this post was submitted on 02 Aug 2024
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Started as a shower thought (literally in the shower), but decided to make it more open-ended.

My answer to this would be "watch future seasons of anime that I am waiting on".

I don't see how that could cause a huge ripple through time.

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 4 months ago

Go back in time and fill the lottery, but don't check the winning numbers before going back.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

You can't change the future (...of your original universe)

That die had already been cast, that wave function had already collapsed. The very act of traveling backwards immediately creates a new timeline no matter what.

Any change you make any step you take, is all affecting that new universe while your original universe keeps on keeping on the way that it was, except now without you in it.

So from your perspective, if you were to travel forward again, things would be different, yes. But only because you're no longer in your original universe. The people in your original universe would see no changes because in that universe, the wave function had already collapsed, the die had already been cast.

There is no chance to EVER get back to your original timeline no matter what. Every jump backwards instantly creates a new universe (one in which the wave function collapses to reveal that you have traveled through time) and every jump forward is in THAT new timeline.

Essentially, you can't go home again.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 4 months ago

To me the rules of time travel are that it is time travel only. Go forward or back more than a few seconds and you'll find yourself floating in the vacuum of space rapidly dying as the earth, the galaxy and the universe continues moving.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 4 months ago

We are all travelling through time right now with very little impact.

Yes I know, I suck.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 4 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 months ago

God, I wish.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 months ago

Depends on the type of "time travel". Backwards time travel doesn't seem plausible, so I guess we're talking only about 1 way physical transport time travel. That kind of time travel is achieved either by traveling at speeds approaching the speed of light or via intense gravity, unless you consider something like being cryogenically frozen and then reanimated at some point in the future to be "time travel".

As far as least amount of impact? I guess in terms of impact, its best to travel to the nearest point in the future that you possibly can, so that hopefully very little has changed and you're still more or less the same person living the same life (with just a short gap from leaving the present and arriving in the future). Otherwise, you could take a huge risk and try to travel to the distant future to a time when all traces of your current life have disappeared and peoples' memory of you has long been forgotten.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 4 months ago

Doing it in the style of a Connie Willis novel?

Or like the comic-book Flash instead of the current-day MCU Avengers team post Endgame?

The Avengers tampered with time for corporate reasons, but I think the Flash understands time.

As for the Connie Willis novels, think like Black Out or Doomsday Book, those that I’ve read.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Go back in time and prevent your time machine from working.

Nice tight little loop. Minimal interference, hopefully.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 months ago

You're evil. I approve!

[–] [email protected] -3 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Go back in time and meet Jesus while He was here on earth

[–] [email protected] 3 points 4 months ago

You can meet a Jesus today, it's a fairly common name south of the US border.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Time travel to 12 hours ago so I can get more sleep

[–] [email protected] 3 points 4 months ago

It'd feel too weird sleeping with myself, which would result in lower quality sleep, requiring another trip back in time for more sleep, which would put more people in my bed...

[–] [email protected] 14 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Watch Primer, that's the whole point of the movie, how a couple of engineers who discover time travel try to profit from it while causing the least impact possible.

Also easily my favorite time travel movie by a long shot, and I'm a time travel movie fan.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 months ago (2 children)

Isn't that the one where the guys who are supposed to be engineers do not even seem to know what a capacitor or battery is? Like they unplug the device and it is still showing signs of being "on", and they say "what does that?" to imply it must be time travel.

I very rarely stop watching movies. I have suffered through some awful movies. But this was so stupid I just couldn't continue. Me and my partner now have a running joke where if we unplug like a power cord with a little light powered by a capacitor then we point to it and go "look, time travel".

[–] [email protected] 3 points 4 months ago

The guy who wrote the movie is a mathematician who's worked as a programmer, I studied years of electrical engineering before switching to computer science, and doing a masters in Material Engineering, Perhaps it's you who didn't understood something.

I looked up that part of the movie again to see exactly what you were talking about, they're putting 24V into the machine, but the machine is using more than 24V, even after they unplug it the machine is still pulling more than 24V, perhaps you missed the point that they're looking at a voltmeter (which is never shown on screen), which one of them suggest it's busted and the other tells him that he's tried 3 others. Or perhaps you missed the point that they built the machine, so they know what's in there, they know the machine shouldn't be doing that, so when they ask "What does that?" it means "What part of it does that?" or "What's making it do that?" and not "What other things do that?", the phrase can be interpreted both ways, but only one of them makes sense. The thing is that the movie doesn't try to hold your hand and explain things in detail, the engineers talk like engineers, and that's a very valid question in that situation, in fact I've asked that exact same question of several programs, it's a very common question to ask when trying to understand what's the cause for something.

And no, they're not hinting at time travel there, in fact they go for days not knowing what the machine does, if you had bothered to keep watching you would know the process of them discovering time travel is a lot longer than that, that's just the first mystery behavior from the box, which in fact has nothing to do with time travel but just an inherent way of how the box powers up and down, because it takes time to get into and out of the feedback loop.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 months ago

They did build it themselves and would know that they didn't put in any capacitors, and yeah that was implying that the time travel field has some kind of capacitance.

[–] [email protected] -4 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Literally impossible to answer without discussing what type of time travel you mean.

Regardless, the cop out answer is that the time travel you do by existing is the least impactful. You are currently traveling forward through time merely by existing.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 4 months ago

I didn't set restrictions on the type because that gives everybody the chance to respond how they like.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Going forward three days to when it's $2 beer night at the bar.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 months ago

He said unimportant not financially responsible. Either way be sure to fast and sell plasma, so you have the needed cash and get the most effect from the blue ribbons.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 4 months ago (2 children)

Traveling a second back in time to scratch that itch before it even happens. Maybe going back in time to tell yourself not to order that taco bell. Skipping forward in time to skip a hot pocket cooking in the microwave. Traveling a couple of minutes into the future to skip a boring conversation with the officer that pulled you over.

Here's the real question, if it's possible to time travel isn't it just part of the timeline even if it doesn't seem like it. If you could traverse forward and backwards in time like a tape deck isn't it already laid out including all of the time traveling you'll ever do.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Traveling a few minutes into the future to skip a boring conversation with the office that pulled you over

Skips time ... Cuffed on the floor

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 months ago

Or you travel through time like the Terminator. You find yourself completely naked with the cop having an existential crisis as he questions if any of this is real and the smell of bacon fills the air.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Oh wow, skipping a microwaving hot pocket just reminded me of the movie Click and how SPOILERS FOR CLICK it just adapts and starts fast forwarding through shit it doesn't think he wants to see until he realizes he misses those things

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 months ago

I like the idea of someone traveling through time like the Terminator for mundain things like this. Always ending up naked, leaving scorch marks everywhere, and just casually doing it in front of people without any warning.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 4 months ago

Well I travelled back in time and killed Hans-Johann Scherzlgruber-Vötzfenstein so the world wouldn't have to suffer through his atrocities.

[–] [email protected] 22 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Let's just say no one's noticed anything yet

[–] [email protected] 4 points 4 months ago (1 children)

I wrote a novel where in future people time travel back in time to watch movies in the theater like the original Star Wars. It's book one of a series.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 4 months ago (1 children)

It's book one of a series.

So naturally it's called part IV, right?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 months ago

Lol that's nice idea but don't think it work.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 4 months ago

Instead of rewinding the video, just rewind causality.

And when you skip ads you really skip ads.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 4 months ago

Future time travellers going back in time to the moment the first time machine was invented to figure out how that one worked because in the future theirs suck and are locked down to prevent abuse.

[–] [email protected] -2 points 4 months ago

Go outside the cabin, jerk off, go back.

[–] [email protected] 19 points 4 months ago

"Alright, it says my microwave meal takes four minutes..."

[–] [email protected] 6 points 4 months ago

By doing it in the vastness of empty space.

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