A Better World

This interesting dialogue in Poul Anderson's Twilight World (London, 1984) is also relevant to historical speculation in general and to the same author's Time Patrol series in particular:

"'Had it not been for that damned war and its aftermath, we might stand here [on Ganymede] amidst flowering gardens and know that our people had already reached the stars.'

"'We would not exist,' said Orna prosaically.

"Danivar laughed. 'True. The trend of events must ever seem toward the best, since it is toward the one observing the trend.'" (p. 179)

I disagree. I think that the world could (not necessarily would but could) have been better if history had taken a different course at an earlier stage even though I would in that case not exist to observe the trend:

for Biblical fundamentalists, if the First Parents had not fallen;
scientific and industrial revolutions in ancient Greece preventing the Roman Empire, the Dark Ages and the Middle Ages;
a different outcome for political conflicts in the early twentieth century preventing World Wars, Nazism, Stalinism and nuclear weapons;
my life would have been better with a different upbringing and education even though my present self would not have been here to comment on it - someone better would have been.