[Tyger]

I'd rather go back as I am now then have to be a kid again.

[Wiz Khalifa]

I would travel to the past, because if I would travel to the future I would have no real idea of how all the newer technology works, and there would be less skids in the past.

[mig4ng]

If you travel to the future, you'd be behind on everything, ie. How most old people are behind on today's technology. For me, just that thought is degrading. On the other hand, travelling to the past would be profitable, like you said, but you wouldn't have the tech you have today. It's pretty much a dilemma.

you could go on the past 1 week, win the lotery, and gg

[Adorapuff]

you could go on the past 1 week, win the lotery, and gg

Wouldn't changing things that large have negative effects?

[Nyx]

Actually, more specific to what you're asking: if you travel back to the past while you're still alive, are we assuming that you go back into your own body, or you stay in your body and there's two of "you" walking around?

If you go to the future the same dilemma arises. Personally I'd go back to when Bitcoins were started and invest every single cent my family had in possession into it. Then when the 17th of November, 2013 rolls around to where each Bitcoin goes for 1216.73$ each, I sell it all and never have to do any work at all in my lifetime, then I travel the world, try and help out with the knowledge that I have retained from the future. I see it as a win - win. Or I could go far back and start Microsoft to become the richest man in the world.

[mig4ng]

Wouldn't changing things that large have negative effects?

maybe, but I'd risk it anyways

[cr33pyguy]

Personally, I'd travel to the past. Being able to know the future ahead of time could be profitable. You could manipulate the stock exchange, cheat at the lottery, and make mass fortunes. Of course, you'd be missing out on possible opportunities travelling to the future might hold (such as improvements to technology).

Wouldn't it be a completely different past, and all of this could be different?

And is this about if you went back you'd be yourself from then, or you'd be your current age as would make more sense?

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Though assuming it would be you at your current age I'd probably travel to the future. Like really far to the future (100 000 years?) - just to see how it all turns out.

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Wouldn't changing things that large have negative effects?

not necessarily negative. But it would have effects.

[Uzinero]

Here's what I'd do:
Travel into the past, I don't know what sort of time period you're saying we'd travel back too, so I guess I'll assume 100 years. Now, what I do is I take some books I made with me, in these books, blueprints and facts. Things that will happen so that I can use them to my advantage, but more than anything it will be blueprints, modern computers, graphics cards, CPU's, modern cars, cameras, mobile phones etc. I would quickly become the richest man in the world whilst also having all the technology invented almost 100 years earlier, allowing humans to become more advanced faster whilst I make a fortune and live like a king. Everybody wins.

[cr33pyguy]

Here's what I'd do:
Travel into the past, I don't know what sort of time period you're saying we'd travel back too, so I guess I'll assume 100 years. Now, what I do is I take some books I made with me, in these books, blueprints and facts. Things that will happen so that I can use them to my advantage, but more than anything it will be blueprints, modern computers, graphics cards, CPU's, modern cars, cameras, mobile phones etc. I would quickly become the richest man in the world whilst also having all the technology invented almost 100 years earlier, allowing humans to become more advanced faster whilst I make a fortune and live like a king. Everybody wins.

I watched a video about this. It was slightly more extreme, but the same basis.
here's a link to the TED talk: http://www.ted.com/talks/thomas_thwaites...om_scratch

basically he does as if he had to do it all himself - build the toaster, starting by getting iron and things all the way to the plastic casing. You'll have to see what happens for yourself.

[Uzinero]

I watched a video about this. It was slightly more extreme, but the same basis.
here's a link to the TED talk: http://www.ted.com/talks/thomas_thwaites...om_scratch

basically he does as if he had to do it all himself - build the toaster, starting by getting iron and things all the way to the plastic casing. You'll have to see what happens for yourself.

Yeah, but instead of building things myself I'd do it more along the lines of rather than actually building the stuff myself taking the blueprints for making them all as well as information about things happening around the time (lottery numbers, things that would happen, etc.) too make sure that I had the money to have all the machinery built over a few years by tons of employees so that I could then start manufacturing all of our current tech, so long as I took back enough information to get a good cash flow and had enough detail on how things were done that over a period of possibly even 10-20 years the machinery would be finished and ready to start seriously advancing things with modern tech, even though it may take a while to build the machinery at that point I'd pretty much have a monopoly on the world's technology market, so as long as I could fund it until then I would then make insane amounts of money and even if the machinery took like 30 years to put in place before we could start producing things, that's still 70 years earlier than it's been invented so would still be advancing humans a lot.