Time Machine or Fountain of Youth?

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Oh dear.................Peckerwood, of all the things you could do with time travel you would choose to take a load of modern weapons back to the American Revolution just so you could shoot a load of people in the back!?

"it would be kind of fun".........................................!?

I would myself, given the choice, take pain killers and antibiotics back as far as I could. These could have saved countless millions of lives and reduced the suffering of everyone.
 
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I would myself, given the choice, take pain killers and antibiotics back as far as I could. These could have saved countless millions of lives and reduced the suffering of everyone.

Ironically, Peckerwood's foray into the past would most likely do less damage than yours. Still, it's truly a good thing that time machines don't exist and especially good that neither of you has access to one.
:)
 
I'd take the time machine.
Seems so much more fun. One could answer all those 'What ifs'. I for one would be interested to find out what if the dutch would have never ceded their north american colony to the british and what if Hitler would have died in WWI for example.

The list is practically endless…
 
Hi MJL21193,
how do you make that out?
Are you thinking on the lines of "anti-biotic resistance"?

Time machines are an impossibility..........period.

I have no idea what the end result would be if either mine or Peckerwoods suggestions were to happen, so it is the "intent" that you need to concentrate on, and not the cause and effect that seems to concern you.

Its quite startling that on this forum one cannot discuss politics or religion and yet one can talk about killing people "in a kind of fun way"..............in the back!?
 
With the Time Machine, you can transport to any place AND any time an infinite number of times, but you must wait at least 72 hours between jumps.

I'd go to Vegas, January 1967. Bet on the Jets. Then spend the remaining 72 hours catching the shows (Sinatra, etc.) Then fast forward a few months and let it all ride in a bet on the Final Four. Then forward again to January 1968 to let it all ride on the next Superbowl.
And so on, through the years. By the 80s and 90s I would have bought out all the oil and power and health insurance companies, to make them turn their efforts to clean, renewable energy and universal health care. (I'd pay for it all from my personal fortune....no politics involved here).
 
Well in the time of the American revolution there were no laws of war but in my fantasy I would still abide by the current US military rules of war which are more restrictive than the Geneva conventions. Under the US laws of war you can't shoot a person who has put down their arms and surrendered or a person who is obviously wounded (which really means incapacitated) but you can shoot combatants who are running away in the back. That is logical too because they are still a threat unless they surrender. If you couldn't shoot combatants running away they would probably eventually stop running and try to kill you again. I mean the fact that they are there in the first place means they were trying to kill you before they started running. Odds are if you don't shoot them they will try to kill you again later.

Remember that even in my fantasy this is the US and they were not Americans so none of them would be shot if they left us alone. We didn't invade them. Well John Paul Jones attacked them in their own territory but not until after they started the war in the first place.

Is it even possible to behave immorally in a fantasy?

Hey Pano, thank you for mentioning that instead of letting us wonder where it went and if we are loosing our minds or what. I did not intentionally post what would be considered political. I am still trying to figure out exactly what is and what isn't. And now I know something else that is. Military actions that occur. So that is one small step. peckerwood@charter.net is my email address MJL.
 
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JerryO, you can talk about worse things than that on television and radio but you can't say the "f" word. You can show badly maimed dead people and gory killings on TV but you can't show genitals. Apparently murder and war and such is completely acceptable but sex and profanity is going too far.

Wyomingbob, saying universal healthcare is skating on thin ice. I think?
 
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Yeah, I know what you mean.
I have always thought that it is a very strange state of affairs when you can, as you say, show the brutality of mankind through war, murder, torture etc in the most graphic detail to quite young people; and yet when it comes to anything of a sexual nature suddenly we "come over" (excuse the pun) all coy and embarrased. The exception being that content available on the internet of course.
Again, this disparity, to me, shows a culture that is severly out of balance.
 
I could handle living longer than humans usually do but forever is such a long time that eventually I know everything I could possibly do would become so boring I would not be able to stand it.

Yeah , an eternity for "todays" , watching humankind go through his first self imposed mass extinction event and then seeing it again over and over again every few hundred years thereafter would become like a "hell on earth". I suppose with both choices you could either stop this cycle by changing the past or waiting another 200-1000 years or less (eternal life - shorter cycle next time around) to try to stop the fools next time around. TV = radar to avoid the bomb/ solid state (our beloved audio) = smaller-smarter components to make a better bomb. Humans need 1- 2K+ years to catch up to their cranium. :D

OS
 
I'd go to Vegas, January 1967. Bet on the Jets. Then spend the remaining 72 hours catching the shows (Sinatra, etc.) Then fast forward a few months and let it all ride in a bet on the Final Four. Then forward again to January 1968 to let it all ride on the next Superbowl.
And so on, through the years. By the 80s and 90s I would have bought out all the oil and power and health insurance companies, to make them turn their efforts to clean, renewable energy and universal health care. (I'd pay for it all from my personal fortune....no politics involved here).

Unless you used all that wealth/influence to "buy out" the government ,(no politics -just evil) it would all be in vain - you would have little success.

Combine that with several generations of different teachings (maybe - a crash course). Still , it might also be in vain as humankind needs another 1K yrs. to "catch up". The inevitable correlation of overpopulation - resources would cause war regardless of "temporal adjustments". You can't fight the "nature of the beast".

PS , you forgot about Google and M$'s first public stock offerings .. Boeing and other military industrial behemoths. You would have the power of nations, just go back 50-60 years.

OS
 
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Can I be cheeky and throw in an addition to the time machine or fountain of youth thing going on here; and that is:

"Total invisibility"

You are as real and solid as normal but you are completely invisible to your fellow humans. I think it would make a nice third choice.
I would certainly go for it.
 
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