What If....

[magunga]

if future you came to the present and told you to blow up the washington monument, gave you an untraceable, futuristic, remote detonating bomb, said he couldn't tell you why because it could destroy the fabric (of time, would you do it?
http://i2.photobucket.com/albums/y8/Magunga/2021.jpg

[oakley]

Is this secretly a homeland security agent working around internet forums trying to gather suspects? lol seriously man, your first post is this?

[mattipton]

Hmmm... I'd probably try to convince my future self to do it. Seriously though, why can't he just do it himself?... what a lazy future self. Anyway, I suppose I'd do it if he can't do it... BUT I would only do it under one condition: he must agree to give me some valuable future info... like stock tips and whatnot.

[ryudo]

I would freak out and not believe it's a future me but that the universe is so badly designed it has another me it deserves to be destroyed.

[blooper]

I would interrogate my parents to see why they hired some guy to play my future self.

I mean really... they should know better.

[comhcinc]

since time travel(at least to the past) is impossible, i would arrest the person as the terrorist that he is.

[ariastar]

I see no reason to blow it up, so wouldn't.

Dude, this is an odd first post.

[magunga]

Is this secretly a homeland security agent working around internet forums trying to gather suspects? lol seriously man, your first post is this?
No it's not. It's future you.
Hmmm... I'd probably try to convince my future self to do it. Seriously though, why can't he just do it himself?... what a lazy future self. Anyway, I suppose I'd do it if he can't do it... BUT I would only do it under one condition: he must agree to give me some valuable future info... like stock tips and whatnot.
He says you have to do it, but if he tells you why there will be a time paradox that destroys the fabric.
since time travel(at least to the past) is impossible, i would arrest the person as the terrorist that he is.
it's hypothetical dawg

[nextgenxbox]

No. Why would I want to blow up the Washington monument? That's just silly.

[ariastar]

No it's not. It's future you.

He says you have to do it, but if he tells you why there will be a time paradox that destroys the fabric.

it's hypothetical dawg

How do we know its our future selves and not some organization trying to set us up?

[magunga]

How do we know its our future selves and not some organization trying to set us up?
So would you do it?

[kronos6948]

I would require some hard evidence that it was in fact, me.

[darthender]

Of course I'd do it. My future self wouldn't travel back in time for something like that if it wasn't awsome.

After all, he's the one that has to suffer the consequences. He's from the future!

What am I gonna do? Go back in time to play a prank on myself? I don't think so. If I'm traveling back in time to punk someone its gonna be Hitler or something.

[magunga]

I myself would probably do it. I don't drink or do drugs or show any signs of insanity so I don't need to worry about him not being in his right mind.

[lavahot]

I would give him a test, something that only he and I would know. Like maybe ask him if he had a girlfriend, and if he said yes I'd shoot him like the lying dog he is. Bastard.

In all seriousness, why the Washington monument? Why not blow up the president's caravan, or the oval office while Cheney, Bush, Condi, and the CEO of Halliburton are having a meeting, or the Republican party HQ? There are simply so many better targets that I'd question his motive to destroy a building with no people in it. It'd be like blowing up the St. Louis Arch or Abraham Lincoln Memorial or the Space Needle or that town that the Oregon Trail starts in. Nobody cares, thars no reason to do anything like that.

[darthender]

That's just it, only he knows.

Maybe the Washington Monument is a landing array for an alien siegecraft. You just can't know, and he can't tell you.

[silentsignals]

Well I would logically assume that my future self was part of a resistance movement fighting an alien invasion. The aliens could only be defeated by launching the Washington monument at their mothership (since only that monument has the precise mass & shape to penetrate their shields). I then would surmise that just before their ship is destroyed they captured future me & used their alien mind control device to make me their slave & then send me back in time to convince myself to destroy humanity's one chance to survive. I then would have no choice but to kill future me & save future us. Since technically future me is myself I couldn't really be charged with killing myself. I'd also alert the Pentagon to start mass producing washington monument sized missiles so we'd be ready for those alien scumbags. I'd also become a hero & Time magazine's person of the year. You know, since it's hypothetical & all.

[tnvwboy]

Since the future is not set there is no telling which future time-line (there are an infinite number you know) he's from. Thus by blowing up the monument, I may have changed the future for some of those time lines, but in others my actions would have, ultimately, no bearing on some larger outcome.

Even if it was 'myself' I would no choose to do this. I wouldn't do it without prompting, why should I do it because my future self asks me to. He had the chance to set his future already. What right does he have to affect mine?

[oakley]

Since technically future me is myself I couldn't really be charged with killing myself. Guess you've never seen The One with Jet Li :rolleyes:

Why is it that it'll create a time paradox if he tells me why I have to do it, and not the fact that he's standing two feet in front of me?

[damnedeyez]

I simply have no answer. Sure, I could say I'd do this or not...but there's no telling what I'd do unless I was put into that situation.

[reemixx]

Y'know, I probably would do it, yeah.

Of course I'd want proof that it's my future self first. But if I could be ABSOLUTELY POSITIVELY DEFINITELY sure that it was me, then I would do what I told myself to do.

I think I know myself enough to trust myself ;)