Current Events > If you went back in time to it, how would you stop the Columbine shooting?

(+) Yeah! (+)

Turn the in, attack them the day before?

It might save a few lives, but overall it wouldn't change anything.
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AssultTank posted...

I wouldn't. Bad as it sounds, I wouldn't change history. Too much potential for catastrophe.

Lmfao wow, now that's what I call angst

Reminds me of that movie the Butterfly Effect. Really cool movie about how decisions big and small have incredible ripple effects that effect multiple people in surprising ways.

Trip them as they're walking into the school with their guns in hand
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AssultTank posted...

I wouldn't. Bad as it sounds, I wouldn't change history. Too much potential for catastrophe.

This is movie/TV BS. Some events make the world better, without us knowing, and some make the world worse. Every single day you chose to change the future based on micro and macro choices you make, but you don't worry about it. If you KNOW you can stop senseless violence, copycats, and fear culture, it's probably a good idea.
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Muten_Jiren posted...

AssultTank posted...

I wouldn't. Bad as it sounds, I wouldn't change history. Too much potential for catastrophe.

Lmfao wow, now that's what I call angst

How is that angst
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fhqwhgads posted...

Muten_Jiren posted...

AssultTank posted...

I wouldn't. Bad as it sounds, I wouldn't change history. Too much potential for catastrophe.

Lmfao wow, now that's what I call angst

How is that angst

Do you need me to link the dictionary or something?

AssultTank posted...

I wouldn't. Bad as it sounds, I wouldn't change history. Too much potential for catastrophe.

Pretty much this. Every movie with time travel shows that if you prevent a bad thing from happening, you automatically make something worse happen. Suffocate Hitler in his crib? Germany nukes America somehow. Stop 9/11? Somehow start a second civil war. Try to stop Brady from getting shot? Communist USA inexplicably.
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ChocoboMog123 posted...

AssultTank posted...

I wouldn't. Bad as it sounds, I wouldn't change history. Too much potential for catastrophe.

This is movie/TV BS. Some events make the world better, without us knowing, and some make the world worse. Every single day you chose to change the future based on micro and macro choices you make, but you don't worry about it. If you KNOW you can stop senseless violence, copycats, and fear culture, it's probably a good idea.

Say goodbye to any cousins/nephews/anyone under 19 that you know today. Mess with an event that reaching and odds are that they won't exist in the new timeline.
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Butterfly effect and all.
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AssultTank posted...

So you stop Columbine and save those kids. That is great, but can you predict how you will change because of it?

So ground rules:
1) Time travel backwards is likely impossible, but we're ignoring that.
2) Are you assuming you're going to jump back into your normal time? If yes, that makes a difference, if no:
3) If no, you don't care about predicting how things will change. You are now in an alternate universe and can set the wheels in motion however you'd like, just like you can now. You are already influencing things in ways you cannot predict. But, if you know that there's going to be a school schooting, at least call the damn cops - just like current day.

Unless you're planning on profiting off of investments or bets, change the future however you can. In real life, if you had the opportunity to stop a school shooting, would you? Maybe if you stop it, the people saved will go on to become a political party which commits genocide on a massive scale - but you don't know that. What you do know is that you can save lives.

This is a trolley problem where your choices are save zero lives or save 15-39. But, you're concerned that the people stuck to the track might make the world a worse place. In that case, you might as well be driving the train.

tri sapphire posted...

ChocoboMog123 posted...

AssultTank posted...

I wouldn't. Bad as it sounds, I wouldn't change history. Too much potential for catastrophe.

This is movie/TV BS. Some events make the world better, without us knowing, and some make the world worse. Every single day you chose to change the future based on micro and macro choices you make, but you don't worry about it. If you KNOW you can stop senseless violence, copycats, and fear culture, it's probably a good idea.

Say goodbye to any cousins/nephews/anyone under 19 that you know today. Mess with an event that reaching and odds are that they won't exist in the new timeline.

Again, this is bad movie logic. Odds are most events won't change that drastically. Maybe some people have sex on different days, maybe some people don't get together at all. Do you care if the universe you're put into is exactly the same as the one you were taken from? You're already a time traveller, you're already influencing things. And, again, you're doing this every day in the real world, influencing things in ways you cannot comprehend.
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I'd murder Marilyn Manson.

AssultTank posted...

I wouldn't. Bad as it sounds, I wouldn't change history. Too much potential for catastrophe.

That's really dumb. By your logic nobody should ever do anything good, even saving the lives of kids because something bad could happen in the future that wouldn't have otherwise.

Offer everyone involved a Pepsi
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ChocoboMog123 posted...

Say goodbye to any cousins/nephews/anyone under 19 that you know today. Mess with an event that reaching and odds are that they won't exist in the new timeline.

Again, this is bad movie logic. Odds are most events won't change that drastically. Maybe some people have sex on different days, maybe some people don't get together at all. Do you care if the universe you're put into is exactly the same as the one you were taken from? You're already a time traveller, you're already influencing things. And, again, you're doing this every day in the real world, influencing things in ways you cannot comprehend.

Not movie logic, science. Even if the day of a couple having sex doesn't change, even the slightest change in the way/timing on that day can throw that (minimum) 1 in 40 million chance of a person being born as they are off the rails. And odds are, something that big would throw off everyone who's ever heard of it enough to completely rewrite pretty much everyone conceived after that date (at least in the U.S.).

If anything, it's movie logic that messing with time doesn't mess with stuff like this.

So, yeah, you can claim that it doesn't matter to you, but anyone else considering something like this would probably be off put by the info that they'd pretty much be condemning everyone they know under 19 to nonexistence. Sure, odds are that they'd be replaced in some way or another by another person, and it probably wouldn't change too many large events, but that's still a heavy burden for anyone with younger relatives or acquaintances.
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masterbarf posted...

I'd murder Marilyn Manson.

AssultTank posted...

I wouldn't. Bad as it sounds, I wouldn't change history. Too much potential for catastrophe.

That's really dumb. By your logic nobody should ever do anything good, even saving the lives of kids because something bad could happen in the future that wouldn't have otherwise.

The logic is you can't predict the effects. And generally, that's why WWII is such a popular spot for the butterfly effect, because it's far enough back that modern life would be markedly different, but not so far back to be totally unrecognizable. Let's say you prevent the Holocaust and other Nazi war crimes for instance; the biggest noteworthy change I can think of is that no one will codify a soldier's right and obligation to ignore unlawful orders. Now imagine how Vietnam, the Gulf Wars, and the occupation of Iraq would have gone if "I was only following orders" was still a legally credible defense.

Modern society is shaped by history. Changing history therefore changes society, possibly in unexpected ways. Rolling back to Columbine, let's say you prevent the massacre. One of the shooters was caught making pipe bombs before he decided to just use a gun. What's to say he didn't perfect pipe bombs and collapse half the school increasing the death toll even higher than it already was.
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Hopping on to the Butterfly Effect bus.

Think of how shitty it would be if you saved them, only for one of them to murder you in the future. Gat dam.

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you can't predict all of the effects of any action you take in the present either. But if you see a kid about to shoot up some school, you call the cops. You don't ponder whether by calling the cops you'll inadvertently bring about some horrible outcome. You make decisions based on what you think will be the best predictable outcome, and the predictable outcome of stopping the columbine shooting would be many lives saved. So you turn them in
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bevan306 posted...

you can't predict all of the effects of any action you take in the present either. But if you see a kid about to shoot up some school, you call the cops. You don't ponder whether by calling the cops you'll inadvertently bring about some horrible outcome.

That's because the future isn't written. But if you can theoretically go to the past, you can change what IS written which brings about a different moral dilemma that's more complicated.
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Crazyman93 posted...

bevan306 posted...

you can't predict all of the effects of any action you take in the present either. But if you see a kid about to shoot up some school, you call the cops. You don't ponder whether by calling the cops you'll inadvertently bring about some horrible outcome.

That's because the future isn't written. But if you can theoretically go to the past, you can change what IS written which brings about a different moral dilemma that's more complicated.

Moral dilemma: You know children will die, but the world will be as shitty and as good as you remember. Or, you can attempt to save them, but the world might change, for better or worse.

Why does every hypothetical assume changing the past will make the "present" worse? Say you call the cops before the shooting and the cops die too. You've just added to the bodycount, right? That's ridiculous. You made a purposeful action to save lives using the best information you had. Whether the future changes for the better or worse, you made the best action to make it better.
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Crazyman93 posted...

Modern society is shaped by history. Changing history therefore changes society, possibly in unexpected ways. Rolling back to Columbine, let's say you prevent the massacre. One of the shooters was caught making pipe bombs before he decided to just use a gun. What's to say he didn't perfect pipe bombs and collapse half the school increasing the death toll even higher than it already was.

And the future is shaped by the present. That shouldn't stop people from doing good things because of unpredictable consequences. It's always a better bet to do good whether it's 2019, 1999, or 1939.

And just to anticipate other responses. There's no reason to even worry about changing the time line.

There's two ways this can go. One person goes back in time, and creates a new separate time line from the one he came from. He has no way of altering the time line he came from. This makes sense, as if I go back in time, it's not like suddenly the universe I came from disappears. The fact that my make up remains in tact as I travel time, is proof that that time line still exists as my existence is predicated on it.

The other way is that one person goes back in time and everything he does actually does alter "the time line he came from". This is actually a falsehood as it's not even time travel. This is literally the complete destruction of the present universe and a recreation of how it once was. Under these circumstances, even if you make it so the new 2019 is exactly the same as the one the time traveler came from, it's still just a copy and the time traveler essentially murdered every living thing in the universe just by going back in time.

teepan95 posted...

Offer everyone involved a Pepsi

Genius
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Imagine not being able to understand the butterfly effect
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assuming i would just come back when i was done, i would honestly just ice the shooters the day before
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I wouldn't do it. As others have pointed out, it would seriously throw off the reality you're familiar with (chiefly with anyone under 19 being born at all).

Say you do though: are your memories completely rewritten when you jump back to the present? Do you suffer eternally, alone, because your child is gone and no one acknowledges that they ever existed? Do you have to just live out the rest of your life from the moment you go back? Because I was in elementary school at the time, so I'm not sure what I could have done to prevent it. If you somehow go back as your current age and just have to live from there... well, that's horrifying. You'll have to create a new identity. You can never talk to your old friends and family again because "you" should be a small child and not a grown man at the time.

CM_Ponch posted...

Imagine not being able to understand the butterfly effect

The Ashton Kutcher movie was pretty straightforward too
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Wait at the location they opened fire. Restrain both kids. Call the police.

CM_Ponch posted...

Imagine not being able to understand the butterfly effect

Imagine not recognizing time as a dimension and part of the fabric of the universe. There's no reason to even consider the butterfly effect, unless you're a fool, or an obsessive compulsive coward.

tri sapphire posted...

ChocoboMog123 posted...

AssultTank posted...

I wouldn't. Bad as it sounds, I wouldn't change history. Too much potential for catastrophe.

This is movie/TV BS. Some events make the world better, without us knowing, and some make the world worse. Every single day you chose to change the future based on micro and macro choices you make, but you don't worry about it. If you KNOW you can stop senseless violence, copycats, and fear culture, it's probably a good idea.

Say goodbye to any cousins/nephews/anyone under 19 that you know today. Mess with an event that reaching and odds are that they won't exist in the new timeline.

That line of thinking is based on a slippery slope fallacy though.

Theres no reason to believe that changing columbine would have an impact on any given persons life.

I mean it might sure, but theres no actual reason to believe that.
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Id give them even bigger guns.

...but they fire backwards.

Zeeak4444 posted...

That line of thinking is based on a slippery slope fallacy though.

Theres no reason to believe that changing columbine would have an impact on any given persons life.

I mean it might sure, but theres no actual reason to believe that.

We literally don't know the implications of time travel. So... Yeah. Not sure how you're so confident in your opinion

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Muten_Jiren posted...

AssultTank posted...

I wouldn't. Bad as it sounds, I wouldn't change history. Too much potential for catastrophe.

Lmfao wow, now that's what I call angst

I mean it's a great philosophical dilemma. Do you go back in time and prevent WW2 at the risk of your ancestors lineage and their loved ones never being born?

It gets worse the further you go back. The more further back you go, the more a miniscule change can effect the future. Nothing is predetermined.

I would pay two random women to fuck them and bam history changed.
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mattnd2007 posted...

Zeeak4444 posted...

That line of thinking is based on a slippery slope fallacy though.

Theres no reason to believe that changing columbine would have an impact on any given persons life.

I mean it might sure, but theres no actual reason to believe that.

We literally don't know the implications of time travel. So... Yeah. Not sure how you're so confident in your opinion

My opinion was exactly that. We dont know the implications so theres no reason to favor one over the other.

I mean, personally, I would bet on the butterfly effect. Im not sure why thats relevant to my post but now you know.
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Zeeak4444 posted...

My opinion was exactly that. We dont know the implications so theres no reason to favor one over the other.

I mean, personally, I would bet on the butterfly effect. Im not sure why thats relevant to my post but now you know.

I dunno. I guess we just see things too differently on the subject. There are so many unknowns at play. I would feel like I'm playing God, and I know I couldn't handle that.

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mattnd2007 posted...

Zeeak4444 posted...

My opinion was exactly that. We dont know the implications so theres no reason to favor one over the other.

I mean, personally, I would bet on the butterfly effect. Im not sure why thats relevant to my post but now you know.

I dunno. I guess we just see things too differently on the subject. There are so many unknowns at play. I would feel like I'm playing God, and I know I couldn't handle that.

Oh I agree. Im not sure I could actually do it myself lol, Id have to really think about it.

For fun though lets say columbine never happened and nothing else takes its place what happens to Santana high school in 2001? Do they still have a shooting? Does the focus go to them or another similar instance that occurred?

A lot can happen or really nothing major can happen and instead everythings just delayed by a few years.

And thats just one line of thinking. Theres far more others aside from the butterfly effect occurring yet the end results still being largely the same.

Thats all I meant with my original post though. I wasnt trying to say I had the answer as much as saying its wrong to flat out assume anyone born 17-19 years ago would no longer be born. It could go either way though, I dont think Id wanna fuck around with the laws of nature tbh but I also cant claim that outright.
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Zeeak4444 posted...

tri sapphire posted...

ChocoboMog123 posted...

AssultTank posted...

I wouldn't. Bad as it sounds, I wouldn't change history. Too much potential for catastrophe.

This is movie/TV BS. Some events make the world better, without us knowing, and some make the world worse. Every single day you chose to change the future based on micro and macro choices you make, but you don't worry about it. If you KNOW you can stop senseless violence, copycats, and fear culture, it's probably a good idea.

Say goodbye to any cousins/nephews/anyone under 19 that you know today. Mess with an event that reaching and odds are that they won't exist in the new timeline.

That line of thinking is based on a slippery slope fallacy though.

Theres no reason to believe that changing columbine would have an impact on any given persons life.

I mean it might sure, but theres no actual reason to believe that.

What slippery slope? This isn't about the butterfly effect. This is a direct effect with regards to how statistics and reproduction works.

You are the product of 1 in (a low average of) 40 million sperm. Change the timing or placement of release by even a second or inch and odds are massively against you being born vs someone new. And that's if Columbine just barely registers in a couple's life as a small blip that they don't pay any attention to. Have sex be off by a day and chances of you being born again as you are practically 0%. Conception off by a whole egg cycle? Definitely 0%.

A large event like Columbine, which became known to pretty much everyone with a TV or radio at the time, as well as influenced media and future shootings, would definitely throw off something that small for a majority of America. Other countries might be affected less, but would still suffer a small wave of alternate conceptions.

Again, maybe nothing big in regards to large events, but devastating to generations of potential people who now don't exist. And it's nothing anyone would or should worry about in the present, but if you're messing with the past? Unless you have no attachment to anyone in that age group, it's a hard choice to make.
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Wouldnt it be more fair to say anyone born within x range of event then though? Like say 6 months to compensate for after shock ripples and shit.

But after that point wouldnt things have normalized enough for things to have steadied out along the same timeline? Especially for people with little to no direct impact from it?

Sorta but not really like a schrodinger's cat situation.

Edit: as for the morality of it see my last post. I dont think I would do it myself.
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realistically. what can be done to stop gun violence other than offerings of thoughts and prayers?
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Zeeak4444 posted...

Wouldnt it be more fair to say anyone born within x range of event then though? Like say 6 months to compensate for after shock ripples and shit.

But after that point wouldnt things have normalized enough for things to have steadied out along the same timeline? Especially for people with little to no direct impact from it?

Sorta but not really like a schrodinger's cat situation.

Edit: as for the morality of it see my last post. I dont think I would do it myself.

It might have a few pockets of realignment for some people. But odds are that a large majority of people 19 and under would be affected. Especially with the shootings (or lack of shootings) that will follow without Columbine to be brought back into the limelight.

Once you get that first wave of new people being born though, that's when the butterfly effect would be taken into account. Everyone that lost generation would have interacted with would now be interacted with differently. Again, it only takes sex being off by an inch or a second to throw that (low end average) 1 in 40 million into jeopardy.
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I think you need to address post 24 explaining why the butterfly effect is irrelevant if you're going to continue on with this line of discussion.

I probably honestly not do anything :(

tri sapphire posted...

Zeeak4444 posted...

Wouldnt it be more fair to say anyone born within x range of event then though? Like say 6 months to compensate for after shock ripples and shit.

But after that point wouldnt things have normalized enough for things to have steadied out along the same timeline? Especially for people with little to no direct impact from it?

Sorta but not really like a schrodinger's cat situation.

Edit: as for the morality of it see my last post. I dont think I would do it myself.

It might have a few pockets of realignment for some people. But odds are that a large majority of people 19 and under would be affected. Especially with the shootings (or lack of shootings) that will follow without Columbine to be brought back into the limelight.

Once you get that first wave of new people being born though, that's when the butterfly effect would be taken into account. Everyone that lost generation would have interacted with would now be interacted with differently. Again, it only takes sex being off by an inch or a second to throw that (low end average) 1 in 40 million into jeopardy.

Hmm, when you put it that way that makes a lot of sense. My first instinct was to say the people they interact with having new paths which in turn creates news paths for everyone the meet etc etc but then I was thinking about arguing that the odds of those people actually going out of town enough to make a difference on things would be minimal but I also dont know how big of a place Columbine actually is so ya I think youre right.

I only mentioned the Santana shooting because barely anyone talks about it and the motivations were very different. I dont even know if any others occurred between the two tbh. But ya so my thoughts were that the national movement would have just been focused on that instead and the result would be a relatively similar result by 2005 or so but who knows lol. I mean in that timeline my life would be drastically different Id assume so everything here would be different but id assume not so much in say Maryland or Iowa.

Fun to think about though. I appreciate the fun discussion.
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I wouldn't. Think of it this way, of the many people that were killed that day, how are we to assume that all of them are of sound mind? How do we know that one of them doesn't rise up and do something that is 10x worse?

Same with the whole Hitler situation. If someone were to save Hitler(god forbid), how do we know that he doesn't take on an apprentice 10 years later who is 1000x worse than he was?

Time travel is a pain in the ass. Look no further than the X-Men with Cable travelling back in time(talking about the cartoon...maybe the comics here), every time Cable does something that he thinks will help his future, something else gets erased in its place. You spend all your time going back and forth trying to fix the problems in an infinite loop.

masterbarf posted...

I think you need to address post 24 explaining why the butterfly effect is irrelevant if you're going to continue on with this line of discussion.

It's a pretty bad post is why

"changing history is fine because it might not fuck up" is a dumb argument
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IMO, we take the concept of changing events in the past way too seriously, even ignoring the implausibility of time travel.

It's a bit bizarre to be worried that you might change things while trying to change things. It's also weird to freak out about future events being largely unpredictable when that was the default position before you began time travelling.

I'd imagine altering events in the past, if possible, as being like creating a chronological restore point and then having to play out the new timeline before you could see where it went. An oddity of that concept is that it would make time travel forward even less plausible than time travel backward.

Back on topic, how would i try to stop it? I guess i'd try to warn any authority that might listen about the people involved and their propensity for gun violence, and hope they actually bothered to play it safe and keep an eye on them.
In other words, it probably wouldn't work.
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UnfairRepresent posted...

masterbarf posted...

I think you need to address post 24 explaining why the butterfly effect is irrelevant if you're going to continue on with this line of discussion.

It's a pretty bad post is why

"changing history is fine because it might not fuck up" is a dumb argument

If you're going to call a post bad you should probably understand it first. Seriously, how could you possibly be that far off? No wonder you can't address a single point being made and resort to a the response of a first grader.

I said people shouldn't avoid doing good deeds because of the inability to predict all of its consequences. Surely even you would prefer a world where people try to make the world a better place.

Then I said if somebody goes back in time the butterfly effect is irrelevant because a) the two time lines the time traveler experiences exist simultaneously. This is provable by the very fact that he could go back in time and continue his experience. If the time line he came from wasn't as it was, he couldn't continue to exist as he is in any dimension.

and b) if hypothetically time wasn't a dimension like the three we perceive (which it is) and the above wasn't the case, there'd be no sense in worrying that the time line you create after "traveling back in time" being different than that you came from, because the mere action of switching out your present for the past, essentially murders everything that lived where you came from. Even if the new time line turned out exactly as the one you came from, it'd essentially be a copy. So yea if that's how time travel works then it's immoral, but not because of the butterfly effect.

Anyways you couldn't understand it before, so I doubt you will this time.