Time Travel: What would you do?

I'm going full Booster Gold.

I've never thought about that before, but presuming that there's no monkey paw bullshit where I cause a butterfly to fart and then I'm never born or jumps forward cause me to fall into the sun, I'd treat the universe as my own personal playground.

I'd go forward in time, document a bunch of technology, then go back in time, introduce a change, then jump forward in time to see the impact. I'd do that over and over and document it extensively and use that to communicate to whatever kind of time paradox copies of myself there were.

I'd probably optimize toward getting humanity past the great filters ( Great Filter - Wikipedia ). Presumably on the current timeline we get rekt by nuclear war, asteroid, pollution, liberalism, whatever into a state that causes a permanent regression before we become an interstellar species. I'd do something to fix that. It could be as trivial as jumping forward far enough to find the solution to the Arc Reactor, Epstein Drive and transparent aluminum and then introducing that information during ancient Egypt and letting her rip. Or it could be a monstrously difficult path because humanity is truly self-destructive and the civilization required to do things like build a stargate to Alpha Centauri require enough of a population that earth self destructs within 5 generations every.single.time.

Would be fun to solve and I can't think of anything more interesting than that to do.

Just giving each of the great civilizations from Egypt's New Kingdom to China's Spring and Autumn to August Caesar's Rome to the British Empire a technological compendium and seeing how they transform into a global hegemony and prepare to become an interstellar species would be fascinating. It wouldn't be surprising at all if the truly ancient empires like Sumer were the best since they'd have minimal competition.

Ukerric said:

Depend if it's back-and-forth, or full no-return trip. Because dipping into time to do the tourist-slash-researcher is one thing, but going back to change things, and stay there because of course your original timeline is erased by your actions are two very different things.

The former? Do the tourist thing. Visit original Egypt pre-roman conquest, attend ceremonies to Enlil at Nippur, see a full-blown festival at the Coliseum, chat with Confucius to see if he really had a broom stuck in the...

The latter? Late roman republic. Introduce simple and basic technologies and ideas:
- Movable type printing press
- Immediately after, the academic press, so you can kickstart the scientific method (that lets people figure everything you forgot)
- Accounting & economy methods (so that the gov realizes they can't devolve money without consequences, as they started to do later)
- Germ theory, sanitation/hygiene (there are some nasty plagues coming up soon)
- Simple electricity: show how a telegraph works, let them do the rest ("oh, by the way, yes, it lets you transport energy")
- Simple machinery. Introduce a modern version of the lathe (whose principles were known already), then showcase steam-powered stuff like presses ("I can make a curved shield in 10 minutes").
- Introduce the concept of standardized measures and interchangeable parts for the above.
- A world map. A fuckin' honest to goodness world map, in front of Mr. Julius Gaius Caesar ("you're thinking too small, Jules"). Also, dump Gibbon's Rise and Fall (translated) on him and a few select politicians to see what mistakes Rome needs to avoid.
- And cooking ("No, you do not need to put garum in everything. Try this things called a pizza, instead...")

Then I retire and watch the World Empire start.

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I'd like to see a show or movie about this hypothetical. I imagine the Roman Empire would have lasted WELL into their future if you were to essentially move the Italian Renaissance back in time 1500 years.

On the other hand, knowing the full scope of the world might make them hyperextend and lose control of it even sooner. At least we'd have some pretty sweet ruins in North America.

TJT said:

Not sure how cool it would be to go to a library full of texts in ancient languages you can't read at all.

Language barrier is going to be a major problem if you time travel back that far lol.

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Yeah, that's true with most time travel scenarios going back more than 800 years or so. Even old English is practically a foreign language. In college they made us read The Faerie Queen (circa 1300's) and it might as well have been a sister language to what we have now.

Star Trek kind of borked my mindset into thinking of these things like I always have a universal translator equipped or something. In actuality going back to the Library of Alexandria to read things would not be any help at all. Unless the goal is to somehow totally clean the place out before it burns and bring everything back to the modern era for analysis. Warp in in the middle of the night and grab everything you can and warp out, night after night, until they realize everything seems to be going missing and start posting guards everywhere.

Who burned it? Antifa? Maybe find that out and stop 'em. But we'd still lose a ton of stuff to time, so I think transporting things to the present is the way to go. Also a way to revive lost species.

Rajaah said:

Yeah, that's true with most time travel scenarios going back more than 800 years or so. Even old English is practically a foreign language. In college they made us read The Faerie Queen (circa 1300's) and it might as well have been a sister language to what we have now.

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In my scenario of hopping back, enacting a change and hopping forward to see how it played out, I think this would be a problem and you'd have to motivate a society to overcome the language/tech barrier to experience the payoff. Jumping forward 10,000 years only to find out that Augustus was murdered even FASTER and Cato had everyone throw away your tech compendium because it was progressive would be pretty disappointing.

You could just hop back to King Tut, give him an ipad with Season 1 of Firefly with hieroglyphic subtitles, and say that the next ten seasons are stored on disks he needs to develop the technology to playback and that if he motivates his entire civilization to learn the tech you just gave him, he might be able to watch the rest of the series before he dies.

Tuco said:

In my scenario of hopping back, enacting a change and hopping forward to see how it played out, I think this would be a problem and you'd have to motivate a society to overcome the language/tech barrier to experience the payoff. Jumping forward 10,000 years only to find out that Augustus was murdered even FASTER and Cato had everyone throw away your tech compendium because it was progressive would be pretty disappointing.

You could just hop back to King Tut, give him an ipad with Season 1 of Firefly with hieroglyphic subtitles, and say that the next ten seasons are stored on disks he needs to develop the technology to playback and that if he motivates his entire civilization to learn the tech you just gave him, he might be able to watch the rest of the series before he dies.

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I really wish Firefly had gotten the planned five seasons. I assume the Serenity movie is basically what Season 5 would have been, but then we have a lot of in-between space that is pretty enigmatic. I'm guessing the government would have been the bad guys throughout, with their CIA spook "Hands of Blue" terminator guys coming into play a lot more. Also lots of running away from Reavers.

Maybe I'd go back in time and ask the showrunners what their plans were for Seasons 2-4. Lawl.

Fucker said:

I'd go back to 1964 to see why Kennedy shot himself.

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Gonna be late to that party.

I'd go back to when things started to branch off in my tree and make sure only the correct monkeys rightfully rule.