If you could be sent to the past, would you change the course of history?

Hm, I've been wondering this in the past few days. The thought is just running around my head. @_@ If you could be sent to the Ice Age/paleolithic age, would you teach everyone how to light a fire?



If you'd be sent before Newton’s time, would you present the people the 3 laws of motion and get the credit, instead of Newton?



Would you make a telephone [in case you know how] before Bell's time?





Would you tell the old people how to apply simple cures to diseases that you know?



Would you write your favorite song just so you could keep hearing it in the past even if it's not yet composed at that time?



Would you go dig up the places you know where dinosaurs/hominid fossils are?



And many more, if you get what I mean.



In that way, you can live in the past with at least having a feel of the more comfortable life you %26quot;had%26quot; in the future.



...and of course all the credits go to you, not to the people who really discovered and invented stuff, which will change the course of history.



Newton won’t be as famous as he is now, it would be you.

The wheel might be invented in earlier times because of you.

And who knows if Herodotus will still the big guy of history. [lol!]





I think you’re getting what I want to say.



So, would you, if you can?



Of would you just “go with the flow” in the past time, live a normal, boring life, forget about all the “future” stuff and just wait for the big guys to discover/invent them?
If you could be sent to the past, would you change the course of history?
There are two potential problems with time travel. First is the so-called %26quot;butterfly effect,%26quot; in which an apparently insignificant action has far-reaching consequences. Suppose you save a child's life in 1452. As a result George Washington's parents never meet.



The competing theory is that socioeconomic forces at a given time are so strong that, if a known historical villian was eliminated, another infdividusal would arise to take his place.
If you could be sent to the past, would you change the course of history?
Thats hard.. if I could though i think I would do something big like 'remove' certain people before they became a problem - Osama Bin Laden, Hitler, Mugabe but then thats playing god so I'm not sure.



I'd sure as hell get a job at Microsoft in the first few months of the company though!!!!!
Yes. I would definitely take some credit from others, but I'll feel bad doing it.
yes, unfortunately as you pointed out the reasons why i %26quot;would%26quot; do what I've %26quot;done%26quot; are to complex to write in words.
No. Everything happens for a reason. But if there is something I regret, it's bad eating habits. I didn't eat much veggies and didn't drink milk when I was younger now I'm suffering being small.
I would invest in certain companies that are big $ today! Like McDonalds, Apple, Walmart, Microsoft, etc.



I would change a few things that I did in my past.



I wouldn't change any history, I don't think... everything that happened back then made the world what it is today.



I would try to stop 9/11.



I would place a lot of bets on games that I already knew who wins! lol



I would protect a lot of friends from things that I know now.... friends who died, friends who did bad things, car accidents, jail, etc. I would be a better friend because of it, I think.
ofcourse i would i would defenetley change certain things in the past then things would have been different than they are today
It's hard to say because you can't know if you can really change history. For example if you stopped Hitler before he came to power that doesn't mean that you stopped WWII or the Holocaust. There were many evil men who thought just as Hitler did, one of them might have taken power instead and done all the things Hitler did.
It would be a dangerous proposition (especially if you believe Hollywood) as long as the ideas of infinite realities or parallel universes don’t exist. These beliefs suggest that you wouldn’t actually be changing your future but creating or guiding one of an infinite number of futures. Of course if you believe this then you aren’t changing anything at all. This was supposed to happen and in some other universe, you made the opposite decision.



Anyway, that’s a good question. I’m sure that I’d do something to improve my situation financially but I doubt that I’d try to steal someone else’s fame (although if I am able to steal their fame, maybe they stole someone else’s).



If I really wanted to shake things up though, I’d go back to the first century and convince Heron to turn his little Steam Ball experiment into an engine for the locomotive. Usher in the industrial revolution almost a couple thousand years before it happened and see what happens.
I'd kill Mohammed and invest in Google.