OK - this isn't science and is really stupid but bfd. Which power would you like to have for one month - be able to become invisible at will or go back in time to any point in the past and return safely whenever you desired? [btw - you can't manipulate anything in the past]
Invisibility.....I could change the present, and thus the future. You do not allow me to change the past, might as well read about it.
invisibility please even if you could change the past heck even if you could go to the future - - - Updated - - - well if you weer in to history you could see if whats written is actually accurate as well as seeing things no ones has written about
Since you can't really change anything if you go back in time I would definitely choose that one out of the two.
Doesn't make any sense. Clearly, going back in time is the most powerful mechanism to control the future if it isn't to your liking. However, if you impose the artificial constraint that "you can't change anything", then you must impose the same observer status to the invisible man or woman (i.e. no coercion through punches in the face, tackling or interaction). Thus, both observers are useless and incapable of changing the future to your liking (i.e. what is the point of either technology?).
Being invisible would be fun for a few minutes, but I think it would start to feel pretty creepy pretty quickly. I think I'd like to travel into the past, though. I'd like to see the origin of life, although I'd have to take a scuba tank so I could breathe the air back then. Maybe watch the Chicxulub Asteroid come in.... I'd like to see the mid-continent rift zone tearing apart 1.1 billion years ago, and see the massive volcanoes, taller than Everest, stretching the entire length of what is now the North Shore of Lake Superior... see the glaciers plowing down through Wisconsin.... the last eruption of Yellowstone.... see the first Super Bowl.... Krakatoa.... the Tonga eruption.... the moment the first bird took flight for the very first time - i'd love to see the "WTF!" look on his face..... Yeah, I think I could definitely fill up that month pretty easily. Sign me up for time travel.
I'd like to see the "discovery" of fire, or humankind's first use of it as a technology... - - - Updated - - - I'd go to Woodstock!!!!!!
I would choose the most profitable power. Going back in time you could find the locations of buried treasures which are undiscovered in your time. You could also take pictures, hide them somewhere for hundreds of years, and then sell them. You could publish a time travelers edition of a playboy like magazine. I have only scratched the surface of possibilities. As for the invisibility, you could spy to gain insider information on which stocks to buy, you could become an assassin, or a jewel thief. There are so many possibilities to profit from these two powers. I would have to do much thinking in order to decide which one I would want.
But there wouldn't there be any conceivable way to know whether you'd changed the past or not. Any interaction, no matter how slight, might create a cascade of changes which would be totally undetectable no matter how extreme the consequences. Because when you returned, the "new" past would be all that there ever had been! So what would "going back in time" entail, if you couldn't eat, couldn't drink, and couldn't pee, for a month? Sounds like suicide to me.
Well, now that you mention it . . - - - Updated - - - I just added that in order to eliminate the usual paradoxical what ifs.
In that case, going into the past would be far more profitable. If you choose invisibility, the best you could do would be to rob a few banks during your month. Chump change, and dishonest to boot. But if you travel into the past, during your month you could set up a trust fund, require the trustees to follow specific investment instructions, and make your future self the beneficiary at some defined date. A very modest initial investment (say, $100 in 1920), combined with appropriate research in Wall Street Journal, would be worth hundreds of millions by the time you returned.
When I asked myself your question, my only answer, so far, is self gratification. You could see and know things lost to time if you cared enough to be present and visible at a certain place in history just to know the truth of a matter. Like, where treasures were buried, for instance. Self-gratification. Or, you could suddenly appear in gentlemens clubs. Self-gratfication.
That's what I was thinking. Use a couple days to set up sweet investments back when each was an ipo and that would take care of you pretty well (ok, VERY WELL) when your month of time traveling has expired. Then I'd use the rest to bop around various eras and epochs and just check it all out. I'd like to meet James Clerk Maxwell while he was working on his Treatise on Electricity and Magnetism. Give him a few pointers. lol That raises the problem that when we travel back in time using the time machine, we'd still be in the same location. That means I'd have to use the rest of my month up traveling to Scotland on a steamer. Bummer.
