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Originally posted by watchitburn
reply to post by Magister
Your thread title was kind of misleading, well for me at least. When I think of the "Big Red Button" I immediately associate it with launching all the nukes. Yes I would push the hell out of it.
But I digress,
To answer your question, I would still push the button. But to decide on one time period is hard, I think I would have to go back to 1890 or so to help out Nicola Tesla.
He was brilliant, but I think he may have needed some guidance.
Originally posted by Hopechest
I would go back to a time long before the dinosaurs went extinct and proclaim myself Overlord of the Earth. I would then be eaten by a hungry dinosaur.
Originally posted by ganjoa
Question for the OP -
Are you resetting all of time, to be lived-over again, or is your concept as some poster have assumed to be like a time machine where you could return to the present day with your historical experience intact?
In your proposal and other's there is a certain "romantic" notion regarding bold new ventures and a bit of future impact as well. It seems to me that maximizing impact on the future requires the leverage of many intervening years. Smaller more do-able actions can have great impact over a longer number of years. For example, ANY change made in the pre-big-bang universe would have a tremendous impact on today's universe - or a small change, perhaps to a hominid we call "Lucy" would completely affect our own evolution.
That having been said, it's difficult to choose a time to "reset" our history. The pre-Sumerian through Egyptian
period and into the Greek period is intensely interesting from the perspective of sociological and cultural development. Perhaps the mysteries of the pyramids could finally be revealed. Another period would be at the beginning of the renaissance and maybe end up being the source of DaVinci's technology development ideas.
The problem is assessing your results: unless you're using the time machine construct it would be impossible to see the results of your actions. The problem with resetting all history and reliving it is that we all have to go along for the ride except for the guy pushing the button who gets to experience the whole reset phenomena.
Conceptually it's really just the creation of an alternate timeline, which isn't quite as far fetched now as it was a few decades back (at least we have the math for it).
ganjoa