On Thursday, 12 July 2018 00:33:31 UTC+2, RichA wrote:
On Wednesday, 11 July 2018 02:23:10 UTC-4, Quadibloc wrote:
On Tuesday, July 10, 2018 at 8:34:10 PM UTC-6, RichA wrote:
I'm surprised this guy isn't at the Institute for Advanced Study...not really.

I would tend to agree with Lee Smolin: time really does pass, and as Arthur C.
Clarke said, time travel "is a fit subject for fantasy, not science".

Still, your title made me think of an old science-fiction story about a failed
attempt by a scientist at Unknown University to solve the terrorism problem by
nipping it in the bud.

John Savard

What I like are moronic "scientists" who think that somehow, man is going to create "wormholes" when it would take an atom smasher the size of the galaxy just to see elementary particles as they really are. We will never have the power.

We will never have... insert any "breakthrough" of your choice.

Imagine inventing a "screen" which could show time travel. There is no need for the human traveler to even enter into the equation. Add VR and a sensory deprivation tank and you can enjoy virtual time travel without the usual, direct, causal risks.

The dangers of knowing the future might easily destroy our future world as we know it. The future is all our descendants living as advanced "aliens." How do you stop insider trading? Preemptive strikes on a future enemy? Or discover a global depression, disease or anarchy?

It would be infinitely far more powerful than AI in ridding us of disease. But then we really are changing the future! Survival and death of individuals matters in human progress and shapes future times. The problem is we just don't know which. The cascade effect of every present change can never be predicted with safety.

Better set the dial backwards and undo religion's superheroes? Rewrite history based on facts rather than legend and myth? It might be best not to allow time travel in any shape or form unless it is only used, off-Earth, for space travel.