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Time Travelers' Convention
Posted by
timothy
on Sun May 01, 2005 06:02 PM
from the early-registration-discouraged dept.
from the early-registration-discouraged dept.
usermilk writes "Some folks at MIT are holding a time-travelers' convention. The idea is to make it so famous and so widely-known that even thousands of years in the future, people will still know exactly when and where this time-traveler convention went down, and will all come travel to it at some point in their illustrious time-traveling careers. For those interested in attending, it's on May 7, 2005, 10:00pm EDT (08 May 2005 02:00:00 UTC) in the East Campus Courtyard at MIT. 42:21:36.025N, 71:05:16.332W (42.360007,-071.087870 in decimal degrees)."
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Ahh... (Score:5, Funny)
But will John Titor be invited?
Re:Ahh... (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Ahh... (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:Ahh... (Score:5, Interesting)
I found the John Titor episode very interesting. Many people have characterised him as a hoax, but I think that's unfair. I think it was a very clever piece of Internet performance art, anticipating alternate games like I Love Bees.
My hat is off to the guy. He's made me think a lot about how future generations will judge our current culture, which I think was the main point of the exercise.
It reminds me a bit of Confessions of a Dangerous Mind. It was unfair to call that a "hoax" because a hoaxer expects you to believe their bullshit. Chuck Barris was trying to make a point through a clever piece of alternate-reality fiction. Much the same as John Titor, whoever he really was.
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I tried to make it (Score:5, Funny)
Re:I tried to make it (Score:5, Funny)
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Why did they set the date in the future? (Score:5, Interesting)
I already went. (Score:5, Funny)
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In a way, you illustrate the REAL problem (Score:5, Interesting)
You know how long a thousand years is? Columbus discovering America is _half_ that time ago.
A thousand years ago, the Vikings were still getting converted to Christianity. Do you know where the big parties have been at this time? If I told you that Bjarni Hrolfsson and Erik Karlsson (made up viking names) had this fabulous party 1000 years ago, would you even know when and where to go?
Heck, would you have even heard about it? History tends to recall more like royal events and wars from that long ago. We know roughly when and where the saxon earl Harold Goodwinson fought the Vikings and we know where he later lost to William of Normandie. But do you know exactly where some vikings or normans from back then had a party? I don't think so.
Roughly a thousand years ago, we had the first crusade. We remember that because it's a bloody big war... went awfully wrong, with a bloody huge PR, but even then a lot of details are missing.
Roughly a thousand years ago, temperatures peaked _higher_ than they are today. In fact so high that Greenland thawed and was green enough to be called that. The Vikings could farm it.
That's a bloody huge event even on history scale, but even the vast majority the global-warming scare gang doesn't know about it. (E.g., that it happened without driving SUVs. Or that no, all that molten ice did _not_ kill all fish life, and did _not_ reverse the gulf stream either.)
Roughly a thousand years ago, Leif Eriksson decided to sail west from Greenland, to check out Bjarni Herjolfsson's story that he's seen land there. And he discovered America. That's a bloody huge event, and even about that we have little more than a saga and some ruins that sorta look like a Viking village. And even that's _one_ of the landfalls that Leif made.
So what makes anyone think that a nerd party would go into every history book for millenia?
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Re:Why did they set the date in the future? (Score:5, Funny)
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Hmmm.... (Score:5, Interesting)
1. if a time travel came back in time and altered the past, no one would know but him/her.
2. it is impossible to prove that our recorded history now is the same as it was 1 second ago due to rule number 1.
3. You may be caught in a temporal causality loop, doomed forever to repeat the same period of time over and over.
4. If time is an expression of entropy, then the only way to travel through time is to prefectly reverse entropy, which is impossible because, iirc, entropy is chaotic.
5. If the universe is nonlinear, or rather, linear is an illusion, then there is no past or future to travel to, but only the present wich exists at any instant as a snapshot in the cascade towards greater entropy.
6. The universe is moving towards a state of pure heat, at which time entropy will cease, as all engery, which drives entropy, will have been used. if you intend to travel through time by altering the universe around you, then you can not go past this point, or ever return. if you time travel by using internal independent means, then you may travel past this point, but you would no longer have any external means of measuring the passage of time in the universe. To time travel through external means you must increase the general entropy of the universe such that all events happen faster outside your time machine. to travel through time internaly you must slow down your own entropy. in both instances you must phase away from the universe such that you do not exist in it, lest you collide with something going faster than you can percieve.
7 If time is a seperate dimension then you must find a way to travel in the direction that is forwards or backwards from where you are now. 4 dimensional travel occurs at a steady, measurable rate. As you approach the speed of light, this rate of passage decreases. Thus, it is logical to assume that by exceeding the speed of light in our universe of spacetime you would travel backwards in time.
8. You may be your own great great grandparent.
9. If you change your own past you can not go back to your own future to reap the benifits because the new future would have a new you to match it.
10. Journeyman Project is t3h roxors!!!!!
Re:Hmmm.... (Score:5, Interesting)
Assuming time travel is possible, it's impossible to alter the past.
Think of it this way, the way something happened, is the way it happened. If you travel back in time, then you're participating in events however, your paticipation would already have happened. Therefore, anything you've already done would already have happened.
Think of it this way. You couldn't go back in time and shoot Hilter before he got into power for the very simple reason that it didn't happen. Say you setup a sniper rifle on a building. You could try to fire but you'd either miss, the gun would jam, you'd get arrested, have a heart-attack etc. etc.
This isn't the universe trying to protect itself or any such mystical mumbo jumbo. It's just the simple fact that a thing didn't happen and your actions in trying to change the past are already part of history.
Probably didn't explain it very clearly.
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Re:Hmmm.... (Score:5, Interesting)
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Re:Hmmm.... (Score:5, Interesting)
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Easier way is, "Time is an illusion" (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Hmmm.... (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re:Hmmm.... (Score:5, Funny)
But what you could do is slip into an alternate universe which is exactly like ours, only 60 years behind. Once there you could kill Hitler and alter History... but only in THAT copy of the Universe.
While useless to alter history, I do find the technique works well for obtaining quality building materials, and collectables for my Ebay super-store.
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Re:TT is possible (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Hmmm.... (Score:5, Funny)
No, no, no; you got it all wrong. It was just exactly because someone went back and shot that Hilter you speak of; that the much worse dictator Hitler we do remember could come to power.
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Re:Hmmm.... (Score:5, Interesting)
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Re:Hmmm.... (Score:5, Insightful)
We speak of "time" because it's convenient. It allows us to measure our lives and our activities against a single background. We keep track of "time" by observing the predictable patterns of celestial objects, as well as by setting mechanical devices to synchronize with those celestial movement cycles.
But what exactly is "time"? Time is a series of events. Nothing more. You can't undo things in real life. A broken vase can't be put back together just by reversing the event that caused it to break. Why? Because events are irreversible. You can cause a negating event for some things (like turning a light on or off), but you can never undo an event once it's done.
So, simply put, time doesn't exist. It's merely perception of a series of events. The fact that it's perception is made clear by the phrase "time flies when you're having fun." Your brain records images of events into your memory, sometimes with a record of celestial body locations or numeric representations thereof.
The more interested you are in what is happening around you, the more things your brain will record. But having limited processing resources, it will skip the "timestamp" on many of those events. The relative difference between each "timestamp" is much farther apart than is expected or normal, so "time flies."
When you're disinterested in events around you, the opposite is true. Your brain records some meaningless drivel and since it has lots of resources available, it slaps a "timestamp" on every one of those mental notes. Boring stuff seems to take much longer because of this.
Let's see the writers for the next Star Trek series (several years from now, I hear) put this tidbit of time-travel logic to work. It'll at least spare us some crappy re-hashes of Nazis in space (spaaaaaaaaaaaace?).
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Re:Hmmm.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Think of it this way, the way something happened, is the way it happened.
Buddy, I've got a cat in a box that would or would not beg to disagree.
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Re:Hmmm.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Now, here's the tricky part: what if I decide not to go in the past and me going into the past is part of history? That would change history and oh I've gone crosseyed.
Since I'm not a big fan of predetermined fate, I must assume that no one may go in the past of their own dimension. The two seem to go hand-in-hand as far as I see.
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Re:Hmmm.... (Score:5, Funny)
So let me get this straight. You have never met your great great grandma, but the pictures of her in her younger years show that she was one hot babe. You decide to go back in time and do her?
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Hm (Score:5, Funny)
gets the imagination going (Score:5, Funny)
RSVP? (Score:5, Funny)
Oh, I'm sure I'll get around to it one of these days.
so naturally (Score:5, Funny)
Re:so naturally (Score:5, Funny)
Maybe spandex is all the rage in 3166.
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Re:so naturally (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:so naturally (Score:5, Funny)
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Paradoxes (Score:5, Insightful)
If no time travellers turn up on May 7th, will everyone stop promoting it after the date?
Personally I would have thought it'd make sense to give a bit more advanced notice than a week, if only to give people a chance to get the word around more beforehand (thus more likely to be archived).
Fuck (Score:5, Funny)
Hold on, I have to go get this Erik kid married to his one true love.
Oh boy.
Re:Fuck (Score:4, Funny)
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It could be a ruse... (Score:5, Funny)
I went there next year. (Score:5, Funny)
marketing idea (Score:5, Funny)
- Legit costumes for whatever era. WW2 uniform, peasant outfit, etc
- Monetary exchange: buy/sell money from different eras, at varying rates. You will always need money(depending on the time)
- Fake IDs. Going back 20 years? get an ID 20 years prior to your birthday
- Fake license plates. Travelling in an old car back to an earlier time? Get "legit" license plates that are either from the same car, or just some convincing out-of-state plates.
WARNING: Management is not responsible to disruptions in history.
The sales possibilities are endless.
zerg (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:zerg (Score:5, Informative)
-- Reaching the exact coordinates at the right instant, considering rotation and revolution of the planet, solar system, and galaxy.
-- Matching the velocity of that location (and timeframe) exactly.
It's not only useless to appear at the right instant in the right room if your body doesn't exactly match the inertial frame -- it would be fatal. Forgetting to account for just the earth's revolution around the sun would slam the traveller against the wall at 30km/sec.
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Not Bloody Likely (Score:5, Funny)
Larry Niven Already Dealt With This (Score:5, Insightful)
Asimov Worked That Out Before Niven Did (Score:5, Informative)
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Yeah, like the government won't be watching THAT (Score:5, Insightful)
Or if you're the big-business conspiracy theory type, substitute "government" for "private mercenaries."
One fear... (Score:5, Funny)
Telefrags.
Re:The Convention (Score:5, Funny)
I believe you mean willan on-be a blast.
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Re:Sweet! (Score:5, Funny)
Let me hop in my delorean and I'll be there in 5 minutes ago.
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Re:Sweet! (Score:5, Funny)
So, as a countermeasure, we formed a "Time Travellers Club". We put out notices in everyone's boxes, first notifying people of an upcoming meeting a week prior, and the second time thanking everyone for such a large turnout at our meeting a week later. We got permission to post our own sign - a big hanging one that ha our group name, and its motto ("I'll See You Yesterday!").
Later, we found the notices on at least one RA's and one student's door - the student had apparently actually tried to go to the meeting that we thanked people for the turnout at, because they had it next to a note that said "I went, and it sucked!"
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Re:so theoretically (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:so theoretically (Score:5, Funny)
As someone who frequents these types of parties I can tell you they never go bad. Whats so bad about a bunch of engineers having huge drunken bonanza?
"Dude, why is your volumetric spirit flow rate decreasing exponentially as a function of time while your volumetric elimination flow rate increasing as a logarithmic function of time?"
Yeah, those types of parties.
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Re:Why this ain't gonna fly (Score:5, Funny)
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