Murder or Suicide

[Dinomoto]

If you travel foward in time and kill yourself, is that murder or suicide?

[Jorgen]

Personality which is what makes you you, is a coalition between things that have happened to you and what you were born with.
So what this explains is that the person you kill back in time is not really you =)

If you would've said travel back in time that would be different, seeing as the present you would die 2 =P

[B.E.R.S.~4:20]

thats actually a hard one but i think it would be murder to travel forward in time and kill yourself, but if you travel back in time i would have to say it would be suicide.

[Ghast]

Suicide.

"Killing" yourself.

[crypto]

I've tried it and it doesn't work.

Sorry.

In all serious (hehehahaha!), I want to say that this a false dilemma, or at least an situation that flies in the face of logic, and I'm mad as hell at myself because I remember listening to a audiobook written by some genius scientist that dealt with all sorts of physical/cosmological awesomeness, and it explained the concept of space-time and talked about time as the fourth dimension, and there was a part that addressed time travel. And I can't remember what the conclusion was. The grandfather paradox is more philosophically logical than scientifically evidenced but it casts serious doubt over the possibility of backward time travel. In fact, it probably confirms that it's impossible. If you go back in time, kill your grandfather, and then return to the "present," do you find the world as it would be if you had never been born? Sup, impossible situation and consequent mind screw.

As for forward time travel, it is possible—100% possible, and we know with 100% certainty. Killing your future self messes with my mind, though. I want to say it would become a cycle, as the self you'd be killing would be the same self who traveled forward to kill himself, but I don't know jack about this stuff. HOWEVA, given that you can't travel back in time, it would be impossible for you to return to the present (2011), as the present is the past of the future. unless I'm missing something, this means that if you travel to the future then there will be no future self to meet—you are your future self, so to speak.

[Lone Mudkips]

Killing yourself in the future would probably be murder.

[crypto]

Okay, I'm done trolling. I voted suicide but then I thought about it and (ignoring all scientific nonsense) I'd say it's murder. You may have the same DNA, but

(1) you'll have different experiences, memories, and other forms of knowledge;
(2) saying for example that it's 2011 and you time-travel to 2013, something might've happened in 2012 to alter your future self that wouldn't alter your present self (e.g., you get lobotomized, or you get your arm chopped off);
(3) bearing in mind points (1) and (2), your present and future selves will have different cognitive functions;
(4) you're two different bodies, two separate and therefore distinguishable organisms, so you're not the same person, your brains don't magically synchronize when you're put in the same room, etc.

It's like one identical twin killing the other, except that identical twins aren't quite genetically identical as You I and You II are.

[Dante]

Murder AND Suicide.
Because you murder your future self thus when you become your future self your past self kills yourself.
And if its in the past. PARADOX!!!!!!!!!

[Boxman]

Personality which is what makes you you, is a coalition between things that have happened to you and what you were born with.
So what this explains is that the person you kill back in time is not really you =)

If you would've said travel back in time that would be different, seeing as the present you would die 2 =P

That'd be later, though.

[Travis]

You're ending your life causing a fate that will happen at that moment in the future for you too, so suicide.

[crypto]

Oh, damn, jorgen beat me to the point. Nature versus nurture.

[WillKill]

If I am killing myself I am taking a few people with me... Just saying

[TowerSheep]

Murder, Pat (past you) is going to kill Joe (future you). Joe is not taking his life, it is being taken from him by Pat.

Pat is not Joe because he lacks the (x amount of time you go forward)  experience and memories. There is part of Joe that Pat is not, thus murder.

[Dante]

Murder, Pat (past you) is going to kill Joe (future you). Joe is not taking his life, it is being taken from him by Pat.

Pat is not Joe because he lacks the (x amount of time you go forward)  experience and memories. There is part of Joe that Pat is not, thus murder.

And suicide because. Pat will kill kill joe thus when pat becomes joe pat will kill joe but joe and pat are one and the other so either way when pat gets to the time when he is joe he will be killed by pat and he is pat.

[Whitellama]

The act is murder. Suicide is to kill yourself for whatever reason you decide. But if a duplicate of "yourself" from the past or future were to make the decision for the "present" you it would be murder because it was not the present you's decision.