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Ask HN: If you had 24 hours in the year 2050, what questions would you ask?

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Re: Ask HN: If you had 24 hours in the year 2050, what questions would you ask?

#51

Post by bradlys »

Lottery ticket numbers for immediate use when home. Best performing stocks (or whatever metric I need to leverage options effectively) and trends within the next ten years. (With some analysis on long term trends)

Where real estate goes up the most over the following 25 years. What cities/regions become most enjoyable to live in compared to now and have a clear upward trend still within them.

After that - I’d probably just look into safest, cleanest, and most reliable places to live because I’m stupid FAT at this point (billionaire status within a few years) and my only concern is my well being in life.

I’d also like to read books or find out information about how people viewed events from 30 years ago and what they think should’ve been done and what we could do going forward. Oh and if there’s any ground breaking research or inventions in the last 20 years that I could take back and make a fortune on. That’d be dope.

Re: Ask HN: If you had 24 hours in the year 2050, what questions would you ask?

#52

Post by AnimalMuppet »

lancesells wrote: post #22
rjmill wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Some guy C'mon, it's 2050! I sure hope the president isn't always a guy by that point.

7 chances left. 6 if you leave off this next election of Biden / Trump.

Hillary may run again in 2024. At a minimum, I don't think she's ruled it out.

If Biden doesn't run again, Harris almost certainly will.

Re: Ask HN: If you had 24 hours in the year 2050, what questions would you ask?

#53

Post by AnimalMuppet »

Selfishly: Who won the Super Bowl each year since 2022? I could get a pretty nice return from Vegas on that info.

Scientifically: Do you have a theory that reconciles general relativity and quantum mechanics? What does it explain? What does it predict?

Socially: What admissionsguy said. Where did the bombs fall? Where was safe?

Re: Ask HN: If you had 24 hours in the year 2050, what questions would you ask?

#54

Post by Jaruzel »

Jaruzel wrote: post #9

I'd ask "Which tech or disruptive startup from 2023 onwards is now a massive success, and when did they start offering shares?" Once back in my own time, wait and invest accordingly, then reap the profit.

Tsk, downvoters.... you know you'd do the same. I'm just being honest.

Re: Ask HN: If you had 24 hours in the year 2050, what questions would you ask?

#55

Post by spywaregorilla »

bradlys wrote: post #50
spywaregorilla wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Butterfly effects of your altered behavior upon returning could possibly mess up lottery numbers. Stocks are probably safer.

Buy a lottery ticket within the same week. Very unlikely you’ll have any affect on the spin of the balls.

I'm not so sure. A dice thrown by a machine is pretty rigid. You won't affect the spin by your external meddling. A dice thrown by a human has tons of nuance. If the cumulative effect of your different actions results in a half a second deviation in the ball chooser's schedule, there's probably enough random noise in their choosing process to result in a deviation.

Although writing this I realize I don't know how lotteries are conducted

Re: Ask HN: If you had 24 hours in the year 2050, what questions would you ask?

#56

Post by bradlys »

spywaregorilla wrote: post #55
bradlys wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Buy a lottery ticket within the same week. Very unlikely you’ll have any affect on the spin of the balls.

I'm not so sure. A dice thrown by a machine is pretty rigid. You won't affect the spin by your external meddling. A dice thrown by a human has tons of nuance. If the cumulative effect of your different actions results in a half a second deviation in the ball chooser's schedule, there's probably enough random noise in their choosing process to result in a deviation. Although writing this I realize I don't know how lot…

You really do overestimate your contributions to the world. Buying a lottery ticket is not going to affect the spin of the ball when literally hundreds of thousands/millions are purchased every week.

Re: Ask HN: If you had 24 hours in the year 2050, what questions would you ask?

#58

Post by spywaregorilla »

bradlys wrote: post #56
spywaregorilla wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not so sure. A dice thrown by a machine is pretty rigid. You won't affect the spin by your external meddling. A dice thrown by a human has tons of nuance. If the cumulative effect of your different actions results in a half a second deviation in the ball chooser's schedule, there's probably enough random noise in their choosing process to result in a deviation. Although writing this I realize I don't know how lot…

You really do overestimate your contributions to the world. Buying a lottery ticket is not going to affect the spin of the ball when literally hundreds of thousands/millions are purchased every week.

If you drive to the store to buy a lottery ticket, you add a car to traffic. If you add a car to traffic, you adjust the timing of other people's traffic experiences. Someone hits one extra red light. They're now offset by 12 seconds from their baseline pattern. Things accumulate. It's hardly difficult to imagine how a tiny bit of noise results in a lot of differences. Again, I don't know the specifics of how lottery systems work, but if it's a pseudo random physical process with some degree of human input, I expect the butterfly effect would matter a lot. Dice are a good example. The amount of noise you need to add to make a parallel version of yourself roll differently on another timeline, even they both roll at exactly the same time, is probably trivial. Why? Because the human physical action is basically a random process in itself. Force, angle, hand position, landing angle, etc. People won't, and often can't, control these things with much precision and are largely driven by lots of tiny subconscious effects.

If an extra red light causes you to shake the dice or spin the balls an extra 0.1 seconds longer, it seems likely that the outcome will be different.

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