If you could do one, would you rather change the past or the future?

[dustybiker2]

This could be to better your life or those around you. Whatever thoughts come to you. No wrong answers.

[GuyAnswersGirls123]

I have zero interest in changing the past. I don't understand what changing the future means exactly since I don't know what the future will bring to know what I'd be changing about it [*].

[*] Unless I could foresee the future, but then foreseeing it would already change it unless foreseeing the future is embedded into the future, but then so too would changing it be a part of the future if I could change it, and so I don't really see how we can change the future.

[GuyAnswersGirls123]

I could see changing the past hypothetically. If we imagine life and the universe as a simulation, we could hypothetically go back and change some parameters and get a brand new simulation. Actually the outcomes over a sufficient period of time would likely be radically different (chaos theory). Even tweaking a seemingly insignificant variable in the past might become quite significant when cascaded over years. I might be dead right now, for example, if I tweaked something in my past. Very likely I wouldn't be married to my wife who I love so dearly. Hence I have no interest in changing my past.

Yet I can't see how we can change the future since it's destined to unfold a certain way unless we change present parameters but then the changing of those parameters in the present would be embedded as a part of the future.

[dustybiker2]

Choices in present change and effect the future. Moving house, etc.

[GuyAnswersGirls123]

The way I look at things is not so much that changing parameters in the near-present changes the future but that it is the future. That's not necessarily to completely disregard metaphysical free will but a way to look at it is linear vs. branching paths. When the future is unknown and we can't backtrack, we can only carve a linear path through it. There is no branching as I see it unless we backtrack and change the path. So whatever linear path we carve through the future, that is the future as I see it.

[GuyAnswersGirls123]

If we could branch from the known as in we can perfectly foresee (not merely predict) at least one outcome in the future already to deviate and choose another, then from a sort type of philosophical standpoint the future in this case is the past, and our branching is still based on the antecedent. It's not knowing the future that makes the future, the future, as I see it, and knowing the past that makes the past, the past.

[GuyAnswersGirls123]

I might have explained that poorly. Had to sleep on it!

Let's assume an deterministic universe for the moment. In that case, all things in the future are predestined and therefore cannot change, even if we could hypothetically time travel and change the past, that would be embedded as part of the predestined future. That's a simple case: a deterministic universe means all things yet to unfold are predetermined.

However, let's consider an indeterministic universe whether as a result of metaphysical/supernatural free will or quantum indeterminacy or anything else. In that case, the future is not predestined and we might think of it as though we have the ability to change based on our actions given that they are not governed by antecedent causes.

I would claim we still can't change the future in an indeterministic universe because the future would then be indeterminate until it occurs, and it can only occur one way (at least to our consciousness), and once it occurs that one way, it cannot occur any other way as it is now in the past.

Does that make sense? It's admittedly a bit of a mind twister and I'm not used to articulating it before. Yet it never made sense to me that we can change the future. We can only change the present and, if time traveling hypothetically existed, the past.

[dustybiker2]

Yes, it makes sense. I like to think if it is predetermined that we at least have a dozen options to select from at each crossroad. To think we might be set on a solid course and every regret I have was meant to have happened.. that would suck.

[GuyAnswersGirls123]

Something that's determinate and predestined cannot change since it's constant. Something that's indeterminate and not predestined cannot change since it's indeterminate; something undefined can't change because it's not defined.

[dustybiker2]

Unless there are other factors of the universe that we are yet aware of. .

[GuyAnswersGirls123]

Or to put it in a prettier way, something that's shapeless cannot be changed in shape since it hasn't taken on a shape yet. It can only be changed in shape once it has taken on a shape, but then the shape it took on would be in the past.

[dustybiker2]

Shapes. You must know that the universe likes to repeat patterns. The shell shape for instance. What are your thoughts on that?

[GuyAnswersGirls123]

Fractals? I think they're very orderly and lovely and often suggest simplicity at the heart of what appears to be great complexity. For theists, I often think this is a sign that there's order and harmony in the universe, not just "random chaos", and an indicator of a design of sorts.

[GuyAnswersGirls123]

Also apologies, I was mulling over how to explain the above comments and missed yours in the middle of writing mine!

>> To think we might be set on a solid course and every regret I have was meant to have happened.. that would suck.

Admittedly this is the way I've always leaned since I was a boy (hard determinism) and there were many times during which I thought it sucks if it's the case. On the flip side, it's kind of a prerequisite in a lot of areas of science, like science concerned with studying and predicting human behavior (psychology, criminology, sociology, etc), that human behavior is governed by antecedent causes, or at least governed enough that we can start to predict what caused, say, a human to turn into a serial killer.

I never really thought it made much of a difference though since the future is unknown. Either it's meant to happen one way and we discover it as it unfolds or it unfolds in an endless possible variety of ways and we still discover how it unfolds the one way it will for us. Either way when the metaphorical wave of fate or not fate hits us, it's worth swimming against it whether or not we're fated to do so.

[exitseven]

I would change rthe past. It would be like this.

https://www.youtube.com/embed/wZ2XuIPOoxE

[dustybiker2]

Just filming this must have been a riot.

[exitseven]

yes, the Msrvel movies wer egood because they had humor.

[exitseven]

Thanks for the MHO😎

[dustybiker2]

Welcome

[douride2]

I have 2 life changing occurrences from my past I would love to go back to & change. One was a near death experience that changed my life forever.

[dustybiker2]

I'm glad we still have you here with us.

[exitseven]

@dustybiker2 @douride2 I am too.

[douride2]

Thanks for a MHO.

[dustybiker2]

You are welcome

[TrueConfection]

I'd change the future. Tomorrow, I'll wake up to a clean house, breakfast, hot coffee, and a happy family. ❤

[dustybiker2]

I love this.

[loveslongnails]

I don't know what the future is going to be, so I wouldn't want to change it unless I did! I wouldn't mess with changing the past unless there was a way to wipe out human stupidity and greed. That alone would take care of most of the problems throughout history.

[dustybiker2]

Smart. I agree too.

[loveslongnails]

GMTA

[abc3643]

The past.

THIS TIME... I would pick the WINNING lottery numbers (now that I know what they are)!

[dustybiker2]

Hold onto that lol

[serious]

The past for sure. That is because changing the past and undoing many wrong things will automatically change the present and future as the chain of events connected to what exactly was corrected/undone will change as well.

[TheSpaceGnome]

There is no such thing as the past or future in the linear sense.

[dustybiker2]

This is gag. I have all the power to encourage fantasy in my own questions. 🙂

[TheSpaceGnome]

Yeah but even in a fantasy context, they tend to have branching timelines to account for paradoxes.
Whats your canon on that issue? if you are making up the rules, I'd need tp know them in order to answer the question.

[dustybiker2]

None. People are free to reply how they want. I honestly won't judge. I get humbled people want to reply.

[Miah04]

Neither. God's plans are God's plans. I trust his judgment

[dustybiker2]

That's fair.

[Miah04]

Yeah. I know sometimes even i bum out questions 😂

[dustybiker2]

Keeps it fresh

[Wiredone]

The future is unknown so there's no way to change it. What you do in the present depicts the future.

[dustybiker2]

So in this way.. you can effect the future.

[Wiredone]

What you do today, does affect the future

[menina]

I would change my past. If I could do that, my life would be better now. I would definitely be a different person and I would be in a better place.

[sirderpsalot123]

Change the past, way more power to affect the futures you would have seen.

[sirderpsalot123]

I read this as "would you rather change the past or see into the future"

[SunnyRS]

I would go with past because if I change my past I am changing my future as well.

[lightbulb27]

welcome back.

the past.

[dustybiker2]

Thank you 😎

[worldscolide]

Future. My past is what makes me, me..

[dustybiker2]

Excellent point.

[laly520]

change the past so the future gets changed

[jahaims]

If you change the past you change the future

[Fuentes]

Nothing lol

[dustybiker2]

What about your health?

[Fuentes]

How can I possibly change that lol

[dustybiker2]

I don't know. But given the chance I would look into it lol

[Nice222]

Hmmmm

[dustybiker2]

It's the thought that counts.