Poll: An interesting question on traveling through time.

[thenoblegaunt]

Forwards, I'd rather explore the unknown than exploit the past.

 

[danneloid]

Well im gonna be a partypooper and say that time dosnt exist, the difference between one second and a year is nothing compared to eternity. Time is something humans have invented to keep track of dates it isnt something fysical that we can manipulate in any way. But playing with thought i would go back in time to the middle ages and bring a lighter a gun and a flashlight to freak people out. (gun is to protect myself when they want to burn me for beeing a witch. oh and btw you cant go back in time and fuck things up since u went back it has already happened and it was the point of your timeline.

 

[Asturiel]

I go forwards not backwards. Probably die but I'd rather not cause a parodox. If you go forward it's less likely than backward.

 

[luclin92]

always away to the future, yust to see if the space marines will be an reality and if thats true then see if i can join them.

 

[Azure-Supernova]

I'd like to go backwards, but I fear that I'd be executed as a heretic.

 

[RanD00M]

I would go backwards.
Bob Rocker must die.

 

[klakkat]

Forwards. I'd rather see the future; I don't care about details of the past that have been lost to history. Besides, forwards is much easier; you only need some kind of hibernation rather than actually tearing the universe a new time-space hole.

 

[Maze1125]

Time is something humans have invented to keep track of dates it isnt something fysical that we can manipulate in any way.

Einstein disagrees with you.

 

[ssgt splatter]

I wouldn't go at all. I'd like to come back to my own time eventually.

 

[dont_blink]

i'd go forwards. caution is for wimps. future's a mystery =D

EDIT- i'd only go if i could take someone with me...

 

[Poke_Freak]

Well im gonna be a partypooper and say that time dosnt exist, the difference between one second and a year is nothing compared to eternity. Time is something humans have invented to keep track of dates it isnt something fysical that we can manipulate in any way. But playing with thought i would go back in time to the middle ages and bring a lighter a gun and a flashlight to freak people out. (gun is to protect myself when they want to burn me for beeing a witch. oh and btw you cant go back in time and fuck things up since u went back it has already happened and it was the point of your timeline.

Because dates are a completely fictional invention, and not a system to keep track of the cycles of the sun and the moon as well as the changing seasons.

And whether or not you can fuck up time, we don't know yet. Since there has never been any (recorded) time travellers, we don't know if time travel is impossible (due to time paradoxes) or if time fixes itself (either the timeline "has always been that way" or you just cause a new "branch" to happen where the new timeline works. Essentially travelling between dimensions rather than in time).

-------------------------------------

Either way, I'd go towards the future. There are way too many things that can cause trouble for you in the past, even when ignoring paradoxes just by travelling.
Superstition, language barriers, diseases (I have no idea what the effect of diseases that are now dead would have on me, or modern diseases would have on people in the past), and so on.
As for what I'd bring, I'd try to bring as much of todays knowledge as possible. A laptop and just a fuckload of external harddrives crammed with just about everything humanity knows today.

If I end up 40 years in the future, the experiment is a huge success and I can report back to the scientist most likely.
If I end up 1000 years in the future. Well, either they have their own, perfected, time travel (hey, he could send me there from 1k years in the past. Which means time travel has had 1k years to develop) or I can do some good.
Post-apocalyptic, I could try to help rebuild society.
Otherwhise I could donate my bag to a museum. Imagine someone appearing from the past with just the content of the library of Alexandria today. Every archaeologist in the WORLD would line up just to see, not even read, the scrolls.

 

[HK_01]

Forwards,

that way I don't end up create some time paradox and end up making it so I never exist.

But if you make it so that you never exist by fucking things up in the past, you'd not exist in the future, making it impossible for you to have used the time machine, thereby not being able to destroy yourself. But since you then you did not destroy yourself, you'd live and be able to go in the time machine...ahhgh, it's an endless loop!

OT: I'd go back in time and take all the knowledge I could about history and modern technology with me. With that, I'd then conquer earth and become Emperor of Everything.

 

[ma55ter_fett]

that 40-1000 requirement kills my gobackintimewithaAK-47andruleegyptandhavesexallday plan... so forwards in time I suppose.

 

[Kyber]

Travelling into time is not fun, when you go backwards, even the a little thing that you do can mess up the hole universe creating a paradox and when you go to the future, guess what PARADOXES!!!

 

[GrinningManiac]

I'd go forwards into the future, grab an immortality device and grab a time machine into the past (I figure if we're experimenting with them in 2010, they'll be common use around 3050.)

Why backwards, and why immortal?

Because I LOVE HISTORY

And I'd proably take a Poncho, a Gun, a Medical Kit, a sweet hat and something else

Becaue then I could be the Wandering Traveller of legend, who wore strange clothing and spoke with a strange accent, arriving at historical journeés, observing and participating with an all-knowing look before vanishing JUST around the time things screwed up.

I'd be like an earth-bound Doctor Who, only infinatley less alien-y and more of a Clint Eastwood-meets-Phileas Fogg character

 

[Poke_Freak]

Forwards,

that way I don't end up create some time paradox and end up making it so I never exist.

But if you make it so that you never exist by fucking things up in the past, you'd not exist in the future, making it impossible for you to have used the time machine, thereby not being able to destroy yourself. But since you then you did not destroy yourself, you'd live and be able to go in the time machine...ahhgh, it's an endless loop!

Congratulations, you've just realized the classic time paradox that is the biggest reason time travel "should" be impossible.

Although something interesting to consider as well is this:
All current (and relevant) fields of science agree that matter can neither be created nor destroyed, only converted to energy and back again.
If it can't be created or destroyed, it must have always existed. Otherwhise it would have at one point been created.
For it to always have existed, it must have existed for an infinite amount of time.
If the same matter has existed an infinite amount of time, then all possible combinations of of matter must have, at some point, happened an infinite amount of times.

In the end what this all MEANS is that every moment you experience must have already happened an infinite amount of times, and must happen again an infinite amount of times.

--------------------------------

Oh, and I almost forgot.
I AM already a time traveller. I travelled here from the year 1985.

 

[The Shade]

Not go at all. Mainly because if time is circular, forward and backwards are the same.
If it's linear, you can't change it without a self-annhilating paradox.
If it's multi-dimensional, you are travelling sideways as well as forward or backwards.

So which one does The Doctor do? Because I'd only wanna time travel if I had the TARDIS' awesomeness backing me up.

Also, if I pissed off the Horde of Genghis Khan, I could hide inside, safe in the knowledge of the door's stability against such an attack.

 

[Poke_Freak]

Not go at all. Mainly because if time is circular, forward and backwards are the same.
If it's linear, you can't change it without a self-annhilating paradox.
If it's multi-dimensional, you are travelling sideways as well as forward or backwards.

So which one does The Doctor do? Because I'd only wanna time travel if I had the TARDIS' awesomeness backing me up.

Also, if I pissed off the Horde of Genghis Khan, I could hide inside, safe in the knowledge of the door's stability against such an attack.

The Doctor operates in "FUCK YOUR LOGIC! I'VE GOT SUSPENSION OF DISBELIEF!"-time. Which is the same as Terminator, Star Trek and any other fictional timeline you can think of.

 

[jpoon]

Easily backwards.

Going forwards pretty much guarantees you'll end up in Idiocracy or in a nightmarish version of 1984.