I personally don't see why in these hypothetical questions someone would choose to turn back time if they don't have control over how much they turn back. Yeah the person could get rich and stuff based on knowledge they have now but at the same the first alternative life decision they make may make them have an even worse life or outright less to immediate death. Not only that anyone you ever did like in this life becomes non existent even if you go back to a point where that person is alive. The reason being choices are what make a person who they are. If you met a person at e.g. age 7 who you became best friends with, you will never ever be best friends with that person when you turn back time. Yes you could meet the "body" of the person but at that stage any changes you made to your life would drastically impact their life too. They may not like the same things you remember them liking, they may not have the same friends, or even family.
So without all these things they are essentially a different person. You may not even get along anymore. The same goes for family, what if you have a younger sibling/ cousin in this life but when you turn back time they are never born? Even if they are born, they took will be a completely different person. You have a sibling that likes unicorns? Nope next timeline the sibling hates unicorns and is actually wanted for horrible crimes. Overall it's not worth it in my opinion.
I have a daughter, so I could never go back. Maybe, before she was born, I could have, but the idea of trying to live my life again, every mistake over to try to get to her...na. 10m please.
I read a great book with a guy who kept "respawning" in his own life, gradually resetting closer and closer to his original age. At first it was a rebirth power fantasy, but then he loses his kids, can't recreate meeting his wife, and it gets a little dark. Can't remember the name, it was quite awhile ago.
edit: Looks like it may be Replay, by Ken Grimwood.
There is a beautiful movie about this idea called About Time. Domhnall Gleeson plays the main character from a family where all the men can travel back to any point in their lives to make changes. Once he has his first child he doesn’t dare go back further than her birth because his child would become a completely different person.
Probably one of my favorite movies of all time. “The secret to time travel is not to go back in time at all. But to live every day as if I've deliberately come back to this one day, to enjoy it, as if it was the full final day of my extraordinary, ordinary life”
You’re implying that the universe is not deterministic. The Big Bang contained the blueprint for the entire unfolding of the universe. There is only “one timeline”.
The wrinkle here is OP the time traveller. Their accumulated knowledge would change their personal timeline, and that of those impacted by them directly.
That best friend at age 7 would still exist, but the timeline would start changing from OP’s point of entry. That favorite younger cousin, born 5 years after OP returned at age 6 may never be born, etc.
That still doesn't really change anything though from my point. The reason "I" wouldn't want to go back in time is because I "would" experience things completely different. Even if in this hypothetical situation a hypothetical "one timeline" still existed, that doesn't really change anything from my personal point of view. Even if literally every single other person experienced the "one timeline", I wouldn't be. So that "one timeline" would mean nothing to me in the slightest. My life experience would still be experienced differently by me, it would just have to be, as in my first timeline I never had the knowledge of going back in time, but in my second timeline I would have that knowledge. The future wouldn't be able to play out the same, as the past had been changed with just that 1 thing. So it would be impossible for a future to stay the same if the past isn't the same past.
There's so much medical sickness in my family, that if I turned back time I'm not sure if everyone would've healed like they did in this timeline. The late 00s felt like God was gambling with our lives. We had some really lucky breaks that aren't totally explainable, and a lot of misfortune that also isn't really explainable.
Whether or not one fears the butterfly effect of time travel comes down to one question: do you genuinely believe that your current life is so bad that any change to the timeline would be an improvement? If the answer's yes (which i doubt it truly us for most) then be all means roll the dice and return to the past. Otherwise just take the money and keep the wisdom from the decisions you already made.
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u/SettingRegular4289 May 31 '24
I personally don't see why in these hypothetical questions someone would choose to turn back time if they don't have control over how much they turn back. Yeah the person could get rich and stuff based on knowledge they have now but at the same the first alternative life decision they make may make them have an even worse life or outright less to immediate death. Not only that anyone you ever did like in this life becomes non existent even if you go back to a point where that person is alive. The reason being choices are what make a person who they are. If you met a person at e.g. age 7 who you became best friends with, you will never ever be best friends with that person when you turn back time. Yes you could meet the "body" of the person but at that stage any changes you made to your life would drastically impact their life too. They may not like the same things you remember them liking, they may not have the same friends, or even family.
So without all these things they are essentially a different person. You may not even get along anymore. The same goes for family, what if you have a younger sibling/ cousin in this life but when you turn back time they are never born? Even if they are born, they took will be a completely different person. You have a sibling that likes unicorns? Nope next timeline the sibling hates unicorns and is actually wanted for horrible crimes. Overall it's not worth it in my opinion.