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There are many models for time travel. Sometimes, travelling in time creates a separate timeline, this is neat, because it avoids paradoxical logic. But a model where there is only one timeline, and if you change something, everything that comes after ceases to exist, has some interesting dilemmas.

The 20th century was marked with war and genocide. Historians would say that this is the result of many complex societal factors and events, but for the sake of argument, let's say you could go back in time and prevent it. You figure out a set of action that will create world peace and today we'd be living in an objectively better society.

Only problem is that we'd all be dead too.

Everything that happened in the 20th century has shaped the lives of our ancestors. They'd have been raised very differently. How do we know our parents would have met if it didn't happen?

And the conception of a child is a very random event. If your grandparents had sex on a different day, then your parents would be very different people. Would they have found one another?

Without time travel, it is rather nonsensical to think of the people who weren't born. Only weird fringe people do that. Most would agree that wearing a condom doesn't mean you're killing a child by not making it.

But with time travel, it's different, because the people already exist, and maybe you'll make society objectively better, but you'll also kill everyone they already exists. You'll also kill yourself by the way.

It's a kind of trolley problem. You take action for a better outcome, but you are responsible for the negative consequences of it, or you do nothing, accept that reality is what it is. Whether an omnicide is better than a genocide.

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