Is rewriting time/history murder?

[Sexy Frog]

Okay, here's the sitch.

After obsessively watching 2 seasons of Doctor Who I started thinking. I though that everyone has lived their lives, like everyone else and became what they wanted or what they didn't.  Loved, hated, fought, learned, bore children and more but one instance, one tiny change erases them and everything they did or stood for from the whole of existence. In return they are replaced in their entirety by someone else who may have done totally different things and had totally different ideologies and families and more. All...just...gone. In the blink of an eye.

I asked my Dad, who is another Doctor Who fanboy and he said he thinks it depends on the point of view. If you're being erased then it may. If you aren't then it may not. But in his opinion as a third party, it isn't murder because they wouldn't have existed in the first place. I think it is murder personally because you are destroying everything they once were.

So tell me, what do the people of Catalyst-Gaming think about the matter?

[Dallas]

It's really not important whether someone thinks it's murder as murder implies they have lived lives. They would have never have existed so it's not an issue.

[Sexy Frog]

It's really not important whether someone thinks it's murder as murder implies they have lived lives. They would have never have existed so it's not an issue.

But that's the problem in my opinion. Because they did exist at one point and they had lived lives, but because of someones actions they don't anymore.

[Dallas]

It's really not important whether someone thinks it's murder as murder implies they have lived lives. They would have never have existed so it's not an issue.

But that's the problem in my opinion. Because they did exist at one point and they had lived lives, but because of someones actions they don't anymore.

They'd never have existed and there would only be the time traveler to grief their lack-of-existence.

[Mr Jive]

Well no... because Time travel couldn't 'really' happen in all honesty, and if it could it would depend on the effect (like paradox effect, alternative time lines or something we couldn't even comprehend)

[Sexy Frog]

Well no... because Time travel couldn't 'really' happen in all honesty, and if it could it would depend on the effect (like paradox effect, alternative time lines or something we couldn't even comprehend)

Well, obviously I'm talking in the theoretical sense. If there WAS time travel.

[Pielolz]

No. Because they didn't exist in the first place. (By that logic) and murder is a synonym for the proper word, homicide


Homi= man. cide = kill


Mankill, or to kill a man. You killed no one, you simply changed history to where they didn't exist. So they didn't die, because they didn't exist.

[A Dark Tree]

Like Renegade said, if there's no one to kill, then it can't be murder.  The fact that they, in said timeline, didn't exist makes it impossible to kill them, because you are not able to kill what isn't there.  The only example I can currently think of is a pretty shitty one, but it's like trying to breathe in space, sure, you can inhale.  But there's nothing to breathe in.  Plus, you probably wouldn't want to because the gases would expand inside of you, and cause your lungs to explode.

[Mr Jive]

Okay okay okay, assuming you could time travel it would still depend on what laws of time travel you were following. Say I went back to kill Hitler as a child, once I had killed him I would change history so that future me wouldn't have any interest in killing Hitler and so would never go back, causing a paradox. OR perhaps it would create a new parallel universe where Hitler never came to power, so in a sense I didn't kill him because he still exists in my time line but wouldn't exist in the new timeline (ignore the fact that I said I killed him, lets assume I just changed history so he didn't come to power). You see this is why it wouldn't work, time travel, as soon as you start to think about the consequences it becomes very weird, also the other theory is that I'm on a fixed timeline, so that if I did go back and do stuff it was always going to happen and whatever I do would either fail or the universe would fix itself, e.g. create a new equally evil Hitler. In which case I wold have just either failed or created a new parallel Hitler - Reltih, sure why not.

Time Travel is so silly sometimes...