If you had a time machine...

This is something I actually think about. I would like to visit certain countries in the past…see family who are gone. California in the 70s feels right to me too.

I’d go back to the time of my youth and invest in Berkshire Hathaway, Microsoft and Apple.

Are you the age you are now when you go back, or do you go back to the age you were at the time - that is IF you were alive?

Because history is for the most part recored by the wealthiest segments of a society and those who worked for them, I don't think we have ANY clue as to how miserable daily life for the average person was compared to the lives we are used to leading now. Even Versailles reeked of human and animal shit all over the place - and that was a Palace. I think our fellow man we would find vomit inducing if you were to go back far enough.

I would visit 1970’s San Fra… LESBIANS ON DATA LOUNGE-HOW DID THEY EVER GET IN?

Minoan Crete.

I wouldn't stay nor change events.

Would love to visit Ancient Rome during the height of the empire, so maybe around 100 AD. Just as a passive observer. Would also love to experience Berlin in the 1920s and Southern California in the 1970s before it all went to shit.

I wouldn’t want to go anywhere that didn’t have indoor plumbing, toothpaste and deodorant.

I'd pop back to 2009, invest $10,000 in Bitcoin, and then pop back.

I would go back to 1995. I was 12. If I knew then what I know now about high-school, what matters and doesn't, etc. I'd gladly go back. I wasted my teens and early twenties stupidly giving a shit about material things, what other people thought of me, trying needlessly to please everyone, etc

I want to be at Sun Studios on July 5, 1954 when Elvis started playing That's All Right.

I'd go to Galilee to be around the figure known as Christ, to observe just what he got up to.

Next stop Southwark, to be around The Globe Theatre when Shakespeare was in his prime.

1997-1999

Anywhere in America before the white man came. Or Rome before the Italian revolution, early 19th century, when the ruins were still in ruin. Both those were covered in huge ancient trees and numbers of birds and animals. The total absence of electricity and noisy modern sounds, plague, etc. Fascinating.

R3, Most people are living miserable lives today. Most humans live in poverty. I would stick to the wealthy areas during my time travels.

This has always been a favorite daydream, going back to time/location of famous mysteries like the grassy knoll. I once asked my boyfriend what time period he’d like to go back to. He said “that depends” “Depends on what? “ “Depends on if I can bring a gun” Yeah he was an asshole.

Assuming you could make a functioning time machine it seems to me past or future travel would leave you dying horribly in cold space. It gets complicated.

The Earth orbits the sun but the sun orbits the Milky Way once every quarter billion years PLUS it bobs up and down by thousands of light years as it does so. Then the Milky Way is moving at 600 kps towards the Great Attractor. Further the Universe itself is expanding moment by moment.

Consequently at every instant the Earth is in a place it has never before been and across eternity will never again occupy. Put together this would seem to take away your soft landing at the base of the Pyramids.

Here…

More questions for you:

Would you tell the people you meet that you are a time traveller? I would if I felt comfortable enough with this person.

Would you want to meet your past self? I would, but mostly, I would want to scare my parents and tell them I'm their daughter from the future.

Would you bring proof with you that you are from the future? I would.

Which time travel theory do you believe? The Back To The Future theory (changing the past, changes the future), the time travel paradox (you kill your grandmother in the past, you are never born, you never went back in time and it loops), the Block Universe theory? The Multiverse theory?

I don't know which one I believe.

Periclean Athens.

Venice during the Doges.

I'd just be an outside observer.

I would go back to the time nine months before Defacto is born and turn his father gay

Does your Time Machine provide suitable money and knowledge? I’d hate to arrive in say, Ancient Rome with no money and no idea how things work. I guess I could study what we think we know, but there;s a lot you have to know not to get in trouble.

I would not want to reveal myself as time traveler, so I wouldn't change anything. But not sure I could keep up a charade. Would I be able to communicate with anyone?

I'd visit Berlin's gay scene in 1926, Rome around 100 AD - probably traveling with r6. Would love to get to know Hadrian. I'd want to know the people who build Stonehenge. I'd visit A Hitler in his childhood to see what makes a dictator. And I'd buy a ticket for the Orient Express.

I think about this a lot. I would go back to the beginning of each decade at the age of 20 and live the entire decade, then start over. So I'd be 20-29 in the 1940s, 50s, 60s, 70s and 80s.

Fifty years would be enough time traveling for me and I'd be happy to come back to today and check out.

Oh God, Al….The big jerk. I’m all right. All I have to do is keep talking.

R5 Minoan Crete, me too!!

I was so captivated by the descriptions and the mystery I went to Crete in 1989. I have a Minoan mosaic (tourist shop version) on my wall.

It sounds like it was the only time in ancient history where they weren't torturing gays and women or anybody, really.

I would skip to my death. I'm tired.

Oh Al….

I just have to keep talking. Forever…..

My childhood home. NYC 1975 ot 76 and to a Halloween party at Studio 54 1977 or 1978 (and I get in!) . Plato's retreat when it was at the Ansonia Hotel. A Playboy Mansion party when it was swingin' in Chicago and a Playboy mansion party in Holmby Hills party in the seventies when Dorothy Stratten was at the party and the Village People. The night BEFORE the Mansion murders on Cielo Drive and warn them all, including word out to the LaBiancas. Not stay forever. Would be part of the parties so perhaps that would make a change in something. Would want to be in my early 20s in all.

The 1770s and 1780s to see the founding of America and the Revolutionary War.

1990

I’d be the petrified video store clerk that was held up by the girl from Diff’rent Strokes - Dana Plato.

1980. Buy every share of Apple stock I could lay my hands on.

I'm black, so I'm kind of limited in how far I can go back and have a nice time. I would love to relive my college days in the 90s, that was fun. Maybe make a few strategic changes. For this game can we go to the future? I'd love to see what's happening 100 years from now.

Not really into the Time Machine scenario but if I could be 30 years younger in the present time with what I know now I’m all for it.

I'd go back to 1971 for a day.

I’d return to 1974-76, just to spy on myself and my siblings growing up in the tiny house we lived in. I’d watch my now deceased parents raising the five of us, and I’d take pictures, because I don’t have enough photos from that time in our lives. I’d make sure to get shots of our little yellow house and our school across the street, because that’s all gone now. Our block, our part of the street, and the school were razed in order to expand the school.

I’d also go back to the summer of 1982, when I first visited LA. My friend and I spent the nights dancing at Club Odyssey (I’d just turned 18), and the days cruising up and down Santa Monica Boulevard, which was lined with swaths of gay men in very little clothing. Again, I’d take pictures, because it was before the AIDS crisis hit hard, and I have no pictures from those three weeks in West Hollywood, Beverly Hills, and the beach.

June 15, 1815-The Duchess of Richmond's Ball in Brussels.

I want to go back as a 30 yrs. hot nobleman& fuck and rape my way thru the titled men's who will die in the battle the next day.

I want one hot Viscount after fucking his brains say to me "Sir, you are no gentleman". I laugh and say "No fucking shit motherfucker." Then work my thru the regular troops, making them feel better about getting splattered the next day my Napolean's cannons.

R25, I'm sure you already know this: the Minoans had no need for defensive walls, had indoor plumbing, and exported throughout the Mediterranean at will. Linear A remains undeciphered, and their frescoes are gorgeous. I suspect there are some beautiful men too.

I've been to Akrotiri in Santorini, but Crete is definitely on my bucket list. I've been fascinated by their culture since I was a child, which was roughly contemporary with Palace II ;-)

^ NERD!

I’d probably send all of you back a few thousand years and become Queen of my Neighborhood until the public utilities failed.

Los Angeles in the 1940s — the movie colony, the beaches before they were built up, streetcars, no traffic, still lots of citrus groves, clandestine gay life.

New York in the 1950s — Greenwich Village, café society, several daily newspapers, gossip columnists, early television, affordable apartments, clandestine gay life.

Yeah, there are brief, history-making events that I’d like to witness but to spend some time, Greenwich Village in the 50s.

I've fantasized about this and have come to a couple of conclusions. First, I assume that the technology to do it would only be available in the present and future, meaning that if you went back in time you'd be stuck there to live out your days (which is not necessarily a bad thing). Second, once you arrived, you'd have to find some money of the era (assuming you can't bring objects and/or tech with you a la [italic]The Terminator[/italic] because you'd arrive naked with no place to live). Third, you'd be a fish out of water for a while because we're used to what we have and how we live today; for instance, you'd have to learn to read a paper map, communicate without a cell phone and not have access to the world's knowledge base at your fingertips. I also assume you'd have to know precisely when and where to arrive to avoid these and other complications.

My goal would be to mentor myself through an incident that happened in late April of my senior year in high school when a teacher did something to me that altered the trajectory of my life and which I spent a long time holding resentment and anger over, but which ended up being a good thing. But the ultimate purpose of doing this would be to push myself to take advantage of an opportunity that came along a few months later which I sadly squandered and which would have set me upon a trajectory towards long-term success, hindsight being 20/20 and all.

To solve the logistical issues, I'd target arriving when on a trip through Las Vegas with my parents the Summer before I turned 18. My father refused to use credit cards, so when we traveled he always brought a wad of cash which he would then stash in the hotel room before going out. I'd arrive when the room was empty, borrow clothes, cash and my father's driver's license (we look enough alike I could pass for him), and having memorized the winning Keno numbers for later that evening, stroll in and place a bet to win enough money to replace the borrowed cash and clothes, pay for a room and buy a car. I'd then drive to California and, having memorized the winning lottery numbers for a few days later, win enough money to take care of the money problem in perpetuity.

I'd then lay low for almost a year until the incidents I'm aiming to alter played out, ready to step in and guide myself through these pivot points. I've assumed I would have to tell 18-year-old me who I was, and why and how I got there, but then I could be my own desperately needed father figure that my father never was. I'd also give young me a scholarship to Stanford where I was accepted and wanted to go but didn't. And then I would disappear to live out my days; again assuming I would arrive being nearly 60, ready to retire and live through the 80s and 90s again only with the knowledge to mediate the horror of being a gay man living through height of the AIDs crisis, checking in on myself from time to time until I passed away as the new young me lived a completely different life.

The only unanswered question is whether I would take steps to prevent the time travel technology from ever being discovered and built, pulling the ultimate in boomer-pulling-up-the-ladder behind me because should it ever be invented, time travel will destroy the world before we even slither out of the primordial ooze to become bipedal human beings.

R42 I didn’t read two words of your endless diatribe

Be kind r43. It costs nothing.

January 21, 2025.

None of you would have sex with people from the past?

Fin de siècle St. Petersburg

On the one hand, I'd like to go to the late 70s to attend some Sex Pistols shows. And the late 30's to see some of Orson Welles' Mercury Theatre productions...especially Julias Caesar.

On the other, I'd love to go to Bosworth to warn Richard III about Lord Stanley's treachery.

I would go back to the late Cretaceous period, film the dinosaurs, then bring the film back and sell it for millions. Amazing and profitable.

I imagine attending these historical moments and being able to be immersed in them and observe first hand, would be disillusioning on many levels.

I feel one would become bitterly angry at the way history had re-written and romanticized things.

I'd go back and stop myself from taking Cipro. Biggest mistake of my life and it cost me my life. I dream often of having a time machine to undo this horror.

Gay Berlin in the1920s is overly romanticized by repressed English public school boys. Life was pretty miserable then. Southern California in the 1970s or NYC in the late 1990s was much better.

R46/OP: If I could make a pit-stop along the way, I'd go to Manhattan in about 1978 - 1980 to spend a few evenings cruising HK ending up at The Mineshaft, but I'd want to do it as mid-30s me when I was at my physical peak. There are a few guys I met in the 90s and early 2000s that I'd like to have sex with before they got sick, old or died.

19th Century NYC.

[quote]None of you would have sex with people from the past?

The people in the past weren't all that hygienic.

I'd go back to 1990, when both "Designing Women" and "China Beach" were about to hit the skids, and I'd write a cross-network Very Special Episode where the two somehow merged for a crossover. Let's see Annie Potts covered in some GI's blood, and Delta Burke stranded in the Mekong Delta.

And after my work there was done, I'd walk right over to the "Twin Peaks" set and slap the shit out of David Lynch. No one actually liked that show or even understood it, but they liked to pretend they did so they could impress people at the water cooler. Piece of shit.

I think most of your trips will end in tears upon discovering that recorded history is mostly absolute bullshit.

R57 Many of us here were alive in the 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s and 90s and remember how western society was much better than it is today.

R56, I loved season 1 of Twin Peaks. Lynch lost me in season 2 and I think he lost his mind in season 3.

[quote][R57] Many of us here were alive in the 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s and 90s and remember how western society was much better than it is today.

What a load of crap. It's nice too look back fondly on certain decades, but right here, right now is one of the best times to be alive and tomorrow will be even better than today. Longing for an idealized past hinders progress and sends us backwards.

R60 We've already gone backwards....wayyyyyy back. Just because time advances, doesn't mean a society progresses. Technology has progressed while humans have regressed.

R46, thinking about how most indigenous South Americans died after contact with the Spanish because they had no immunity to the many deadly European illnesses, no.

[quote] What a load of crap. It's nice too look back fondly on certain decades, but right here, right now is one of the best times to be alive and tomorrow will be even better than today. Longing for an idealized past hinders progress and sends us backwards.

Other than having internet, I can't think of anything that is better now than in the 80s or 90s. Environmental catastrophe, fascists attempting to take over the country, mass shootings becoming normalized, Covid, the brink of WWIII. This is progress?

My top 3 choices for time travel

New York city in the mid 70s

Paris during La Belle Epoque

Home town Buenos Aires in the 1920s, back when Argentina was still super rich and tango was everywhere and immigrants kept coming in in droves.

I would not stay away forever though lol 6 months I think would be good enough.

Honorable mention to NYC in the late 40s. I could go see A Streetcar named desire on Broadway, catch some Dizzy Gillepsie in some night club and see the birth of the Beat movement.

Would you tell the people you meet that you are a time traveller? I would if I felt comfortable enough with this person.

No. I'd want to fully feel like I was of that time. Plus people would think I'm weird

Would you want to meet your past self? I would, but mostly, I would want to scare my parents and tell them I'm their daughter from the future.

I'd be tempted to visit myself as a child to comfort me and give me words of encouragement when I needed them. But no, if I can actually time travel I would not waste it by going to suburban New Jersey in the late 80s....ugh..depressing.

Would you bring proof with you that you are from the future? I would.

No. See 1st answer.

Which time travel theory do you believe? The Back To The Future theory (changing the past, changes the future), the time travel paradox (you kill your grandmother in the past, you are never born, you never went back in time and it loops), the Block Universe theory? The Multiverse theory

Dont really care, don't take it that seriously.

Andrew D. Basiago claims to have traveled back through time repeatedly as a child in the 1970s as part of a US government experiment.

Here he is giving a lecture on the various modes of time travel that were used on him in the past, and explaining in great detail his experience visiting the site of Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg address (including pointing himself out in the crowd as a child).

This guy is a deep-dive rabbit hole but he’s an interesting storyteller/liar and speaks at length about what many people are discussing in this thread… the complexities of arriving in a completely different time period.

I would go 200 years into the future and visit the world's largest cities. It would be interesting to see how advanced technology has become or if we're even still around by then.

Me too, maybe just 50 years in the future. Probably start in London or Paris and see what else is good. Maybe Mumbai or Nairobi are the places to go then?

I'd like to go back to the early 50's when my parents met and look them up, follow them around for a while. Then travel forward to when I was 10 or 12 and look after myself, tell myself everything was going to be alright.

But I fear I might trigger the butterfly effects and fuck everything up so, no, I'm staying right where I am.

Triumph of caesar, BCE 46 .

50,000 years into the future.

(... for starters)

Did people ever forget about that thing in the sauna that got me kicked out? Did they ever reboot LOST? Whatever happened to humanity?

If you 𝑐𝑜𝑢𝑙𝑑 overcome physics and orbital mechanics to travel forward or backyard in time, better hope you find one of those colloquial English speaking civilizations who are in all the movies

I'd take the Tardis, r73. Everything is ready for the trip.

The Winter Garden Theatre, April 4 1971.

Would like to go back to the late 1930s and 1940s, and watch my parents, both products of the Depression and WWIi, growing up and dealing with their particular situations. I was too self involved when they were on this earth to try to understand them.

[quote]R42: I'd arrive when the room was empty, borrow clothes, cash and my father's driver's license (we look enough alike I could pass for him),

It's not like any of those 'borrowings' would not be noticed. You would have altered the past which produced you, creating a paradox. We don't empirically know what would result from that. It might zero you out completely, so that the 'you' who went back never existed, and thus couldn't 'borrow' the money and clothes. The past would remain unchanged, but you would no longer exist from the moment you departed on your time-travel trip to the past.

An alternative theory would be that you could travel back and make these changes, but that all subsequent history would be different, and you would find that you could never return/find your way back to the reality from which you'd come; you would become 'orphaned' from your own timeline.

To illustrate this theory of time travel, let's take 'George' from Pal's version of 𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐓𝐢𝐦𝐞 𝐌𝐚𝐜𝐡𝐢𝐧𝐞 (1960). George boards his machine and leaves his home on the evening of Dec. 31st, 1899, traveling into the future. He makes various stops on the way, and eventually winds up visiting 802,701 CE, finding a society bifurcated between surface and underground dwellers. He has his adventure (you've seen the movie, right?), and then returns to Friday, January 5, 1900, in time for the dinner party he'd scheduled with his friends that past New Year's Eve. He tells them his story, and gives Filby the flower Weena had given him. Three of them scorn his story, and refuse to believe him. Incensed, he grabs three books from his own bookshelves and sets off again into the future. Filby and Mrs Watchett presume he's gone back to 802,701 CE, to reunite with Weena outside of the Sphinx, and to "help the Eloi build a new world." And so the film as we know it ends.

But search as he might, George never again finds Weena, or the Eloi as he had left them, free of Morlock rule. His return to 1900 and telling the story to his friends altered all subsequent future events. Weena and the Eloi with whom he shared an adventure are now gone, part of an 'orphaned timeline' which only George remembers. They can never be recovered. Another world, with other people and circumstances, occupy the place they once did. We can only speculate what fate met George, for, as the novel puts it, "as everybody knows now, he has never returned."

As far as my own attitude towards the imagined possibility of time travel, I would not do it. If there were some sort of magnum opus detailing the issues of time travel (𝐃𝐨𝐧𝐧𝐢𝐞 𝐃𝐚𝐫𝐤𝐨 2001 postulates a book, 𝑇ℎ𝑒 𝑃ℎ𝑖𝑙𝑜𝑠𝑜𝑝ℎ𝑦 𝑜𝑓 𝑇𝑖𝑚𝑒 𝑇𝑟𝑎𝑣𝑒𝑙, written by one Roberta Sparrow), in order for it to offer important practical advice, the first page of the book would contain a couple of rules. Rule Number One would read "𝐃𝐎𝐍'𝐓!", and Rule Number Two would offer, "𝐇𝐄𝐄𝐃 𝐑𝐔𝐋𝐄 𝐍𝐔𝐌𝐁𝐄𝐑 𝐎𝐍𝐄." Breaking these rules and engaging in time travel would always result in some form of self-destruction, or at the very least, the loss/destruction of everything and everyone you ever knew.

I'm an historian and so a little preoccupied with times and places past but have no interest in time travel.

The past is interesting through the lens with which we view it, for what we know of the past and what we don't.

Big events are the least interesting thing for me. Wars and beheadings and political and social revolutions and inventions are more interesting in how they played out in small, personal ways.

Now if I could zip back to the bearer past for a few minutes, just long enough to shift some investments around... But that's not really about any curiosity of the past.

The people who want to go to the Globe in Shakespeare's day and to Periclean Athens had better take a good stock of the antibiotics we use to treat bubonic plague with them and be up to date with their flu vax.

Shakespeare's career was punctuated by theatre closures due to plague, and Pericles died of theirs, which may or may not have been bubonic.

Also, R23, you do NOT want to be a man aged 20-29 in the 1940s, unless you enjoy being shot at.

If I had a Time Machine I’d file a patent

I know this sounds strange, but where I go and what I did would depend on the actual Time Machine itself, how it operated, how long it took, etc.

If it were a wrist worn item that required only a quick button hit to activate, it would be very different from a huge HG Wells machine that required stowing upon reaching a destination with the chance that locals could find, take, and potentially dismantle it. If it were a Marty McFly flying car, again too many chances of getting trapped in the past because I couldn't obtain the necessary power source and huge risk of the car being found by locals.

However, I would consider a handful of activities - going to the grassy knoll with modern video equipment, staking out Lindburgh's house the night the kid was supposedly kidnapped.

Of course, the most important one is going to Boulder, CO, December 26, 1996.

That's dangerous R70. Your young mother could fall in love with you.

[quote] going to the grassy knoll with modern video equipment

I mean, if you're going there, wouldn't you rather go to yell, "DUCK, MR. PRESIDENT!!"?

The Greek islands, the Acropolis, Crete - before the tourist hoards. I don't know what decade that should be. Likely the early 1900s? Then I'd hop over to Italy: Rome, Tuscany etc before retiring and spending the rest of my days on a shore of crystalline blue waters and white sand. Maybe a small fishing village in southern greece.

I want to completely unplug from this reality and never come back. Starting today.

[quote]R11: I'd go to Galilee to be around the figure known as Christ, to observe just what he got up to.

It's a nice fantasy, going back to settle questions about what really happened in various instances. Simply observing shouldn't harm anything, right? But, in keeping with my premise in R77 ("𝐃𝐎𝐍'𝐓!"), there's also the 'Observer Effect,' or 'Law of Quantum Observation.' Stated simply, it means that by the very act of watching, the observer affects the observed reality. In the context of time travel, even simply for observational purposes, it would create a paradox, resulting in either cancellation or being orphaned from one's timeline.

𝐃𝐎𝐍'𝐓!

Even if you could go back to ancient Judea or Galilee to observe the Savior in action though, I strongly suspect you wouldn't find anyone like that there. ;)

[quote] I mean, if you're going there, wouldn't you rather go to yell, "DUCK, MR. PRESIDENT!!"?

Or,

"Move a little to the left, Jackie!"

If I had a Time Machine, I’d beat you over the head with it.

Ca. 400 bc to be a spectator at the ancient Greek Olympics- to see all of those HOT completely naked athletes.

I would want to visit nearly each and every civilisation, historic moment, you name it — as long as I were part of the upper class. And even they had it rough compared to our comfortably, clean lives today.

I would go back to the day of Trump's birth and disappear him.

The most logical explanation that "interfering time travel" will NEVER be possible is that World War One happened.

(You can take any significant moment, of course)

I think some of you would be very disappointed in the past. History is often written by the winners and never quite in the way you may think. And some of you wouldn't be able to handle the truth.

I'd love to go back to the 1950s and visit Beirut, Baghdad, Tehran, etc., when they were in their prime.

Great choices, R94

R93 no one is talking about going back and ruling the world, hun. Chill.

R96, R93 said nothing whatsoever about ruling the world.

[quote] The most logical explanation that "interfering time travel" will NEVER be possible is that World War One happened.

So how do you explain the disappearance of World War III in the sixties then?

[quote]R98: So how do you explain the disappearance of World War III in the sixties then?

Somebody with the 'Lathe of Heaven' ability.

I wouldn't change or try to change any events because, even if it were possible, who knows what unexpected disasters might result?

Assuming I could time travel and also be youngish (in my 30s) and have a decent travel budget, I would go to Los Angeles ca.1960, or, as I think of it, "Perry Mason's Los Angeles". I wouldn't do anything in particular except sample some nightlife on the Strip and drive around a lot. I just want the adventure of being in a different time and place - one that I admire a great deal but don't remember and that I'm familiar enough with that I could manage easily.

If I could go to more than one destination, I'd go to New York in the late '40s and London in the late '30s. These are all places and times I would love to experience on vacation.

Although the temptation would be strong, I would not go anywhere near my childhood location. I wouldn't stay permanently in the past, even though I would fit in much better there in many ways because I'm not about to give up modern medicine.

[quote]engaging in time travel would always result in some form of self-destruction

I agree with you, R77/PoisonedDragon insofar as not knowing how even observing changes outcomes, but not all observations are equal. I also accept the fact that going back is for keeps (as in living out my 60s and 70s in the 1980s and 1990s). The question I've always come to but unable to answer is if time travel is possible why we haven't experienced it already. If time is merely a continuum that we conquer in the future, then we've conquered it now and in the past, which is what leads me to believe that if it were possible humanity would be stopped before we got started. The alternative — that we have conquered time travel, made alterations to our timeline and the best possible outcome is the one we're living — is pretty bleak.

R89 = porn addict. Stopped trying to quit long ago.

London in the 1960's.

I would go back in time and tell NBC to pay Trump more than Gwen Stefani and stop him from running for president.

I'd like to see the Battle of Cerami in person, frankly.

Personally, if I could turn back time. If I could find a way, I'd take back those words that have hurt you and you'd stay.

I don't know why I did the things I did. I don't know why I said the things I said. Pride's like a knife, it can cut deep inside. Words are like weapons, they wound sometimes. I didn't really mean to hurt you. I didn't wanna see you go. I know I made you cry, but baby

[quote] if time travel is possible why we haven't experienced it already.

There is a school of thought that UFOs are drunk time travel tourists getting their kicks by buzzing we cavemen.

R103,

Swinging London only happened to 300 rich people in Chelsea. The rest of the country was still beset with poverty and social inequality.

[quote]R101: The question I've always come to but unable to answer is if time travel is possible why we haven't experienced it already.

Who says we haven't? The only person who would be aware of the time travel and whatever changes it wrought would be the Time Traveler(s) themselves. Everyone else would experience it as unbroken reality, without any perception of before/after changes.

There's an exchange in 𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐋𝐚𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐨𝐟 𝐇𝐞𝐚𝐯𝐞𝐧 (1980) where George Orr needles his former therapist, who's just used hypnotic techniques to take away George's ability to "effectively dream," giving the ability to himself instead:

"Hey, Haber!... I was just thinking... wouldn't it be funny if I wasn't the only one who could dream effectively. What if everybody could do it? And reality was being pulled out from under us all the time. And we didn't even know it. Well, it's just a thought."

Isn't there some time travel theory that you can only time travel to any time before you born and any time after you're dead because two "yous" can't exist in the same time without fucking up everything.

[quote] Isn't there some time travel theory that you can only time travel to any time before you born

Totally sci fi theoretical. There is no real reason to say you could or couldn't.

There’s a funny chat room short story from early internet days about time travelers enthusiastically posting that they’re off to kill Hitler before he can start WWII and the weary forum moderator has to go back to the day before Hitler was killed to fix history because the time traveler always ended up eliminating himself. “please read the FAQs people!”

R101, perhaps we do eventually invent time travel. Perhaps there are a few time travelers among us now, but they are not allowed to reveal their identity - no one would believe them anyway - and are strictly forbidden to do anything to deliberately change events of what is, to them, the past. The inevitable butterfly-effect changes of their mere presence here are bad enough. Deliberately altering the past is absolutely forbidden on pain of instant death by some devious means of the future.

I don't think you should that any time travelers of the future have the aim of changing anything in the past; their goal would more likely be to change as little as possible.

^^^"I don't think you should ASSUME that any ..."

There is another theory of time travel which is that your awareness or consciousness is a time machine. If linear time doesn't exist and only the NOW exists as many physicists believe, then every year is in a parallel NOW. You are experiencing the year 2024 because that is where your awareness is but according to this theory the year 1924 still exists in a different NOW, in a dimension that you cannot see. However, if you were to put your awareness in the year 1924 and live like it was that year, you would "time travel" meaning your current reality would start disappearing and a new reality would appear. I tried this myself several years ago by imagining that I was living in 1987 when I was 8. I only did it for one week and many strange things happened. I met a teacher I had in 1987 that hadn't seen since I was 12. I heard songs on the radio from 1987, I turned on the television and the movie Evil Dead 2 was just starting, and the next day it was Dirty Dancing... both came out in 1987. I freaked out and stopped the experiment because I wasn't ready for the possible consequences. But this is something you can try without a time machine and see what happens.

I would go back to New York City, pre 2001.

It’s a cliche to say but 9-11 really changed the world in a way we never recovered from.

Germany, 1940’s and 1950’s. I would love to see how WWII unfolded locally, from the seemingly endless military successes, to the final disaster.

But also, I would die to see on stage Kirsten Flagstadt, Astrid Varnay, Hans Hotter, and all those glorious voices we only know today in grainy mono.

Ancient Rome. I would want Hadrian in me quite deeply. He was supposedly very handsome and masculine. I would love to be a pass around bottom for gladiators (yes, they were allowed male companions and all sorts of treats to motivate them for their big day in the arena).

Renaissance Florence and be a part of Michelangelo stable of hunky models and fuck buddies.

Last week. Really pissed that I missed that BOGO special on Dorito chips at the Piggly Wiggly

That's the plot device of Christopher Reeve's [italic]Somewhere in Time[/italic], R115/OP.

Never seen that movie R119. My theory is a mix of quantum physics and the teachings of Neville Goddard.

[quote] Never seen that movie [R119]. My theory is a mix of quantum physics and the teachings of Neville Goddard.

You both miss the target,

People assume that time is a strict progression of cause to effect, but actually, from a nonlinear, non-subjective viewpoint, it's more like a big ball of wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey... stuff.

The Vulcan Science Directorate has determined that time travel is impossible.