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Searching the Internet for evidence of time travelers

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Re: Searching the Internet for evidence of time travelers

#71

Post by XorNot »

3rd3 wrote: post #22

The NSA probably has enough data at hand for answering this question.

This is actually something that's more reasonable. Presumably time travellers wouldn't advertise their presence heavily (can you say immediate and massive possible security hazard?) but one way to track them would be to look for net-traffic patterns which matched a person who was trying to localize the day and time, or who searched for things well in advance of them becoming known, general trends, or even being put up on the internet at all.

Re: Searching the Internet for evidence of time travelers

#72

Post by ElongatedTowel »

graylights wrote: post #43
threeseed wrote: post #40

I've never understood this logic. If say time travel is invented in year 3000. Then surely by 3050 it would be affordable for a certain segment of society. And be 3070 available for a mass market. And by 3100 available in watch form. So shouldn't we expect there to be millions/billions of people interfering with the past. A significant percentage of which would be deliberately aiming to manipulate, destroy, communica…

It's been 60 years since nuclear power was invented, so in 10 years it'll be available for mass market? I'd also like my watch form plane. What if it's so energy intensive that a future dyson sphere can only power it once a year. It doesn't matter how cheap the machine is, if the resources are expensive.

That poses the question whether a civilization that is advanced enough to build a dyson sphere would be able to build a second one somewhere else. The species would have enough time to collect energy and improve the machine until no reachable sun would be usable. And though we don't carry nuclear reactors in our watches (I guess smartphone would be more reasonable these days) we might carry fusion reactors in the year 38000.

Re: Searching the Internet for evidence of time travelers

#73

Post by g_lined »

DanBC wrote: post #56
bwindels wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Armstrong and Miller actually: http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=6c2kyNJ3Omo

Whoops, thanks for the correction. I did wonder why I couldn't find the clip in YouTube.

You may have been thinking of this sketch: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oa_hiLXLbTc Where one guy proposes a modern idea but it makes no sense to people of the past. I think this is one of a 2 or 3 such sketches.

Re: Searching the Internet for evidence of time travelers

#74

Post by lukifer »

lazyjones wrote: post #28

If time travel is possible at all, we'd eventually discover and use it. I wonder if this means that we'll destroy our civilization before becoming able to use time travel (seems more likely than time travel being impossible to achieve within thousands of years from now).

One could also posit an Anthropic Principle of time travel: the fact that we still exist means that our universe is among the tiny subset of potential multiverses in which time travel is not discovered, or whose use is sufficiently constrained so as to not result in destruction or paradox.

Re: Searching the Internet for evidence of time travelers

#75

Post by rwmj »

DanBC wrote: post #26

There's a relevant Mitchell and Web scetch. Someone travels back in time and meets Faraday. Faraday asks a bunch of questions, none of which can be answered because the traveller is just an everyday person who has little clue about how things work.

There's a slightly silly-but-entertaining film in which an aircraft carrier goes back in time. The spoiler of the film is that one man who is left behind in time becomes absurdly rich by becoming a pioneering "inventor".

So we should look for absurdly rich people who have made dozens of inventions.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0080736/

Re: Searching the Internet for evidence of time travelers

#76

Post by ksk »

I've always wondered about this. Now, what if, in "reality" after every unit planck-time the universe forks itself N times based on all the things that could have happened but didn't? And if you went back in time, you go back to that particular fork and so that there is no way to ever detect your time travel? I realize this a fairly naive idea..

Re: Searching the Internet for evidence of time travelers

#77

Post by vixen99 »

mcv wrote: post #58
arethuza wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why just Hitler? Stalin and Mao were arguably equally as bad: http://necrometrics.com/tyrants.htm And there are monsters like Leopold II of Belgium (possible victims in the range 2-15 million) who hardly anyone remembers: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leopold_II_of_Belgium#Exploitat... Actually, as hardly anyone remembers Leopold II maybe he is the ideal target.... :-| [NB I eventually remembered that I'm against the…

Killing Stalin without killing Hitler might not be the best idea, considering the vital role Russia played in the defeat of the nazis. And maybe Leopold II gets overlooked by time travelers exactly because they also don't remember him. (Good of you to mention Leopold II, though. Also note Henry Morton Stanley's role in that despicable piece of genocide.)

There is a view that General Winter managed very well by himself.

Re: Searching the Internet for evidence of time travelers

#78

Post by dscrd »

arethuza wrote: post #34
andyjohnson0 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"...say to kill Hitler." Everybody kills Hitler on their first trip. http://www.abyssapexzine.com/wikihistory/

Why just Hitler? Stalin and Mao were arguably equally as bad: http://necrometrics.com/tyrants.htm And there are monsters like Leopold II of Belgium (possible victims in the range 2-15 million) who hardly anyone remembers: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leopold_II_of_Belgium#Exploitat... Actually, as hardly anyone remembers Leopold II maybe he is the ideal target.... :-| [NB I eventually remembered that I'm against the…

Wouldn't it be highly probable that the untimely death of any of those men would cause almost everyone born after the war to cease existing?

Re: Searching the Internet for evidence of time travelers

#80

Post by fauigerzigerk »

I think it's rather unlikely that we will find time travellers among us, for two reasons:

We don't seem to be anywhere close to inventing time travel. If time travel is invented, say, 10000 years from now, our moment in time might not be interesting enough to travel to.

All the funny paradoxes caused by time travel suggest that time travellers could fork a new branch in the multiverse, but that would not change the future they were coming from and they would never be able to return to that future. Hence, the interest in travelling back in time might not be that great, even if it were possible.

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