Andrea Junker 
When people travel to the past, they worry about radically changing the present by doing something small.
Few people think that they can radically change the future by doing something small in the present.
This is the only real time travel paradox.
CaptBobbers@Strandjunker
I think, like most people, I fail to grasp the sheer complexity of history. You think "oh, they zigged when they should have zagged, I could travel back in time and change the worlds by convincing everyone to zag!" Never once stopping to consider all of the factors that led to the zigging in the first place.
Perhaps this is partly a consequence of our focus on the "great men" view of historical events. Making it all a reactionary "I can change him" moment.
John Mullinax@CaptBobbers @Strandjunker History is complex, but IMHO the concept of how things change is simple: (1) Things are connected - they affect each other. (2) Things are path dependent - when you walk through a door, the set of new opportunities and choices is different. These two principles can help us see interrelationships of how things change over time. It's still complex, but it makes history more explainable -- and the future a bit little more predictable, too.
AnomnomnomalyI subscribe to the many worlds theory.
If you travel back into the past, you can never travel back to 'your' present because the timeline you left is gone. You could only move forward within the new timeline you created by going back in time.
So it means that making changes to events, won't affect the timeline you left anyway. So there can be no paradoxes. Killing your grandfather so you're not born means nothing because you've not been born in that timeline
Michael Redbendad
Cogito Ergo Resist@CaptBobbers @Strandjunker I think it's more like our obsessive love affair w/ silver bullets. We want one easy-to-find pill to magically make us thin, happy, or smart. We want one project that will make us famous in our field or company, and ensure our stable, preferably rich, future.
Similarly, if we want to fix something in the past, we want it to be that one action or person that's easy to spot.
Too bad a magic bullet only works past the tipping point toward an outcome.
Similarly, if we want to fix something in the past, we want it to be that one action or person that's easy to spot.
Too bad a magic bullet only works past the tipping point toward an outcome.
Stephen Cox Author@CaptBobbers @Strandjunker Bertrand Russell said that history was driven by social and economic forces; impersonal natural forces - his example was climate chsnge in mid Asia big driver of tribes heading west; ideas; and some role for individuals. My fave example of Great Manism debunked is Churchill, who said that had he proposed peace with Germany in 1940, the full Cabinet would have rejected it and he would have been out.
Mike Taylor 🦕@CaptBobbers @Strandjunker Right. The key question that is summed up in the dilemma: if you had euthanized Baby Hitler, how much difference would it have made?