Mind Game for the Day: Time Travel Edition

[RevolverRob]

I was sitting in my car this morning, in traffic, because I live in Chicago. And I started thinking, "If I had the power to go back in time and change three events, major or minor, what would I change?" Of course, like the first three to pop into my head:

1) Kill Karl Marx
2) Kill Adolf Hitler
3) Kill Pol Pot

But then I started thinking, "In that order?"

And it occurred to me that the three events you change would need to be done in a specific order to accomplish the desired outcome.

So - what three events would you change over the course of human history and in what order would you change them? Why? Do you pick a recent event first to test the waters or go for broke and jump straight into preventing the Romans from crucifying Jesus?

[Hambo]

I think I saw that on a Star Trek episode. Not the bullshit sequels, the real Star Trek.

[Yung]

Now I ask you: what can be expected of man since he is a being endowed with strange qualities? Shower upon him every earthly blessing, drown him in a sea of happiness, so that nothing but bubbles of bliss can be seen on the surface; give him economic prosperity, such that he should have nothing else to do but sleep, eat cakes and busy himself with the continuation of his species, and even then out of sheer ingratitude, sheer spite, man would play you some nasty trick. He would even risk his cakes and would deliberately desire the most fatal rubbish, the most uneconomical absurdity, simply to introduce into all this positive good sense his fatal fantastic element.

It is just his fantastic dreams, his vulgar folly that he will desire to retain, simply in order to prove to himself--as though that were so necessary-- that men still are men and not the keys of a piano, which the laws of nature threaten to control so completely that soon one will be able to desire nothing but by the calendar. And that is not all: even if man really were nothing but a piano-key, even if this were proved to him by natural science and mathematics, even then he would not become reasonable, but would purposely do something perverse out of simple ingratitude, simply to gain his point.

[Balisong]

I think I saw that on a Star Trek episode. Not the bullshit sequels, the real Star Trek.

That helped my answer a lot, thank you.

I would go back in time and not watch any of the Star Trek movies I saw.

[Totem Polar]

1) I would take back the mean thing I said to a good friend in HS,
2) I would take back the mean thing I did to a fellow student in middle school.
3) I would have banged more of my hot ballet dancer friends who wanted to in HS and college, instead of being so damn honorable (most of the time)

I know you were hoping for "I would have bought Gavrilo Princip a sandwich in a different shop on the other side of town" or some shit like that, but hey, I gotta do me.

[Joe in PNG]

I can imagine a story where someone just returned from 1923 after shooting notorious dictator Max Von Scheubner.

Hitler? Why worry about Hitler- he's just a figurehead that will get purged by Rohm in 1934.

[Grey]

Go back in time and bet on all the shit ala Back to the Future sports almanac fiasco.

[Duelist]

1) I would take back the mean thing I said to a good friend in HS,
2) I would take back the mean thing I did to a fellow student in middle school.
3) I would have banged more of my hot ballet dancer friends who wanted to in HS and college, instead of being so damn honorable (most of the time)

I know you were hoping for "I would have bought Gavrilo Princip a sandwich in a different shop on the other side of town" or some shit like that, but hey, I gotta do me.

Ah, I just married the ballerina I wanted. No regrets about who I did or didn’t do.

I do wish I’d started taking ballet myself sooner, though, instead of worrying about what my friends would say.

Nobody in history I particularly want to shoot that someone didn’t eventually get to. Shooting Bin Laden in 1998, maybe.

[Malamute]

...or go for broke and jump straight into preventing the Romans from crucifying Jesus?

Depending on your intent,...for good or bad. It would derail Christianity, assuming you could undo something that was foretold long before it happened and was intended to happen. Without the sacrifice, there was no payment for sin, and so no forgiveness in Christ.

The crucifixion wasnt an "oh shit, that wasnt supposed to happen like that" moment. When he said "My God my God, why have you forsaken me?", he wasnt "saying" it, he was quoting psalm 22. Anyone there with knowledge of the jewish law would instantly understand what he was saying was exactly what was described in psalm 22 and was happening in front of them at that moment. It proved his provenance.

[5pins]

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