Poll of the Day > If you could, would you rather travel forwards in time or backwards in time?

(+) Yeah! (+)

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Are we talking one way, or return trip? Also, what limitations would we have when traveling, such as what can we or can't we interact with?

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I see no reason to travel through time unless it's backwards and to make profits off of my knowledge of the future.

Or I guess to change the future through introducing certain knowledge/technogy earlier than it should be if you're one of those people that just wants to be a weirdo.

Entity13 posted...

Are we talking one way, or return trip? Also, what limitations would we have when traveling, such as what can we or can't we interact with?

you can return to the present time, and you can't interact with anything

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If time travel were real... could you invest in Stock Pasts?

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it said, not to make money

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ReggieTheReckless posted...

I see no reason to travel through time unless it's backwards and to make profits off of my knowledge of the future.

Or I guess to change the future through introducing certain knowledge/technogy earlier than it should be if you're one of those people that just wants to be a weirdo.

Well there is sightseeing, or getting to know historical events better than we've been taught in schools. Like, if we could take certain technology with us at all, I would be subtle about any recording devices so I could set certain events straight, or save a series or two whose episodes had been burned in the late 60s or early 70s due to BBC policy at the time.

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Probably future. The past sucks. And the only reason to go would be to learn about history (which is usually boring unless I could go wherever without being seen, but also be safe), or to try to profit off of it. So, that's out. The future seems like it could be fun, though...
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what about to see dinosaurs?

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DoubleOSnake posted...

it said, not to make money

that's asides the point, I was making a time travel joke ... stock futures; stock pasts

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DoubleOSnake posted...

and you can't interact with anything

Probably should've of put this in the op.

I'm of the belief if you go back in time and change anything, you cannot go back to your original timeline cause going back to the future will always be different since you changed something and even trying to fix it will still leading to lingering effects.

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Future easily

the past is awful and gross, they didnt even have air conditioning for most of it

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DoubleOSnake posted...

what about to see dinosaurs?

Thirty years ago, I would have said hell yeah. Now? Not unless I could record them at various times and places and make a tidy profit off the documentation. But profit is out, as you said. So no.

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DoubleOSnake posted...

you can't interact with anything

Bummer, so much for going back to the birthplace of humanity with an assault rifle, or putting together some manner of atmosphere scrubber and going back to reverse the effects of the nuclear winter after that fateful asteroid strike.

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People think about traveling back in time, but there's all kinds of diseases that you have probably never been immunized for, like smallpox, cholera, and dysentery. And even in England, the language has changed a lot in a fairly short time. The Canterbury Tales are less than 600 years old and it's barely understandable in print. "Whan that Aprill with his shoures soote, the droghte of March hath perced to the roote, and bathed every veyne in swich licour, of which vertu engendred is the flour". Not to mention being labeled a witch because of your clothing, speech, and mannerisms.

Going forward you'd probably still have a language barrier, though maybe not as bad. And you'd be more of a danger disease-wise than future people. Heck, they might even be able to cure you of something you didn't know you had. And you'd be far less likely to be burned at the stake for heresy.

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What is the nature of this trip?
Is it a permanent relocation and you're now stuck there? Is it a day trip then back to your own time? A week? You choose when to return (and is it like magical blinking out or you have to actually return to some time machine and hope it's not destroyed?)? What?
Are you an active participant and in danger of harm/death, able to influence/change events, etc...? Or are you more like a ghostly observer?

captpackrat posted... Going forward you'd probably still have a language barrier, though maybe not as bad. And you'd be more of a danger disease-wise than future people. Heck, they might even be able to cure you of something you didn't know you had. And you'd be far less likely to be burned at the stake for heresy.

Don't count on that.... in the future, they could have had numerous diseases that'd be very dangerous to you that they've adapted to (after some mass die-off), that you may catch from an asymptomatic carrier before you can even get a vaccine and have it begin working. The more our world becomes interconnected, the easier it becomes for a major illness to ravage the populace and spread and mutate.
I'd say "think COVID", but really COVID is nothing compared to what could happen. Like...there's been fears for years now of "super bug" bacteria developing that's resistant to all forms of antibiotics (MRSA, I think it was?).
Conversely, a bunch of the deadly diseases of the past you've been fully immunized to and were born from generations that lived through it and possibly were resistant to it.

I'd travel back, for sure. Going as just an observer, with no interaction - no diseases to worry about, travel back and forth as I please, etc. - is THE selling point. First thing I'd do is go around my area to see how places looked 50+ years ago. And that would just be the start of it.

Forward in time would end up just make the present feel painfully outdated, since as an observer I'm not really "living" in the future, just observing it, but I'd still learn of all kinds of marvelous technology/improvements that wouldn't actually appear for years, decades, centuries to come.

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I would keep traveling forward until I could find a time a backwards time machine was invented do I could do both

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Backwards if I could do it over and over. I would never go too far back. Just minutes, seconds, or hours here and there to redo things.

CarefreeDude posted...

do both

You mean like in that episode of Futurama where Philip forgets to attend dinner with his one-eyed co-worker.
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Forwards. The past has already happened and it's easy enough for me to gain knowledge my reading up on that. What's to come has yet to be written and I'm curious about that. It makes me sad to know one day I'll cease to exist again but life will still go on. Simply because I'll never know it.

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Oh forward for sure! I can look on and read about the ugly past so forward for me.

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backwards and make more love

Civilization is crumbling anyways....why would I want to travel to the future, knowing all that is left is decaying buildings and cockroaches?

I'd travel to the past, with 10 years worth of winning lottery numbers, and knowledge of stock options,.... become so rich, I'd become a myth to the general public, buy an island and erase it from every printed map.

Then when I return to the present I left in the first place, I'd sit back and watch civilization tear itself a part.

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