So, another take on killing Hitler

[conuly]

Enjoy!

I'm not sure killing Hitler would be all that catastrophic, though I suspect it'd be ultimately ineffective. Like I said back on the XKCD feed page, the only way to stop all the various genocides is to go back far enough to start from scratch and get it right this time, hopefully without any messy time loops. I hate time loops. They confuse the narrative terribly.

(Would altering history so dramatically that all the genocided people and genocidal people never existed in the first place in and of itself constitute some sort of mega-genocide? And will it all even out if we at least manage to save some mammoths in the process?)

Comments

[elenbarathi.livejournal.com]

If the "multi-verse theory" is correct, so that apparent time-travel is just switching to a parallel time-stream, there's not much point in time-traveling. Particularly if the odds of ever finding your own time-line again are one to infinity-minus-one.

We definitely contributed to the extinction of the megafauna once we learned to hunt with fire but I think even if we hadn't come along, they wouldn't necessarily lasted. Too big, too specialized; 'diminishing returns'. Of course, they might not have gone extinct, but rather evolved into more efficient forms, if they'd had the chance.

We'll never stop war, plague, starvation and genocide until we find some better way of keeping our numbers down.

[conuly]

If the "multi-verse theory" is correct, so that apparent time-travel is just switching to a parallel time-stream, there's not much point in time-traveling.

Well, you might find yourself happier somewhere else. Let other people suffer, you're in the place where you're happy.

We'll never stop war, plague, starvation and genocide until we find some better way of keeping our numbers down.

I think if we'd started with workable contraception earlier (and less silly religious prohibitions on same) then we'd be in a better position now. The worldwide birth rate continues to drop, even in places where it was historically quite high. I don't think I'm stretching too far to say that people in general don't want more kids than they can feed and, especially nowadays, educate.