Would you rather go back into past or go into the future?

I'm not so sure what I would rather do. I think both would be pretty much as awesome as each other. It's just whether I would rather live through something that has happened or live in the unknown. Even if I can't live through it, just to 'see' it would be mesmerizing.

Imagine being able to go back to the beginning of 'time' or to see dinosaurs (or perhaps things before?) or times when other human species were alive and humans were well and truly animals, just like every other. What about being able to see how life really was like in WW1 and WW2? What about seeing the first ever life forms? Life in roman times? Who are you ancestors? Was the 'big-bang' real?

On the other hand, imagine being able to go into the future, to see what it would be like. Would there be things like we see in futuristic movies? If you go so far into the future, and providing you believe in certain theories, would Earth escape the 'red sun' that is believed to swallow it as Earth could just be just too far away for the 'red sun' to be able to engulf it. What species would come after us? Would humans have technology advanced enough to travel to find (if they exist) other planets that would allow life? Would humans exist after the demise of the Earth's living conditions? What would it be like in 100, 200, 50 thousand, 1 million, 25 billion years time? Even 500 billion years time, would the universe have ended? Hmm..

So would you go back in time or forward in time? Where would you go first? What would you do?

As cool as it would be to go back in time, I'd probably go forwards in time. I haven't really decided how far, if you could only go to one point in time it'd be hard to decide. I'd like to see how it would be like whatever period in time I pick.

1. Past or future.
2. You can only visit ONE place/point in time (to make it more interesting to see where people would go, I mean if you go as many times as you want, wouldn't you just go everywhere lol?).
3. Thank you!

Edit: so yeah, if you picked WW2 you could see the entire period, not just 1939 or 1942 or 1945 or whatever.

Yeah, some periods wouldn't be all that, but it would still be interesting just to see exactly how it was.

If you went into the past you could have a beer with Einstein, lol. (If he did drink that is).

This is highly dependant on whether the past can be changed and whether or not this could happen by accident.

Deleting myself via a time paradox would not be good.

And on the other hand... would going into the past/future lead to my accidental death?

e.g. I appear in the empty space where the Earth was when I set off but it's not there because it's in a different point in its orbit at the time when I appear at the same coordinates.

I would choose the future three times out of four. If this was in terms of self-reflection on my own life, I would choose to go back into the past. For anything else, like my friends/entourage's future, or the world's upcoming occurrences, then the future.

quote Styot

I kinda think going into the past wouldn't a pleasant experience, they really didn't have any concept of sanitation at all, the smell would be overwhelming and the general level of disgust would be though the roof. The streets were covered in human shit, and apparently even in the palace of Versailles the corridors were filled with human shit, which they shovelled out every few months. No thanks. Discovering germs really was the best thing that ever happen to mankind.

Maybe not all historical times would be that... disappointing though.

That's true, but the future may end up in the same state due to overpopulation and/or other unforeseen events. If the OP's question was actually real then you'd be taking quite a risk when it comes to quality of life.

It'd be interesting living in the past (well, certain parts of it), but I think I'd be more fascinated in how mankind has progressed. So future for me.

I can't see any reason why I would want to relive wars and everything else, not to mention the disease and filth of the past. I'd rather check out the future, maybe a couple hundred years or even a couple thousand, or enough so hopefully the planet is still alive and beyond my natural living span. Hopefully there would be some cool technology that would be pretty impressive, and not just some sort of destructive end.

I'd say past, reasoning would be that there is alot of mystery about the future that I think you should leave alone until it's time comes. The past is something you can always learn about and never be destroyed by, but certainly something that is very interesting not to mention educative. Might even open up some mysteries about religions and reasonings behind wars/withdrawals and inventions etc.

As to what time I would travel to, probably 600 BC or so, around the time of Nebuchadnezzar and the fall of Babylon/rise of Persia leading into the event at Marathon and Thermopylae some years later. Possibly to year 30 to say hi to Jesus