Verification of Potential Time Travelers

Kairos

Senior Member
Messages
1,103
I would just demonstrate future tech if I were trying to prove anything.

I think, however, a lot of people underestimate the difficulty of entering our society from scratch without resources in the world to create a fake identity, etc. Say a guy comes here from a century in the future. How does he even get to the point where he is sitting on a computer in some apartment shooting shit with any of you on the Internet? He can't even open a bank account. In the third world where he could possibly get by selling precious metals or whatever, he is just as likely to get robbed and killed.

I think if there exists a time traveler -- and that's a really big if -- then he is coming in here more like Survivor Man where he needs to navigate a foreign society ( a society where he can make little headway in establishing himself and has no social connections whatsoever) in order to accomplish some goal of observation or collection. Then he gets out.

The idea of trying to formulate a test to present to a pronounced time traveler is silly to me for this reason.

The problem of identification of time travelers is a nifty game, in my opinion, for teaching tradecraft, counterespionage, and surveillance skills. I just think you need to be realistic about that problem. Trying to interrogate random posters on an Internet forum who claim to be time travelers.. that's not really a serious effort.

Think about the difficulty of establishing an espionage network in some foreign nation where your group has no contacts and no relationships. A time traveler trying to operate in some distant timeframe would be that problem with no operational support at all and no resources on the ground. No communication and no easy exfiltration.
 

Kairos

Senior Member
Messages
1,103
If you want an interesting discussion, make a thread about how one might detect time travelers in the wild. Make a serious effort to outline all the difficulties inherent in a time traveling expedition, how a time traveler might mitigate those difficulties, and what clues and tells they would leave in their path through our world towards some unknown goal.

Different time travel paradigms have to be accounted for as well. For instance, if the multiverse hypothesis is correct, then maybe the traveler can bring back some antique paper money and coinage, but there could be some little differences in the design of the money or even big differences (like a dime with Thomas E. Dewey's portrait engraved on it) instead of FDR.
 

Mayhem

Senior Member
Zenith
Messages
6,744
Or....

How without some time measurement in the wild does a supposed time traveller know he/she has travelled back,forward,sideways?
 

Will Bind

New Member
Messages
7
If you want an interesting discussion, make a thread about how one might detect time travelers in the wild. Make a serious effort to outline all the difficulties inherent in a time traveling expedition, how a time traveler might mitigate those difficulties, and what clues and tells they would leave in their path through our world towards some unknown goal.

Different time travel paradigms have to be accounted for as well. For instance, if the multiverse hypothesis is correct, then maybe the traveler can bring back some antique paper money and coinage, but there could be some little differences in the design of the money or even big differences (like a dime with Thomas E. Dewey's portrait engraved on it) instead of FDR.
I agree completely with what you are saying although it is definitely easier to "infiltrate" and integrate our current society because of 1: the amount knowledge of our time period available, especially to future more technically advanced societies and 2: tying in with the previous point, time travelers from the future would probably have much more advanced tech that they could use to either forge paperwork and our inject it into the database.

I proposed this test more for people who have started on this site and have had successful results and have come back to share it, then people who just come from the future, its silly to think they would even come online here to share.
 

eight

New Member
Messages
10
Hello everybody,

People claiming to be time travelers frequent these boards, and I was wondering if there are any tests in place to verify if said time travelers are real or fake. One example of a test would be for an administrator to post periodically a string of random words to a dedicated board, and if the potential time traveler posts the string correctly before the next string comes out, they are verified.
Time travel is possible but has not occurred yet because we still currently alive and the whole universe has yet to be destroyed. If someone were to time travel they will be adding themselves into a time period that they don't exist thus creating energy out of nowhere and we already know by the laws of physics: energy cannot be created or destroyed, only transferred. Hence, we are here now and the universe is intact thus they have being no time traveling
 

Cirrus

Member
Messages
485
I proposed this test more for people who have started on this site and have had successful results and have come back to share it, then people who just come from the future, its silly to think they would even come online here to share.

The first thing I do after I come back from the future is jump on here as @The_Observer just to mess with @Einstein ;).

Also note... this is one of the very few times I agree with @Kairos.
 

TimeFlipper

Senior Member
Messages
13,705
If you want an interesting discussion, make a thread about how one might detect time travelers in the wild. Make a serious effort to outline all the difficulties inherent in a time traveling expedition, how a time traveler might mitigate those difficulties, and what clues and tells they would leave in their path through our world towards some unknown goal.

Different time travel paradigms have to be accounted for as well. For instance, if the multiverse hypothesis is correct, then maybe the traveler can bring back some antique paper money and coinage, but there could be some little differences in the design of the money or even big differences (like a dime with Thomas E. Dewey's portrait engraved on it) instead of FDR.

I can quote one scenario of how a time-traveller in the wild can mitigate a Lion running then jumping up at him...
The proof would be a knocked out Lion at the base of a tree, caused by the time traveller suddenly switching to another time era, just as the Lion was about to rip out his throat :D..
 

Cirrus

Member
Messages
485
I can quote one scenario of how a time-traveller in the wild can mitigate a Lion running then jumping up at him...
The proof would be a knocked out Lion at the base of a tree, caused by the time traveller suddenly switching to another time era, just as the Lion was about to rip out his throat :D..

That's if the technology is that accurate. My guess is it's not and he'll find himself inside a tree that grew in the same place 30 years later.
 

TimeFlipper

Senior Member
Messages
13,705
That's if the technology is that accurate. My guess is it's not and he'll find himself inside a tree that grew in the same place 30 years later.

The time traveller would STILL have escaped the Lions jaws, even if he had moved forward in time by 30 years :p..
 

Top