Rules and mechanics about time travel in the real world are not really known. Scenarios like these are kind of thought pumps about what even could happen atm.
One issue is whether you identify with your genes. Would a person born in the same time and place but for different parents be you?
One issue is also whether you care about different possibilities of yourself. Imagine a kind of russian roulette where you can choose to get your grandfather killed but double your current net worth (or maybe you literally go murder-rob another iteration of you). If you only care about “your branch” or “you standing here” this can seem and under some timetravel rules is upside with neglible downsides. If you care about your “multiverse average happiness” and under some other kind of rules this can seems to give an expected net worth of (0+2x)/2 = 1x
Yeah I guess regular intuition only cover affecting the present and future. With time travel it might not be taken for guarantee that the past “is in the bank”. I mostly took the role of the grandfather to be your causal support. One can consider whether things would change if “kill grandfather” is changed to “kill you just after having been born” (or to the more extreme end “snuff out sun before life develops on earth”).
Rules and mechanics about time travel in the real world are not really known. Scenarios like these are kind of thought pumps about what even could happen atm.
One issue is whether you identify with your genes. Would a person born in the same time and place but for different parents be you?
One issue is also whether you care about different possibilities of yourself. Imagine a kind of russian roulette where you can choose to get your grandfather killed but double your current net worth (or maybe you literally go murder-rob another iteration of you). If you only care about “your branch” or “you standing here” this can seem and under some timetravel rules is upside with neglible downsides. If you care about your “multiverse average happiness” and under some other kind of rules this can seems to give an expected net worth of (0+2x)/2 = 1x
What about your grandfather?
Yeah I guess regular intuition only cover affecting the present and future. With time travel it might not be taken for guarantee that the past “is in the bank”. I mostly took the role of the grandfather to be your causal support. One can consider whether things would change if “kill grandfather” is changed to “kill you just after having been born” (or to the more extreme end “snuff out sun before life develops on earth”).