NationStates Jolt Archive

If you could travel to anytime in time, and live there for the rest of your life, would you rather live in the past or in the future. Past= More than 20 years ago, future = more than 20 years from now.

Do i get to take anything with me?

Into the past, of course.

It would be too much culture shock either way.

If presented with having to make the choice, it would be the future. Even just a mere hundred years ago, I would have been killed at birth!

December 22nd, 2012.

Only so I could say "I vont to be alone", and then kill myself.

I am going to have to say the Past...

If I get to take something with me, Im bringing an M-16 and as many Rounds as I can fit to the Roman Empire Era, Assassinate Augustus, and install myself as Emperor...

And, if I dont, well, at least Fat was sexy back then, lol

I'd only travel to the future knowing we'd have shit like shiny pants, personal jet packs and all that other crap we thought we'd have now 47 years ago. Guess that means I'd travel to the past and dream up all the awesome shit we have now and be hailed as some sort of messiah. You know I'd do things like invent rock 'n' roll and central plumbing. Maybe predict a few disasters if I'm up to it.

I'd go to 20 years in the past. No internet. Yay! Knowing which stocks to buy! BIGGER YAY!

While Trostia has a point with the "oh, microsoft? I'll put money on that one", frankly I have no desire to live in the past.

The great kings of Europe had far worse lives than I.

If you could travel to anytime in time, and live there for the rest of your life, would you rather live in the past or in the future. Past= More than 20 years ago, future = more than 20 years from now.

future I think

Actually, Why not just get a Delorian, goes both ways, lol...

While Trostia has a point with the "oh, microsoft? I'll put money on that one", frankly I have no desire to live in the past.

The great kings of Europe had far worse lives than I.

Well it doesn't have to be Dark Age Europe. It just has to be more than 20 years. So, 1988. The only real cons is you'd have to live through the 90's again.

Actually, Why not just get a Delorian, goes both ways, lol...

Just remember to get the Mr. Fusion powered model or you'll have Libyan terrorists hunting you down throughout time.

While Trostia has a point with the "oh, microsoft? I'll put money on that one", frankly I have no desire to live in the past.

The great kings of Europe had far worse lives than I.

Unless you could bring a portion of the present with you to the past that is.

I'd go 20-30 years into the past. Those days sucked, but in ways I found less annoying than present suckitude.

There is no time in the past beyond that which I, a woman, would want to live in. I would definitely not want to live in any time before the Civil Rights movement and antibiotics.

As for the future, I am pessimistic and lazy. I figure I can just wait around for it to show up, and it's going to suck anyway.

Well it doesn't have to be Dark Age Europe. It just has to be more than 20 years. So, 1988. The only real cons is you'd have to live through the 90's again.

The sixities in the US. With a copy of Wikipedia on a netbook which I will keep in a bank deposit box. Future be mine!

With this, I get to exploit people using the stockmarket, and enjoy all the good 'stuff' before it gets made illegal.

The sixities in the US. With a copy of Wikipedia on a netbook which I will keep in a bank deposit box. Future be mine!

With this, I get to exploit people using the stockmarket, and enjoy all the good 'stuff' before it gets made illegal.

It was already illegal, and it wasn't as good.

I figure I was born either 60 years too early or 60 years too late.

The sixities in the US. With a copy of Wikipedia on a netbook which I will keep in a bank deposit box. Future be mine!


The butterfly effect means that the event entries in wikipedia will be worthless after a few years.

The butterfly effect means that the event entries in wikipedia will be worthless after a few years.

They aren't Now??? :D :D

I have seriously considered this during my many late-night musings while my brain decompresses every night.

I can't narrow it down at all but here's where I'd liek to go:

1: 1776, USA (Help the US slap the Brits back across the pond faster)

2: 1865: Washington DC. Preventign Lincoln's Assassination. If he wasn't killed, the civil rights movement of the 1960's would have started way earlier (Around the end of WWI)

3: Europe at the beginning of the Enlightenment.

4: 8000 BC, (jsut to see if the Sphinx was built by then or not)

5: 2408 AD. Just to see if the Cubs had won a World Series within the last 500 years! :D

*snip*

It might be fun to give AK-47's to the Greeks at Thermopylae.

Some times I wouldn't mind going back to:

Back to the Baltic during the Baltic crusades- not to join the crusade, but to fight against it.

Back to Dark Age Europe to try and carve out a kingdom, or hell, become a Varangian.

Or, go way, way, back, say 10,000+ years, or so, and be a hunter-gatherer.

Twenty years in the past, but only if I can be twenty years younger (but still knowing what I know now).

Yeah I'd go to 18th century Vienna and punch Mozart in the face.

Yeah I'd go to 18th century Vienna and punch Mozart in the face.

What? Why?

What? Why?

It seems like a good idea at the time.

Also, he was incredibly obnoxious and needing to be punched once or twice in Amadeus. Yes, I know it wasn't really him and was just one actor's performance. No, I don't care. I blame Mozart. That bastard!

It seems like a good idea at the time.

Also, he was incredibly obnoxious and needing to be punched once or twice in Amadeus. Yes, I know it wasn't really him and was just one actor's performance. No, I don't care. I blame Mozart. That bastard!

Haha!

Past - not sure when, though. I'd love to meet the Celts and study w/ a druid; I'd love to sit and talk with John about his vision at Patmos (the Book of Revelations); I'd enjoy talking with Abraham - or even more interesting, someone from before the Flood (Yes, I believe the Flood is real).

I would be highly reluctant to go into the future, mostly cuz while there would likely be some cool stuff - there could also be some seriously unpleasant stuff. At least I already know about most of the unpleasant stuff of the past.

Damn, I would like to visit Athens in it's hayday, but the past always seems better than it actually was.

So, I guess the future.

When the ability to explore space alone or with friends/crew becomes a viable option,
Or Transhumanism is a reality.

So, definitely the future.

While the future would be fun, I'd love to go to the past and place a few bets...we'll start with Super Bowl III.

It was already illegal, and it wasn't as good.

LSD wasn't, and I'd be around for Ecstasy to stockpile before it became illegal and filled with poisons.

LSD wasn't, and I'd be around for Ecstasy to stockpile before it became illegal and filled with poisons.

You really like drugs, don't you?

very definitely a particular future about 320 years from now. although it might be a hundred years closer then that, or even two.

when the dust has settled, so to speak, from all the disease and famine correcting human overpopulation. or of course, people might wise up and avoid that scenario entirely, but at anyrate, after the earth has gotten a bit of a break after a human population IMplosion.

a time when most of what we know, technologically hasn't been forgotten but the realization has become generalized into the dominant culture of the practical need to go about it in ways more harmonious with nature. ways we mostly know how to do now, but mostly aren't yet as widely doing as we severely need to.

basically a world with many of the natural advantages of more primitive times, primarily that of human population being a lot smaller, but with technologies, some of which we haven't even entirely developed yet, being used to live in closer, and at the same time free-er and more gratifying, harmony WITH nature.

i know most people who have grown up in cities probably have a hard time understanding what i'm talking about, and i know a lot of people make some pretty absurd assumptions about it, but really well, its going to come, most of it, though of course its under no obligation to the finer details of how i like to visualize it in my mind.

i just wish everyone could. i think if more people really understood the greater degree of gratification this would bring, not to some few at the expense of the many, but to absolutely everyone, i'm sure there would be a LOT more, a serious majority even, interested in it.

and certainly in shortening the time, and understanding and promoting the avoidance of those more immediate difficulties, seeming to stand between now and then.

the future isn't a "the", its something we create, are always creating, whether we think about it or not, and too often we don't, and because we don't, we pay unfortunate consequences that far more then we are told to expect, are entirely avoidable.

You really like drugs, don't you?

I like my freedom.

If you could travel to anytime in time, and live there for the rest of your life, would you rather live in the past or in the future. Past= More than 20 years ago, future = more than 20 years from now.

Neither. I'm quite happy where I am at the moment, thanks.

I'd go back to 1991, and tell the crew of the Andrea Gail to turn the fuck around, or they'd die in a 'perfect storm', a book would be written about them, and this in turn would be adapted into the shittest film ever created.

I'd go back to 1991, and tell the crew of the Andrea Gail to turn the fuck around, or they'd die in a 'perfect storm', a book would be written about them, and this in turn would be adapted into the shittest film ever created.

The Novikov self-consistency principle (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Novikov_self-consistency_principle) means that even if you did, there'd still be a book, and still a shitty movie.

Almost the Perfect Storm.

YOU CANT ESCAPE FATE.

I wouldnt want to live there. But Id like to visit 33 AD and see about that whole "rise again" thing.

Just so I could come back and crush half the worlds hopes.

Better yet, I would go back in time about...50 years ago and predict every major world event to the day.

I would be hailed as a prophet!

past.

I go to the future, and technology would be so far advanced that I wouldn't be able to function.

Past.

If I have to live there for the rest of my life, absolutely not any part of the past. I'm female and have health issues; I'd have to be a moron to want to diminish my rights and my access to competent health care. As for the future, I wouldn't mind bouncing forward a year or two in hopes that I could then better afford said competent health care, but more than that and I'd be way out of sync with all my friends, and that would just be sad. I'll stay put, thanks.

Now, if we could just go visit other eras and then come back, I'd be all in favor of roaming all over history (and, as mentioned, stopping by the past couple of decades to invest a few bucks in cute little companies like "Microsoft" and "Google").

If I have to live there for the rest of my life, absolutely not any part of the past. I'm female and have health issues; I'd have to be a moron to want to diminish my rights and my access to competent health care. As for the future, I wouldn't mind bouncing forward a year or two in hopes that I could then better afford said competent health care, but more than that and I'd be way out of sync with all my friends, and that would just be sad. I'll stay put, thanks.

Now, if we could just go visit other eras and then come back, I'd be all in favor of roaming all over history (and, as mentioned, stopping by the past couple of decades to invest a few bucks in cute little companies like "Microsoft" and "Google").

ah, but why not go into the past say... 20 yrs, and give a jump start to the research in modern medical problems.

Medieval Scotland would be getting a nice deposit of fully-automatic weapons and guerilla warfare strategies. All I want to do.

ah, but why not go into the past say... 20 yrs, and give a jump start to the research in modern medical problems.

Well, if I was able to bring along all the relevant papers and such, sure. But I'm hardly an expert on any, let alone EVERY, medical development in the last twenty years, so I'd have to be lugging a heck of a lot of information with me to do much good - and even then, the experts in the field would need some time to learn everything I brought before making further progress, so I'd still be screwing myself over a bit. But I'd happily drop the papers off while I'm making those investments, pop back to 2009, and see what shiny new treatments have been developed while I was away. :P

Well, if I was able to bring along all the relevant papers and such, sure. But I'm hardly an expert on any, let alone EVERY, medical development in the last twenty years, so I'd have to be lugging a heck of a lot of information with me to do much good - and even then, the experts in the field would need some time to learn everything I brought before making further progress, so I'd still be screwing myself over a bit. But I'd happily drop the papers off while I'm making those investments, pop back to 2009, and see what shiny new treatments have been developed while I was away. :P

You could go back to New Orleans, find a big hill and start a small boat business. :)

I would go back to my own birth, and coach myself through life. I made a lot of very serious mistakes in my life, and even though they made me the man I am, I would still change quite a few of them. Then again I doubt I would listen to my future self.

Well, if I was able to bring along all the relevant papers and such, sure. But I'm hardly an expert on any, let alone EVERY, medical development in the last twenty years, so I'd have to be lugging a heck of a lot of information with me to do much good - and even then, the experts in the field would need some time to learn everything I brought before making further progress, so I'd still be screwing myself over a bit. But I'd happily drop the papers off while I'm making those investments, pop back to 2009, and see what shiny new treatments have been developed while I was away. :P

30 Yrs ago, cassette tapes were still around. so make a tape of the research papers then leave them behind for some up and coming med student to find... ;)

To a future beyond death, of course. Or at least beyond current age expectancy. Then if I want to go to the past I'll just Holodeck it up for an afternoon and skip the perpetual squalor.

To the past.

Circa AD 0 or so, and I'd live in or near the city of Rome.

It was a time of relative peace for the Empire, sanitation was excellent, civilization hadn't started its retrograde yet, security, citizenship, roads...

The past.

Around the 8th. and 9th. centuries AD. The golden age of monasteries and illustrated manuscripts. I would've loved being a monk, working the nights away making manuscripts.

The past.

Around the 8th. and 9th. centuries AD. The golden age of monasteries and illustrated manuscripts. I would've loved being a monk, working the nights away making manuscripts.

Did they allow women to read back then?

Did they allow women to read back then?

No, hence why I posted that I would've liked to be a monk, masculine.:wink:

No, hence why I posted that I would've liked to be a monk, masculine.:wink:

Something tells me you enjoy being a woman far too much for that.

Something tells me you enjoy being a woman far too much for that.

I enjoy being a woman, true. But if I had the chance of living in a different age, if I could choose said age, I would choose that age and, since only men had access to knowledge, I would choose to be a man.

You could go back to New Orleans, find a big hill and start a small boat business. :)
Hahaha, well played. That's actually not a half bad idea...

As several have pointed out, the past is mostly overrated; medical treatment either nonexistent or inferior to current standards, plus the fact that it probably just isn't as cool as we think it is.

Unfortunately, I see the future as not being terribly cool either; AFAIK, we've proven that exceeding the speed of light is impossible, so pretty much all of our super-cool futuristic dreams are all for naught. The future's probably going to be much like now, except we'll probably sink more into the instant gratification culture: more things will be automatic, or microwaveable. (Either that or we'll all die in 2012 anyway.)

So...I guess I'll stick with staying here.

If you could travel to anytime in time, and live there for the rest of your life, would you rather live in the past or in the future. Past= More than 20 years ago, future = more than 20 years from now.

Mmhhh....

20 years from now, Berlusconi will be dead (or undead...), so future might be an idea. On the other hand, I'd live in a place ruined for 20 years by Berlusconi and his party... so it's either the far future or the Renaissance. It would be nice to have Leonardo da Vinci and Boccaccio as neighbours.

It might be fun to give AK-47's to the Greeks at Thermopylae.


They did pretty okay with the swords, spears and shields they had. Poor Xeres would know what hit him.


On the other note future for me. 100 years or so should do the trick.

On the other note future for me. 100 years or so should do the trick.

With my luck everything would be all Mad Max if I were to do that.

I would go back to my own birth, and coach myself through life. I made a lot of very serious mistakes in my life, and even though they made me the man I am, I would still change quite a few of them. Then again I doubt I would listen to my future self.

Paradox, paradox alert. Don't touch yourself otherwise it could be a problem. If you accidentally cause yourself to be killed it could be bad for you. You would begin to fade away. I wonder if that would be painful?


Just kidding I have hard time with this stuff.

From the past it would be cool to see the effect of one minor change in the past and see what would happen in your own time. You would need to use the "do over" circuitry.

With my luck everything would be all Mad Max if I were to do that.

For some reason I see something like "Neuromancer". Dystopian almost for sure the flavor depends. Iguess it depends whether you are a pessimist or an optimist.


Besides in Mad Max at least you could wear a cool haircut without anyone looking funny at you. by the way how good of a shot are you? ;)

"Bust a deal and face the wheel"

Dr. Dealgood: Listen all! This is the truth of it. Fighting leads to killing, and killing gets to warring. And that was damn near the death of us all. Look at us now! Busted up, and everyone talking about hard rain! But we've learned, by the dust of them all... Bartertown learned. Now, when men get to fighting, it happens here! And it finishes here! Two men enter; one man leaves.

Dr. Dealgood: Right now, I've got two men, two men with a gut full of fear. Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls... dyin' times here!

First, I'd learn how to make electric generators, trains, guns (good, rifled guns. not shitty, innaccurate muskets), etc. Then I'd go thousands of years in the past, probably to ancient Egypt, where furries weren't regarded as child-molesting nazis. Plus, they really know how to make stuff last. Their wonder of the ancient world is still standing today. Take that, hanging gardens and Greek temple thing.

With electricity, guns, and eventually a knowledge of local customs and language, I'd conquer the ancient world and spread furryism all over the world just to piss the furryhaters off. I mean come on! Cat-like reflexes. Superior canine sense of smell. Primate opposable thumbs. All in one body. What's wrong with that? Next thing you know, furry haters will be telling everyone that seeing and walking are too big of advantages and will go around smashing backs and stabbing eyes. Assholes.

Paradox, paradox alert. Don't touch yourself otherwise it could be a problem. If you accidentally cause yourself to be killed it could be bad for you. You would begin to fade away. I wonder if that would be painful?


Just kidding I have hard time with this stuff.

From the past it would be cool to see the effect of one minor change in the past and see what would happen in your own time. You would need to use the "do over" circuitry.

Yeah, but if you killed yourself, either
A: You wouldn't exist, therefore you wouldn't be able to go back and killself, etc (the Grandfather Paradox)
or B: You'd still exist, but in a separate time-frame, in which the only way to get yourself back in the 'correct' one would be to travel further back in time and make sure that the 'correct' one occurs (the Quantum leap scenario)

Since time travel is impossible anyway (The proof: We haven't been visited by any one from the future!) it don't matter what you do!

With my luck everything would be all Mad Max if I were to do that.
POST "mad max". lots of green, environmental health returning, thanx to reduced human population, (reduced primarily by either famine and epidemic, resulting from global climate change, if nothing is done to change our current course, or by deliberately reducing all human fertility in an unbiased manor to thus avoid the pain of the former), plenty of ruins to explore and camp out in, no one to prevent you from doing so at your own risk, what sovereignty/law enforcement remains having more realistically focused priorities then trying to prevent this, or enforce probably no longer existing building codes. technology, relatively cleaner kind mostly, and even the less clean lower impact simply because fewer people, not forgotten, continuing to evolve, or resuming its evolution, in, for the most part, more environmentally friendly directions.

maybe a hundred, almost certainly not more 320. oil and coal either gone or no longer extracted. one more reason technology cleaner, or at least mostly so.

'mad max' in the sense of personal mechanical ingenuity though, just like as with the phasing out and forgetting of the whole concept of rural imposition of building codes.

most of todays economics and ideologies, maybe even dominant systems of belief, relegated to museums, where they belong, along with today's monstrously oversized combustion powered automobiles, or anything very closely resembling them. (little or no maintenance of paved roads and no gas stations for one thing. but plenty of pleasant, even beautiful hiking and bike trails, and with enough luck, in at least SOME places, an abundance of something at least a little like narrow gauge railways, all as a network of transportation infrastructure.)

and yes, maybe even renewed interest in basic research and space exploration!

("you may say i'm a dreamer; but i'm not the only one. someday you may join us. and the world will live as one" -J.Lennon- "imagine")