The Grandfather Paradox

Post » Tue Aug 27, 2013 1:24 am

The following Paragraph is taken from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grandfather_paradox

The grandfather paradox is a proposed http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physical_paradox of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_travel first described by the science fiction writer http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ren%C3%A9_Barjavel in his 1943 book Le Voyageur Imprudent (Future Times Three). The paradox is described as following: the time traveller went back in time to the time when his grandfather had not married yet. At that time, the time traveller kills his grandfather, and therefore, the time traveller is never born when he was meant to be. If he is never born, then he is unable to travel through time and kill his grandfather, which means he would be born, and so on.

Now what i want to know is that is their any event that you would risk your existence to prevent or even witness with the outcome been you die regardless of if you prevent the event or witness it.

I guess you could say that what event would you be willing to commit suicide for.

Take the Hindenburg you want to witness it first hand but in doing so it results in your death or you want to prevent it but again it results in your death.

For me it would be the birth of life on earth just so i know that as i decompose my genes an dna will be getting spread throughout life. (Prometheus style)

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lacy lake
 
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Post » Tue Aug 27, 2013 4:45 am

Back to the Future paradox.

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Farrah Lee
 
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Post » Tue Aug 27, 2013 2:40 am

Hmm, kind of hard to answer that and stay away from politics or religion. I will say there is no one in the past I'd want to kill, even if they did start a war and kill millions. If someone like that were to die then everyone who met because of this person, got married, and had children ... well their children would be wiped out because of me ... no thanks.

There are probably dozens if not hundreds of things that happened in history I'd like to witness though, I'm just too tired to think of them at the moment :D

Hmm, just reread the OP and realized I'd missed this part

"I guess you could say that what event would you be willing to commit suicide for.

Take the Hindenburg you want to witness it first hand but in doing so it results in your death or you want to prevent it but again it results in your death"

New answer: Nothing. I really wouldn't want to die just so I could witness something.

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Monika Fiolek
 
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Post » Mon Aug 26, 2013 3:32 pm

Changing the past? Too dodgy, you've no idea what could happen. And I can't think of any event I'd like to see badly enough I'd die to do so.

As for the whole grandfather paradox thing, I don't buy it, I doubt timeloops work that way.

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aisha jamil
 
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Post » Tue Aug 27, 2013 2:25 am

So many people history could rather do without.

Reading any history book is indistuingishable from reading case studies on psycopaths and sociopaths and the level of rational thinking is otherwise few and far between. (And when someone then for once creates a state that is humane and rational they invariably get conquered by the violent, such as Tibet only recently has, historically speaking.)

No, I'm afraid there is no recourse but for me to pull a http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helen_Cutter#Helen_Cutter and attempt to right this at the source. Only I'd go at it a whole lot more efficiently, likely with a virus tailored to sterilise primates.

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Richard Dixon
 
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