Answer for question 4602.

[seawasp]

[Error: unknown template qotd]I would never do it. Even a very small change in past events can have huge consequences. If I went back at any time earlier than 1990, I might never have ended up marrying Kathy (and in fact any change up until the wedding could do that). Sure, there's things I regret doing and would like to change, but the likelihood is that I'd cause something -- maybe a LOT of somethings -- to change in a way I didn't like.

Comments

[groblek.livejournal.com]

I'm with you. I like the way my life has turned out too much to risk meddling.

This also answers my teenage question of "If I set a date to meet my future self, and I don't show up, does that prove I never have access to time travel?" Though underestimating my own absent-mindedness also answers that one - I have no idea now what date I set for that theoretical meeting.

[kgbooklog.livejournal.com]

Obviously, you need to go back in time and ask your younger self what date you're supposed to meet them at.

My regrets are hundreds of little things spread over nearly a decade. There's no obvious point in time I can say "this is where I went wrong", and even if there was, there's nothing I could tell myself that I didn't already know.

[sturgeonslawyer.livejournal.com]

Reminds me of Nietzsche's dictum that, if there is even one moment in your life to which you can say an unqualified Yes!, then you must say yes to the rest of your life - for that is the context in which that moment is embedded, and to reject it would be to qualify that Yes!

[pedanther]

I'm definitely not tempted to mess with any of the big obvious decision points in my life, but I do occasionally think wistfully about going back to a certain bookshop, finding the version of me who's about to decide not to buy a book, and tell him he totally should. I probably wouldn't actually do it if I had the chance, though: who knows where it might end? And anyway, I don't actually remember what date it was.

James H Schmitz once wrote a short story called "Would You?", in which the protagonist is presented with an opportunity to alter his past. It includes a lot of safety features, including being able to preview any proposed changes to see what consequences they would have -- and he still decides, in the end, that he wouldn't.