Ask Lemmy @lemmy.world Danterious @lemmy.dbzer0.com 10mo ago

A time traveller comes back from 50 years in the future. You have 3 hours with them. What do you do?

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/12770326

Rules:

The time traveller is able to travel backward and forward through time (max forward is 2074) and they can only transport things that can fit in a small backpack.

You can choose when the 3 hours begin but it has to be in 2024 and once it has begun the timer can't be reset or stopped.

They will answer to the best of their ability but imagine this is a random person from 2074.

53 comments

Try to get pregnant with them to create a time paradox
- Unfortunately everyone is obsessed with anal 50 years from now so it doesn't go your way.
  
  Ah, well I'll try anyway :-)
  
  dm;hs
  
  so it doesn't go your way.<
  
  You sure?
- What's the paradox? Or are we assuming they’re your grandchild and you’re doing the nasty in the pasty?
  
  If our kid meets the young version of their other parent in the future, they might prevent them to become a time traveler for example
This one is easy. I would simply do what they tell me to do. After all, since they came back to see me, it's certainly because the future me sent them back in time.

If it wasn't me that sent them back in time, then it's probably a set up, and I would be powerless to resist it.

If they insisted on my ordering them around, I'd have them bring back a copy of their Wikipedia from 50 years in the future, and then I'd try to use the rest of the time to figure out the physics behind time travel, and see if I can't get plans for a time machine.
- "You said to tell you nothing because, and I quote, 'spoilers'. I'm just here to see what you were like before it happened."
  
  I would totally send someone backwards in time just to mess with myself.
- Think of it more as a summoning ritual. You accidently pull in a time traveller from that year.
  
  Also what would you do with a time machine?
  
  There are few theoretically possible technologies as overwhelmingly powerful as time machines. Even an extraordinarily weak time machine, for example, one that could only move you a few minutes back and forth, would be enough to make me insanely wealthy, assuming that it wasn't cost prohibitive to run.
  
  So he could time travel the way he wants to rather than being bound by an arbitrary 3 hour time limit?
Ask for the names of the biggest companies over the last 50 years, and roughly when they peaked.

I'd ask about what industries emerged, and what industries support those emergent industries.

Basically I'd end up a trillionaire.
- Then you will have the biggest company ever. You created a loop in time.
- And than you die due to climate change instability.
  
  But for one brief moment you made your bank account rich.
Breathe a big sigh of relieve that humanity is around in 50 years, and has advanced enough to create time travel. Then maybe the sex thing?
Ask if they come from a utopia world, a shittier version of this world, or a post apocalypse world.

if its anything but a utopia world, ask who we have to get rid of to push us towards the utopia world.
- if when its anything but a utopia world, ask who we have to get rid of to push us towards the utopia world.
Take then to a plant store to stock up on seeds.

As much fresh water as they want to drink. Maybe let them take a shower too.

A trip to the zoo and/or aquarium.

Afternoon picnic in a sunny park without personal air conditioning equipment.

Ask who started the fire? It wasn't us but someone did. I bet theynhave figured it out by then.
- No one started the fire. It was always burning, since the world's been turning
Offer them a hug. 2074 sounds like a scary time to be alive.
All of these comments are well intentioned but of the big picture: land and weather.
Where's the safest place to live and how is the weather doing at that time. Based on it one can potentially align survival to meet these places and protect us from severe weather.

Then we can ask him to go back and find a list of lottery combinations and dates to cash in real dollars for real, no investment and zero ties other than bankrupting red states.

Why red states? Because fuck them idiocy of saying a bunch of things are socialism when they're not. Also because gambling when you always win is not a business for the state.

In years to come probably we could get an idea of the biggest changes in societal behaviors and cash into that so we effectively influence their future for better. Remember they're also a person who needs access to their better life and we can help them achieve it.
Are they able to effectively teleport? Or do they just time travel where they stand?
- Good question. Well any form of time travel would be teleporting since the earth is moving. So I guess they solve teleportation to.
  
  Well, for money then, definitely have them travel to a time and place with a hyper inflated currency, and then bring it back in time to have tons of money. I think this might technically be a form of arbitrage.
  
  Hmm… assassination would be pretty easy, but idk who
Please go to next week and bring me the winning lottery numbers, then please go to next year and bring me a newspaper with the stock market records, then go ten years in the future and bring me a map of what areas are being developed for housing.
Did the Vulcans show up?
Ask if nuclear war has occured.

If they can go back to their time and grab things to bring something back, I'd have them bring back (assuming they still have them) a USB portable hard drive (or something similar) that has many petabytes with of data (assuming it exists).

Ask if they wanna play games because I don't know what else to do with a time traveler.
Try to not trade our current infective diseases with whatever future disease they might have carried back
Kill the time traveler

Acquire his time machine

Whatever I want
- Kill? No no no no.
  
  "Hey, time traveler. Do you live in a sucky future?"
  
  "No, not really sucky." "Ok then, if you go back to your time and send the machine back to me, I will put my entire fortune into a single bank account with your name on it, in any country and bank in the entire world you think is best. I will then take a few brief trips of my own and send the machine back to you. Deal?"
  
  "Yes, future is the most sucky." "Would you prefer to stay here, then, and be a god among men, while I take a joyride?"
I say the cliche which stocks to invest in. They will know which companies are big at various times. Lotto numbers if they can get that. Blah blah blah.

After that I'm not sure I want to know the other things. It takes the fun out of life.

I mean there are things that you have to worry about like personal safety. I I doubt there will be another World War so I won't have to worry about the draft or death. Maybe major disasters so I won't be there. Civil unrest but I'm fortunate enough to live in Canada.
I don't even wanna know how fucked up shit will be 50 years from now.
Transporting information is the only meaningful option here.
Ask them to get a sports almanac back, and new seasons of shows I'm waiting for, and perhaps a copy of GTA6 if it's out by 2074
When we go back in time, we worry about changing the past. But we expect this person from the future to tell us all the stuff so we can fuck around with (for them) things that already happened.
- True, but the consequences of anything we do will already have happened for them anyway.
Ask if an episode of Inanimate Insanity actually released on December 37, 2074. And no, I did not write that incorrectly by mistake. I actually meant to say December Thirty-Seventh.
First, determine the state of the planet 50 years from now. This will largely dictate my next set of questions.

Is the earth on fire? Is there rampant suffering? What was the biggest catastrophe to mankind in that time?

Did humanity actually do something to help the earth? Once I learn this, I can invest in that thing to simultaneously push that technology forward and benefit from it myself.

Is any single person held responsible for bad things that have happened? Unlikely, but if so, I would work on assassinating that person.
Ask for the most recent version of dwarf fortress
Ask whether we got fusion working. Whether we did or didn't, how do we start attacking our CO2 problem in a way that would minimally disrupt the traveler's future?

They've had time and history to look at for the key knobs and levers to adjust that would solve a lot of our issues (while for sure creating new ones).
Find the nearest English Civil War reenactment and go watch it
Ask them what is the best way to get rich over the next few years. (If nothing else, then tomorrow's lottery numbers)

Ask them what the greatest invention of their last 50 years was and get a sample and a printout of the patents and as many patents as samples for batteries and processors and communication devices as I can get my hands on.

I would ask them to get me a 2074 laptop, with a Linux install & full source code, a kiwix copy of Wikipedia 2074, and if they have time and space some copies of some of the best music and movies of the next 50 years.
Point out that I have no immunities to Covid-74 then I assume fall on the ground with bleeding eyes.
Bang!

53 comments