It appears that only Hitler can kill Hitler, and perhaps, Chuck Norris.
Evidence suggests Chuck Norris didn't manage to kill Hitler.
Why You Can’t Travel Back in Time and Kill Hitler
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Re: Why You Can’t Travel Back in Time and Kill Hitler
#12Re: Why You Can’t Travel Back in Time and Kill Hitler
#13The true reason is probably much simpler than any of those considering war has a profound impact wherever it strikes. WW1&2 were triggered by a long chain of events and itself sparked another chain of ongoing events, affecting great many lives dead or not (including myself). If it all possible, you may have to mate with an ancestor to get your own life back.
Re: Why You Can’t Travel Back in Time and Kill Hitler
#14I hate explanations like "you can't change history". It's a self-fulfilling prophecy. You don't kill Hitler because you didn't kill Hitler.
Re: Why You Can’t Travel Back in Time and Kill Hitler
#15The true reason is probably much simpler than any of those considering war has a profound impact wherever it strikes. WW1&2 were triggered by a long chain of events and itself sparked another chain of ongoing events, affecting great many lives dead or not (including myself). If it all possible, you may have to mate with an ancestor to get your own life back.
That's true for everything, with the whole butterfly effect. Just opening the door to the time machine and walking outside is enough to change history completely. Imagine someone has sex in a different position or at a slightly different time. A different sperm reaches the egg, a different person is born. Not only will that affect all their descendants (which is pretty much the entire human race after a few centuries), but all the people they would have known or interacted with.
Re: Why You Can’t Travel Back in Time and Kill Hitler
#16Doesn't it stand to reason that if it were ever possible to travel back in time and kill Hitler that this would've already happened?
It may not be possible to have a stable timeline that involves time travel i.e. if time travel exists, someone always ends up travelling back and messing up the timeline so that time travel isn't discovered. If timelines which include time travel are inherently unstable then the timeline(assuming there's only) would stabilise when time travel isn't used at any point. This does leave the door open for time travel tourism though, where you just go back and observe but without changing history in any way. The method of time travel would actually have to prevent changing the past though otherwise the potential for abuse would lead you back to the unstable timeline issue.
Re: Why You Can’t Travel Back in Time and Kill Hitler
#17This whole issue leads to a dark place (intellectually). Would you be alive today without WW2 or without the Holocaust?
I wouldn't. How am I supposed to feel about that?
Re: Why You Can’t Travel Back in Time and Kill Hitler
#18If you subscribe to the multi-verse theory, then you can. Except when you "return" to your own time, you are forced to travel to a present where you did kill Hitler. Your own original time, where you didn't hill Hitler continues on as it was except you can no longer travel there.
Killer Hitler is like throwing a railroad switch and changing tracks, once entropy send you down the new track, there's no hopping back across. And even if you could you'd just be going to a present time where you failed to kill Hitler.
Re: Why You Can’t Travel Back in Time and Kill Hitler
#19"One of the bylaws of the International Association of Time Travelers states that you can't kill Hitler. The problem is, everybody kills Hitler on their first trip. This leaves more experienced time travelers the onerous task of undoing the historical edits of n00bs." http://www.tor.com/stories/2011/08/wikihistory
That's hilarious, but the justification they give for not killing Hitler is unfortunately pretty weak:
"no Hitler means no Third Reich, no World War II, no rocketry programs, no electronics, no computers, no time travel."
But still worth a read!
Re: Why You Can’t Travel Back in Time and Kill Hitler
#20The true reason is probably much simpler than any of those considering war has a profound impact wherever it strikes. WW1&2 were triggered by a long chain of events and itself sparked another chain of ongoing events, affecting great many lives dead or not (including myself). If it all possible, you may have to mate with an ancestor to get your own life back.
That's true for everything, with the whole butterfly effect. Just opening the door to the time machine and walking outside is enough to change history completely. Imagine someone has sex in a different position or at a slightly different time. A different sperm reaches the egg, a different person is born. Not only will that affect all their descendants (which is pretty much the entire human race after a few centuries…
It's the opposite of the butterfly effect, he's more likely arguing that WW2 was built on the frustrations and ideologies thrust forth as a result of WW1, so merely killing one angry officer isn't necessarily going to avoid one or another catastrophe involving war and genocide. WW2 might in fact have been unavoidable (not sure whether this is true or not, but it might be). Some other racist charismatic dude might just take his place, ready to harness whatever ill will there was around him/her. (Well, probably "him".)