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Best Practices for Time Travelers (2003)

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Re: Best Practices for Time Travelers (2003)

#31

There is no such thing as time, or time travel. There are only positions of particles. To go back in time by 1 minute, all particles in the universe have to be moved/changed back to their previous position. This is not time travel, but universe manipulation except for one subject. If there were parallel universes with every possible outcome and you traveled to one, this would also not be time travel, but a moving to…

You make a good point. What if a civilization figured out how to do this on a local level? To finely manipulate particles within a small area? It would be like version control for reality.

Re: Best Practices for Time Travelers (2003)

#32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Steins;Gate[1] contains references to John Titor[2]. I actually thought they had made him up until I looked on Wikipedia and discovered he was a real ("real") conspiracy theory. An English version of the game is now up on Steam. Highly recommended. http://store.steampowered.com/app/412830/ [1]: Edit: the game. Not sure about the anime. [2]: Edit: In the game at least this is more in depth than just a password. Saying…

Thoroughly offtopic, would you recommend Steins Gate? I haven't watched any anime for a while but enjoyed Ergo Proxy and Eden of the East.

I can't speak to the anime, but I enjoyed and recommend the visual novel version.

I got into it because I wanted a break from more traditional games (such as RPGs) which may claim to have a story but often don't go deep into character development and so on. If that's what you want, Steins;Gate definitely delivers.

I'd make two cautionary points if you're going to try it:

1. It's a visual novel, so it's not going to be interactive like a more traditional game. You get some choices, which among other things determine what ending you get, but really don't influence much otherwise.

2. There's a lot of banter. You'll know in the first 10 minutes of the game if this bothers you or not. I personally didn't have a problem with it, but your mileage may vary.

Re: Best Practices for Time Travelers (2003)

#33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Steins;Gate[1] contains references to John Titor[2]. I actually thought they had made him up until I looked on Wikipedia and discovered he was a real ("real") conspiracy theory. An English version of the game is now up on Steam. Highly recommended. http://store.steampowered.com/app/412830/ [1]: Edit: the game. Not sure about the anime. [2]: Edit: In the game at least this is more in depth than just a password. Saying…

Thoroughly offtopic, would you recommend Steins Gate? I haven't watched any anime for a while but enjoyed Ergo Proxy and Eden of the East.

The visual novel is really fantastic, though fairly slow-moving if you're not used to the medium. (Visual novels in general tend to be very detailed and very slow-paced. Some, like Higurashi, use this to great effect, but it can also annoy people not used to them.)

If you're not sure about reading it, the anime is also really good. It's obviously much less detailed than the visual novel (compressing ~40 hours of visual novel into TV format is hard) and omits some sizable plot points, but it's still great. The first half is fairly slow set up before it hits like a truck.

Re: Best Practices for Time Travelers (2003)

#34
post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Steins;Gate[1] contains references to John Titor[2]. I actually thought they had made him up until I looked on Wikipedia and discovered he was a real ("real") conspiracy theory. An English version of the game is now up on Steam. Highly recommended. http://store.steampowered.com/app/412830/ [1]: Edit: the game. Not sure about the anime. [2]: Edit: In the game at least this is more in depth than just a password. Saying…

Welp, no linux version. A visual novel that actually got me interested. Hasn't happened in quite some time!

It's a bit expensive for me to buy just for testing in WINE, but I think you'd have a fairly good chance of it working.

Re: Best Practices for Time Travelers (2003)

#35
post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thoroughly offtopic, would you recommend Steins Gate? I haven't watched any anime for a while but enjoyed Ergo Proxy and Eden of the East.

The visual novel is really fantastic, though fairly slow-moving if you're not used to the medium. (Visual novels in general tend to be very detailed and very slow-paced. Some, like Higurashi, use this to great effect, but it can also annoy people not used to them.) If you're not sure about reading it, the anime is also really good. It's obviously much less detailed than the visual novel (compressing ~40 hours of visu…

What would you recommend to try next for someone who liked Steins;Gate (the visual novel)?

Re: Best Practices for Time Travelers (2003)

#36

I stopped reading when he said that the clocks would tip over at 2^32 seconds after 1970 (136 years), but it is really 2^31 since it uses a signed 32-bit int (68 years).

Fixed. You can finish reading.

Only 4.155×10⁸ seconds late :)

Re: Best Practices for Time Travelers (2003)

#37

A few links are broken in that article. Here's an archive which contains the pictures referenced: http://web.archive.org/web/20070202095050/http://www.anomali...

I assume the war destroyed all the decent smartphones then, along with the vaping devices. Those photos look worse than ones taken on my Moto G.

Re: Best Practices for Time Travelers (2003)

#38
Does anybody know if the forum archives with John Titor's posts are still floating around somewhere? I remember reading some of his stuff a few years after he disappeared and it made for quite an entertaining read. This guy had his story figures out to the very bone. Everything down to the sci-fi tech. He had every nook and cranny covered.

Re: Best Practices for Time Travelers (2003)

#39

There is no such thing as time, or time travel. There are only positions of particles. To go back in time by 1 minute, all particles in the universe have to be moved/changed back to their previous position. This is not time travel, but universe manipulation except for one subject. If there were parallel universes with every possible outcome and you traveled to one, this would also not be time travel, but a moving to…

OTOH time is relative to the observer and certain universe phenomena, such as black holes, can distort how time passes in different points of the space dimension. The general idea that a point in time is how we define a particular snapshot of particles is probably right, but time as a dimension also appears to be a bit more complex than how we perceive it from Earth, which we should also not forget.
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