Spoilers Timeless: Season 1 on NBC

[Christopher]

I'm operating under the hand-wave that accuracy is the thing the Mothership gets right. Lifeboat could take a wild stab at it, but can use the MS as a reference point in order to be specific. That would allow the lifeboat to prove it works, but MS to dial it in better. Lifeboat isn't pulled back in time without choice, and still needs a pilot, so IS operating on it's own, just may use the MS for accuracy. best I can do with what they've shown.

Well, I recall them explaining a couple of episodes ago that the pilot's job is to make sure the capsule lands in a safe place once it reaches the destination, i.e. in the middle of the woods rather than in the middle of a public school or a mile in the air or the bottom of a lake.

Besides, not all vehicle controllers have a choice over what course they follow. An automobile driver or an airline pilot does, but a railroad engineer or a cable-car operator does not. My working assumption is that what links the two time capsules is tantamount to a wormhole, because that's the kind of time-travel mechanism that has the most theory and logic backing it up, so that gives me a foundation to reason from. So I assume the only thing the lifeboat can do is travel along that wormhole, with some finite leeway about the final destination in space. A pilot is needed to set that destination and to make sure the passage through the wormhole is done correctly and safely, but that doesn't mean the vehicle has complete freedom of movement.

Yes ok, but silly nit to pick. Not infinite tries, but LOTS of them.

It's not nitpicking; my point was that maybe he has to choose his targets carefully and budget his power usage. It's only your assumption that he'd have enough power to make as many trips as he needed. As we've seen, the writers of this show have no trouble making assumptions that serve their story needs, so they could easily be assuming that he doesn't have unlimited power and thus has to husband his resources. Because that's the assumption that works better for their story needs. You or I can argue in the abstract that it should be different, but we're not the ones making the show.

Plus, time machine, so can go get more plutonium, or charge up again, etc.

It took a lot of effort to get that first plutonium core. It had to be done in just the right place and time, it was only possible to get access with the involvement of a specific person in a special position to help, and the Mason team was trying to stop them the whole time. Now that they've figured out what the plutonium was for, they'd be alert to further such attempts and could probably stop them.

And I believe part of the reason they wanted a plutonium battery was so the Feds couldn't track them using their drain on the power grid.

If I want to kill you, and failed six months ago, I could just go back 1 day earlier and try again. if that fails, go back 1 day earlier etc. Or even less than a day, if you want to just allow enough time to leave before the previous YOU shows up to fail at his attempt. This is the biggest fail in the logic of it (and LoT).

Yeah, but show me any time-travel series where that actually happens. Episodic TV shows don't like to repeat the same plot over and over. There are some individual stories where the repeated efforts to change the same event are a plot point -- e.g. Voyager's "Relativity" or Back to the Future Part II -- but that's a specific subgenre and it's not what this show's writers want to do.

In Flynn's case, maybe he didn't want to go back earlier because he didn't want to risk undoing his success at killing the elder Rittenhouse. Sure, someone above suggested that slow-poison thing, but Flynn doesn't strike me as a subtle enough kind of guy to think of something like that; he's all about rage and brute force and just shooting down whoever gets in his way.

No natural, bad logic. Why flail around again? go to the day before your failed attempt and start over. You know it's a half dozen people or whatever in the 1770s, easier to manage than 'naturally' jumping ahead 120 years and trying to jump 3 people at random.

But Flynn doesn't have free rein, because he knows his enemies are close behind him. If he tried going back to the same event twice, then he'd just give his enemies the advantage, because they'd already know what his target was and that would make it easier for them to stop him. So he has to pick a new target to keep a step ahead of them. In the case of young Rittenhouse, he was willing to risk a second try in short order because he knew his enemies would need time to recharge, but the fact that he and his foes are synchronized with each other in time means that he was on a clock too. He's hemmed in by their actions almost as much as they're hemmed in by his. He only had a finite amount of time to try for his target before he'd be pursued. So that limited his ability to succeed.

3 people whose deaths will have MASSIVE repercussions beyond just ending Rittenhouse (if they are even important parts, and not just famous ones).

How is that new? Garcia Flynn has already tried to do multiple things that would've had enormous repercussions on history. He tried to assassinate two future presidents along with Lincoln. He tried to turn von Braun over to the Soviets. He tried to prevent Texas from seceding from the Mexican Empire.

he can still end it in one stroke, just go to before he failed and kill David again, plus the kid, plus the original conspirators. All fixed. it's not hard, and should be obvious to him; he has a time machine.

And it should be obvious that the writers of a work of fiction don't want the outcomes to be that simple, so for a fictional character, a time machine is rarely going to be a simple magic bullet for fixing everything. There will be limitations, rules, or consequences that keep the character from just randomly doing whatever they want. Stories are about challenges, not instant gratification. So you keep insisting that they "should" do something that it makes absolutely no dramatic sense for them to want to do.

---

Now you're mixing the time traveling and the doctor scenarios.

Where in the world did you get the idea they were separate? The latter was an analogy to illustrate the moral principle involved in the former. They're supposed to be connected -- that's the whole point of an analogy!

But, I was never talking about rewriting history solely for someone to meet their own preferences.

Of course you were. Your whole premise was about one person going back in time to save a few of their own loved ones, regardless of the consequences to everyone else's loved ones. It's a completely selfish action, like what Barry Allen did in Flashpoint.

Nor did I mention rewriting all of history.

Yes, you were -- you just don't realize it. That is the whole reason your argument is fatally flawed. You're making the completely false, glib assumption that you can change only the things you want to change and somehow magically have no effect on everything else. Time and causality do not work that way. You can't pull one card out of a house of cards and expect the rest to be unaffected.

 

[Mr Awe]

Or even better, kill David as a kid or one of his parents before his birth! No David, no son of David, no Riddenhouse to begin with! Garcia is telling Wyatt this is the way to go with his wife's killer, why is he not thinking about doing this with Riddenhouse.

Great point. Flynn brought this idea up himself so why isn't he following his own advice!

 

[Mr Awe]

Where in the world did you get the idea they were separate? The latter was an analogy to illustrate the moral principle involved in the former. They're supposed to be connected -- that's the whole point of an analogy!

Of course, but analogies are never identical to what they're representing. You can't just mix them willy nilly.

Of course you were.

No I wasn't and I know my own argument thank you.

Yes, you were -- you just don't realize it. That is the whole reason your argument is fatally flawed. You're making the completely false, glib assumption that you can change only the things you want to change and somehow magically have no effect on everything else. Time and causality do not work that way. You can't pull one card out of a house of cards and expect the rest to be unaffected.

Wow, smarty pants, have you figured out how condescending you come across sometimes? I was trying to have a pleasant discussion. These are opinions and should be fun to discuss. You just sucked the fun right out of it.

Not only that, you completely misrepresented what I said. I never suggested that only certain things would change. In fact, I quite specifically said there would be a wide range of effects but that the tradeoff would be worthwhile.

I would expect a writer to have a better sense of word choice when expressing themselves and a better reading comprehension.

Mr Awe

 

[Christopher]

Not only that, you completely misrepresented what I said. I never suggested that only certain things would change. In fact, I quite specifically said there would be a wide range of effects but that the tradeoff would be worthwhile.

And that's exactly what I find so incredibly selfish -- the idea that the negative consequences to everyone else don't matter as long as you save the people you care about. You don't have the right to decide for other people that the sacrifice of their original histories, their relationships, their successes, even their lives is "worthwhile" if it means you get your own loved ones back. That's the exact decision Barry made in "Flashpoint," and they've spent the whole season since underlining how wrong he was to do it and how damaging it was to the people around him.

 

[Scout101]

And it should be obvious that the writers of a work of fiction don't want the outcomes to be that simple, so for a fictional character, a time machine is rarely going to be a simple magic bullet for fixing everything. There will be limitations, rules, or consequences that keep the character from just randomly doing whatever they want. Stories are about challenges, not instant gratification. So you keep insisting that they "should" do something that it makes absolutely no dramatic sense for them to want to do.

Yes, i understand that the writers don't want them to do this, and thus end the show. Where I'm having a problem is that they haven't introduced a reason why the characters don't want to do this, or why they can't. Characters are acting dumb because plot/format demands it. Poor writing if they haven't been able to explain why the characters shouldn't do what seems like an obvious thing. They should have laid out that you can't revisit within an X year radius of a previous visit or something.

You get paid to write for a living, and have experience with time travel situations. If your characters had just killed David Rittenhouse, but failed to kill the kid, and that didn't bring down the consipiracy, which way would you have them go, given the rules of the show (as explained thus far) and the stated goal of "stopping" Rittenhouse from existing and killing his family:

A) travel ahead 120 years and kill 3 prominent members
B) travel back 1 month and kill David again, plus the kid this time (or back further and get him before he conceives the kid if you want to limit the killing to just they guy you already killed)

B seems much more obvious, with greater likelihood of success. From previous travels, you know the members at the start now. You know it's just starting in late 1700s, vice no idea how widespread in 1890s. Stopping it while it's still in its infancy seems a hell of a lot easier than letting it become an evil cabal and going dark for 120 years and then randomly killing a few prominent players.

And I get it, it means the show's kinda over (or at least that goal in the show), but you've got a bad guy with a time machine and a single-minded obsession to do this no matter the cost to history. Why's A worse than B, in universe?

That the show hasn't given a good explanation for why the characters aren't doing the obvious thing isn't MY failing, it's theirs.

 

[Christopher]

Yes, i understand that the writers don't want them to do this, and thus end the show. Where I'm having a problem is that they haven't introduced a reason why the characters don't want to do this, or why they can't. Characters are acting dumb because plot/format demands it. Poor writing if they haven't been able to explain why the characters shouldn't do what seems like an obvious thing. They should have laid out that you can't revisit within an X year radius of a previous visit or something.

Yes, it is a systemic problem with this show that it takes too many of its ground rules for granted and doesn't bother to explain them to the audience. True, there's something to be said for not spoonfeeding an audience and trusting them to work things out on their own, but that requires giving them enough information to allow that deduction. This show hasn't done that.

You get paid to write for a living, and have experience with time travel situations. If your characters had just killed David Rittenhouse, but failed to kill the kid, and that didn't bring down the consipiracy, which way would you have them go, given the rules of the show (as explained thus far) and the stated goal of "stopping" Rittenhouse from existing and killing his family:

A) travel ahead 120 years and kill 3 prominent members
B) travel back 1 month and kill David again, plus the kid this time (or back further and get him before he conceives the kid if you want to limit the killing to just they guy you already killed)

B seems much more obvious, with greater likelihood of success. From previous travels, you know the members at the start now. You know it's just starting in late 1700s, vice no idea how widespread in 1890s. Stopping it while it's still in its infancy seems a hell of a lot easier than letting it become an evil cabal and going dark for 120 years and then randomly killing a few prominent players.

I already offered a reason why B) wouldn't work. Since the rival team already knows his target, it would be easier for them to stop him the second time, and then he'd not only fail to kill the kid, but he'd lose his victory of killing the father. This is a chess game, player against player, so he has to make his decisions based on the other team's expected response. He knows he's not going to have free rein as long as they're still out there. So he has to try to stay a step ahead of them, keep them guessing. That's why he can't just repeat the same move.

Anyway, I learned long, long ago that if you apply too much logic to virtually any time-travel story ever, especially in the mass media, it completely falls apart. It's just not a genre that holds up well to critical analysis. Virtually every time-travel story is dependent on at least one or two completely nonsensical and impossible assumptions; some just have a bigger dose of nonsense than others. At least Timeless is marginally more consistent in its temporal logic than, say, Legends of Tomorrow.

 

[Mr Awe]

And that's exactly what I find so incredibly selfish -- the idea that the negative consequences to everyone else don't matter as long as you save the people you care about. You don't have the right to decide for other people that the sacrifice of their original histories, their relationships, their successes, even their lives is "worthwhile" if it means you get your own loved ones back. That's the exact decision Barry made in "Flashpoint," and they've spent the whole season since underlining how wrong he was to do it and how damaging it was to the people around him.

Ok, I'll try once more. Again, it's fine if we don't agree, and I really don't care if we end up agreeing (that seems unlikely), but it would be nice if you could at least correctly characterize the other viewpoint.

If a time traveler chooses to prevent the birth of a murderer who was convicted of killing 3 people, yes, I do think it's a good thing to do. This is not being selfish. It's being compassionate and humane. The time traveler is preventing 3 grisly deaths and a lot of suffering of the loved ones.

However, if the time traveler chooses not to, that is still a an active choice. The time traveler's choice to do nothing condemns those 3 people to die and the loved ones to suffer.

It's a choice either way.

You were kind enough to point out the "fatal flaw" with my argument so now I'll do the same with yours. The fatal flaw with your position is that you think that being passive absolves you of responsibility. It's a very passive position that I find distasteful. If you just sit there and do nothing, you're not off the hook in my book. Doing nothing is still a choice and it has consequences.

My position is more active and places more responsibility on the individual because it's a choice either way. Either the person chooses to intervene or the person chooses to not intervene. And, yes, I'd err on the side of choosing to save innocent people from being murdered. If you think that is "selfish," so be it. I think of it as being compassionate.

Mr Awe

 

[Mr Awe]

Where I'm having a problem is that they haven't introduced a reason why the characters don't want to do this, or why they can't. Characters are acting dumb because plot/format demands it. Poor writing if they haven't been able to explain why the characters shouldn't do what seems like an obvious thing. They should have laid out that you can't revisit within an X year radius of a previous visit or something.

There's an even more fundamental problem with this. Ok, we all agree that for the sake of keeping the show going, they don't want to end it this way. However, it's a fundamental writing error that the script has the antagonist suggest a related course of action to Wyatt. You can't go back to a time where you already exist, so just go back a little further. That's essentially what we're talking about here. If they don't want to open that can of worms, don't go there. That's even worse than just failing to provide the ground rules because Flynn himself says it's a viable solution. I don't get it.

Time travel is tricky though.

Mr Awe

 

[Guy Gardener]

Garcia was telling Wyatt to murder the parents of the men who killed his wife, at a point before Wyatt was born.

 

[Photoman15]

They're still thinking 3 dimensionally. They don't have to murder the two parents. A, they could just kill one of them. Problem solved. or B, separate them. Get one of them a job somewhere else. Then the murderer is never conceived. Problem solved.

 

[Guy Gardener]

It's really amazing that after all the time jumps that they have had, where each time jump had changed the present day to be minutely different. that there is only one person missing, Lucy's sister, on the entire planet.

 

[Scout101]

Yeah, we went round and round on that one earlier. Probably one of the bigger problems in the show. Because of the history porn aspect, they're never playing around with small moments, only the biggest moments in history for the most part. The more they screw with those, the more things should be drastically different in the future. I wish the show had thought more about the overall plan, and even what story they are trying to tell, but feel that a lot of the sales pitch was: "We could show the cast in fun historical events and neat period outfits, name dropping left and right. Oh, and also they're sorta chasing a bad guy or whatever, even though by definition the moment they start chasing him, they eff the timeline up so bad that the mission doesn't really matter. He's, uh, trying to stop the death of his wife (sure, why not?), and we'll ignore that most of the things he's doing to prevent her death will likely also prevent her birth, or meeting him, and almost certainly the conception of the child he's also trying to save."

I suggested that even if the general mission was the same, they ought to be rotating the cast that stays in the silo more, so it's different combos half the time, or someone else is in charge, or Mason is a woman sometimes, all kinds of things like that. The team is protected because of time travel magic, but the support crew is not. Sister disappeared in the first episode, but basically nothing they've done since has changed anything at all other than the name of a James Bond movie or trivia of Lincoln's assassin or whatnot. Hindenburg blowing up a couple hours later is probably one of the SMALLER things they've messed with since; they've been killing people left and right, and the constant assassination attempts on prominent people (Presidents, government people who will be future Presidents, captains of industry, etc.) plus things like 'communists' sabotaging the moon launch, etc. ought to have led to a much more paranoid, security-conscious society. A blip is a blip, but when it starts to happen more and more often, should add up to something.

As for Christopher's response to why B wouldn't work? Doesn't really track. Doing something random and much less useful WOULD surprise them, I guess, so you get a couple extra hours to work before they home in on you, but since the effect is much less useful, does it matter? And he had them basically in the perfect spot; they can't follow for X hours (at least 4, but not sure how long it had already been charging), so he's got a clean window to attempt things before they can chase him. Yes, they know where to go, but so do you. Even a 4 hour head start ought to be fine if all you need to do is walk down the road to a house you already know the layout of, and shoot the occupants that you know will be there, how much of a lead do you need?

Again, I get it, show must go on, but they need to work out some better reasoning behind why they do what they do, and why he doesn't do the more obvious (and effective) thing. Especially when he's suggesting Wyatt do EXACTLY that, so he knows it will work and doesn't violate the rules of his universe.

Speaking of that, one more fun question: Doesn't the Flynn/Wyatt conversation prove (or at least hint) that the lifeboat works just fine after all? How is Wyatt supposed to go back to kill the parents of his wife's killer? Answer: use the time machine (lifeboat) in his possession. Unless Flynn is the most considerate bad guy in the world and intentionally goes there so Wyatt can do it, or he's going to loan out the Mother Ship, heavily implies that the Lifeboat is capable of making that trip, no? How else should we read that scene? (other than bad writing, again) Unless there's a new Mother Ship in construction that can be used, there's just the two of them, and Flynn is unlikely to give his up. We'll need the drama eventually, so maybe Flynn will just coincidentally pick a time for Worthless Reason X that will allow Wyatt the opportunity as a bonus, but that's even shittier writing.

So, CAN the lifeboat really travel on its own?

 

[Guy Gardener]

The script said "The CPUs are linked" and called the life boat "their earliest prototype" which would infer that it was traveling through time fine well before the Mother Ship was invented.

All Wyatt needs is a couple diamonds, something like money, but not actually money, to set in motion a number of contracts against a family tree extending back to Fred Flintstone days.

 

[Tom]

They're still thinking 3 dimensionally. They don't have to murder the two parents. A, they could just kill one of them. Problem solved. or B, separate them. Get one of them a job somewhere else. Then the murderer is never conceived. Problem solved.

There other non-lethal ways, like displacing one of the parents right before they meet perhaps. Or maybe bring one parent to the present day and strand them there Etc..

 

[Christopher]

If a time traveler chooses to prevent the birth of a murderer who was convicted of killing 3 people, yes, I do think it's a good thing to do. This is not being selfish. It's being compassionate and humane. The time traveler is preventing 3 grisly deaths and a lot of suffering of the loved ones.

And I keep telling you it's dishonest to take such a tunnel-vision perspective, to assume that those lives are the only ones being affected. That is absolutely false -- it's a self-serving lie to justify putting your own concerns above everyone else's. As I and others have repeatedly pointed out to you, saving those lives will have unpredictable, frequently negative or fatal effects on thousands or millions of other lives. You have no right to ignore those other lives in making a moral determination.

You say it's being "compassionate and humane," but it isn't. You're extending that compassion only to the individuals you personally care about, and not caring in the least about the consequences to a far larger number of strangers. That's the kind of selective compassion that's allowed people to commit great atrocities throughout history -- like all the rich, powerful people throughout history who loved their wives and children while abusing, torturing, and murdering their slaves or slaughtering people of the "wrong" race or religion. Most people have compassion for those in their immediate circle, but it's their failure to extend compassion to strangers or outsiders that makes them capable of profound evil.

However, if the time traveler chooses not to, that is still a an active choice. The time traveler's choice to do nothing condemns those 3 people to die and the loved ones to suffer.

Nobody can prevent every bad thing from happening. All we can do is try not to add more bad things while using "doing good" as an excuse. Saving three people is not a pure good if it requires violating the rights of millions, or condemning people to death who lived before.

What if you could save one person from being hit by a car on the freeway, but the only way to do it would be to cause a pile-up that would kill and injure hundreds of people? In that case, would it truly be wrong to do nothing? You have to consider the consequences to everyone.

You were kind enough to point out the "fatal flaw" with my argument so now I'll do the same with yours. The fatal flaw with your position is that you think that being passive absolves you of responsibility.

That is not what I think. What I think, as I just said, is that responsibility extends to everyone, not just the few people we want to be responsible for. There are cases where the most responsible choice is to do nothing. Because other people have responsibilities and rights of their own. They have the freedom to live their own lives, make their own choices, make their own mistakes. Wanting to help other people has to be balanced with respect for their rights and independence. So responsibility requires recognizing that our power to influence others is finite, and should be finite. Just because you have power, that doesn't mean you're required to use it. Powers that would entail violating other people's free choice and consent -- like time travel or mind control -- are powers that it's usually more responsible not to use.

This is why the Federation has the Prime Directive. This is why Superman doesn't make himself dictator of the world. They have the power to intervene in many more situations than they do, and by not intervening, they fail to prevent people from suffering and dying. But this is because they understand that merely having power over others does not give them the right to use it. The end of saving some people's lives does not justify the means of depriving many other people of their freedom to choose and control their own lives.

People have a right to have a say in the course of their lives. Changing history is a decision that affects millions. It's not just a few people at stake, it's everyone. And so they have a right to be consulted. Maybe changing history could be ethically justified if the public were given a chance to vote on it, to be offered consent in the decision. But no single individual has the right to make that decision on behalf of everyone else. No matter how benevolent the excuse, that's tyranny.

This is not just abstract to me. I've lived this choice. My father had a living will with a do not resuscitate order, which was something I didn't agree with. When he neared the end of his life, I could've tried to fight the order and get the doctors to take more measures to save him. But I didn't, because I respected his right to make his own choices. He valued that right to choose more than he valued his survival. And I couldn't take that from him, no matter my personal feelings. Responsibility is not just about doing what you want to do and ignoring every other consideration that gets in your way. Often, responsibility requires choosing not to do the thing you most wish you could do. So don't you dare tell me I'm making a passive or irresponsible choice, or that I've failed to consider the consequences. I've faced this choice in a far more real and painful way than some stupid argument over a TV show.

As for Christopher's response to why B wouldn't work? Doesn't really track. Doing something random and much less useful WOULD surprise them, I guess, so you get a couple extra hours to work before they home in on you

It's more than that. Even if they know where and when Flynn is, they don't necessarily know who he's going after or what he intends to do. So it can take them more time once they arrive in the past to figure all that out, and that gives him more of a chance to stay ahead of them. (In the '60s Vegas episode, they never did figure out what his actual goal was. I think it was only this week that they finally pieced it together.) But if he goes back to the same place and time, then they know in advance exactly who he's going after, and they've already got the lay of the land and experience in taking him on, so they have a greater advantage.

, but since the effect is much less useful, does it matter?

Re-killing Rittenhouse would only be more useful if it succeeded. That's the point -- it's unlikely to succeed, because the rival team would have a greater advantage and a better chance of preventing it. Hence my chess metaphor. Figuring out a chess move isn't just about deciding what you want to do -- it's about anticipating how the other player is going to respond and whether their response would do you more harm than good. You may want to use your queen to put their king in check, but it's the wrong move to make if doing so would let them capture your queen and put your own king in check two moves later. So you have to choose not to take the most desirable step, because it has no chance of succeeding and would only hurt you in the long run. You have to think multiple steps ahead and find some less obvious, more indirect way to gain advantage.

And he had them basically in the perfect spot; they can't follow for X hours (at least 4, but not sure how long it had already been charging), so he's got a clean window to attempt things before they can chase him. Yes, they know where to go, but so do you. Even a 4 hour head start ought to be fine if all you need to do is walk down the road to a house you already know the layout of, and shoot the occupants that you know will be there, how much of a lead do you need?

And what about unpredictable factors? He'd be walking down that road in the middle of a war. There's no guarantee he'd succeed in killing Rittenhouse a second time. As things stand, he may have lost the son, but at least he succeeded in killing the father, and I can understand why he wouldn't want to risk losing the victory he's scored by trying to replay the point.

Again, I get it, show must go on, but they need to work out some better reasoning behind why they do what they do, and why he doesn't do the more obvious (and effective) thing. Especially when he's suggesting Wyatt do EXACTLY that, so he knows it will work and doesn't violate the rules of his universe.

It's not the same, because it's not replaying a point. And because it's not his own goal. Flynn doesn't care if Wyatt succeeds or not; he's just trying to manipulate him.

Speaking of that, one more fun question: Doesn't the Flynn/Wyatt conversation prove (or at least hint) that the lifeboat works just fine after all? How is Wyatt supposed to go back to kill the parents of his wife's killer? Answer: use the time machine (lifeboat) in his possession. Unless Flynn is the most considerate bad guy in the world and intentionally goes there so Wyatt can do it, or he's going to loan out the Mother Ship, heavily implies that the Lifeboat is capable of making that trip, no? How else should we read that scene? (other than bad writing, again)

I think, rather, that Flynn was offering Wyatt a chance to defect. "Come to my side and I'll use the Mothership to help you save your wife." Or else he was just trying to manipulate Wyatt and couldn't care less whether the plan was actually viable, so long as Wyatt was desperate enough to fall for it.

There other non-lethal ways, like displacing one of the parents right before they meet perhaps. Or maybe bring one parent to the present day and strand them there Etc..

Except it isn't "non-lethal," because the goal is still to eradicate the son's existence. That's still killing the son in a way, even if it isn't a conventional way.

 

[Mr Awe]

They're still thinking 3 dimensionally. They don't have to murder the two parents. A, they could just kill one of them. Problem solved. or B, separate them. Get one of them a job somewhere else. Then the murderer is never conceived. Problem solved.

It's even simpler, somehow disrupt the parent's schedule just enough to throw off the timing of the conception. It's not difficult to make it so that one of the millions of other sperm is the lucky one to fertilize the egg.

Mr Awe

 

[Mr Awe]

And I keep telling you it's dishonest to take such a tunnel-vision perspective, to assume that those lives are the only ones being affected.

And, I keep telling YOU that I'm not making that assumption at all. Reading comprehension.

Should a doctor who is working to save a patient, but knows nothing about the patient personally, have any quandaries about saving that patient because if the patient survives he might someday do something wrong? Of course not. The doctor should work to save that patient.

You say it's being "compassionate and humane," but it isn't. You're extending that compassion only to the individuals you personally care about

That's not true. We're talking about the idea in abstract based on an example in the show. So, there is no one that "I personally care about". We're talking about the concept of preventing the birth of a murderer to save those who'd otherwise be victims. We're not talking about saving people I know personally. You jumped to conclusions on that.

Nobody can prevent every bad thing from happening.

Non sequitur. That was never a part of my argument.

What if you could save one person from being hit by a car on the freeway, but the only way to do it would be to cause a pile-up that would kill and injure hundreds of people?

Well, obviously that would be bad but we're not talking about that so it's an irrelevant point. Nice red herring though.

We just have different world views. Mine is a more active one that emphasizes personal responsibility for both action and in-action (which is truly just a choice to not take action). It recognizes the fact that both action and inaction have consequences. Sometimes not doing anything is the correct choice but sometimes the costs of inaction are much higher.

Your world view is more that if you don't take action you're off the hook. Sure, don't stop the murderer. You're not doing anything so you're not responsible.

This is not just abstract to me. I've lived this choice. My father had a living will with a do not resuscitate order, which was something I didn't agree with. When he neared the end of his life, I could've tried to fight the order and get the doctors to take more measures to save him. But I didn't, because I respected his right to make his own choices. He valued that right to choose more than he valued his survival. And I couldn't take that from him, no matter my personal feelings.

I respect that. As I mentioned earlier in this thread, my Grandmother also has a DNR request and I am legally her health proxy. It is up to me to enforce it. I fully intend to as that's her wish regardless of my personal thoughts. So, all of your attempts to paint it as "selfish" are just offbase.

It's not the same, because it's not replaying a point. And because it's not his own goal. Flynn doesn't care if Wyatt succeeds or not; he's just trying to manipulate him.

It's functionally the same principle. If it doesn't work at one point in time just go back to the next previous point in time so that you can try again. In this case, the next previous point is before Wyatt was born.

That's still killing the son in a way, even if it isn't a conventional way.

You're stuck in 3D thinking. He's can't be killed if he's never been born.

Mr Awe

 

[Aragorn]

It's even simpler, somehow disrupt the parent's schedule just enough to throw off the timing of the conception. It's not difficult to make it so that one of the millions of other sperm is the lucky one to fertilize the egg.

Mr Awe

Unless it's Star Trek, in which case alternate universes with completely different histories and additional facial hair still result in the same people having the same kids at the same time.

 

[Mr Awe]

Unless it's Star Trek, in which case alternate universes with completely different histories and additional facial hair still result in the same people having the same kids at the same time.

Timeless suffers from this too where changes to the past should've had a huge ripple effect in the future! But, no, most everything works out to be the same except for a movie or something like that. Only Lucy's sister has gone missing.

 

[Christopher]

That's not true. We're talking about the idea in abstract based on an example in the show. So, there is no one that "I personally care about". We're talking about the concept of preventing the birth of a murderer to save those who'd otherwise be victims.

This debate began as a discussion about whether Wyatt Logan has the right to change history to save his wife. So yes, it is and always has been about a time traveler saving those who matter to him personally, and whether his personal investment gives him the right to ignore the consequences to others. I'm saying that Wyatt, Barry Allen, or any other time traveler in the same situation does not have a right to change history to save his loved ones, because that action is bound to cause other people to die or cease to exist. Like how Barry Allen's attempt to save his parents led to a timeline where Wally West and others died (or in the comics and animated movie, to a timeline where pretty much the whole world was a disaster), and even his attempt to put things back (in the TV show) resulted in a timeline where Cisco Ramon's brother was hit by a car, where John Diggle's baby daughter Sara had never been born, etc. Barry thus came to realize that he had been wrong to take unilateral action to save his loved ones without considering the consequences to others. And Wyatt would be wrong to do the same, just as Garcia Flynn is wrong to try to warp history to save his wife and kid.

Well, obviously that would be bad but we're not talking about that so it's an irrelevant point. Nice red herring though.

This is the second time you've failed to understand how an analogy was relevant. The moral principle is exactly the same, because in both cases the decision to save one or two people will have harmful effects on many other people.

We just have different world views. Mine is a more active one that emphasizes personal responsibility for both action and in-action (which is truly just a choice to not take action). It recognizes the fact that both action and inaction have consequences. Sometimes not doing anything is the correct choice but sometimes the costs of inaction are much higher.

If that's what you actually believe, then we do not have different worldviews at all. But nothing you've said to date has suggested that you actually believe this, because you keep talking about changing history to save 2-3 people as if it would have no consequences beyond that. Whereas my whole point all along has been that it would have massive consequences to millions of others, because you can't change history so granularly.

Your world view is more that if you don't take action you're off the hook. Sure, don't stop the murderer. You're not doing anything so you're not responsible.

That is not even remotely what I'm saying, and it is not even close to what I believe. What I'm saying is that the ends don't justify the means -- that if the only way to stop the murderer is to commit a greater evil of your own, like using time travel to forcibly alter or erase the lives of millions of others who have no consent in the matter, then your responsibility is not to act. Choosing not to alter history is not shunning responsibility -- it's taking responsibility by respecting the consent of everyone who would be affected.

You're stuck in 3D thinking. He's can't be killed if he's never been born.

That's just weaseling out of responsibility. What we're talking about is the time traveler taking action to eradicate a specific person from existence. The person did exist, and the time traveler acted with the deliberate intention of undoing that existence. That may not be "killing" as the term is conventionally defined, but it is murder from the perspective of the time traveler's mens rea and intentions, even if no observers in the altered timeline will be aware that the person ever existed. After all, we're talking about ethics here. The question isn't about the physical or temporal mechanics of a person's existence and its ending, it's about the morality of the time traveler's choice to deliberately target a person for annihilation.