The Ethics of Replacing the Past with the Present

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Re: The Ethics of Replacing the Past with the Present

Postby Grimstone » Fri Aug 04, 2017 4:04 am

Doodle Dee. Snickers wrote:
Spoiler: show
While we're at it, let's discuss the merits of pissing through our fingers.

But for real, what you're suggesting wouldn't even work, because I should point out that you seem to think the enlightenment of today would somehow shine through their prejudices as we currently live in a world where Donald "Black people are genetically lazy" Trump is president, Jeff Beauregard "MLK's wife literally wrote a letter about what a racist asshole I am" Sessions III is the top law enforcement officer of the country, and there are rabid supporters who want to deport non-whites from the country who are a bloc almost large enough to get a candidate through a primary in a plurality.

You want to stop Jim Crow in the 50s? North Carolina was stopped not that long ago for trying to target black people with voter suppression while Democrats yell at Republicans about it (and ignore the informal school segregation happening in their backyards). Not too long ago, I seem to remember one of my family members yelling (and I quote) "Shut the fuck up, you dumb ni**er" to the radio when a clip of an Obama speech came on, then shortly after another of my family members yelled something similar at the screen when Beyonce dared to come on during the Superbowl and sing the National Anthem (I don't go to family gatherings anymore). Sending our information back to racists? LBJ should send an instruction manual forward to today about how the fuck he managed to do what he did during an era where southern politicians were still proudly calling back to their Confederate ancestors.

What you're suggesting and how you seem to view information is naive, is what I'm saying, since you seem to think we live in some world where racists are a dying breed. They're still here today, the same as they've always been here, and the same as they (frankly) probably always will be here.

We have all the information in the world at our fingertips and a solid half of our population will refuse to believe it. You can turn on Fox News tonight to hear Carlson Tucker wonder aloud why we allow people with non-Western values in the country (non-Western countries that are, not coincidentally, the ones that don't have white people in it) and host Sebastian "Don't ask me what this v. in my name stands for" Gorka, advisor to the president, to talk about immigration in what is definitely not a hardcore blowie session and then listen to many conservatives croon over what a brave intellectual he is. I literally have a lady I work with who will ask if a headline I read is fake news, even if it's just a piece on North Korea or something that no outlet would have reason to lie about.

People today have more capacity and ease to learn than ever before and happily remain ignorant (and, in the case of conservatives, some have started to revert backwards to the days of George Wallace and the John Birch Society of the fifties and sixties, so I don't know what you think sending them information from now is gonna do when the people of now are starting to think like that again anyways) whether that be refusing to believe factual evidence in an article or simply go on a Wiki rampage and learn some shit. So what do you think sending a slaveholder from the 1700s a book is gonna do?


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Re: The Ethics of Replacing the Past with the Present

Postby cmsellers » Fri Aug 04, 2017 5:40 pm

If I had a time machine, I'd go back to when there were about fourteen humans in existence and kill all the males so that any female who wanted a baby had to go through me. Then all of humanity would think like me.

Of course all of humanity would suffer from severe depression and be the result of incest, but hey: that's the price for greatness.
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Re: The Ethics of Replacing the Past with the Present

Postby D-LOGAN » Fri Aug 04, 2017 7:02 pm

Sounds good. Go for it.
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Re: The Ethics of Replacing the Past with the Present

Postby 52xMax » Sat Aug 05, 2017 6:19 pm

cmsellers wrote:If I had a time machine, I'd go back to when there were about fourteen humans in existence and kill all the males so that any female who wanted a baby had to go through me. Then all of humanity would think like me.

Of course all of humanity would suffer from severe depression and be the result of incest, but hey: that's the price for greatness.


There was no point at which there were only a handful of humans, you realize. And they were never concentrated in a small area either. So, presuming you could accomplish such a feat (by using guns or something, keep in mind these guys hunted mammoths and fought sabertooth tigers and shit, and they were used to run after some of the fastest animals for days until they dropped from exhaustion) you would have to care for each of the relatively vulnerable fertile females, especially during pregnancy and infancy of your entire offspring to make sure humanity survives and don't sucumb to predators, the environment and diseases...not to mention getting cuckolded by Neanderthals.
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Re: The Ethics of Replacing the Past with the Present

Postby cmsellers » Sat Aug 05, 2017 7:12 pm

So apparently I was getting confused with a possible bottleneck further back back when we were ape men.

And while I like my women short and hairy, I'm not sure I'd go quite that far. There was (probably) a population bottleneck in Homo sapiens, but there were still at least 10k people., which means at least 5k men to kill and probably 3k fertile women to knock up.

I still say my plan makes more sense than the OP's though.
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Re: The Ethics of Replacing the Past with the Present

Postby Anglerphobe » Sat Aug 05, 2017 7:22 pm

I think I would go back in time to solve the mystery of the Princes in the Tower, then bungle it and accidentally kill them, having to cover it up and return to the present as if I had been unsuccessful. Might have taken a stab at Caesar, too. It's not like it would have any timeline altering consequences if there was one more person giving it to him, and I'd love to use the line "Et me, buddy."
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Re: The Ethics of Replacing the Past with the Present

Postby CarrieVS » Sat Aug 05, 2017 7:44 pm

Anglerphobe wrote:I think I would go back in time to solve the mystery of the Princes in the Tower, then bungle it and accidentally kill them, having to cover it up and return to the present as if I had been unsuccessful. Might have taken a stab at Caesar, too. It's not like it would have any timeline altering consequences if there was one more person giving it to him, and I'd love to use the line "Et me, buddy."


I've got a bunch of things that need putting right by going back in time.

One is stopping HP Lovecraft from writing Through the Gates of the Silver Key because that wretched story (which he was reluctantly coerced into writing) ruins, utterly ruins, the ending of The Silver Key which was the most beautiful ending.

Another one is attending the Battle of Agincourt and making sure that the myth about the origin of the two fingers gesture actually happened.
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Re: The Ethics of Replacing the Past with the Present

Postby Deathclaw_Puncher » Sun Aug 06, 2017 2:49 am

cmsellers wrote:I still say my plan makes more sense than the OP's though.

My plan makes sense, given if it were possible to send information backwards in time in a way that was accessible to the human consciousness, then erasing scientific and social ignorance from history, and just have everybody ever have the knowledge of say, your average college level science and psychology textbooks, think of all the advancements that could come of that! But would it be ethical? Should people be left ignorant? Do people have a right to ignorance?
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Re: The Ethics of Replacing the Past with the Present

Postby Doodle Dee. Snickers » Sun Aug 06, 2017 4:34 pm

Deathclaw_Puncher wrote:Do people have a right to ignorance?


/me looks at current president.

ohimprettysurewehavearighttoignorance.

Also, beaming all that knowledge back means they will discover factories, nuclear weapons, and vehicles early enough to wipe humanity out before we make it to Nebuchadnezzer (sp? I'm on my phone). At the very least, Nero would have destroyed the world. Or failing that, Gandhi would nuke the world once he reached the atomic age.
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Re: The Ethics of Replacing the Past with the Present

Postby FaceTheCitizen » Sun Aug 06, 2017 5:29 pm

...
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Re: The Ethics of Replacing the Past with the Present

Postby Marcuse » Sun Aug 06, 2017 5:57 pm

My plan makes sense, given if it were possible to send information backwards in time in a way that was accessible to the human consciousness, then erasing scientific and social ignorance from history, and just have everybody ever have the knowledge of say, your average college level science and psychology textbooks, think of all the advancements that could come of that!


Holy run on sentences Batman! But this plan doesn't make sense because it relies on absolute statements that don't make any sense. In what sense would importing our scientific and social attitudes erase any ignorance at all? Take a 2000ml bucket with 100ml of water in it. You're proposing to add, at best, another 20ml of water to it, but you're speaking like it'd fill it completely.

But would it be ethical?


Absolutely not. It'd be a form of mind control designed to control people's attitudes. It would literally alter who these people were fundamentally, and would probably cause a high degree of cognitive dissonance and mental illness. We can't be sure because it's entirely impossible to actually do, so it's not something that would be comparable to anything in the real world, but I believe it would be directly harmful to those people regardless of the righteousness of the intention.

Should people be left ignorant?


Leaving aside the point that the proposal wouldn't do anything to remove ignorance, yes they should. Every experience in indoctrination and control of thought has pointed out that you cannot force people to think something they know is untrue, even where that knowledge is ultimately untrue. The only way to make people think like you is to convince them to, which relies on persuasive arguments and consent. Without that consent there's no point because they'd probably backslide as soon as they could.

Do people have a right to ignorance?


Insofar as rights are political assertions by governments as to what they will and will not do for their citizens, no people don't have a right to ignorance, any more than they have a right to knowledge. Describing it as a right suggests that ultimately, it's someone else's job to make sure these people know things, and I don't know how it's possible to ensure anything like that in any case. As an aside, that doesn't mean governments can't guarantee a right to education but that's not the same as a right to knowledge.
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Re: The Ethics of Replacing the Past with the Present

Postby Anglerphobe » Sun Aug 06, 2017 6:36 pm

The right to ignorance is already a present issue in some places. Uncontacted peoples drag up the issue (among others) quite frequently in areas where their territory has come to intersect modern civilisation. People are generally down with providing disaster relief and stuff but vaccines, antibiotics and literacy are clearly out for advocates of preserving their isolation from the rest of the world.
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Re: The Ethics of Replacing the Past with the Present

Postby Windy » Mon Aug 14, 2017 2:52 am

I have a personal thing for preserving history. The internet annoys me because it's a part of history now, but things get deleted and lost all the time.
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Re: The Ethics of Replacing the Past with the Present

Postby cmsellers » Mon Aug 14, 2017 2:57 am

Windy wrote:I have a personal thing for preserving history. The internet annoys me because it's a part of history now, but things get deleted and lost all the time.

http://www.archive.org
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Re: The Ethics of Replacing the Past with the Present

Postby Crimson847 » Mon Aug 14, 2017 5:12 am

After reading the thread, I agree with Marcuse and Doodles. Imparting knowledge to someone (that is to say, teaching them something) is the same thing as mind controlling them to do what you want, and we haven't made any social progress at all in human history so teaching people things is pointless anyway.
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