Asklemmy

Ask if Half-Life 3 is available

First couple of minutes would be nice to catch up with world events. I would take some time to find money making strategies, like learning what to invest in, or what about to buy. If the person has any knowledge about some revolutionary technology, it would be nice to learn about it. Maybe we could use the knowledge to advance mankind. I would also want to learn about things to watch out for. Maybe I should move to some other country because the one I'm in goes to shit.

If I get to ask them to bring something, I guess all the major world news and science media of the previous 50 years on a hard drive would come in handy. I'd use it to bankrupt all the billionionaires and bring peace and prosperity to the world.

He can travel back in time so I'm going the other direction with this.

I have about six hundred ounces of silver bullion.

So I'd send him back to around 2010 when silver was going for thirty bucks an ounce and Bitcoin was going for a buck a coin.

Cash out silver, buy Bitcoin, bring me the wallet.

This could be done a little more efficiently with a stop on whatever year Bitcoin was over sixty thousand, but even at today's rates, I would instantly have several hundred million dollars. I wouldn't even mind paying the taxes on that.

Why get future information that's going to take time to manifest itself when I can cash instantly?

Edit: Six hundred ounces of silver would physically fit in a backpack, but the weight would likely tear it to shreds. I'd have time for him to make multiple trips so he doesn't destroy his backpack or his spine.

It should be possible to get the boot strap paradox out of the way and establish a stable time loop in which case the traveler just hands me a storage device full of everything I need to know to make a lot of money and establish a time travel research organization that will 50 years later send the traveler back to me.

50 years?

I would ask them how we survived the chaotic weather, massive parallel famines, collapse of trade & technology, and lethally high wet bulb temperatures of climate change.

Plus, there is also the high likelihood of all these causing a massive drop in human population that compounds the irreversible and permanent collapse of human civilization. To the point where any high tech is increasingly unlikely to exist.

People in time travel movies always talk about going back in time and accidentally changing one small thing that reverberates into an immensely large change today. In real life people never talk about making a small, deliberate, positive change today in their own life timeline for an immense positive change in their future.

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.

Sports almanac, any kind of history of the stock market, and the history of Power Ball and Mega Millions.

Gonna have to go the Bill and Ted route.

I'll figure out what I need in the next 50 years and let him know there. Now the time traveler can just tell me whatever I want to have wanted to know.

Kill them and steal their time machine.

##3. They will answer to the best of their ability but imagine this is a random person from 2074.

Oh, I love this rule. Everyone is planning on asking this guy how time travel works and detailed accounts of world history, but if the brain drain we've experienced as a society is going to continue, how exactly do you expect an average person half a century from now to answer?

I'm imagining this exact scenario playing out but instead we are the time traveler, returning back to 1974.

"Oh wow, so can you explain all the geopolitics of the next fifty years?"

"..."

"And this 'Internet' thing you speak of? It sounds amazing! How does it work?"

"......"

"I'm also very excited to learn about these 'smart phones', they sound very powerful. Could you describe how they're built?"

"........."

I'll fucking torture them and steal their time machine. Go forward in time myself collect all stock market data, all the research paper published, all the politicians who got elected, details on all the wars that happened, details on all the influential people, etc. And then go back as far as possible and establish a secret society with me at the helm of and achieve complete world domination ....ultimate rice pudding..... Shout out to exurb1a

I ask them about the history of time travel and either listen to them, or accept the recording they give me, and carefully record it myself. Then I ignore them and try to metagame time travel, assuming they've set up some form of time loop.

The first step is to buy lottery tickets (with choices based on a quantum RNG), and if I win, buy more lottery tickets until I have an arbitrary amount of wealth. If I'm in a time loop, there will exist an iteration where I win all attempted lottery instances (note that only non-deterministic RNGs will work for this, like the one I have on my desk). I then use that wealth and my foreknowledge to adjust the future history of time travel such that I exclusively control the technology. Then I send someone back in time with the recorded history (now incorrect) of time travel.

That ought to destabilize any loop they're trying to set up after a finite number of iterations, and wrap my loop around it. If you're a time traveler looking to prevent me from doing this, I accept cash, money, and filthy lucre. Just make sure the dates on the bills make sense for this period.

Just to confirm, can they go back and forth through time multiple times?

So in theory they could make 100 trips through time and then I sit down with them for 3 hours?

Ask if they'd like a cup of tea and tell them I'm really sorry we fucked up the world. Then I'd leave them be, to enjoy the 3 hours they can spend here.

Ask why. Then probably work on subversion... because it is seriously doubtful they've come back for any good reason.

I just want to know if artificial general intelligence is real, and when that'll happen.

Oh, and go back to 2011 and buy me some bitcoin please.

You don't need three hours. Just read their demeanor to see if the future is going to be shit or not.

Guess I'll be sucking the dick of the person who is technically the youngest person I've met.

Map out what stocks to buy and when over the last 40 years, print it out and have the time traveler take it back along with a video of me explaining what to do to become insanely wealthy to my 5 year old self.

I give them some water, because it is probably pretty scarce and valuable by 2074. Then I ask them if they remembered to bring me the lottery ticket numbers for the big lottery that I win in October of 2024.