I want to make it clear to everyone in all 52 U.S. states that time travel is impossible.

[lauren@mastodon.laurenweinstein.org]

I want to make it clear to everyone in all 52 U.S. states that time travel is impossible. Thank you for your attention to this matter.

[melissadancey@mastodon.au]

@lauren If time travel were possible, going back 20 -100 years ago! Wouldn't make a difference what's going on today.. People would try to warn about the horror that lies ahead, but the majority of people won't listen to these warnings and predictions. About Trump having his "demi god worshipped and Marie Antoinette moments!" due to his incompetence and corruption. Millions of Americans and the rest of the world are suffering.
Going into the future, 50- 100 years from now and reading history books about the impact of this period of time. It won't change the reality and problems of today, as this time period is a fixed point in time and the universe.

[lauren@mastodon.laurenweinstein.org]

@melissadancey That's not how temporal adjustments are done. You don't try to convince anyone of anything. You make calculated changes yourself (in conjunction with your team and appropriate approvals) to adjust the timeline. Usually, you keep your own presence as minimal as possible to avoid uncalculated variations. Calculated changes can be extremely small -- we call them MNCs -- Minimum Necessary Changes. These can be as simple as moving a can a few inches on a shelf. I'm not at liberty to go into more detail about this.

[resuna@ohai.social]

@lauren @melissadancey

The butterfly effect is a bitch. It's basically impossible to interact with the timeline before your birth without keeping yourself from being born. In _A Sound of Thunder_... after the first trip to the Cretaceous humanity would never have evolved.

I think Charlie Stross's "Palimpsest" is the only novel I can recall that takes this seriously.