All of my teen boys were at home the other day, hanging out and waiting for food to appear. Normally we would end up arguing about why invisibility does or does not blow as a superpower. I believe it blows, but that has nothing to do with this blog. Instead, we started talking about time travel. I proposed that the existence of Hitler proves that time travel is not possible. Or at least not the type of time travel we would all want to have; the ability to change past events.
If time travel were possible, wouldn't anyone want to kill Hitler, or Pol Pot? Most people would kill these mass murdering dictators. If time travel were possible then someone at some time in the future would have invented it. Since we have an infinite amount of time ahead of us in order to invent time travel, if it were possible, then we should have it and Hitler would be dead.
I can only think of one possible reason why Hitler would still be alive if time travel is possible and we can affect the past. The reason is actually pretty horrifying. Maybe something even worse happened to the world and time travelers came back and killed that evil dictator and Hitler happened instead. This would mean that Hitler was less evil than what ever happened instead.
Ok, so now you are going to say that I hate the Jews because I am saying that something can be worse than Hitler. Well, as evil as the planned extermination of an entire people is, there are worse things that I can imagine. Imagine a Pol Pot type dictator over Europe that succeeded in enslaving and re-educating all of Europe thereby eliminating forever a free Europe. Or, imagine a Germany that got the atomic bomb before the US. If someone slightly more competent than Hitler rose to power, they could have beaten us to the bomb. A nuclear winter caused by Germany's last gasp at revenge by detonating an atomic bomb would have been very bad for all of humanity.
If any of these things happened then a future time traveling people could have decided to kill the worse dictator. Later (if that even has a meaning at this point) they would have discovered that Hitler happened instead. The question would still remain: Why they would not come back and kill Hitler once they realized how awful he was. Perhaps they just wanted to stop the annihilation of the most of the human race and accept how bad Hitler was for fear that further messing with history.
The existence of a mega-dictator is only speculation and it seems unlikely to have happened. Therefore, I can only conclude that since Hitler lived and anyone would kill him if given the chance, and with an infinite amount of time available in the future to invent time travel, time travel that can effect the past is impossible.
What about the Cuban Missile Crisis? I think someone messed with the button.
ReplyDeleteYou raise an interesting point. Why would a time traveller stop with just killing Hitler. They would probably be too busy filling in lotto forms with the winning numbers to worry about the Fuhrer and his antics. My guess is time travelers would have to have a strict code of conduct, because changing one small thing that happened years ago could cause the future to change into a state where that time traveler did not get born and they would cease to exist instantly. I suppose we could have a suicide time traveler who went back to 1889 and strangled an Austrian baby who would know by doing so he would then become non-existant! I think? Does anyone know the physics behind time travel? Theory and practical do not always marry up!
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