Is erasing someone from time the same as killing them?

[joshuaayt]

It does depend on how time works in this case, but I'm going to say yes, from your point of view, which is the most important view- there was a person, and you did something, and then that person was no longer alive. It's probably the nicest way to kill someone, albeit a way fraught with ethical concerns and possible ramifications, because it doesn't necessarily hurt people.

If you really wanted to get rid of an unpleasant person, though, I'd recommend instead changing their childhood. Go back and take them on a time travel adventure! I guarantee it will make them a different, possibly even better, person when you get back to your present.

EDIT: All that said, though... Why the fuck are you worried about a single bully? Go and make friends with Jesus or something, your power over time puts you above such issues. If I had a time machine, I'd hop around so much I'd probably forget when exactly my present was, and then stop caring. I'd eventually settle around when holodecks become affordable, and then simulate time travelling because it's probably a lot safer.

 

[viranimus]

Nope, at least not to them. Part of life is some level of capacity to perceive ones existence in reality. If someone is removed there is never an opportunity for such perception to occur thus it is not like killing them as they would never know they did exist.

But if you really REALLY want to get down to the philosophical technicalities of it, the only way the question can be approached is in the context of the action and intention of who set the erasure into motion to occur. If erasure occurs by ones actions simply out of mere coincidence devoid the intention from the one erasing, there is no intention and thus no negative. However if it is a willful conscious decision to do so then on that level it is close enough to the same albeit it semantically different. The simple presentation of will regardless of if it is benevolent or malevolent in effect applies ownership to the action, and thus even if the individual who is erased will never know that decisisive action will remain with the one who erased and the consequences of that action will remain carried with them for good or ill.

But Meh, If you do not care what the consequences are to them or to you to not even bear it a thought, it is almost as good as there being no intent because the impact of the action will be just as null as the erased individual.

 

[Dismal purple]

It's worse than killing them.

After someone is dead they will still exist in a different position in the fourth dimension (time), but if you remove someone with a time machine then that will be gone too.

If you kill them the scale of time in which they exist will be shorter, using a time machine will remove everything.

 

[MeChaNiZ3D]

Well, in my opinion they're not mutually exclusive. If you actively erase someone from time you have effectively killed them. So it's not so much that erasing someone from time (which is ridiculous, by the way) is different from killing them as it is a kind of killing them, with the specifics being that no-one else notices.

Well actually maybe it is different if you render them never to have existed to anyone, so my revised answer is who cares. You'll never be in a position to erase anyone from time. As if that could even happen.

 

[Winnosh]

It's not the same. In my opinion it's FAR worse. As you are not only killing them you are removing any effect that they or their progeny may have had on the future. You remove a legacy which is really all we ever have.

 

[Angie7F]

It's worse than killing them.

After someone is dead they will still exist in a different position in the fourth dimension (time), but if you remove someone with a time machine then that will be gone too.

If you kill them the scale of time in which they exist will be shorter, using a time machine will remove everything.

I agree with this.
At least if you lived you have made some kind of impact in the timeline.
Being wiped out is worse because you will not exsist at all.

However it brings me to the conclusion that the two are totally different in nature.

 

[Scarim Coral]

It depend on the actual time travel law/ physic itself. I mean if you erase someone then technically all of your memories involved of that person will be erase therefore you had competely forgotten that person in the first place? Don't gett me started on the timeline being altered by erasing someone no matter how insufficant that person is!

 

[Palademon]

It is both better and worse than killing them.

On one hand, you are doing more than killing them. You are undoing them. Destroying their existence.

On the other hand, it leaves a scar-less void. There is no consequence. No one would miss them. They would simply be gone.

But yes, I would consider it killing. But killing without consequence. Still technically morally bad, but maybe preferred.

 

[Lieju]

It's not the same.

If you murder someone, they will most likely have friends, family, people who will miss them.
If you erase them, it's not like anyone will remember them, and if they did something really horrible, you can prevent that from ever happening.
But all the good things they did as well, and their legacy (and offspring), would be wiped out...

However, it's not a power any one person should have, and once you start erasing people, where will you draw the line? And when you change history, you risk unforeseen consequences.

I'd consider messing with the timeline the actual issue, rather than erasing someone.

 

[the December King]

Cool question!

Since good things can arise from even the vilest actions, albeit not necessarily directly, then the total removal of an individual from the time stream would reset events before that individual existed, and long after, good and bad, in a non-linear fashion. Influences both minute and grand, deliberate and accidental, from 'Butterfly effect' style chaos application to orchestrated acts of influence and control.

Death is a suitable punishment for those whose crimes warrant it (I don't want to get into my feelings on capital punishment at the moment). But I cannot think of a crime that warrants utter removal from existence. It would be an abominate act, completely unnatural.

 

[TheDoctor455]

I would say it's the equivalent of killing someone.

We should consult an expert on time travel.

snip

What would the Lords of Gallifrey think, good sir?

I'm another timelord ready to answer that for you.

Morally, they're about the same. Because the intent in both is to make someone gone forever.

However, in effect... very different.

With murder, there is at least some evidence that this person was killed (even if it is only that we have a dead body to deal with)...

with erasing someone from existence... there aren't even memories left over that this person ever lived... so how the hell could you possible prosecute someone for this crime when even the 'killer' might not remember the victim?

 

[Vegosiux]

with erasing someone from existence... there aren't even memories left over that this person ever lived... so how the hell could you possible prosecute someone for this crime when even the 'killer' might not remember the victim?

Or the prosecution, or the family, or anyone for that matter. Erasing people from time is one of those things none of us can be sure it isn't going on, because even if it is, we'd not know it!

 

[Angelous Wang]

They are not the same. At all.

Killing someone:
1. Removes them from the world.
2. Causes emotional trauma to others (well not always, but most people have at least one person who cares).
3. Disrupts whatever they where responsible for whilst alive.
4. You stop any future effect the person may cause to anything.

Removing someone from existence:
1. Removes them from the world.
2. Removes all memory of them from the world.
3. Undoes any effect they have ever had on anything, which will change allot of other people lives too. As well as any future effects the person may cause.

One could say that makes killing worse, because you cause trauma and disruption to others in the world as well as the victim.

But on the other hand you do change the lives of many more people by removing them, because pretty much all the individual events and possessions and other things that made up the persons life will be split up amongst over individuals changing their lives anywhere from very majorly to very minimally. Some of these changes will be for the better and some will be worse. You might even cause the death of other people. Or you might even save some.

It a roll of the dice.

 

[madwarper]

But, this premise depends on it being possible to erase someone from existence...

Assuming there's only one universe/timeline, let's compare Back to the Future to Futurama.
In BttF, Marty almost prevents his parents from falling in love, where he began to fade from existence. If that were possible and he failed, he would never have existed and couldn't have possibly traveled back to the past to prevent his parents from falling in love. However, in Futurama, when Fry tried and failed to keep his "grandfather" from getting killed, so he figured consequences didn't exist and had sex with his grandmother, becoming his own grandpa. So, anything you do, or not do, in the past is what you were supposed to have done, else your present self wouldn't have been able to travel to the past to do it.

Else, if there's multiple universes/timelines, then anything you changed in the past would not have any effect on your present, because your present is predicated on past events having happened. You're simply causing an alternate universe/timeline to be created where that change exists. So, if you returned to the present, either you're in your present which is unaltered, or you return to an alternate universe/timeline's present, but if the latter was possible, then you could have simply laterally moved into the alternate universe/timeline where the change had naturally occurred.

TL;DR: I don't think it's possible to change the past in order to affect your present.

 

[Gatx]

Technically no - killing to me involves ending a life. If you prevent them from existing, they never started a life for you to end so you're not "killing" per se. On the other hand if you want to take a holistic view into account, not just the singular time line that you altered but the one you came from as well, they DID exist, and you stopped them from existing. Even though no one else would know they had existed, YOU'LL know and for you at least, you'll have "killed" them.

 

[KOMega]

If they never existed wouldn't that mean...

3. Undoes any effect they have ever had on anything, which will change allot of other people lives too. As well as any future effects the person may cause.

That you would also not use the time machine to erase them from existence?

Or lets say you are basically creating another timeline where he is erased. What you have actually done is just gone somewhere where that person isn't, or maybe cloned yourself and sent one of you to a place where the erased one has been erased while the other you is wondering why the machine didn't work.

I would say that it would be bad, not because you erased someone, but because you may have caused damage to the time-space environment, and possibly several grammar texts (as is the nature of time travel) and would require a copy of Dr. Dan Streetmentioner's Time Traveler's Handbook of 1001 Tense Formations.

 

[Phrozenflame500]

Nope, it's not killing them.

Since, you know, they never lived to begin with.

 

[Syzygy23]

So inspired by the other thread about the morality of not saving someone, I have another question to pose to OT


If you had a hypothetical time machine, and you really disliked someone, is going back in time to ensure they were never born the same as killing them?

Admittedly there is no suffering as there is in the violent act of murder, but the effect is more or less the same. You have removed them from the world.

For example, just say there is this bully you really hate at school, and you think you want to kill them. Luckily, you have a time machine, and instead you simply phase them from existence by ensuring they are never conceived. Did you kill them?

This all really depends on how time works.

It's entirely possible that you didn't ACTUALLY de-existify them, rather you simply created a splinter timeline which doesn't contain that person, whereas your own will still contain them.

And then we run in to the whole paradox thing. If your enemy never existed, you would never hate them enough to build/use a time machine to go back and prevent their parents from meeting, therefore undoing everything up to this point. (To be fair, you COULD write a note to yourself from the past telling you to travel back to the point you just did to prevent a paradox, put it in a safety deposit box with orders to have it delivered to yourself a week before you were supposed to go back)

 

[Fractral]

Well, yeah. I mean, they lived, and then they didn't, at least in the sequence of events you would presumably see. So you are ending their life. It might seem different to everybody else, but to the person committing it you would have just killed someone.