Courageous Cockeyed Rum Theory
Or, is Time Travel Ethical?
We have had a basic understanding of the science and theory behind time for many years. Being the inquisitive people we are, many questions have been put forth about the potential activity of time travel (the ultimate Unintended Consequence platform).
Is travel in time even theoretically possible?
How could we do it?
How would we resolve the inevitable time paradox problems?
All valid questions for exploration when sitting around with friends on a Saturday night consuming mass quantities of Captain Courageous Cockeyed Rum Margarita Mai Tai’s… on an ice ball of course.
Okay, maybe I have weird friends, but you get the point… or maybe not. I don’t think I’ve actually gotten to the point yet.
What if We Remember?
I was flipping through TV channels looking for something benign and possibly even interesting to watch while I recovered from a bout of Captain Courageous overdosing. I ended up watching the movie, “Project Almanac” again. It had been many years since my first viewing, but this time I watched from a different perspective focused on unintended consequences (see what I did there?).
I realized that I didn’t really get the underlying point years ago. Now I do.
“Project Almanac” is yet another “found footage” rendition of the discovery of time travel by a small group of people who don’t, at least in the beginning, understand the ramifications of what they are doing. The story line of the movie is not important.
What is important to my tale here is that I was struck with one major point that goes way beyond the plot of the movie —> Those involved in the time travel REMEMBERED EVERYTHING.
No one else did. Only them.
This is fairly typical in time travel movies. Only those who travel remember all timelines and can compare the subtle and profound changes in the world resulting from their actions.
For everyone else, life is normal… same as it has always been from THEIR perspective.
THAT is the important point to remember as we move through this. To the rest of the world, nothing has changed.
Can We Remember the Question?
So this raises TWO questions specific to this aspect of time travel. (We’ll ignore paradox in our discussion because, honestly, I just don’t have the brainpower to mix the two discussions… too many Saturday without adult supervision I guess.) A few alternate scenarios to consider:
If ONLY the Time Travelers remember the changes, is it ethical for THEM to make decisions on how the world is shaped? Is it ethical for them to take advantage of a power that only they possess (right or wrong)? Even to make the world a better place. Or…
If NO ONE remembers the changes (not even the Time Travelers), does it really make a difference? Who would care? To everyone, THIS is the way the world always was.
Okay, I lied, there is a THIRD scenario. What if EVERYONE remembers? Everything. All changed versions of past and present.
Question 3
Let’s start with Question 3 as that one is the easiest. EVERYONE remembers.
RESULT: Chaos! Crisis! Insanity! End of the world kind of pandemonium. So, pretty much like all of us feel during presidential election years. Everything changes from what everyone remembers. Maybe it changes countless times depending on how much the travelers are screwing around to try and fix it. Or maybe chaos is the point. (Obvious ethical issues, but that is beyond the scope of this discussion.) Everyone knows the world has changed, but the Time Travelers are the only ones that know WHY our world keeps changing in inexplicable ways. How better to control and rule the world than to throw it into chaos with you being the only agent who knows why and how? Hmmmm…. Book idea? Wait! Rewind and erase that from your memory. I never said a word.
Quick! Next question…
Question 2
In Question 2, NOBODY remembers, not even the Travelers. Again, this one is fairly simple. To the Time Travelers, if THEY don’t remember the old past, it appears to them that NOTHING has changed.
Therefore, to them, Time Travel was a FAILURE!
Think about it. In their minds, time travel didn’t work. If they don’t remember then old world, then nothing changed from their perspective. In reality, they may have dramatically altered the world into something we would not even recognize, but none of them would ever know it. Neither would we.
It’s just the way things are. Good or bad. Happy or sad.
What is NOW is our REAL past, present, and future. WHY would anyone try to fix it? To those with time travel, it was a bust and just plain DID NOT WORK. Problem is, they might keep trying. Over and over and over again, trying to finally make it work. Always changing the world. Never knowing they succeeded.
How long would they keep trying to make it work? Hmmmm… another book… never mind, move on.
As to ethics, if they were scientifically pure and just trying to see if they could do it, one could argue in a theoretical setting (possibly alcohol laden) that ethics are not involved. It is simply scientific research that never worked… from their perspective. The disastrous results would never be recognized by anyone. No ethical choices could be made because time travel simply did not work from their perspective.
Question 1
In Question 1, the Time Travelers REMEMBER, but no one else does. Now, we get to some true questions about the ethical nature of time travel.
As is typical in the genre, in “Project Almanac” their first forays into Time Travel were experimental and experiential. Did it work? Could they change anything, just something small. The answer was yes. This led to larger experiments and eventually to winning the lottery and other large changes. As you can imagine, the ethical dilemmas began to mount exponentially at that point.
The main character ultimately used Time Travel for personal use to “get the girl”. They were now making decisions to impact the people and the world around them directly. How long before they were making decisions to “fix things” or “right wrongs”? Even with the best of intentions, how long before the laws of Unintended Consequences caught up with them?
IF they could guarantee that they would only do “good” for people AND that there would be NO Unintended Consequences as a result of that, then we might be able to argue the ethical use of Time Travel.
However, I now refer you to something called “the butterfly effect” (and the movie of the same name). Any change in a system (the timeline in this case) may result in unseen ripple effects of unknown magnitude and impact. I discussed this in detail in my post on the “What If Machine” so we can skip it all here. You should read that if you haven’t already. Yes, I admit it, I’m a nerd.
Suffice it to say that if you knowingly use Time Travel to say… save a woman from a car crash (the do good part), and she goes on later to accidentally run over and kill the guy who was about to develop a true free energy source that would have united the world, the ethics of saving that woman becomes eligible for discussion.
Incidentally, you would never even think about fixing this error because, in your world, the free energy source never happened. You would never know about the man because he died before doing his greater good. Unintended Consequences are a bitch sometimes.
It seems that there is no formula that allows for ethical use of a time machine if anyone knows they are using it or is aware of the changes. No matter how much someone is committed to the greater good, who are THEY to make such profound decisions, especially when they can never know the full extent of the changes that follow.
The Ethical Answer
In my questionable analysis based on unknowable theory, the only potentially ethical use of a Time Machine seems to be if NO ONE remembers anything (Question #2). NO ONE! Not even the Time Travelers.
If we had a real “What If Machine” to know all the results, the answer might be different, but a “What If” machine is far less likely than a Time Machine. I know. (Don’t ask.)
I wouldn’t recommend time travel, even in this case, as we could end up with Sloths being our overlords. After all, who would be more motivated to make others do all the work for them? Have you ever looked deep into their eyes? They are plotting something… I can tell (but that’s a different story). Point is, we’d never know that wasn’t the way it was supposed to be.
So… if no one would ever know… if we existed at all and believed the world to be exactly as it is supposed to be, would ethics be an issue? After all, Time Travelers were just experimenting. They believed the experiments failed. From their perspective, nothing had changed. So, were ethics violated?
I don’t think so. But ask me again next reality.
One Last Question
If I go back and rewrite this post, is that Time Travel?
Think about it for a moment. If you have already read this post, you will know that the story has changed. Your reality has now changed. But, for those who did not read the original post at the point in time that you did, the new version would be the original and only version to them.
Although we are on the same timeline, they would never know that a previous reality existed. I would have traveled back to a time before they read this story and changed its reality. Is their reality now changed from yours?
I don’t know.
Maybe the answer is in a few more Captain Courageous Cockeyed Rum Margarita Mai Tai’s.
I’ll let you know.
Or maybe I won’t.
Or maybe I will.
Did you feel that time ripple?
Or maybe you…
David Nemzoff
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Author of “Public Speaking for Kids, Tweens, and Teens - Confidence for Life!”
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