Hitler’s mom was killed before giving birth to him in that other timeline in which berenstein/ain bears was spelled the other way, and in the timeline where Sinbad was in a movie called Shazam.
I love the arrogance of Steven Hawkins. He staged a secret time traveler party, and since nobody showed up, he declared time travel doesn’t exist. Maybe time travelers just don’t want to hang out with Steve…
What I know for sure is that I will never know if time travel is a thing, because if I ever knew, I would already know. This means that if it’s ever invented, it will be after I die, and they will never travel to places I read or know about, because if they did, I would try to get in it, and then youg me would know. So current me would know. Since I don’t know, I will never know it.
Alternatively: If time travel exists and Hitler is canon, then that means time travelers have collectively decided that killing Hitler is the worse option. A nearly infinite number of time travelers have already tried it, discovered it’s a bad idea, then gone back again to stop themselves from killing Hitler.
Which actually has some merit, simply due to the fact that Hitler is pretty widely regarded as a terrible tactician. He was great at inspiring his cult of personality… But when it came to war, he was pretty awful at making good decisions. It’s possible that if someone else were in charge of the Nazis, that they could have won.
If time travel were possible, why kill anyone? Why not go back to their childhood and teach them to be better humans? Is it justice to kill someone for a crime they have yet to commit? Isn’t the fact that you are able to kill them proof enough that they might not commit the crime, and there’s still time for them to change? Or maybe Hitler was arrested and removed from the time stream at the moment of his death to serve a prison sentence in Time Jail for eternity? Isn’t that basically the Christian conception of the afterlife anyway?
Also, intentionally going back to change anything is an inherent paradox as old as HG Wells. If you eliminate the reason for going back, you never go back. If you don’t go back, you don’t change anything.
And if we’re talking multiverse, then you’d never know if someone from an alternate future came to our past and did anything, because that’s what always happened.
my point was that by that logic (of why didn’t anyone kill Hitler in the past), the past should be perfect (which it isn’t), implying that the past events are done in such a manner that they create the best possible future outcome
I mean, giving it very little thought, if Hitler didn’t win, there were good chances that Germany would turn red, and still good chances it would still be aggressive…
And I’m saying that it’s not possible under any understanding of time travel or causality to perfect history for the best possible future outcome, because doing so would negate the necessity for time travel. Unless you want to argue that this is why time travel doesn’t exist, because the past is already a perfect state to never necessitate time travel. But that’s the only objective measure of “perfection” that is internally consistent, and I think we would both agree that from our perspective, the past is far from perfect.
Ok but then going back to study and learn would probably include a policy of non-intervention. So how would you know we aren’t constantly surrounded by time travelers blending in?
why kill anyone? Why not go back to their childhood and teach them to be better humans?
I think this is wonderful logic for a great many situations with a vastly overpowered being. With enough power and patience, all problems can be solved peacefully.
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