Ask Lemmy

If they speak in hillbilly, valleygirl, inner-city slang and various grunts.

I guess just showing my tattoo would do the trick, or the phone in my pocket?

winning lotteries consistently.

I could prove that I am an AI because in the future Internet will be AI only with no humans left

So, as far as a casual one on one conversation, I don't know. But some sort of formal petition to the public or a person of power, I would look for known geological activities like earthquakes and volcanic eruptions before going back in time. Weather events are too fickle. We can't really affect geological events though.

It looks like Mount Iliamna had a known eruption in 1876. You could spend a few months getting attention before it happens. The same way people who give very specific doomsday predictions do. This way, once the eruption happens everyone will be certain you're telling the truth. Or at least, most people won't think you're crazy. They may still be skeptical, but this will be enough to get people to lend you and ear and take warnings seriously. It is probably too early in the industrial revolution to really get people to slow down their progress if you want to stop climate change. A similar stunt around the time the first suppressed reports of climate change happened would be better at that.

Holocene eruptive activity from Iliamna is little known, but radiocarbon dating seems to indicate at least a few eruptions, all before the European settlement of Alaska. Prehistoric eruptions have been dated to 5050 and 2050 BCE (VEI-4), 450 BCE and 1650. Historically observed eruptions took place in 1867 (VEI-2) and 1876 (VEI-3), with unconfirmed eruptions in 1933, 1947, 1952 and 1953.[7]

I'd probably be burned for witchcraft or be shot for it, but let people listen to my mechanical heart valve.

I imagine the average person would 100% freak out over hearing it. A ticking sound? Inside a person's heart? In a time when mechanical body parts aren't normal or really all that existent? That's a burning as a wizard or being shot as an overreaction.

Hmm. I would need to first be vaccinated vs. yellow fever, because apparently that hit so hard right then it left only a few hundred people. My own house is from 1940, though it's in the city now it was not developed yet. Holy fuck, it's also Reconstruction right after the civil war.

I don't think I would even try. Would be enough of a struggle finding a way to survive. And if we have learned one thing from science fiction, it's don't mess with the timeline.

I'd be in my own house, although it may look a little different. The guy that lives there would, presumably, be very confused. So I'd show him pictures of it on my phone and he would probably be even more confused and probably burn me alive as a witch.

If I wake up in 1875 right where I am and a birch tree hasn't appeared through my chest, then I'm a half hour hike away from Fort Saskatchewan. A North West Mounted Police outpost+jail and they'll speak English I can understand in 1875.

In 1879 they'll hang a whiskey addicted Cree man who killed and ate his six children, his wife, mother, and brother. Swift Runner or Ka-Ki-Si-Kutchin. Got kicked out of the fort (I think he worked there? So he might be around already), and then his own tribe kicked his dysfunctional ass out too before he did this.

From Canada Day I wandered through a few times the new replica Fort the city built and read the history placards. So I'd also know a few of policeman names, some trivia about them, and how some of them would die. Mostly by fighting natives. Most of them were cunts frankly. Yes yes very surprising to nobody.

I won't. My best hope is to find an engineering firm and convince them to hire me as a calculator. I won't have any credentials, but it was common for people without a formal education to perform the basic calculations under the direction of a licensed engineer.

I would speak Polish and it would be enough proof with the right story to convince someone. I would be then immidietely killed for danger to the Russification and Germanisation efforts.

(Poland didn't exist in 1875)

I wouldn't try and prove anything.

I would "invent" a few basic tchotchkis and nick-nacks to get money, then out to California ahead of ~~the Gold Rush~~ Hollywood? to ...something, I dunno, and buy land.

Invent a couple variations on heat pumps and electric motors. By 1928 sail away to New Zealand.

Find where to submit a patent, and patent the Telephone as Bell creates that in 1876, and patent the internal gas combustion engine for cars.
Mostly need the engine because I'd probably fail to be able to explain properly how to get a phone working properly, I understand the concepts, but proving enough for a patent to hold up, not sure.

Congratulations, now I've become an enemy of the world because I'd have to use all the money I made from the engines to invest quickly in converting to renewable non gasoline based combustion engines to save the world from myself

I’d stand on street corners telling everyone who passed by that one day people would be putting pineapple on pizzas.

I would show them Fortnite dances unimaginable to their primitive minds.

I don't think I would try to prove anything, why would I want people to know that I'm from the future? but if for some reason I had to prove it, it would depend a lot, like a lot, of the place I'm in. What country and what type of population? I've discovered at a very early age I had an allergy to angry crowds and their willingness to lynch whatever they hate and fear (if there was ever a difference?).

First I tell them the proof to Fermat's theorem.

(For those who aren't familiar with it: it originates from 1637, but nobody in the world was able to prove it until 1994. Therefore it was known among scientists and scholars in all the world during these centuries as one of the greatest riddles in history)

I get world famous, instantly, with newspaper headlines everywhere.

Mathematicians in all countries are able to verify my words, so I gain endless credibility, and I can travel to all kinds of places where they want to hear me speak etc.

A little bit later they will find out that I am not that good at math. Well, not bad, but not good enough by far to find that proof. So there is the next riddle about me.

Then I can tell that I am from the future. And since I have gained credibility before, they are going to listen now.

I probably wouldn't for a while. I'd try my best to blend in and work my way into a position of power using all my knowledge. With the rise in education and general knowledge shared today, just knowing so much might even be a giveaway...so I'd have to be careful. Then id try to make the world a better place. But in the end it would probably be worse off via some unintended consequences.

Or create an electric turbine and motor with some copper and magnets, then show it to some guy in a bar and say I'm from the future.