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Not just that- you could erase your family, your home, everyone you've ever known...

bilateralrope wrote:

Purple wrote:

bilateralrope wrote:What happens if the changes you make prevent your birth ?

You have no idea. But you know that he promised to return you to your time once you are done. So perhaps things work out for you, or perhaps you aren't born. But you figure that either way all paradoxes simply magically smooth them self out or something.

Fuck that. If the ROB hasn't explained what will happen if I prevent my own birth, I'm not risking it.

You do know that he intends to return you to your time with memories of both timelines. So you can be reasonably sure that you and your family line will be preserved. But outside of that, yea, you don't know.

Oh. That suggests that we're not altering our own timeline so much as an alternate one, like in the Abrams Star Trek films.

Anyway, I think its impossible to avoid altering history short of doing something that voids the scenario like committing suicide. As we are not Hitler, we will inevitably do things differently than him.

Edits: Of course, no moral person would be able to follow in Hitler's footsteps or wish to. Its just that they couldn't even if they wanted to.

The Romulan Republic wrote:Oh. That suggests that we're not altering our own timeline so much as an alternate one, like in the Abrams Star Trek films.

No, you most definitively are altering your own timeline. That much is made absolutely clear to you. It's just that you have a godlike omnipotent deity who frankly does not give a flying f* about silly things such as consistency and the rules of the universe sponsoring you as the pawn in its game. ROB is fully capable and willing to make the laws of reality his bitch. And if that means a paradox reality has to bend over and take it.

Well then we aren't being returned to our old lives are we. Plus, you specified that if we "succeed" we have full memories of "both the old and the new timelines."

Because if we are positing one single timeline that I can change with the ROB resolving paradoxes, then fuck no, I'm offing my Hitler-self ASAP and sticking to the original history.

Why? Because if I do go with my stated plan of breaking off the conflict with Britain, then my father's parents will never meet in an East End hospital during the bombing in early 1941 (him a fireman and her a nurse), so that's my family wiped out from the altered timeline. Now if we we trying to destroy the Third Reich early, then you could probably make a moral argument that doing so and stopping the war is worth my life and my family's. But to prolong the Nazi state? Fuck you.

Eternal_Freedom wrote:Well then we aren't being returned to our old lives are we. Plus, you specified that if we "succeed" we have full memories of "both the old and the new timelines."

No, you are not. You are returned to the same point in time (date, time etc.) and relative place (your bedroom in this new timeline). But the consequences of your actions in the past might well have massive or no effects on how that life revolves. You might wake up to find your girlfriend newer existed or that you have one you newer knew etc. That is why the new memories are so important. You retain all the memories of your previous and now possibly undone life but also gain new ones to bring you up to speed with the new changed timeline.

Why? Because if I do go with my stated plan of breaking off the conflict with Britain, then my father's parents will never meet in an East End hospital during the bombing in early 1941 (him a fireman and her a nurse), so that's my family wiped out from the altered timeline. Now if we we trying to destroy the Third Reich early, then you could probably make a moral argument that doing so and stopping the war is worth my life and my family's. But to prolong the Nazi state? Fuck you.

They would magically end up meeting in some other way. ROB works in mysterious ways. But you know that you and your family line (or at least every direct ancestor of yours) are safe.

And yet you just said that my girlfriend might wind up not existing. Sorry, but the "prize" in this case is simply not worth it.

Eternal_Freedom wrote:And yet you just said that my girlfriend might wind up not existing. Sorry, but the "prize" in this case is simply not worth it.

She might not exist. But there is no way to really know once you set the butterflies in motion.

Yeah, sod this mate. If the prize we get for completing this gods-awful task was something like "be returned to your old timeline with $500 billion and designs for a starship" or "remake the 20th century in your image" that would be different. But if all we get is full memories of the original and the, shall we say, edited timeline? Where my friends or family may not exist or be radically altered? What is the gain? And the cost, you're asking us to perpetuate the fucking Nazi regime. Even removing the Holocaust and the other bad stuff, it's still a dictatorship. Even with Hitler's oratory and my own ideas I doubt I could revert Germany back to a stable, successful democracy. Hell, I doubt I could even turn it into something approaching a benevolent dictatorship.

What the fuck is wrong with you that even makes you come up with this idea?

Eternal_Freedom wrote:Yeah, sod this mate. If the prize we get for completing this gods-awful task was something like "be returned to your old timeline with $500 billion and designs for a starship" or "remake the 20th century in your image" that would be different.

And just what is preventing you from using the rest of Hitlers natural life in power as the dictator of Nazi Germany (as given to you as a victory condition by ROB) to set your self up that way?

But if all we get is full memories of the original and the, shall we say, edited timeline? Where my friends or family may not exist or be radically altered? What is the gain? And the cost, you're asking us to perpetuate the fucking Nazi regime. Even removing the Holocaust and the other bad stuff, it's still a dictatorship. Even with Hitler's oratory and my own ideas I doubt I could revert Germany back to a stable, successful democracy. Hell, I doubt I could even turn it into something approaching a benevolent dictatorship.

I am asking you to see if you can think off a way to fix Nazi Germany at a point where it's not yet too far gone. There is a difference. Plus, there is the factor of how far you'd be willing to go to fix what many say is the worst wrong of our time.

How to fix it involves removing the entire Nazi party and their despicable ideology and returning Germany to a democracy of some form. But that means we've destroyed the Third Reich so we "fail" your scenario.

Eternal_Freedom wrote:How to fix it involves removing the entire Nazi party and their despicable ideology and returning Germany to a democracy of some form. But that means we've destroyed the Third Reich so we "fail" your scenario.

That's the obvious solution. Too obvious. That's why I eliminated it. I want you people to get creative.

You want us to get creative...while preserving the Nazi regime. I'm done with thread.

Eternal_Freedom wrote:You want us to get creative...while preserving the Nazi regime. I'm done with thread.

Whilst preserving some sort of dictatorship that has you as its dictator and at least pays lip service to the Nazi Regime. You are free to go as far away as you can as long as that is maintained. The actual nature of the system can be as far from Naziism as the British queen is from ruling over Canada if you think you can get away with it. But you have to be able to get away with it and stay on top.

How broadly do you define "dictatorship"? Does it have to be outright totalitarian, or could a form of limited democracy be permitted? Would a constitutional monarchy where the monarch has some actual authority work?

The Romulan Republic wrote:How broadly do you define "dictatorship"? Does it have to be outright totalitarian, or could a form of limited democracy be permitted? Would a constitutional monarchy where the monarch has some actual authority work?

Basically you have to remain the absolute head of state and actually have absolute power in your hands. But that does not mean you have to use that power. You can delegate the day to day operations to a democracy or any other system of your choosing just as long as you have the ability to assume absolute control at any moment you feel like it. Also, you are not forbidden from making your position be one that vanishes after your term.

In fact, you are not even forbidden from setting the system up to collapse the moment you die.

That's a bit better, although I still can't condone the preservation of the Nazi state in any scenario.

Edit: I also can't condone rewriting reality and erasing God knows how many lives in the process. In a sense, that would be a genocide worse than Hitler's. So I'm leaning toward shooting myself to invalidate the scenario and calling it a day.

The Romulan Republic wrote:Edit: I also can't condone rewriting reality and erasing God knows how many lives in the process. In a sense, that would be a genocide worse than Hitler's.

Why? If you undo lives without them ever being than that does not count as killing. No more than choosing not to build a house counts as destroying it.

Except that they did exist, and I'd have made it so they did not. Its a tricky thing with time travel that people don't always consider, but you can argue that by altering history you are effectively murdering every single person who's history you change.

Of course, you could also say that once you're dumped in Hitler's body the world has already changed and undoing the change would also be erasing a reality. And If reality changing is already a done deal, you might as well try for the best possible end result.

Like I said, its tricky.

The Romulan Republic wrote:Except that they did exist, and I'd have made it so they did not.

No, they did exist but than you made it so that they didn't. There is a difference in tense here that makes all the difference in context.

Its a tricky thing with time travel that people don't always consider, but you can argue that by altering history you are effectively murdering every single person who's history you change.

By that logic you are constantly murdering people with every thing you do. Stop on that traffic light? Well you did not run over that guy crossing which means his girlfriend won't have to find comfort with his best friend and have his babies. You killed their babies!

Purple wrote:

The Romulan Republic wrote:Except that they did exist, and I'd have made it so they did not.

No, they did exist but than you made it so that they didn't. There is a difference in tense here that makes all the difference in context.

Its a tricky thing with time travel that people don't always consider, but you can argue that by altering history you are effectively murdering every single person who's history you change.

By that logic you are constantly murdering people with every thing you do. Stop on that traffic light? Well you did not run over that guy crossing which means his girlfriend won't have to find comfort with his best friend and have his babies. You killed their babies!

Nope, that's not the same since in this scenario no time travel is involved.

AniThyng wrote:Nope, that's not the same since in this scenario no time travel is involved.

It is the same though when you just look at the resulting timeline. And it's the results that count, not the path it took to get there.

Except that we have full memories of the timeline before it was changed if we "succeed." So even if you want to argue that changing history so someone is never born isn't a terrible thing, you still remember them. So, to us, those of us that actually have morals, it will feel like we have destroyed countless millions of lives to perpetuate something terrible.

How do you not understand what a fucking horrible thing that is?

Hell, random thought: we stop the holocaust from happening. AS a result, there is no post-war "what the fuck" moment, and no "the Jews have suffered enough, they can have Israel" so they remain scattered, disunited and quite possibly persecuted since anti-semitism hasn't been so thouroughly discredited.

Eternal_Freedom wrote:Except that we have full memories of the timeline before it was changed if we "succeed." So even if you want to argue that changing history so someone is never born isn't a terrible thing, you still remember them. So, to us, those of us that actually have morals, it will feel like we have destroyed countless millions of lives to perpetuate something terrible.

Well sure. But from a purely scientific perspective you also know that this feeling is purely a subjective one on your part.

How do you not understand what a fucking horrible thing that is?

I do. I just also understand that fundamentally it's just a personal emotion and not physical fact. And emotions are something you can get over. You just have to realize that it's all just you feeling it.

Hell, random thought: we stop the holocaust from happening. AS a result, there is no post-war "what the fuck" moment, and no "the Jews have suffered enough, they can have Israel" so they remain scattered, disunited and quite possibly persecuted since anti-semitism hasn't been so thouroughly discredited.

That might well happen. But you do have the rest of your natural life worth as the dictator of a major European power to try and make sure it doesn't. Making you think of these things and make sure to handle them is part of the fun of this project.

Purple wrote:I do. I just also understand that fundamentally it's just a personal emotion and not physical fact. And emotions are something you can get over. You just have to realize that it's all just you feeling it.

I'm sorry, but are you a sociopath?