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What Happened When We Tried to Publish a Real Paper Investigating Time Travel

thewinnower.com

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Re: What Happened When We Tried to Publish a Real Paper Investigating Time Travel

#51

Post by mjn »

Steuard wrote: post #50

The biggest issue that I see with publishing this work in a physics journal is that although time travel is certainly a concept in physics, the research involved here is not physics research. I'd describe it as sociological(?) research intended to shed light on a problem of interest to physics. That may seem like splitting hairs, but there's a real question of competence here: as a physicist, I don't feel especially…

Yes, my first thought reading through this was surprise that he didn't try any non-physics journals. I think any number of journals devoted to a topic like network science, internet research, web science, etc., would have found the topic of the study more within their area of interest. They would also be able to provide better peer review of the methodological/modeling choices, which mostly aren't related to physics.

Re: What Happened When We Tried to Publish a Real Paper Investigating Time Travel

#52

Post by njharman »

vidarh wrote: post #25
meric wrote: post #17

"In the response, the editor said that (s)he has now sent the article out to another editor, one who is quite famous in this area, but who also agreed that this paper should be rejected without being sent out for peer review. In this reply, the famous editor said: "I should point out that most stock markets around the planet devote considerable resources to looking for temporally anomalous market behavior --- unusual…

> the tweeter could have a uncle who is involved in vatican politics and the tweeter read some of his uncle's notes That wouldn't explain knowing about the name. Of course it is possible that someone would have guessed at possible names for a pope. Since the name is inspired from the name of Francis of Assisi, it is not inconceivable, so a search would still not be proof. But the name "Pope Francis" did not exist unt…

Pope names form a fairly limited set. I bet if you asked 100,000 Catholics to guess the next pope's name, > 0 would get it right. I'm actually surprised there isn't tons of speculation about it. Maybe it's not a "thing" or sacrilegious or this sort of speculation is not on the Internet?

Re: What Happened When We Tried to Publish a Real Paper Investigating Time Travel

#53

Post by mhandley »

corry wrote: post #46

Imagine: Google itself could find proof of this, given that it's organizing the world's information. In fact, Google is one of the only entities that could actually 'prove' this out. What would they do if they identified the time traveller? Locate him/her? Use his knowledge to further their plans? The knowledge may be potentially world-changing; whoever finds the traveller will be in a very powerful position. Script…

Although Google is best placed to find any time traveller, the time traveller is even better placed to go back further in time and correct the situation to prevent the knowledge becoming widely known. Thus if time travel is possible, it's almost a certainty that Sergey Brin is a time traveller.

Re: What Happened When We Tried to Publish a Real Paper Investigating Time Travel

#54

Post by unreal37 »

Steuard wrote: post #50

The biggest issue that I see with publishing this work in a physics journal is that although time travel is certainly a concept in physics, the research involved here is not physics research. I'd describe it as sociological(?) research intended to shed light on a problem of interest to physics. That may seem like splitting hairs, but there's a real question of competence here: as a physicist, I don't feel especially…

I agree. "How I Tried to Solve a Tough Physics Problem Only Using Google Searches" isn't a classic research paper, and seems to be no surprise that it didn't get accepted in the biggest physics journals.

Re: What Happened When We Tried to Publish a Real Paper Investigating Time Travel

#55

Post by jackgavigan »

vidarh wrote: post #25
meric wrote: post #17

"In the response, the editor said that (s)he has now sent the article out to another editor, one who is quite famous in this area, but who also agreed that this paper should be rejected without being sent out for peer review. In this reply, the famous editor said: "I should point out that most stock markets around the planet devote considerable resources to looking for temporally anomalous market behavior --- unusual…

> the tweeter could have a uncle who is involved in vatican politics and the tweeter read some of his uncle's notes That wouldn't explain knowing about the name. Of course it is possible that someone would have guessed at possible names for a pope. Since the name is inspired from the name of Francis of Assisi, it is not inconceivable, so a search would still not be proof. But the name "Pope Francis" did not exist unt…

> If you know how the stock market will perform in detail far in advance, though, rather than sit on a single tip about some deal, you can do amazingly well by moving sufficiently small amounts into each of a bunch of shares sufficiently long in advance that it'd be just noise.

If, however, you consider the stock market to be a chaotic system, your small trades will change the market's performance.

Re: What Happened When We Tried to Publish a Real Paper Investigating Time Travel

#56

Post by TheOtherHobbes »

corry wrote: post #46

Imagine: Google itself could find proof of this, given that it's organizing the world's information. In fact, Google is one of the only entities that could actually 'prove' this out. What would they do if they identified the time traveller? Locate him/her? Use his knowledge to further their plans? The knowledge may be potentially world-changing; whoever finds the traveller will be in a very powerful position. Script…

Neat idea.

But if you were a time traveller, what would you use Google for, and why?

I'm not convinced you're going to be Googling the future pope, because it's trivially easy to Google the current one.

The possible telltales are not obvious.

Re: What Happened When We Tried to Publish a Real Paper Investigating Time Travel

#57

Post by Rapzid »

mseebach wrote: post #43

I think the methodology of the paper is flawed. Why would a time traveller from the future be discussing "Comet ISON" or "Pope Francis"? According to Wikipedia, comet ISON wasn't ever bright enough to spot with the naked eye, and thus left no significant impact on humanity. It's obviously too early to decide if Pope Francis will leave a deep, significant impact, but odds are against it. For this methodology to really…

Also, what if the first rule of time travel is: 1.) Don't talk about time travel

Re: What Happened When We Tried to Publish a Real Paper Investigating Time Travel

#58

Post by melvinmt »

madaxe_again wrote: post #13
gb wrote: post #7

Perhaps no evidence was found because people from the future have seen this paper and therefore know not to reveal themselves this way!

If there are time travellers from a future, it isn't our future, and this isn't their past - otherwise causality doesn't work. Instead if you travel back in time you travel to a point, which immediately bifurcates into a new reality. I like to think that we're all time travellers, collectively collapsing the universe's wavefunction through will alone... And now I'm onto determinism so I'll shut up.

Who says your reality is the same as my reality already? :)
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