BS: change 1 thing in the past

Subject: BS: change 1 thing in the past
From: Donuel
Date: 19 Jan 19 - 09:17 PM

As 3D beings we can not change the past, but if a 4D being changed one thing in the past for our good, what would it be?

Subject: RE: BS: change 1 thing in the past
From: Dave the Gnome
Date: 20 Jan 19 - 03:48 AM

UK - Brexit referendum
US - Trump

:D

Subject: RE: BS: change 1 thing in the past
From: peteglasgow
Date: 20 Jan 19 - 04:11 AM

no television/computers/mobile phones

Subject: RE: BS: change 1 thing in the past
From: Joe Offer
Date: 20 Jan 19 - 04:14 AM

The 2016 U.S. election...

Subject: RE: BS: change 1 thing in the past
From: BobL
Date: 20 Jan 19 - 04:48 AM

Irish Home Rule, 1880s & -90s. Could have spared everyone a lot of Trouble.

Subject: RE: BS: change 1 thing in the past
From: gillymor
Date: 20 Jan 19 - 06:13 AM

Smother either young Adolf or the electoral college in their respective cribs, tough choice.

Subject: RE: BS: change 1 thing in the past
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 20 Jan 19 - 06:19 AM

Religion.

Subject: RE: BS: change 1 thing in the past
From: Donuel
Date: 20 Jan 19 - 08:19 AM

In realm of the impossible these are all honorable suggestions.

I am looking for the unintuitive small change that would have changed everything. Something like not giving the first and only CBN satellite transmission dish to Jim and Tammy Faye Baker.

Subject: RE: BS: change 1 thing in the past
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 20 Jan 19 - 08:25 AM

A very small but very useful change would have been for a different sperm to get to the egg that was destined to become half of Margaret Thatcher.

Subject: RE: BS: change 1 thing in the past
From: Bill D
Date: 20 Jan 19 - 10:03 AM

Mitochondrial Eve being eaten by a lion at the age of 7.

Subject: RE: BS: change 1 thing in the past
From: Bee-dubya-ell
Date: 20 Jan 19 - 10:41 AM

I don't think eliminating one specific individual or event from the past would necessarily guarantee a more positive outcome in the present or future. Events arise from complicated sets of preconditions, not the actions of individuals. Killing a young Adolph Hitler would not have prevented WWII or its attendant atrocities. The conditions which precipitated Hitler's rise were such that someone of a similar personality type would probably have wound up leading Germany anyway. It's even possible that a different German leader could have won the war.

Science fiction literature is littered with the negative consequences of well-intended alterations of the past. Read Stephen King's 11/22/63 or Ken Grimwood's Replay for examples.

Subject: RE: BS: change 1 thing in the past
From: Mossback
Date: 20 Jan 19 - 10:51 AM

2016 election? Hardly.

The 1980 election and the Reagan/Gingrich/Norquist axis began the long devolution of the Republican Party into the lying sack of racist, authoritarian, gutless, amoral asshole wonders it is today.

Trump is just a symptom.

Subject: RE: BS: change 1 thing in the past
From: Bee-dubya-ell
Date: 20 Jan 19 - 11:02 AM

Heck, Bill, if we're going to feed Mitochondrial Eve to a lion, why not go back even further and eliminate that big rock that wiped out the dinosaurs? Then evolution would have taken an entirely different path. Intelligent dinosaur descendants, not humans, would be the dominant species. And they probably would have achieved a level of advancement equal to present-day humans several million years ago. If they didn't manage to destroy themselves and/or the planet along the way, their civilization would be advanced beyond our wildest imaginings.

Subject: RE: BS: change 1 thing in the past
From: Donuel
Date: 20 Jan 19 - 11:06 AM

There are hundreds of SciFi plots that involves this concept and failed attempts to correct a perceived mistake from Dr Who to all the imagined temporal agents good and bad.

Technology changes things more easily than changing human beings.
Changing a transmission dish changes both.

Bill D-You said the Earth is better off without us. Perhaps but there is still the possible future sapien species better choices.

Subject: RE: BS: change 1 thing in the past
From: JMB
Date: 20 Jan 19 - 11:37 AM

I would change it to somehow make it so the Jacobites were not defeated at the Battle of Culloden. Enough said.

Subject: RE: BS: change 1 thing in the past
From: Donuel
Date: 20 Jan 19 - 12:03 PM

Mossback, Jim and Tammy Faye steered 50+ million votes to Reagan.
The PTL fortune eventually was put in the hands of Jerry Falwell.
It is selfish that I would choose my own nation's political evolution to be changed and not change a global catastrophe but it has lead us to this dangerous Trump era.

Subject: RE: BS: change 1 thing in the past
From: Mossback
Date: 20 Jan 19 - 01:02 PM

Ah, but then Trump IS a global catastrophe....

Subject: RE: BS: change 1 thing in the past
From: Thompson
Date: 20 Jan 19 - 01:35 PM

I don't know that killing Hitler wouldn't have prevented the Holocaust; I think it would. He was the one that directed all the free-floating hatred at the Jews, surely?

I think I'd go back and give antibiotics to Prince Arthur, the elder brother of Henry VIII, and then if necessary give IVF to his bride Catherine of Aragon. Most of his family and associates were pretty unpleasant, but Henry took the biscuit.

As for Home Rule, that was only like a fancy county council; it wasn't going to be enough - Ireland was going to be independent one way or the other. But perhaps if England had immediately recognised and accepted the massive vote for independence that was the 1918 election, and above all had not put its fingers in the pot and insisted on partition, it would have been a lot better for Ireland. Most of Ireland's 20th-century problems came about through partition. Ditto with India and Pakistan - as explained in a recent New York Times piece.

Subject: RE: BS: change 1 thing in the past
From: gillymor
Date: 20 Jan 19 - 04:20 PM

It'd be nice to have a do over on the Treaty of Versailles, as well. Something less punitive would have averted a lot of human suffering.

Subject: RE: BS: change 1 thing in the past
From: Donuel
Date: 20 Jan 19 - 07:14 PM

Yup.
Don't poke an insane bear.

Subject: RE: BS: change 1 thing in the past
From: gnu
Date: 22 Jan 19 - 03:14 PM

The 1974 Bank Of Canada Act. The 1934 Act was just fine. Now, we're screwed.

Subject: RE: BS: change 1 thing in the past
From: meself
Date: 22 Jan 19 - 03:18 PM

Have some wealthy burgher buy young Adolf's landscapes for far more than they were worth - and commission more .....

Subject: RE: BS: change 1 thing in the past
From: Nick
Date: 22 Jan 19 - 04:07 PM

I'd stop that butterfly beating its wings in Brazil as it seems to be the cause of everything

Subject: RE: BS: change 1 thing in the past
From: Donuel
Date: 22 Jan 19 - 04:16 PM

Good point. An innocent small event in the midst of everything else can give unexpected results.

It reminds me of the poem 'for the lack of a nail a war was lost'.

Subject: RE: BS: change 1 thing in the past
From: Mrrzy
Date: 22 Jan 19 - 04:57 PM

Europeans who did not want to take over what they "discovered"

Subject: RE: BS: change 1 thing in the past
From: Bill D
Date: 22 Jan 19 - 08:11 PM

Donuel.. I didn't actually say that Earth would be better off without us. My vague point was that we would have had a different M-Eve, and 'maybe' different descendants would have done things differently.
   There were other humans when Eve lived... some of them would have bred with different mates and Eve² would have been it.

Subject: RE: BS: change 1 thing in the past
From: meself
Date: 22 Jan 19 - 10:25 PM

Not just the war - but the 'kingdom' was lost.

Subject: RE: BS: change 1 thing in the past
From: Rapparee
Date: 23 Jan 19 - 09:36 PM

I would have also shot the deputy.

Subject: RE: BS: change 1 thing in the past
From: Dave the Gnome
Date: 24 Jan 19 - 04:14 AM

I would have given Mary and Joseph the bridal suite at the inn. That would have buggered the story up :-)

Subject: RE: BS: change 1 thing in the past
From: saulgoldie
Date: 24 Jan 19 - 07:47 AM

I have often thought that the most profound time to have changed the human trajectory would have been the modern beginning of using oil in its many forms. Combustion, petrochemicals, and its profound influence on geopolitics.

So my change would be that in the very beginning of the era of wider use of oil, say, the late 1800s, that something was discovered in oil's nature that made it totally unusable. And that there was no technology that could even come remotely close to making it safely usable.

As noted elsewhere in this thread, the outcomes would still be a mixture of pluses and minuses. But it seems to me that at least there would be vastly fewer humans and that our impact on the Earth would be vastly lower.

Very interesting thread!

Saul

Subject: RE: BS: change 1 thing in the past
From: Senoufou
Date: 24 Jan 19 - 08:07 AM

Hahaha Dave! More than once, during one of my Nativity Plays with 'ad lib' script, the child playing the innkeeper has muffed it.

Joseph: Have you got a room for us please? My wife here is very tired.
Innkeeper: Yes of course I have. Please come in!

(Gah! Seated at the piano, I'm tearing my hair out)

Subject: RE: BS: change 1 thing in the past
From: Jack Campin
Date: 24 Jan 19 - 08:17 AM

An early mutation in the coding for the human brain that would have prevented anything being mentally categorized as personal property.

Subject: RE: BS: change 1 thing in the past
From: Donuel
Date: 24 Jan 19 - 10:33 AM

Change oil development and there goes WW1&2 as we know it.
Going from coal to solar and wind sounds good.

Jack that sounds like American Indian culture.

Subject: RE: BS: change 1 thing in the past
From: SPB-Cooperator
Date: 24 Jan 19 - 10:39 AM

Remove A50 from the Lisbon treaty.

Subject: RE: BS: change 1 thing in the past
From: BobL
Date: 25 Jan 19 - 03:56 AM

Sen, I hard a similar story - Joseph recovered the situation, emerging a few seconds later saying "Don't you ever clean your inn? It's filthy! I'd sooner sleep in the stable!"

Subject: RE: BS: change 1 thing in the past
From: Mrrzy
Date: 25 Jan 19 - 07:47 AM

What is the scifi novel where they go into space and when they come back it's to the Celts are running Europe and the Native Americans are in charge over here?

Subject: RE: BS: change 1 thing in the past
From: olddude
Date: 25 Jan 19 - 12:16 PM

Jello never existed

Subject: RE: BS: change 1 thing in the past
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 25 Jan 19 - 02:30 PM

Change one thing in history and you can be certain you won't ever have come into existence.

Looking round the world today I sometimes feel some daft or malicious or pillock from the future must have been playing around and messing up things.

Subject: RE: BS: change 1 thing in the past
From: Rapparee
Date: 25 Jan 19 - 07:24 PM

Welcome Back, Olddude!

Subject: RE: BS: change 1 thing in the past
From: olddude
Date: 26 Jan 19 - 10:56 AM

Thats mean rap lol and lime green the worst

Subject: RE: BS: change 1 thing in the past
From: Ebbie
Date: 28 Jan 19 - 03:51 AM

"Change one thing in history and you can be certain you won't ever have come into existence".Kevin, not necessarily. Even I- the creator/discoverer of this thought- can't quite grasp it but something tells me that if I, for instance, had not been born, I would have been born some other person and therefore, still I. (Do you follow that?)

Subject: RE: BS: change 1 thing in the past
From: Donuel
Date: 28 Jan 19 - 10:14 AM

Rod Serling rang this bell about a dozen times when ever he needed a quick plot.
A different 'I' is easy to imagine. In fact it is preferable to imagine it in new situations. It is what actors do for a living.

Subject: RE: BS: change 1 thing in the past
From: olddude
Date: 28 Jan 19 - 02:02 PM

Yes but world peace can be accomplished if jello never existed

Subject: RE: BS: change 1 thing in the past
From: Dave the Gnome
Date: 29 Jan 19 - 05:07 AM

Whirled peas instead of Jello?

Subject: RE: BS: change 1 thing in the past
From: Jos
Date: 29 Jan 19 - 06:09 AM

I have never heard of 'whirled peas', but if they are the same as 'processed peas', then I agree - the world (well, my world) would be a better place without them, even if it doesn't bring about world peace.

Subject: RE: BS: change 1 thing in the past
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 29 Jan 19 - 06:48 AM

The world would not be worth living in without mushy peas.

Subject: RE: BS: change 1 thing in the past
From: Mrrzy
Date: 29 Jan 19 - 10:57 AM

What I would most like to change happened in 1983 so many of us, me included, would still exist.

Subject: RE: BS: change 1 thing in the past
From: robomatic
Date: 30 Jan 19 - 06:42 PM

Dan Bern:

"God Said No"

Subject: RE: BS: change 1 thing in the past
From: Donuel
Date: 01 Feb 19 - 03:11 PM

Because God said No



This Thread Has Been Closed

Subject: RE: BS: change 1 thing in the past
From: olddude
Date: 01 Feb 19 - 05:24 PM

Mushy peas in jello now that is the stuff of nightmares and farts

Subject: RE: BS: change 1 thing in the past
From: Donuel
Date: 01 Feb 19 - 07:54 PM

professor, Fresh peas are delicious and sweet. Every other form of peas should be illegal.

Fresh jello is cow hooves.

Subject: RE: BS: change 1 thing in the past
From: Doug Chadwick
Date: 02 Feb 19 - 10:38 AM

So my change would be that in the very beginning of the era of wider use of oil, say, the late 1800s, that something was discovered in oil's nature that made it totally unusable. And that there was no technology that could even come remotely close to making it safely usable.

That's the major part of my working life down the pan. Keep your changes to yourself, thank you very much!

DC

Subject: RE: BS: change 1 thing in the past
From: Stanron
Date: 02 Feb 19 - 12:10 PM

I seem to remember that Mr Diesel's original compression engine was designed to run on peanut oil. Mined oil came later. If mineral oil hadn't come along vegetable oils would have done the job but farmers would have been better off.

Subject: RE: BS: change 1 thing in the past
From: olddude
Date: 03 Feb 19 - 06:54 PM

Dc but then countries would have to find something else to fight about

Subject: RE: BS: change 1 thing in the past
From: Doug Chadwick
Date: 03 Feb 19 - 07:35 PM

There has plenty to fight about from the battle of Jericho up to the American Civil War before oil came into the equation.

DC

Subject: RE: BS: change 1 thing in the past
From: Mrrzy
Date: 04 Feb 19 - 11:06 AM

Plus we love plastics, right?