The comedy of errors that resulted in World War 1 seems to indicate that there is a group of time travelers trying to make sure this time line happens.
I would go back in time and meet the people who wrote the first ever USB standard. Then I would convince them that all USB connectors have to be reversible from day one so that nobody will ever need to struggle with the 20/80 odds of getting it right on the first try. Come on, it’s two possibilities and the probability of the wrong one is at least 80%. What’s the deal with a connector like that?
Accordingly to the USB inventor, he didn't make it reversible right off the bat because it would need 2x more wires, circuits, and cost 2x more. So you probably [won't be | weren't]* able to convince him.
Perhaps a better approach is to tell him that they should be clearly asymmetric, to both touch and sight. Like HDMI connectors are.
*tense marking is fun in time travel.
*tense marking is fun in time travel.
One of the major problems encountered in time travel is not that of becoming your own father or mother. There is no problem in becoming your own father or mother that a broad-minded and well-adjusted family can't cope with. There is no problem with changing the course of history—the course of history does not change because it all fits together like a jigsaw. All the important changes have happened before the things they were supposed to change and it all sorts itself out in the end.
The major problem is simply one of grammar, and the main work to consult in this matter is Dr. Dan Streetmentioner's Time Traveler's Handbook of 1001 Tense Formations. It will tell you, for instance, how to describe something that was about to happen to you in the past before you avoided it by time-jumping forward two days in order to avoid it. The event will be descibed differently according to whether you are talking about it from the standpoint of your own natural time, from a time in the further future, or a time in the further past and is futher complicated by the possibility of conducting conversations while you are actually traveling from one time to another with the intention of becoming your own mother or father.
Most readers get as far as the Future Semiconditionally Modified Subinverted Plagal Past Subjunctive Intentional before giving up; and in fact in later aditions of the book all pages beyond this point have been left blank to save on printing costs.
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy skips lightly over this tangle of academic abstraction, pausing only to note that the term "Future Perfect" has been abandoned since it was discovered not to be.
This is the sort of thing that I love reading on the internet.
From a conlanger perspective I feel like the time reference could be split into four, to account time travel. For example: let's say that both of us travelled to 3100, I remained there and you came back to 2024. Then you write me a letter, that I'm going to read as soon as we arrive in 3100, telling me about your experiences. You could use:
Any given language could pick any of those references to model their tense around, or many of them, or even none (plenty languages IRL lack grammatical tense). If only doing things from the PoV of the speaker (you), that means 6~9 tenses for what most languages have 2 (past and non-past) or 3 (past, present, future).
This is the sort of thing that I love reading on the internet.
Sorry to disappoint you, but most of that text is found offline — as it's an excerpt from Douglas Adam's "The Restaurant at the End of the Universe" (sequel to "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy"). I probably should've attributed it.
If only doing things from the PoV of the speaker (you), that means 6~9 tenses for what most languages have 2 (past and non-past) or 3 (past, present, future).
And then you'd have to account who knows what, which version of a person you're talking to. Say you're having a conversation with someone before traveling in time to a time in which they've not timetraveled, so it's either their subjective past or future, but then you continue the conversation, so you'd have to account for both the speakers perspective and the person being spoken to, who would then be subject to two different tense "totalities" since the conversation with them would have been taking place in two different times at the same time.
I seriously suggest reading Douglas Adams and Terry Pratchett for that sort of thing. I used to use Pratchett books as a substitute for weed when I was a bit over twenty.
You can even make the connector look like a B with a larger loop on one side, that when people were like why is it shaped like that you could just say that's the b in the USB
You don't need double the wires if you change the recepticle so that you can plug it in both ways, and the recepticle would just have those wires connected on the board.
While you’re there make damn sure they create a coherent naming scheme that allows upgrade paths/versioning.
Sincerely,
USB 3.2 Gen 1×1
USB 3.2 Gen 2×1
USB 3.2 Gen 1×2
USB 3.2 Gen 2×2
True.
And you could always go back in time to stop me from stopping you from stopping the guy.
That's why I think time travel will never allow history to be changed, and I think Rick and Morty may have done a bit about that.
Indeed. Even the late Stephen Hawking arranged his own experiment to prove/disprove the possibility.
Apparently it was disproven...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawking's_time_traveller_party
I think not entirely - the experiment did not seem to rule out the case where traveling backwards in time is possible, but only up to the point when the time machine was built.
I.e. in 3012 Dwayne George successfully creates the first functional time machine, and moments later is slain at the hand of a time traveller who went back to prevent the invention of the time machine.
Go back to 1911 and convince Taft to concede the Republican nomination to Roosevelt. That allows Roosevelt to stomp Wilson, get the US into the war before Russia left, and get the war over with years earlier.
This prevents both Stalin and Hitler from rising to power, and prevents most of the European theater of WW2, as well as a host of other knock-on effects.
In this scenario Lenin does not manage to take over Russia and the warning to the world by the real life examples of Germany and Italy about the dangers of fashism does not happen either. Authoritarianism raises its ugly head later in a world with better weapons and more destructive potential for humanity.
I doubt it. The Russians are still gonna want to try to beat the US at anything they can, and prove themselves on the global stage, but it may have been a cooperative venture, instead of competitive.
I'd like to say something noble like warn Amelia Earhart, or hookup Adolph with some Bob Ross videos. But if I'm being honest, I would probably be selfish. I would tell past me to not fuck up quite a few things that past me royally fucked up.
As we learned from the Butterfly Effect, changing the past only results in Ashton Kutcher getting more power.
Think of all the good I could do with a trillion dollars. I'd have to create a lot of destruction of other people's wealth to get there but they will understand. I really need a trillion dollars!
Got to do it in stages so it doesn't look too premeditated.
Start a online auction site where people can sell their stuff and you get a small cut of the profit.
Then to help people on board start a payment processor company to ensure that the sellers ship their goods and that buyers pay.
Once that has established, go public with it so that your stock sales can support the existence of your current portfolio while you dabble in other things that you know are very profitable.
Once you have that going, which will take a few years. You can take a victory lap or two and maybe pay some PR firms to make you look like the cool rich kid on the internet that everyone wants to hang out with.
Then you can do stuff like starting a spaceship company and helping to bring about the end of the internal combustion engine by starting an electric car company and doing some solar panel stuff.
Eventually you'll be the richest person on the planet and then you can get to doing the really fun stuff assuming you don't like tank all of your personal reputation by blowing 20% of your net worth on a microblogging website or something while disavowing your trans daughter.
I mean, if you're smart enough to do all the other things surely you wouldn't blow it at the five yard line like that.
The Nissan Versa was also a reference to the show. There's an episode where Hiro makes a huge deal out of using a Nissan Versa to drive around America,. It was over the top product placement.
I can't say I recall that part, but I definitely have a terrible eye for cars. Is that around the time he meets the girl with perfect memory? Or is it later in the series?
It's when Hiro first arrives in America, he's very excited to rent the Versa, and says Nissan Versa like 3 or 4 times in a row, and it was an absolutely ridiculous instance of blatent advertising. The scene on YouTube.
OMG I forgot how cute hiro is as a character! He's so enthusiastic and adorable
Haha okay I remember that now, they were going after double personality woman (am bad with names)
Warn about how plastic (especially single-use) is a major pollutant, with microplastics managing to get into our organs with long term consequences we are yet to grasp.
It did push our technology and way of living forward, but at what cost?
You'd be the crazy manbearpig dude. Nobody would listen to you. How would anyone be able to persuade the people?
That wouldn't work because you're a single person fighting against the same companies that finance climate change denialism. Hell, between understanding that leaded gasoline was harmful and banning it were at least 20 years
Yeah but the OP question isn't asking what you would do, but rather what you'd change. If the question was about what people would do, half these answers have a lot of explaining to do.
I'd go hunt down Ronald Regan at about age 30 and empty an entire magazine of .45s into his dome while he slept.
I would try to save the roman republic and prevent the roman kindgom. It would also be interesting to see what would have happend if they never switched to christianity.
To prevent the empire would be more complicated than it looks like, since you got multiple rebellions and civil wars popping up as early as 135 BCE. They ultimately boiled down to
And those are all problems that are damn hard to address without leading to plebeians being manipulated, local peoples being suppressed, and cutting down the power of the patricians by a central, strong government. That's basically what Caesar tried to do, and Octavian achieved.
I'd go back and write a book with just enough truths to cement myself as a soothsayer. I'd then warn of wars, eco disasters, pandemics, natural disasters. Then I'd invest some money in some good places and make sure it made it to my kids after I'm gone.
I think saving JFK would really alter the timeline. I doubt Nixon would have ever been president.
Preventing the Iranian hostage crisis might also have had a huge impact.
Have your read 11/22/63? It's Stephen King 's take on what would happen if a time traveler tries to stop the JFK assassination.
Great book, in my opinion.
I'd find the first motherfucker that started smoking stuff, whether it was first tobacco or whatever, and get rid of him/her before anyone else ever learned of the practice/habit.
Would have been better health for countless people afterwards, if simply nobody ever knew..
Eliminate tobacco smokers? US Govt. tried, however American Indians are still with us today.
No, eliminate the single individual that originally invented tobacco smoking. Then nobody from that point on would ever know and the problem would have never existed in the first place.
Nip the problem directly at the source ya know. Guess you're not all that good with these sort of hypothetical time travel thoughts..
Smoking was discovered independently in many cultures with different substances used by different cultures. In the Americas, it was tobacco, while the Scythians of Central Asia used cannabis in ritualistic hotboxes, as evidenced by archaeological finds of smoking tools in kurgans. Other regions, like India and Southeast Asia, saw the smoking of opium and herbs.