Solveig Singleton

Time Travel

Yesterday was “pretend to be a time traveler” day. I particularly like this suggestion, from the distopian future section:

Take some trinket with you (it can be anything really), hand it to some stranger, along with a phone number and say “In thirty years dial this number. You’ll know what to do after that.” Then slip away.

Time travel hypotheticals, along with teleportation, mindreading, and other such exploits are great for thought experiments involving rights theory in a classical liberal tradition. Two treatments of thought: In one, new abilities that create potential new types of conflicts or that upset existing institutions or rule arrangements are best left alone, dealt with by contract; if the old rules don’t cover ‘em, it’s inconsistent with freedom to impose any new ones. In another, one takes a step back, more or less leaves things alone, but if conflicts arising in a certain area seem to be creating systemic problems with long-run consequences, try some new rules and institutional arrangements and see how it goes. Or eventually let settled and customary expectations evolve into the default rules. Rather like IP today. Or infanticide in past centuries. Fun to be had by all.

December 10, 2007 | Comments |

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