Is Changing The Past Really Unethical?

I am watching "Back to the Future" as I post this. And I am thinking of what the mad scientist says in the movie. It is wrong to change the past.

But this got me to thinking. Is it really? What do you all think?

BTW I also have to comment on the possibility of time travel. Maybe we won't be able to do it any time soon. But it will happen some day. I mean we can already conceive of the notion. So why the heck not?

Thank you in advance to all who reply

 

Yes, it is wrong and always a loss to meddle with the accuracy of history.

 

Says who? What's not to say that you have the opportunity to make it better? And who says and really KNOWS that meddling with the past will have ANY affect on the future? I don't think meddling with the past can make shit any worse than it is now.

 

sure it could. you really think we are in the worst possible scenario right now? even if you don't make the world a worse place overall, you could absolutely make it worse for individuals.

overall, i'm torn on the question. maybe it's just conditioning from years of watching time travel movies, but the idea of altering the past just feels a little icky for some reason. i suppose you could make things better, but you could just as easily make things worse, and in the wrong hands things could be made really really worse. also, in a way you would be stealing everyone's past and negating all the decisions they've made in life if you made changes that altered their past. and if there are actually any sort of time travel paradoxes, then the more you change the more room there is for things to go wrong in that way.

on the other hand, if you were to travel to the future, would it be wrong to come back to the present and do anything differently than what you may have witnessed in the future? changing anything would be changing that future's past, but not changing anything would mean giving up your free will.

time travel's fucked up.

 

Time travel is something I've oft thought of
The 'ripple effect' consequences of interference seem to me to point more to the possibility of infinite timelines than the physical experience that deja vu provides, and leads me to the conclusion that if/when it is enacted ... has already been, ... and gone, and yet is to be

 

It'll never be possible, from my understanding the current notion of teleporting, which would be a key component to time travel, is that they'd have to recreate every atom in a person's body at a sending point and a destination point. I don't see how it'd ever be possible to account for all the atoms between these two points as they're constantly in flux.

 

i think this would have to be considered on a case by case.
there may even be some things that would be unethical not to,
if you actually had the means by which you could.

the ripple effect is the thing of course though.
you might even cause yourself not to have been born.
this won't negate the change you made,
but without existing you won't be able to go back yet again.

there are other problems,
making too many competing changes could get really out of hand.

there is some evidence to suggest this might have already happened.

the past is best not messed with,
or even directly observed other then by
really undiscoverable drones.

the related problem of cultural interference isn't just a matter of aesthetics either.

no one person has all the right answers for this
and i don't claim to.

 

If time travel was ever going going to be invented then we would already be flooded with visitors from the future.

 

How do you know we aren't?

As for the OP
Ethical is what people make it.
Yes I say it is unethical because the reason we have history classes is to learn from the past. That isn't possible if the past is wrong.

 

Apparently Eric has never seen any time travel movies. Not a single one.

 

"Youfreeme", don't get it twisted. I've seen time travel movies. And that's exactly what they are- "movies". And my point is, since it is a concept visualized ONLY in the movies, and no factual science (proven, tested, or experimented) to back it up, I'm thinking "out of the box" when I say that how do we know that anything mentioned in a movie about time travel is being accurately portrayed? It's fantasy, it's science fiction, it will NEVER happen.
You still believe in Santa Clause and the tooth ferry, dont you?

 

Messing with history always screws something else up for someone else and still has a negative. Why time travel when in today's culture you can just say it, out it in writing and it is true? Kind of like time travel changing the past without the travel part.

I think it could happen one day, but not in my lifetime.

 

In H.G Wells: The Time Machine, just such a thing is attempted. Yet, the death of the Time Traveller's beloved is only postponed until a new disaster strikes.

 

apparently eric has never had a sense of humor. not a single one.

 

https://youtu.be/B34DmsMxUlA

 

11/22/63 is a great little series

i suggest checking it out if you havent watched it



http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2879552/

 

The book was a lot of fun, too. Didn't realize that they had made a series out of it!

 

Funny how people can take time travel seriously and laugh at the possibility of God. Going back in time to say Hi to Cleopatra or George Washington may be an appealing fantasy, but there is no empirical support for it--only some equations on a blackboard derived from general and special relativity, Do we really think that the future and the past are places we can visit? That somewhere in another dimension we're still kids waiting to open our Christmas presents, or our grandparents are babies in the delivery room. M-theory, Godel metrics, wormholes and other hypotheticals may look possible on blackboards, but so far have no empirical backing. Hawking thinks a "chronology protection" principle derived from the fundamental laws of nature may prevent it, so belief in such a development must rest on a large amount of faith. But with science, all things are possible!