After the recent post about time travel, some readers wondered about the morality of interacting with the past and whether we would be obliged to refrain from changing historical events or not. In other words, would we be bound by a "temporal prime directive" against interfering with history if we travelled into the past.
This is actually something I’ve thought about, so here are some reflections.
The fundamental moral axiom is "Do good and avoid evil." This axiom is binding on all people, all the time. It is part of human nature. If we were transported into the past it would be binding on us then. We would have to do our best to do good and avoid evil, just as we are bound to do it now.
The question is whether interfering with history is a good or an evil–and whether it is even possible.
As sci-fi writers, among others, have speculated, changing history may not be possible. It may be, for example, that if we end up in the past then this does not represent a change to history. We were always part of history, and so whatever actions we take in the past played their proper role in how history did unfold.
If this is the case then three things follow: (1) We can’t change history because our introduction into it was always there, and it will unfold exactly as it did in our timeline and (2) we therefore don’t have to worry about whether we’re changing history. We can just do our best to do good and avoid evil. Also (3) we can avoid wasting our time trying to prevent outcomes that we already know (e.g., we may as well not try to stop 9/11 from happening). The issue of a temporal prime directive thus fails to arise if this is how time travel works.
There is also another version of how history is unchangeable. It could be that we were NOT part of history the "first time" it unfolded, and our insertion into the past OF ITSELF represents a change. It would appear, if this is how things work, that arriving in the past of itself creates an alternate timeline–one that is different than the timeline in which we originated.
But if that’s the case then, no matter what we do in the alterate timeline, we aren’t really changing history–not OUR history. That’s back on the original timeline that we left. The new timeline that we’re living in is one that budded off of ours.
If that’s the case then we are under no obligation to protect our own history because we have no ability to affect that history. That’s a timeline we are no longer part of.
It might be possible (depending on how time travel works) to get back to that timeline, but that would mean leaving the alterate timeline (no matter what good or bad we’ve done in it) and getting back to our original reality, in which we never appeared in history. If this is the case then visiting the past is like visiting an alterate universe. No matter what we do there, we won’t have to live with the effects of it once we return to our own home timeline.
So while in the "past" (really an alterate past) we would have the liberty to do good and avoid evil to the best of our ability. Stop 9/11? Sure! It’ll help the folks out who live in that timeline, even if our 9/11 will still be there when we return to our own timeline.
On the other hand, it may not be possible to get back to our own timeline. If we jump forward into the future, we may be jumping into the future of the alterate timeline that was created by our insertion into the past. In that case, we’ll have to live with the effects of what we’ve done. That’s an added incentive to be careful about what we do, since we’re now personally invested in the future of this timeline, but it doesn’t affect the fundamental moral calculus of how we should behave in it. Even if we weren’t going to stay in this timeline, the Golden Rule would tell us "Don’t mess up someone else’s timeline if you wouldn’t want someone else to mess up yours."
Since, on this option, we’re not really changing our own timeline, the issue of a temporal prime directive does not arise–at least not directly.
Of course, we could get scrupulous about the effects out actions will have on the timeline. Perhaps all kinds of "Monkey’s Paw" situations will arise and by trying to fix problems, we’ll actually make them worse.
Could be.
But that’s something we have to live with all the time back home in our original reality. We don’t know what the ultimate effects of our actions are going to be. We just have to do our best, based on the knowledge we have at the moment, to do good and avoid evil. If we’re in an alterate timeline but have an idea where it’s going to go based on the way our timeline did then that’s a bit of extra knowledge for us, but we can’t start out by second-guessing ourselves to death, worrying excessively about whether we’re helping or harming. We have to just do the best we can with the info we’ve got.
(And if we don’t like the results, we can jump back into the "past" again and bud off a new timeline where we can try to do things better. This, however, isn’t really fixing the existing timeline; it’s just transferring us to a new timeline where we hopefully won’t make the same mistakes.)
At this point we don’t have any experience with changing the "past," so we don’t really know whether attempting to do so generally produes good or bad (or neutral) results. It could turn out that attempts to change major historical events invariably makes things worse, but at this point we don’t have evidence for that. If evidence started accumulating then instituting a temporal prime directive of some kind would make sense, but imposing one up front would not make sense.
The mere fact of us being in the past when we weren’t originally means that some changes are made to history, and once we’re there we can’t avoid affecting things–just breathing and taking up space does that. So we may as well not second guess our ability to help the new timeline that we’re in until we get solid evidence that such attempts are more harmful than helpful.
(NOTE: God could have a "Please don’t mess with history" rule, but since he didn’t put it in the deposit of faith in our timeline means that we would likely only figure it out by experience. However, the very fact that he lets us go into the "past" when we weren’t originally there is an indication that he doesn’t mind us working to improve alternate timelines.)
On both of the two theories I’ve just sketched out, changing history isn’t really possible: in the first case because we were always part of history and in the second case because we are in an alterate timeline and not our own.
But is there a third possibility?
Could we really go back into OUR history when we weren’t there originally and change things?
I don’t think so. If we weren’t in history originally and then we put ourselves there then it seems to me that it’s no longer OUR history. It’s a new history–an alterate timeline. That seems to be true by definition.
And, as always happen when you try thought experiments that involve breaking things that are true by definition, you get paradoxes.
Thus if you suppose that we can inject ourselves into a history that we weren’t originally part of, you get things like the Grandfather Paradox. Since I don’t think that physical paradoxes can exist in actuality, I don’t think that this kind of time travel is possible.
There are other ways conceptualizing all this. In fact, there are a mind-numbing number of other ways (see that Grandfather Paradox article for examples). But seems to me that in the end it boils down to the two kinds of considerations I’ve mentioned here: Either our actions in the past were always part of history or we aren’t really living in "our" history as soon as we’ve entered the past.
Either way (and in any other scenario one might want to propose), the fundamental moral axiom still applies to us: Do good and avoid evil. The knowledge we had of how "our" history unfolded simply gives us extra information as we attempt to do that.
What if I went back in time, saw that you were going to post this, and then posted this comment before you wrote the post?
What?
My head hurts.
Barring a strict view of predestination, wouldn’t an alternate timeline present a situation whereas an individual was exposed to certain situations and events in his life, which influenced him to chose salvation … yet, in the alternate timeline, my tampering with history so drastically affected his life that those situations and events were substituted with others that influenced him to reject Christ. Would that mean that God would have to create an afterlife in which that individual existed both in Heaven and Hell for each of the two (and exponentially more) timelines in which he existed?
The “alternate timline” scenarios pose questions about the origin of the human soul that make the problem of identical twins seem like a piece of cake.
E.g.: Imagine a really evil historical figure from our timeline. For the sake of argument, suppose that this person has died and been condemned to Hell. Now, if I go back in history and create an “alternate timeline” where this person goes to heaven instead, what happens to his soul? How many souls does he have? Etc., etc. This problem is compounded by the fact that the number of potential timelines is infinite, apparently limited only by the number of trips through time. It is further complicated by the fact that one could, at least theoretically, change events that were central to salvation history. For example, if we invented time travel how long would it be before somebody decided to pull a Perelandra and go back and convince Adam and Eve (or whoever our first parents were) not to sin?
The other scenario Jimmy mentions– “changing history is impossible because time travel is already part of history”– is also quite interesting. If true, wouldn’t it suggest that time travel is either impossible or extremely difficult for modern humans to detect (either inherently so or simply “as practiced”)? Because otherwise we could expect to see people from the future zapping in all the time to change our present. Wouldn’t we?
Posts crossed. That’s what I get for writing so much.
When considering “known” outcomes, it’s also important to realize that our knowledge is imperfect.
Let’s say, for example, that we end up in the book repository in Dallas on the day Kennedy gets shot. We know Oswald is going to shoot; should we try to stop him?
What if we went ahead and it turned out (for example) that our intervention had prevented Oswald from killing the rest of the passengers in the car?
The best we can do in any circumstance, even including time travel, is to seek to do good and avoid evil, and leave the rest in God’s hands.
I think trying to “save” the future by refusing to intervene (when moral principles would otherwise dictate that we should) would be a bit presumptuous, just as much as trying to “engineer” a new and “better” future.
I also wonder about the questions by awfulthings and francis 03.
I don’t remember who it was, but I’ve heard of a physicist who wrote a book about time travel, and on the first page he promised to give a million dollars to anyone who presented him with a copy of the book before it was published.
Brad: of course, under the “consistent histories” interpretation it would be a safe bet since he already knew nobody would do so — without saying anything about the feasibility of time travel in general.
But, yeah, if general time travel eventually became possible, one wonders why we aren’t awash in tourists already.
One possibility: what if time travel were the last thing ever invented?
Imagine the lone time traveller, 30 years in his own past, wondering why nobody ever comes back for him…
(Heh. That might make an interesting story actually. I’m putting that idea in the public domain if anyone’s so inclined.)
Re: souls
If we are dealing with the same timeline, then we have a serious problem. We can only assume that God always knew this would happen and always provided alternate ways for the soul to find salvation, which the soul then used free will to accept or refuse. I expect most people wouldn’t really have much difference in ultimate outcome, especially if God was working to maximize their free will.
It might even be argued that, to the soul, changes in timeline would just be a normal part of a normal mortal life. In which case, that bit about being sorry for all your sins even if you can’t remember them would be even more important. 🙂 Sorta like an amnesiac in the confessional.
I suppose this would make it even more important not to take it upon yourself to make pronouncements that certain individuals definitely have gone to Hell….
If we are dealing with alternate timelines, you’re dealing with different souls. From the beginning of all things, God decreed that the alternate timelines exist, and created souls to fill them. They might seem exactly like the ones you know, but really, they wouldn’t be.
(Which is probably why alternate history universes are so very different in literature — circumstances are controlled, but free will (of the writer) makes the historical characters sometimes very different from what they were really like. You can say somebody’s Mazarin as much as you like, but he’s really the soul created by, say, Mr. Flint, and has only outward appearances in common with the real Mazarin.)
(Yes, I’m giving up snark for Lent. So this is Big Fat Snark Tuesday.)
Interesting stuff to speculate about, ne?
Well, I’m giving up the Internet for Lent, so I’ll see you all again in 40 (-odd) days.
One point, re: Oswald. The idea is that even before you engaged in time travel, the rest of the people in the car weren’t killed. So wouldn’t it stand to reason that you wouldn’t have to do anything to prevent their deaths?
After all, the presumption is that “you can’t change the future.” Since we know that part of “the future” is Kennedy’s death, and only his, how could your FAILURE to act in the “past” result in the deaths of the other people in the car?
Gosh, this is fun. What a great Mardi Gras.
Doesn’t the postulate “you cannot change history” or “you cannot change the future from the past” – doesn’t that violate free will?
Essentially, the options for time travel are:
1) you can go back and change something in history (e.g., stop Oswald from assassinating JFK), in which case we have multiple timelines. This yields a dead JFK in one line, and one that dies much later. This denies the unity of the human soul.
2) you can go back, but you cannot change things, because your changes are already incorporated into that history (e.g., you try to stop Oswald, but only succeed in stopping him from killing everybody else in the limo as well). This means that, once you go back, you have no choice but to a) “interfere” and b) you are limited in that “interference”. You can’t “not interfere”, because your presence will accomplish just that. This violates the concept of free will.
3) You can go back in time, but only as an observer – e.g., as a bodiless spirit – which can view events, but not be seen or felt by anything/one at that time.
A play on option #3 would be that some could “see” or “feel” you through ESP. This might explain “prophetic vibrations” or the paranoid feeling that you’re being watched (similar to the chills felt in “6th Sense”).
Have fun with these thoughts!
Paragraph 11 of your post = David Webber’s Apocolypse Troll. Have you read it?
Marie
Well, note that I only dealt with the case where you did intervene. Imagine discovering in the process that Oswald had, in fact, intended to kill the other passengers too. If we’re pretending to talk about actual events in hindsight (e.g. you’ve returned from your time-travelling jaunt and are telling me your story), “what if?” is as empty as always.
A time-traveller may have more information about their future, but for human creatures living in time that information is intrinsically incomplete and unreliable. They have to contend not only with their own memories, but also (usually) secondhand or worse information. Even when we have a pretty good idea of what the future holds (as we do in this particular instance), we shouldn’t presume to know with certainty how that future will come about.
When you’re actually there, in the moment, trying to decide whether or not to jump out from behind the crates and tackle Oswald, you don’t have that benefit of hindsight. You don’t know with certainty that Oswald intends to stop with Kennedy.
Maybe it’s possible that you could just stand there passively while murder was comitted, knowing that for whatever reason he’d only successfully shoot Kennedy (and the guy who got winged by that wacky bullet). You would probably be less culpable for your inaction on account of that knowledge, but I suspect it still wouldn’t be good for you.
(This is assuming, of course, that you have perfect knowledge that “consistent histories” is correct. As Jimmy more or less points out in the original post, uncertainty in that regard changes the moral calculus just a bit…)
All that said, I suppose that ever since the floating Soviet Mothersphere leveled Detroit with protonic weapons in 1997, time travel has been the least of our worries.
Be thankful we still have access to an Interfeed node like this one.
The idea is that even before you engaged in time travel, the rest of the people in the car weren’t killed. So wouldn’t it stand to reason that you wouldn’t have to do anything to prevent their deaths?
What do you mean before? If there is only one timeline, there is only one day, one hour, one minute, and you are there at the same time as the events.
Good time travel stories do things that tie your thoughts about cause-and-effect into pretzels.
Maureen is giving up “snark” for Lent. What is snark?!
P.S. If I could go back in time…I’d send Jimmy Akin and Karl Keating (and maybe Tim Staples as well for good measure) back to meet w/the Pope, Martin Luther and all the other folks back then to prevent the whole schism/reformation thing! And anyway, didn’t Captain Kirk go back in time on Star Trek? One more thought…Napoleon Dynamite recently tried time travel and was unsuccessful!
Dude, you plagiarised Star Trek for the conceptual focus of this post.
Maybe. BTW, this iz ahn owld post, mein frind.