First reaction to John Titor story
The notion of the Titor story being the product of a collaborative effort from several specialised people is something i have thought over in great detail. One thing i hadn't thought of though, was that it could have been a government sponsored exercise. That is a brilliant hypothesis, and one that makes the sci-fi crazy part of my brain litterally pulsate with excitement.
The things to consider:
There are undoubtedly thousands of highly intelligent, specialised and secret minds working for the US government. There must be sections of the government dedicated to the prediction of future world events because of the obvious volatility of our current world climate and because of their need to know that their existence will be a secure and prolonged one. There are, and have been for some time, highly complex devices and branches of mathematics and physics models applied to many predictive themes. Japan currently own the largest (known) computer system which models weather patterns. The actual accuracy of this modelling system is staggering considering the chaotic elements and unpredictability associated with the weather. If the technology is there for us to predict future events as complicated as the weather, then it would be no surprise to me that the same kind of system could be adapted to the world population and its influence on future world events. Providing the intial data is accurate and enough of it is fed into a system, the outcome will be as accurate as the credibility of the data fed into it.
Imagine a collection of people assigned a task to predict where we are going as a nation. They are given unlimited access to a government owned supercomputer and are told to use all means necessary to obtain data relating to our future. What if these people ran the simulations only to find the end result saying we will all blow ourselves up in ten to fifteen years. Obviously a hasty re-write in the initial data would be required before anyone could rightfully conclude the predictions as accurate. What if they tried many different ways, but kept coming to the same drastic conclusion? I am sure the results would be brought to the attention of the highest ranking officials fairly speedily.
So, what then would they do to counteract these upcoming events? Using the titor story would be an excellent way to guage the reaction of the people, and to gain a broad spectrum of opinion from the populace. I don't think this would be THE device used to reverse the inevitable, but i am sure it would be a very useful tool to raise awareness without having to tell people exactly what is going to happen. If the government have indeed made some startling discoveries, then it would be in their best interests to start the ball rolling now. And Titor would be a great way to slowly assimilate people to the possibility without invoking widespread panic.
Sometimes real life can be far more interesting than fiction.
The notion of the Titor story being the product of a collaborative effort from several specialised people is something i have thought over in great detail. One thing i hadn't thought of though, was that it could have been a government sponsored exercise. That is a brilliant hypothesis, and one that makes the sci-fi crazy part of my brain litterally pulsate with excitement.
The things to consider:
There are undoubtedly thousands of highly intelligent, specialised and secret minds working for the US government. There must be sections of the government dedicated to the prediction of future world events because of the obvious volatility of our current world climate and because of their need to know that their existence will be a secure and prolonged one. There are, and have been for some time, highly complex devices and branches of mathematics and physics models applied to many predictive themes. Japan currently own the largest (known) computer system which models weather patterns. The actual accuracy of this modelling system is staggering considering the chaotic elements and unpredictability associated with the weather. If the technology is there for us to predict future events as complicated as the weather, then it would be no surprise to me that the same kind of system could be adapted to the world population and its influence on future world events. Providing the intial data is accurate and enough of it is fed into a system, the outcome will be as accurate as the credibility of the data fed into it.
Imagine a collection of people assigned a task to predict where we are going as a nation. They are given unlimited access to a government owned supercomputer and are told to use all means necessary to obtain data relating to our future. What if these people ran the simulations only to find the end result saying we will all blow ourselves up in ten to fifteen years. Obviously a hasty re-write in the initial data would be required before anyone could rightfully conclude the predictions as accurate. What if they tried many different ways, but kept coming to the same drastic conclusion? I am sure the results would be brought to the attention of the highest ranking officials fairly speedily.
So, what then would they do to counteract these upcoming events? Using the titor story would be an excellent way to guage the reaction of the people, and to gain a broad spectrum of opinion from the populace. I don't think this would be THE device used to reverse the inevitable, but i am sure it would be a very useful tool to raise awareness without having to tell people exactly what is going to happen. If the government have indeed made some startling discoveries, then it would be in their best interests to start the ball rolling now. And Titor would be a great way to slowly assimilate people to the possibility without invoking widespread panic.
Sometimes real life can be far more interesting than fiction.
