Why do you keep repeating the same viewpoints ad nauseum? Does it really help to rehash it like this?
You're not psychotic. You could NEVER understand.
(Doing Therapy)
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OK MJ, I'm ready to confess. The "Time is always running" theory of time travel, is an invention of my own. It came from Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure. George Carlin's character says to Ted "That clock. The clock in San Dimas, is always running." That's where I got the name for it, and I wrote the theory largely based off of Bill and Ted. Maybe it makes no sense from a temporal perspective, but it does explain the movies. Under this theory, Napoleon was MIA for 24 hours in the middle of an intense battle. Tell me that's never once happened. Lincoln was alone in the Oval Office, and no one saw him for 24 hours. Nothing to worry about, really. It might make no sense temporally, but it DOES make sense of movies. The "Time is always running" theory was my own creation. I like it, whether or not it makes sense.
(Doing Therapy)
Three
And whilst we're on the subject of things which don't make sense, why is extinguishing a fire a higher bias skill than lighting one? I'd say it's unquestionably more difficult to light a fight with friction than it is to pour a bucket of water onto one.
(Doing Therapy)
double post
Your third post was technically your fourth post.
If an Oriental guy whips out a gun to shoot you minutes after you arrive, most veteran versers at my table would make him regret it after dodging and deflecting all his shots. Not kill him, just let him know he f'd with the wrong person.
And then, well, you're on a boat, and mind reading is an @1 skill, so you might be able to get it to work on a lucky roll, and you don't read a mind in a foreign language, you read it as reading thoughts, not words.
Brock Wrote:
Oh no. I am SO NOT a non-involvement player. I do what I believe will result in a benefit for society as a whole or myself as an individual, like any person of roughly "normal" morality.
Did you ever see the original series Star Trek episode "The City on the Edge of Forever"? McCoy, Spock and Kirk are accidentally transported back in time to before WW2 (And the set used is the old Mayberry set from the Andy Griffith show) A woman named Edith Keeler was about to be hit by a truck. McCoy saved her life. She went on to protest for peace between the US and Germany. The US didn't enter the war when they were supposed to. This led to the US being utterly defeated during WW2. All because McCoy made the "Morally Correct" choice to save her life. You would have saved her life too, I take it. Then watched in horror as Germany nuked the US.
I wouldn't have been dismayed if a foreign America lost to a foreign Germany.
Then again, I'd probably have gone to Germany of my own accord and come up with a way to assassinate Hitler.
No, this was in their own past. The Enterprise no longer existed.
I didn't say anything about the Enterprise.
We're talking about what I would do if it happened to me; if I somehow went back in time and that were to happen, I would protest against Germany, claiming that their concentration camps were actually death camps where millions of people were being killed and living conditions were substandard.
If I versed there and saved her and this happened, I would be heading to Germany to assassinate Hitler of my own accord.
I'm generally inclined to oppose noninvolvement. In the specific case of the Pearl Harbor scenario, I'd probably have tried to inform them close to the attack, so as to allow the attack to occur but not be as devastating. There would be be some risk that the war in the pacific would end extremely quickly and not draw in Germany, but honestly not much of one. Even if the US forces got absurdly lucky and sank the entire Japanese carrier fleet, Imperial Japan was not terribly inclined to surrender.
I'm actually kind of curious about how the end result (Mexican invasion of the US) followed from intervening.
In the event that Germany stayed out of the war, I'd try to trade in on my credit from predicting the Pearl Harbor attack to announce that Germany was running death camps.
Pearl Harbor. A few hundred Americans died heroes, the US came out of The Great Depression and became a superpower. I can live with that. God only knows what would happen if you changed it.
See, that would depend on how it was changed. A failed sneak attack would still provide causus beli, especially considering the simultaneous more successful attacks on other targets. However, it would not sink a major portion of the US fleet and let Japan control the waves for months, conquering islands. It would also not draw as much away from Europe, which was always the first priority in any case.
It is extremely likely the US would emerge from the Great Depression and become a superpower even if Pearl Harbor was only an unprovoked sneak attack that didn't work out very well.
And whilst we're on the subject of things which don't make sense, why is extinguishing a fire a higher bias skill than lighting one? I'd say it's unquestionably more difficult to light a fight with friction than it is to pour a bucket of water onto one.
It's not. Extinguish fire is T1@1, while Ignite Fire from Spark is 1@2 as is Ignite Fire form Friction. Transfer Fire shares the same bias as Extinguish Fire at 1@1 but relies on an already present fire.
As to Pearl Harbor, the topic has been beaten to death many times already. Using examples of people who are going back into their own timeline and why changing things may be bad for them is moot, seeing as you are not going back into your own timeline.
It is extremely likely the US would emerge from the Great Depression and become a superpower even if Pearl Harbor was only an unprovoked sneak attack that didn't work out very well.
Yeah, but it's absolutely certain if the attack proceeds as planned. Absolutely certain is a lot more reassuring than extremely likely.
On the other hand, that timeline would also have 6 million absolutely certain agonizing deaths of civilians in concentration camps, the cold war, and a bunch of other things we would have rather not had happen.
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Huh, this is the first time I've been the subject of the posting error. I'm inclined to suspect that it's an issue with the number of posts to display on each page not being properly synced with the number needed for a new page, but that's just a guess.
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EDIT: huh, this one was longer than the bumps needed in Eli's thread. I wonder if that's because the thread is longer or because two people overlapped posts.
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Nothing is an absolute certainty when we're talking about alternate dimensions.
Well, we've mainly been discussing actions in an alternate universe presumed to be the same, except temporally desynched.
In other situations, I'd be inclined to intervene if able. Admittedly, V-me has so far not done anything major except possibly destabilized the political balance of an entire continent by accident. However, that's largely due to lacking the capacity to do so.
Pearl Harbor. It already happened. They're already dead. They just don't know it yet. The world recovered just fine.
The Holocaust. It already happened. They're already dead. They just don't know it yet. The world recovered just fine.
The Black Plague. It already happened. They're already dead. They just don't know it yet. The world recovered just fine.
Are we seeing a pattern? Historical worlds would be terrible for me.
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JTM wrote:
On the other hand, that timeline would also have 6 million absolutely certain agonizing deaths of civilians in concentration camps, the cold war, and a bunch of other things we would have rather not had happen.
And what would have happened had this NOT happened? Do you know? I don't know. What I DO know is that the world recovered from this. I would have rather not broken my leg when I was 23. In retrospect, it was a major, life-changing event, changed my life for the better, and one of the best things which could have happened. I wouldn't change it if I had the chance.
The sun going supernova and destroying planet Earth. It already happened. We're already dead. The rest of the world continued onward just fine.
An excellent point, young Mr. Young.
(Doing Therapy)
Baen Books is coming out with a SF that deals with this question.
"Written In History" has temporal loops where History One eight million died in the Holocaust, and then there is History Two which is like our history. The heroes want to change things to make them better, but not mess things up. So the difference seems to be that in H1 there were no Israeli secret agent groups, and in H2 there were some. I figure the way the story is going is that its about the making of the H3 timeline.
*pulls invisible strings in the background, unbeknownst to (almost) all*
Now you don't need to know why Kyler's undies fall apart :P
Concerning posting an article, it has been so many years since I set up my account that I don't know how it was done.
I would say go to the main page, click the link for Your Account, and if that brings you to a login screen use your user ID and password from the forum. If that doesn't get you to somewhere from which you can figure out what to do next, post a question to Outpost Discussion and see what Aaron says.
--M. J. Young
Mistake
Here's one for all of you who want to change history. There's a 13 year old girl who wants to marry a man old enough to be her father. He will abuse her verbally and physically, cheat on her and get her pregnant 4 times before she's 20 years old. On top of all of that, she will never see her father again. It's already happened. Based solely on this information, you can go back and prevent the marriage. Do you?
If you said yes, you just talked Loretta Lynn out of marrying the guy that started her singing career. Sometimes history shouldn't be changed, no matter what it is.
(Doing Therapy)
Why do you want to save her singing career?
Is the pleasure you receive from hearing her sing so much as you would not hope for her to not have to go through that?
Would she have traded all that money to have avoided the abuse if she had the money before the abuse?
I have a soft spot for abused little girls, so I would certainly trade the music of Loretta Lynn to prevent her abuse.
Good question, Kyler.
C.J. Cherryh wrote 'Cyteen' which had to do with this topic in a way.
And the question is, would Lorretta have made that trade?
Perhaps not initially, but after a few punches I'm sure she'd have given him anything he wanted (and in fact probably did).
I have a soft spot for abused little girls, so I would certainly trade the music of Loretta Lynn to prevent her abuse.
And what do you do when she marries a different guy who treats her just as badly, but never notices that she can sing? At least in this timeline, the damage is mitigated (kind of) by the fact that she did become rich and famous.
I had just finished watching Coal Miner's Daughter, and I took inspiration from it.
Not every change results in a worse outcome, A1nut.