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OK, here's a variation on a classic ethics question (should you travel back and kill Hitler).

ZAP!

You're abducted back to the 1950s. It was an experiment to pull someone from the 21st Century and find out how things turn out, they can only do it once. President Eisenhower is there, Albert Einstein is there (he was alive right?) along with any other movers and shakers you want.

In 30 minutes you'll be zapped back.

History can be changed. And when you zap back you alone will remember the original time line.

Do you say anything?
What do you say?
Is there an obligation to say something?

Start kicking and screaming babbling incoherantly with the only intelligible sentences being...."I wont go back, in my time the borg have taken over the quadrant! I won't go back you hear me! I'd rather die!

Ok.

Let us set this in its place.

You dont need to kill anyone to corrupt history. either major figures like Hitler or minor figures such as ones own granparents.

Due to chaos ANY action taken in the distant past will likely corrupt the future entirely. Its a Butterfly effect look it up on Google, better than me explaing here.

Just being there is enough to change history in some fashion, those changes get larger as time goes on.

Hence the only logical answer close to correct ethics is to follow a strict obligation NOT to say or do anything.

In fact logically the ojnly way to allow time travel into the past is as an etherial observer unable to alter anything and with no physical presence at all. Thus time travel is restricted to information gathering.

That's pretty much how I feel but to play devil's advocate...

I have 30 minutes to say...
Cigarettes cause cancer
Don't support repressive regimes like South Vietnam or the Shah's Iran
Don't let the Khemer Rouge take power in Cambodia
Open relations with China
Build smaller cars and don't become dependent on foreign oil
Carbon emissions cause climate change

Any one of which could save millions of lives. Sure I might return to find I never existed and that Brazil has nukes but if I have that chance to save lives... am I not obliged to try?

I would take a nice, long, 30 minute poop. Flush twice.

I'd say "when Cuba starts building missiles, NUKE THEM IMMEDIATELY!"

Orkeosaurus wrote:I'd say "when Cuba starts building missiles, NUKE THEM IMMEDIATELY!"

[pedantic] Cuba didn't build missiles, they imported them from the Soviets. [/pedantic]

Orlanth wrote:Ok.

Let us set this in its place.

You dont need to kill anyone to corrupt history. either major figures like Hitler or minor figures such as ones own granparents.

Due to chaos ANY action taken in the distant past will likely corrupt the future entirely. Its a Butterfly effect look it up on Google, better than me explaing here.

Just being there is enough to change history in some fashion, those changes get larger as time goes on.

Hence the only logical answer close to correct ethics is to follow a strict obligation NOT to say or do anything.

In fact logically the ojnly way to allow time travel into the past is as an etherial observer unable to alter anything and with no physical presence at all. Thus time travel is restricted to information gathering.

But what if you were meant to go back in time and do something and if you didn't history was changed? By god, don't NOT do it!

Paradoxes and future change are a stupid idea because if you went back in time and changed something, then it's probably already happened and was already history way before you went back.

In short, if you go back in time, do whatever you want, because you've already done it! In the past!

Kid_Kyoto wrote:

Orkeosaurus wrote:I'd say "when Cuba starts building missiles, NUKE THEM IMMEDIATELY!"

[pedantic] Cuba didn't build missiles, they imported them from the Soviets. [/pedantic]

I know. I was just... uh... testing you. As part of a social experiment. For a class. At a prestigious college that I go to.

You passed.

The point of the thought experiment is to make you think about ethics.

If you make some assumptions:

1. Your historical knowledge is good enough to give accurate information.
2. The information will not be misinterpreted or misused.
3. Use of the information is not likely to lead to some alternative catastrophe occurring, which might be worse than the known historical catastrophe.

Then it would be reasonable to ask Eisenhower and Einstein what they would like to know about the future.

Depending on their answers, you might give them some information that would prevent some kind of disaster.

For example, you could reveal that a drug called Thalidomide would be invented which was a good tranquiliser but when administered to pregnant women caused serious disabilities to the baby.

The president could improve FDA drug testing generally, which would probably have a purely beneficial effect.

I'd teach them that reflex thing where you push the back of your hand against a door frame or wall and it rises up by itself. THAT would blow their tiny little minds!

I would steal a piece of Einstein's hair and something from Eisenhower's office,and then when thirty minutes where up and I went back I would sell them to a collector and make loads of cash!!!How come Doctor Who never messes up the time line?

I see no issue with time travel. As a matter of course any, and all, choices have an incalculable affect on future events.

It is absolutely certain that my actions at this moment will lead to the death of another human being.

The same is true of any given action taken in the past.

The place of the action in the flow of events is irrelevant as the ultimate consequences of any action will always be inestimable.

To take this down Orlanth's chaos line: because all actions have a potentially infinite set of consequences even the choice to not go back in time, except as an observer, produces a future in which someone will go back in time as something other than an observer. In fact, assuming such a thing is possible, it is only logical to assume that someone already has gone back in time in order to affect the past.

As such, the question is not one of whether or not we should attempt to affect history through time travel, but whether or not can we attempt to affect history through time travel. If we can, we will, and already have. If we can't, we won't, and never will.

The person who goes back through time would be isolated from the changes to the time line, so when they got back to the present, they would know what has been changed if the changes are significant enough. I would tell them to abandon the obsession with fighting the communists, keep a tighter watch on the military-industrial complex and get rid of the electoral college.

So you're zapped back to some point between '53 and '55. It's a one time thing that they finest minds of the time have cobbled together so that they can get a glimpse into the future.

I suppose that if they'd gone to all that effort I'd feel obliged to answer some questions. Not outright, I think, but certainly give some meaningful hints. Some nudges in the right direction.

As I say I think the obligation would be to answer but only on the condition that the answers would do nothing to divert the course of history, so it really would have to be nudges in the right direction.

It's the fact it's a one time thing that spoils it. I'd be a little too concerned with getting back to my own time and finding everything irretrievably messed up (OK, irretrievably messed up in a different way to the irretrievably messed up I'm used to. Learning a whole new reality would be somewhat distressing) to really make something of the experience.

Plus the fact I'd just been abducted through space and time. I suspect by the time I'd be capable of coherent speech and thought after an experience like that I'd have already been zapped back.

make sure JFK is not in dallas november 22, well just tell him never to go texas

So, just wondering, has anyone who's posted in this thread ever actually studied ethics? Anyone?

Orlanth wrote:Ok.

Let us set this in its place.

You dont need to kill anyone to corrupt history. either major figures like Hitler or minor figures such as ones own granparents.

Due to chaos ANY action taken in the distant past will likely corrupt the future entirely. Its a Butterfly effect look it up on Google, better than me explaing here.

Just being there is enough to change history in some fashion, those changes get larger as time goes on.

Hence the only logical answer close to correct ethics is to follow a strict obligation NOT to say or do anything.

In fact logically the ojnly way to allow time travel into the past is as an etherial observer unable to alter anything and with no physical presence at all. Thus time travel is restricted to information gathering.

If oyu are going to take the Butterfly effect stance, then why not go ahead and change whatever the heck you want? From that stance, everything will have changed anyway, why not attempt to have some control over the changes?

Nurglitch wrote:So, just wondering, has anyone who's posted in this thread ever actually studied ethics? Anyone?

Dude, I fell asleep during nearly every high school class I attended, do you seriously think I'm gonna even bother stepping into a room where some douche is flapping his lips about something as trivial as ethics? Rich liberals have ethics, us poor folks have expediency.

My problem with Ethics is that I am pretty much morally bankrupt. Like the Baby Eating Bishop of Bath and Wells, Animal, Vegetable or Mineral, I'll do anything to anything.

Though I would advise them to put an outright ban on reality Television, warn them about 9/11, explain just how Bush cheated, and they should find him in their time and put him out our misery post haste.

Oh, I'd also explain the story of Star Wars, so I can sue George Lucas successfully and bag all the wads of cash, buy the Playboy Mansion, with the Bunnies, and live out what little would now remain of my life (due to a hedonistic lifestyle being detrimental to life span) in glorious debauchery. With Bush's head stuffed and mounted to be used as a Dartboard.

The only reason I would really like to go back in time is to give a past generation at least some of our technology so they can reverse engineer it. Blueprints would be better for all intents and purposes, but I don't really have access to any of that.

Imagine what our life would be like if they had access to our current technology 60 years ago?

Nurglitch wrote:So, just wondering, has anyone who's posted in this thread ever actually studied ethics? Anyone?

Yeah. Its a fairly ridiculous discipline outside of some of the more tangible bioethics cases. The whole thing revolves around accepting a set of mutually reinforcing theories as truth, and then extrapolating a series of logical conclusions. It's kind of a blend of philosophy and theology (despite what some recent Ethicists like to believe) in that the initial premises accepted tend to be beyond any proof. For example, humanity will always be humanity.

C'mon! Bioethics is the ultimate party-pooper!

You can't change the past. Here's why:

If you went back in time to change something, then in the future, there would be nothing that needed changing, because it had already been changed by you. So, if you tried to change something that had happened in the past then, since it had already happened, you would have already failed during previously attempts.

I like to imagine time as a series of lines running parallel to one another, there are infinite levels, and each level is going through a different moment in the same timeline. So while the line we are on is currently in the year 2009, several billion levels down, some roman emperor is getting stabbed by his best friend.

When time travel occurs, rather than moving forward or backwards on our level, we travel to another level. This accounts for the fact that we could meet ourselves if we were to travel back in time to a point after our birth, or if we were to travel to a point in time before our death, as there would be the original "us" of the level, and then the time traveling "us"

Now, as far as changing the past goes, the whole idea is a paradox in and of itself. Time is set in stone, and there is nothing that we can do to change it's course. However, if, for example, we traveled to hastings and were fired the arrow that blinded the king, that would NOT be a paradox, because there is no evidence to show that, in fact, someone didn't travel back in time and blind whichever king was blinded at the battle of hastings (sorry, I forgot his name).

As for killing hitler, it is impossible to do that, because if you had gone back in time to kill hitler, then you would have already gone back in time, and stopped hitler.

But if you had stopped hitler before he had killed anyone, then why would you go back in time to stop hitler? We wouldn't even know about him if he hadn't killed everyone.

dogma wrote:Yeah. Its a fairly ridiculous discipline outside of some of the more tangible bioethics cases. The whole thing revolves around accepting a set of mutually reinforcing theories as truth, and then extrapolating a series of logical conclusions. It's kind of a blend of philosophy and theology (despite what some recent Ethicists like to believe) in that the initial premises accepted tend to be beyond any proof. For example, humanity will always be humanity.

I'll hazard that's a "No" on your part.

I like to imagine that there will be a time when somebody went back to cause the K-T event. Then I begin to wonder what he had in mind because when he returned nothing would've changed. Afterwards, I get filled with rage because raptor cavalry would've been totally awesome.

Imagine what our life would be like if they had access to our current technology 60 years ago?

Imagine what our life would be like if someone didn't go back in time to speed things up. Probably still trying to reach the moon.

Nurglitch wrote:

dogma wrote:Yeah. Its a fairly ridiculous discipline outside of some of the more tangible bioethics cases. The whole thing revolves around accepting a set of mutually reinforcing theories as truth, and then extrapolating a series of logical conclusions. It's kind of a blend of philosophy and theology (despite what some recent Ethicists like to believe) in that the initial premises accepted tend to be beyond any proof. For example, humanity will always be humanity.

I'll hazard that's a "No" on your part.

Actually, it was meant as a yes. That's why it began with "Yeah." Though, in hindsight I should have put put a line between "Yeah." and the the rest of the text.

Shrike78 wrote:
When time travel occurs, rather than moving forward or backwards on our level, we travel to another level. This accounts for the fact that we could meet ourselves if we were to travel back in time to a point after our birth, or if we were to travel to a point in time before our death, as there would be the original "us" of the level, and then the time traveling "us"

So, parallel universes?

Shrike78 wrote:
Now, as far as changing the past goes, the whole idea is a paradox in and of itself. Time is set in stone, and there is nothing that we can do to change it's course.

Unless there are more than 4 spatial dimensions.

Shrike78 wrote:
As for killing hitler, it is impossible to do that, because if you had gone back in time to kill hitler, then you would have already gone back in time, and stopped hitler.

But if you had stopped hitler before he had killed anyone, then why would you go back in time to stop hitler? We wouldn't even know about him if he hadn't killed everyone.

Well, if you adhere to the notion of parallel universes, then the Hitler killed by a time traveler would not have been the Hitler from the same time-line the traveler originated in. Hence the question of causation is irrelevant. The Hitler in time-line X caused the Holocaust, and spurred the traveler to kill the Hitler in time-line Y.

dogma:

If you ask someone if they're studied math and they say:

"Yeah. Its a fairly ridiculous discipline outside of some of the more tangible engineering cases. The whole thing revolves around accepting a set of mutually reinforcing theories as truth, and then extrapolating a series of logical conclusions. It's kind of a blend of philosophy and accounting (despite what some Platonists like to believe) in that the initial premises accepted tend to be beyond any proof. For example, 2 will always equal 2."

It's just hard to take your word for it when you say something as bizarre as suggesting that the study of ethics revolves around accepting a set of mutually reinforcing theories as truth.

So let's count that as one person in this thread so far as having studied ethics. Maybe two if you count the dizzying heights of warpcrafter's education.

Edit:

I almost forgot this part: With regard to the question stated in the first post, this question is usually asked of first year undergraduates to get them thinking about Consequentialist ethical theories and why they suck. There's a similar (better) one that has to do with a runaway trolley that leaves out all the mucking about with time travel while leaving the question, of whether consequences suffice to make something good, space to dither around with modalities, hypotheticals, and counter-factuals.

If you want to be trite about it, the question is whether the ends should justify the means.

If you really want to have a constructive discussion about it in the context of time travel, then consider the epistemology of ends and means without reference to a metaphysics either of block-iron universes, or of possible worlds.

Nurglitch wrote:dogma:

If you ask someone if they're studied math and they say:

"Yeah. Its a fairly ridiculous discipline outside of some of the more tangible engineering cases. The whole thing revolves around accepting a set of mutually reinforcing theories as truth, and then extrapolating a series of logical conclusions. It's kind of a blend of philosophy and accounting (despite what some Platonists like to believe) in that the initial premises accepted tend to be beyond any proof. For example, 2 will always equal 2."

Comparing math and ethics is pretty far fetched. You can believe in ethics without believing in ethical truth. You cannot believe in math without believing in mathematical truth. Math necessarily controls for reality by dealing in pure abstraction. Ethics cannot control for reality because it is rooted in words which depend on real-world referents for their meanings.

Nurglitch wrote:
It's just hard to take your word for it when you say something as bizarre as suggesting that the study of ethics revolves around accepting a set of mutually reinforcing theories as truth.

Have you ever read Phillipa Foot? Her thought experiments are a good example of the need for assumptions in the course of ethical study.