Hypothetical

[goldkin]

Today's question mirrors my thoughts:

Suppose you were presented with convincing evidence that you made a series of bad decisions in the past. These decisions are all rooted at a single point in time. Had more information been available at this time, it would have changed your entire life for the better, achieving a defined set of life goals that you've otherwise failed to attain.

Now suppose you were given the ability to change that decision. The means are irrelevant: this could be anything from borrowing the Epoch to finding a loophole in quantum entanglement. You are able to change this decision with 100% certainty.

But there's a catch. Due to the inconvenience of a single timeline and the grandfather paradox, doing so will end your existence in favor of your beneficiary clone. The exact time it ends is not defined, but if you alter history it is assured. As an indirect result, you cannot return to your original time.

What would you do in this case? Would you take the opportunity to reshape your life, even if it could only be enjoyed it vicariously? Or would you continue to be the person you became despite your definably flawed existence in your own mind?

I'll offer my rationale in the comments, if anyone is curious.

Comments

[davv]

I think it'd depend on what happens to consciousness. If the you that is helped "splits off", the question is essentially if you'd help another person - but if you become the clone after existence catches up with the time-stranded version of yourself, I would be more likely to do it.

If the clone splits off, it would seem better to just help another person in the present instead, because you're not going to get the dogs of causality after you and end your own existence that way.

But all of this does remind me of a similar question I've wondered about. Would I change something about my past in a better way - say, leave a hint to myself - if it meant I would instantaneously snap back to that point, forgetting anything from after that point, including all the people I now know? I don't know. The thing to be fixed would have to be pretty serious, yet I can think of a few things that are...

[arethinn]

I find davv's interpretation of the question puzzling, since it seems to assume you "duplicate" yourself in some way - whereas the question says it will "end my existence". I read it as the current "me" would vanish, in favor of this "other me" - which is an opportunity I would certainly take, if only I had any way of determining just which is an appropriate/crucial juncture, and what is really the correct course of action in that case.

[aearo.livejournal.com]

A lot depends on those goals. In the scenario, your alternate/past self is not you, and so what happens in that person's life should be exactly as important as what happens in the life of any stranger. Should you care about them? Yes, I'd say so. Should you destroy your future to change theirs? Not under most circumstances. Maybe if the goals you never achieved have a wide impact outside your life, such as if you were going to invent free energy or usher in a new, golden era of enlightenment and social tolerance or something.

The situation suggests that the alternative to changing the past is living with the knowledge of your mistake. I think it's worth remembering that the knowledge of the mistake carries with it the knowledge that those life goals were at one time achievable, and it might still be possible to achieve them or at least their approximation - particularly since now you know where you went wrong the first time. Depending on how you look at it, knowing that you missed your life goals because of some mistake you made might be a really good, encouraging thing.
So it could be a choice between discarding your own life to create some alternate world where some person who is very similar to yourself has the life you wanted, or finding a way to get that life for yourself.

Although if changing the past gets you separated from causality in such a way that you become a rogue element in the fabric of spacetime, journeying through all possible worlds as some kind of fantastic cosmic nomad rather than causing you to merely cease to exist... heck, those life goals weren't all that great, were they? If they were really so important, your alternate self can worry about 'em. ;)

Anyway... those are my thoughts, but I'm curious and wish to know your rationale, Goldkin.

Repentance

[https://www.google.com/accounts/o8/id?id=AItOawm2AVZhjTrv_oDnWX7ZTkqbIcsgSc1xo_w]

I've come to the conclusion that many times - yes, I would change the past as though I had never committed certain mistakes. But since I can't, I move forward and strive to change the thinking that lead me into it in the first place. Many religions preach the same principle - to pick up and change yourself to be the person who would never have made the same mistake had he been there. Who we are becoming is so much more important than who we once were.

[jaabi.livejournal.com]

I know this is an old entry, but I wandered across this and I was reminded of something that I theorised recently.

Everyone has their own "personal timeline" so-to-speak. Whenever I try to describe it though I find it comes off like the usual parallel timelines in fiction - of which I think it is not.
Your timeline works like this:
"Past" future - time travel to "change past" - "new" future.
Your timeline is based on your perception rather than the believed arrow of time. It's like two arrows: one is your memories and physical state, and one is for the rest of the world.

This is sort of like time traveller's immunity right? Well... what if you did something that stopped you from having to go back in time in the first place? Like your example - if you succeed in "fixing" your past you won't need to go back and change it. Or if someone else changed history to stop you from going back.

Only "you" would still exist. You would still have gone back in time and done your thing. To this other you, or someone who'd altered your past also, you would have not.

When I think about it, it seems like Solipsism in the context of time travel though. Which I don't really identify with. Maybe its like Solipsism, but also not. If you do something to someone's past it is changed to you, but not to them. You each have your own timeline, separated by the things you have done, yet you're also in each other's timeline.

... man, this doesn't make any sense.