There are innovations like time travel that we’ll never enjoy for one simple reason: People are jerks. This is the thought that occurred to me during a hot sleepless night in Eugene. Just as we can’t get our act together for cool things like free mass transit or health care. Innovation is based on a variety of factors, and right now the only factor that seems to count is sociopathic capitalism. That’s sad.
So rather than take arms against the current sea of troubles, let’s practice ‘radical acceptance.‘ No more arguing or fighting – Okay fine, we won’t get the cool future we were hoping for. Let’s see what happens.
As a practicing author with a major in scifi and a minor in futurology, let me share some insights and predictions. We won’t get to one common form of innovation people have dreamed of for centuries: Time Travel. There will be no time travel because people are jerks. Let’s take a deep dive into this topic:
The Cool Idea
I’ve loved the idea of time travel since I watched Back to the Future. Go back, change your history, change your life? Sign me up! Latter time travel movies explored more modern concepts of multiverse navigation (Loki, Interstellar, Tenet, Primer, Timeline) and I was all over it. But then, something hit me that destroyed any confidence in time travel if we ever cracked the code:
Why We Won’t Get It
Every human discovery eventually turns into a weapon. Multiverse transit – in any form – will always be weaponized. I knew that long before I saw it on screen in Tenet and it’s been discussed in short stories like Aristotle and the Gun. Even the best-intentioned human scientist would eventually be overpowered by the most craven sociopathic trillionaire (looking at you, Musk).
The only nation-state capable of protecting the technology would likely be one of its worst users. No amount of high-minded governance could sufficiently predict or prevent the paradoxical problems of physics inherent in multiverse transit. People are jerks – we can’t have time travel because there’s no possibility of us not misusing it.
In fact – here’s a really funny video illustrating what happens when you mix jerks and time travel. Take a look:
Here’s How We Could Fix It
I could talk about how to fix the problem of time travel governance but it’s fairer to say that – we may not have this technology because we exist in a universe where time travel technical innovation *can’t* be achieved.
Think about it, if multiverse transit technology can be achieved, if it will always be weaponized, if the weaponization leads to negative consequences – where does that leave us? Doesn’t that force the multiverse to undo its own damage, constantly pruning out the timelines where humans did discover time travel and then subsequently destroying themselves and the knowledge in the process?
Maybe multiverse transit technology is a self-solving problem. We may not be able to get there because every time we do, we end up right back where we started. Huh.
It’s Up to Us
Perhaps there’s a timeline where human emotional progress advances sufficiently for us to use this technology. Maybe we’re all waiting for that moment, far in the future, where we cold be trusted with the keys to the universe. Until then, I guess we’ll have to wait patiently for the moment when time travel can be truly jerk-free.
