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

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

Rules:

  1. 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.
  2. 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.
  3. They will answer to the best of their ability but imagine this is a random person from 2074.
morgunkorn,
@morgunkorn@discuss.tchncs.de avatar

Try to get pregnant with them to create a time paradox

WhereGrapesMayRule,

Unfortunately everyone is obsessed with anal 50 years from now so it doesn’t go your way.

SkaveRat,

dm;hs

morgunkorn,
@morgunkorn@discuss.tchncs.de avatar

Ah, well I’ll try anyway :-)

WhereGrapesMayRule,

Starts building time machine

Schlomocucumber,
@Schlomocucumber@lemmy.world avatar

so it doesn’t go your way.<

You sure?

foggy,

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.

cloudless,
@cloudless@feddit.uk avatar

Then you will have the biggest company ever. You created a loop in time.

gregorum,

Did the Vulcans show up?

NightAuthor, (edited )

Are they able to effectively teleport? Or do they just time travel where they stand?

Danterious,

Good question. Well any form of time travel would be teleporting since the earth is moving. So I guess they solve teleportation to.

NightAuthor,

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

SayJess,
@SayJess@lemmy.blahaj.zone avatar

Shit just have them rob a mint from like the 1800’s. This way you could say that the money has been passed down, as you auction it for a butt load.

logicbomb,

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.

Danterious,

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?

logicbomb,

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.

Quetzalcutlass,

“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.

Reverendender,

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?

No_Ones_Slick_Like_Gaston,

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.

HenriVolney,

Bang!

morgunkorn,
@morgunkorn@discuss.tchncs.de avatar

deleted_by_author

    •
    Danterious,

    I think you responded to the wrong place.

    morgunkorn, (edited )
    @morgunkorn@discuss.tchncs.de avatar

    Correct, sorry for that I’ll fix that :)

    Danterious,

    no problem just wanted to help.

    bunkyprewster,

    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.

    sanguinepar,
    @sanguinepar@lemmy.world avatar

    True, but the consequences of anything we do will already have happened for them anyway.

    Anticorp,
    1. Kill the time traveler
    2. Acquire his time machine
    3. Whatever I want
    ilinamorato,

    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?”
    RubberElectrons,
    @RubberElectrons@lemmy.world avatar

    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).

    AceFuzzLord,
    1. Ask if nuclear war has occured.
    2. 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).
    3. Ask if they wanna play games because I don’t know what else to do with a time traveler.
    Menagerie,

    Offer them a hug. 2074 sounds like a scary time to be alive.

    otter,

    Try to not trade our current infective diseases with whatever future disease they might have carried back

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