[RayBornert]

allow me to critique your setup:

as compared to the bible example, there is a much higher chance that every word of all of william's plays could be reconstructed from the minds of the worlds' actor population. i understand that you want to frame your question such that the document itself is an erasure point; but if you really want to represent that then imagine the extent to which that knowledge has disseminated throughout mankind over several centuries; the question is easier for me to answer if you allow me these options:

a) save william from abortion (i.e. time travel is involved)
b) save random baby

now we have apples and apples - 1 life known to produce something significant and 1 random life. i'd save william.

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secondly, if you asked the scientists of the world to reverse extrapolate the foundation of what they currently know, they'd be able to do it; i'll grant you that they might not be able to recover all of the personal editorials or opinions of the authors but they'd recover the axioms and theories and arguments and equations for sure. but again, i know that you want to frame the question in such a way so as to achieve a clean erasure point and so i'll do the same thing as above by viewing it this way:

a) save newton and leibniz from abortion
b) save random baby

this is nearly the same as the first but you've doubled the value proposition. i'd save the smart guys.

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and lastly (using the reasoning above) i'd choose not to abort the promising scientist. the birth events for the scientist and the baby are only 2 decades apart and so the problem is much like choosing which baby to abort.

all things considered, you select the person with more proven value (as cruel as that sounds), for the same reasons you'd not kill a mother whose life was threatened by pregnancy.

ray