every decision you make puts you on a path while in an alternative reality yourself made a different decision that set them on a different path. Each of these decision that you, and everyone makes branch off to make a tree with each branch being a different reality.
Which means there are realities where you were never born or you took an extra second to slam on the brakes that one time and you died rather than lived to tell your friends. Which means there are realities where Hitler was never born or he was killed or he became a successful artist and never committed mass murder.
But in this reality, that did happen. If by chance someone created a time machine went back and did stop those terrible things from happening, they would create a new branch in the reality tree, what I call a Dead Limb timeline. A reality that shouldn't exist, but does because of human intervention. And by the reasoning of the writers' of The Big Bang Theory, you could intervene and change history and return to your original timeline, the one you were on, but you would of never of changed history for your timeline, only for someone else, that may or may not include a version of you.
Altruism
Time travel is messy when you think about it. Nothing can proven or disproven without the technology to test which one of these outcomes would come true. But knowing that one of the outcomes could result in wiping yourself out of existence, would you do it?
It's that altruistic question again. To save millions of people in the past, would you risk the existence of millions of people in the future, one of whom is yourself, two of those are your parents, your grandparents, your brother or sister, your nephew or nieces, aunt and uncles, wife or girlfriend along with any children you may have. Are you willing to risk it all to change history?
Making a Conclusion
Everyone might make a different decision on what to do, some might do it and some might not. But I would like to watch that, a deep philosophical and scientific discussion on if they should use the time machine to change history or just witness it. That's what I would do. Solve all the ancient mystery's of the world; who built the pyramids, who was Jack the Ripper or who was the Zodiac, did O.J. really do it, who killed JFK, what happened at Roswell that night? I'm very curious to know the answers to a lot of murder mysteries and paranormal activity. But honestly I don't know if I could stomach it, because I couldn't intervene. The time traveling detective, kind of like the show Crime Traveller except he couldn't travel longer back than a week, but was also not allow to change the past in any way.
But I do know, I don' want to watch happy ending time travel anymore where people can alter the past or the future as much as they want without any consequences. And because the consequences could be too high for all of us; the born, unborn and the dead, no one should even be contemplating the idea of time travel and everyone who says they are a time traveller should be shunned as a liar.
I am usually opened minded about stuff like this, but for some reason I have had it with time travel, I just can't stand anymore time travel fluff and especially for something that can not possibly happen. Yes, it would be nice to go back and fix all the worlds woes, it really would, but living here in the present looking to the future we keep making the same mistakes, so why speculate about fixing the past when we need to be worrying about the future.
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