why, you can't change history.

[danielost]

(This might be better in another thread.)

The main reason you can't change history is tht history is self correcting.

What I mean is you back in time and kill Hitler before WW2. The next time through you wouldn't know you had to back and kill him.

[Rlyeh]

Then he survives thereby causing your desire to kill him.

The biggest problem is time machines don't exist.

[SHaYap]

Hollywood does it all the time ... 'least that is what I hear ...

[danielost]

True , and in the star trek movies Kirks glasses were never made. Yet, they exist.

[Frank Merton]

Heinlein wrote a short story, I think the title was, "By his bootstraps" about a man who goes into the future and there is given a guide-book on how to get on in this future, along with a dictionary of their language.

Later he writes out a copy of that guide-book and ends up, as an old man, giving the copy of the guide-book that he had made to himself as a young man. So it turns out that the guide-book was never actually authored -- only copied from itself in a sort-of endless loop.

[maxhobbs]

Well, you can't change history because, by definition, history is something that has already happened.

But if you trying to say you can't AVOID making the same mistakes that were made in the past, yes, you can avoid this.

But, people/governments seem to do the same things over and over. It isn't necessary, but it can be avoided.

[danielost]

Well, you can't change history because, by definition, history is something that has already happened.

But if you trying to say you can't AVOID making the same mistakes that were made in the past, yes, you can avoid this.

But, people/governments seem to do the same things over and over. It isn't necessary, but it can be avoided.

No, I was being litteral(spch).

[MainerMikeBrown]

All we can do as a human race is learn from the past mistakes we made in history. That's why they teach history in elementary and high school in America.

[StarMountainKid]

In my blog I wrote a little story about scientists using a time machine to change the past to create a better present. "The Schmaltzenberger Equation Project". Not much of a story as usual, and I'm not sure how the Project turned out.

Maybe changing the past in this way would create a new timeline so there wouldn't be any paradoxes.

[Frank Merton]

All we can do as a human race is learn from the past mistakes we made in history. That's why they teach history in elementary and high school in America.

I suspect that the "lessons" we learn from history in those grades is mostly the "lessons" the pedagogues think we should learn, and not what history really tells us.

[Frank Merton]

Maybe changing the past in this way would create a new timeline so there wouldn't be any paradoxes.

That's a common way of dealing with them. Another way is to say that after you are done messing with the past events take over and rearrange things back to the way they were supposed to be.

If traveling into the past is possible, why aren't we pestered by our posterity coming back to gawk at us as tourists?

[danielost]

That's a common way of dealing with them. Another way is to say that after you are done messing with the past events take over and rearrange things back to the way they were supposed to be.

If traveling into the past is possible, why aren't we pestered by our posterity coming back to gawk at us as tourists?

Maybe they have. (God, aliens, bigfoot)

[krypter3]

My friend, a wise man once...people assume that time is a strict progression of cause to effect, but actually from a non-linear, non-subjective viewpoint - it's more like a big ball of wibbly wobbly... time-y wimey... stuff.

And lets just leave it at that =T

[CrimsonKing]

As has already been said history is changed all the time.Find a history book from the early 1900's then one with the same basic tale of characters in it from a high school today.I guarantee you may be astonished by the changes to facts that has been made.

[Frank Merton]

Quite true.

[SHaYap]

I concur ... Hollywood made it into a multi billion business too

[danielost]

All we can do as a human race is learn from the past mistakes we made in history. That's why they teach history in elementary and high school in America.

Problem is we don't always learn from the past mistakes. I am waiting for our version of ceaser.