[HN Gopher] Best Practices for Time Travelers (2003)
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Best Practices for Time Travelers (2003)
Author : weird_user
Score : 51 points
Date : 2023-11-20 12:01 UTC (2 days ago)
(HTM) web link (idlewords.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (idlewords.com)
| josh_fyi wrote:
| I was hoping to see "Best Practices for Time Travelers (2043)"
| B1FF_PSUVM wrote:
| Probably not a best practice.
| lapetitejort wrote:
| The author learned that the hard way. It took three trips to
| correct.
| RecycledEle wrote:
| John Titor said he arrived in a 1967 Corvette that he brought
| with him from 2036. I do not think he said it was a 2036
| Corvette. If he planned to travel to the early 1970's, that makes
| sense.
|
| Here is a bit about it. I can not confirm any of what they are
| saying:
| https://www.reddit.com/r/JohnTitor/comments/yago4w/john_tito...
| ge96 wrote:
| Could carbon dating prove age or is that too accurate eg. needs
| to be 100s of years apart.
| RecycledEle wrote:
| That is an interesting idea.
|
| We are unlikely to ever get a resolution, but...
|
| There are imperfections from the factory in every car. Welds
| were done by hand in 1976. Repairs were done by hand. I
| wonder what improbable similarities the 2 cars could have.
| quietpain wrote:
| The car would be authentic, built in 1967. What the person
| is asking is whether there's a technique to distinguish a
| car from 1967 from a sibling that was brought back from
| 2036.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| Look for radioisotopes from the war of 2031.
| prerok wrote:
| Not that I am any sort of expert on the subject, but the way
| I understand it is:
|
| 1. If you have a fossil you can carbon date it based on the
| amount of C14, which is an isotope of carbon, and is present
| in relatively stable amounts in living organisms. That's
| because a living organism takes carbon from its environment
| and then incorporates it in itself and C14 is continuously
| generated in the environment because of the radiation from
| the sun. As the organism dies, the intake stops, so then you
| can determine its age based on the half life of the C14 and
| the amount of it still remaining in the remains. Long story
| short: it cannot be accurate.
|
| 2. You can only measure this in remains of dead organisms.
| Maybe in leather, if the car had some, otherwise I don't
| think you could easily carbon date a car :)
| quietpain wrote:
| If there's even a diode worth of band-gap technology in
| there: yes, ageing would be demonstrably different in a
| device that lived a couple of decades longer. The crystal
| lattice is not set in stone and atoms move around.
| BurningFrog wrote:
| You can probably carbon date the rubber in the tires:
|
| https://meridian.allenpress.com/rct/article-
| abstract/50/4/81...
| mjevans wrote:
| Avoid paradoxes is likely the one thing even someone trying to
| change the past needs / wants to accomplish.
|
| It'd be nice if some tiny pool of government resources
| (everywhere) were set aside in 'untraceable' ways that only
| someone from many years later could use, by which time any
| untapped resources would be rolled into a new investment area or
| returned to the general fund.
|
| The non time traveler version would be completely off the books
| spy operations, so plausibly someone might rarely need that for
| non-time traveler reasons and thus hide any time travelers.
| dang wrote:
| Discussed 13 years later:
|
| _Best Practices for Time Travelers (2003)_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13051116 - Nov 2016 (76
| comments)
| idlewords wrote:
| That discussion is what prompted me to go back and write the
| original
| leobabauta wrote:
| Perfect comment.
|
| Thank you for your writing, Maciej. It's so good.
| lapetitejort wrote:
| If I wanted to gain access to places in 2023 without too much
| trouble, I'd don a hard-hat, reflective vest, and a clipboard.
| However, what is the equivalent attire for 1880's London? 500's
| Mesoamerica? 300's Rome? Please answer fast as my rift is
| opening.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| Use your rift to check back for late answers...
| lapetitejort wrote:
| A real time traveler would know that opening a rift just to
| get the latest Hacker News was banned in 2052
| rollcat wrote:
| Sorry for nitpicking on your grammar, but you are supposed
| to use the prophetic perfect for stating future events as
| if they were past.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prophetic_perfect_tense
| sprobertson wrote:
| I think "was banned" is correct according to that link -
|
| > future events ... are referred to in the past tense as
| if they had already happened
|
| Lots of wordy theologist writing elsewhere in the article
| but it sounds like in practice it's just using the past
| tense.
| Tao3300 wrote:
| By Imperial Edict of Dang I
| KineticLensman wrote:
| > the equivalent attire for 1880's London?
|
| Either a top-hat and a suitably wealthy attitude, or dress like
| a washerwoman who has come to scrub the floors.
| amenhotep wrote:
| As long as you use the servants' entrance, anyway!
| bryanrasmussen wrote:
| In most of human history there has been wider differentiation
| between the classes than there has been in the past 30 years or
| so, and as such there is unlikely to be just one uniform that
| allows authoritative access to every where, in most cases you
| will want a number of costumes suited to what you are
| attempting to do.
|
| In 1880s London prepare an upper class costume as already
| suggested, a copper's outfit - this will also allow you to bear
| a formidable truncheon, it is nice to have access to weaponry
| when getting access to places when someone discovers you have
| gained access to said places.
| bryanrasmussen wrote:
| In most civilizations before reformation era Europe you would
| be best off dressing as some sort of priest or scribe.
| jonah wrote:
| Here's a joke I like telling:
|
| Regarding astral projection, Woody Allen once wrote, "It is not a
| bad way to travel, although there is usually a half-hour wait for
| your luggage."
| KineticLensman wrote:
| A useful source of tips is in 'Percival Dunwoody Idiot Time
| Traveller From 1909' [0] as long as you do the exact opposite.
|
| My personal advice: Don't get in that time machine and travel
| back! Not if you are on any sort of meds.
|
| [0] e.g. https://www.gocomics.com/tomthedancingbug/2010/11/12
| bryanrasmussen wrote:
| I told a buddy about this and he replied in some ways I found
| interesting, so I have attempted to the best of my abilities to
| replicate his response herein:
|
| Long, exaggerated sigh for effect...OK, Titor is a totally
| reasonable time traveler for someone employed by the U.S Army,
| that is to say he is not especially creative. The Army values
| people who can think inside the box, and this guy can.
|
| If this is what you do for time traveling you might as well go
| see a movie, and not a very good one either.
|
| If you have a quick layover somewhere, make it interesting - I
| recently wrote the guide to 10 concerts you should see if you are
| a time traveler https://medium.com/p/8d2ead8cb643
|
| or maybe you might just like to go get high with the quality
| drugs of yesteryear? https://medium.com/luminasticity/using-time-
| travel-to-score-...
|
| Maybe there is a favorite food that you can no longer get? My
| guilty pleasure was 7-11 Nachos from the 80s when you could pile
| it up high enough to survive all day on one box, as long as you
| didn't care overmuch about what it did to your insides
| https://medium.com/luminasticity/a-stopover-for-nachos-8aed8...
|
| Or indulge in some revenge on your worst enemies after they're
| gone and can't get even https://medium.com/luminasticity/money-
| making-opportunities-...
|
| These may not be best practices, but they are enjoyable
| practices, and someone able to access all of time and space that
| doesn't attempt to enjoy themselves has definitely something a
| bit wrong in the head - just saying. Lucky this guy found someone
| to order him around in his life.
| Simon_ORourke wrote:
| What about alternative historical timelines arriving in 2023?
| There's fewer mention of those H.G. Wells style Edwardian
| gentlemen showing up in some other timeline 150 years into their
| future!
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