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Random Thought Thread


InfestedKerrigan

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43 minutes ago, paxmiles said:

Been thinking about it, Harry Potter is basically a story about the adventures of the top 1% that secretly controls the world...

There are a bunch of interesting ways to look at it. Another that amuses me, given the way the tone makes it more of a nerd story, is that it's, really, the story of a jock who grows up to be a cop.

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In that time travel trope where the people travel back to "fix" the present, how is that different than a suicide pack?

I mean, if the you in the present attempts to alter the past so the you that you never existed, isn't that rather similar to attempts to kill yourself?

Even if you gather others around a common goal, when is it more than poisoned cool-aid in a suicide cult?

The you that you are won't be able to know if it works, you just know the you you are won't exist anymore. Seems a lot like suicide.

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The difference is that a suicide pact does not have any intent to change the present or the past.  The time-travel trope is about making a proactive change which involves sacrifice where you could not say the same about Heaven's Gate or Jonestown.  The Branch Davidians are arguable in that maybe you could argue that they are trying to bring attention to specific grievances against the government (although I am not sure that this is really the case, just one possible interpretation).

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37 minutes ago, Duckman said:

The difference is that a suicide pact does not have any intent to change the present or the past.  The time-travel trope is about making a proactive change which involves sacrifice where you could not say the same about Heaven's Gate or Jonestown.  The Branch Davidians are arguable in that maybe you could argue that they are trying to bring attention to specific grievances against the government (although I am not sure that this is really the case, just one possible interpretation).

So if the goal is to escape our present reality by erasing ourselves, that's one thing, but escaping the present by killing ourselves is different? In both cases, the cornerstone is that they refuse to live in reality, so much that they would give up their lives. 

Or is the difference just that the TV show's perspective includes the alternative timeline changing, so we (the audience) know that they died for an actual purpose?

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Note that this was not the stated goal of either Heaven's Gate or Jonestown, hence my statement.  It's also why I called out the Branch Davidians separately...  The first two had no intention of changing anything going on in the world.  The third *might* have depending on your interpretation and the time travellers certainly do have an intent to change the world if possible.  You are comparing the organized act of swallowing a gun to trying to make proactive change in the world.

 

If you want to understand the difference, much as I hate to recommend anything from him, consider reading "Pastwatch: The Redemption of Christopher Columbus" by Orson Scott Card.

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1 hour ago, Duckman said:

That's one option but I have seen other examples of time travel which are not so noble.  Things where people expect to survive in the new reality or such.

I assumed from Pax's starting point that we were just talking situations where the laws of time travel make "survival", as such, highly unlikely. In a more Back to the Future type scenario or something, the possibilities are far broader, yeah.

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9 hours ago, WestRider said:

I assumed from Pax's starting point that we were just talking situations where the laws of time travel make "survival", as such, highly unlikely. In a more Back to the Future type scenario or something, the possibilities are far broader, yeah.

It was a random thought, I didn't really have a further point.

Was watching The Orville, which features an episode with this trope, where they try to undo a specific event that leads to the disaster that is there present. Was just thinking that for the people that are part of the timeline that they want to replace, those people all get "erased" when they succeed at "fixing" the timeline, making it sort of a suicide pact. Didn't really matter for that show, was just thinking about it because of that. 

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12 minutes ago, WestRider said:

You can ferment pretty much anything with carbohydrates. In the case of artificial juices like these, you're basically fermenting the added sugar, so what you end up with is I believe generally considered a rum.

That's what I thought, but I never really considered fermentation on artificial liquids until today.

I don't really drink, so alcohol is rarely on my mind. Probably an early thought for people that derive more pleasure from alcohol.

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