Not sure if this belongs in x but couldn't think of a better place to put it. So I was thinking and I had the thought that all of our existing technology had the POTENTIAL to exist at any time in the hundreds of thousands of years that humans have existed, and we just didn't know about it. So, if a time traveler were to travel back to the time of the ancient Romans or something and gave them the knowledge of and materials to create and continue creating things like nuclear reactors and other modern technologies, how would the world be different today? What does /x/ think?
WE WUD BE COLONIZE THE MILK WAY AND SHIEEEET
>>17886293
WE WUZ KANGS AND SHIT NIGGA
>>17886288
That would generate a paradox, or an alternate reality. Not much for us, I think.
Multiple worlds theory, the time traveler would create a new world line just by being there.
>>17886288
You mean instigate an industrial revolution making said materials available to do said things? That would both require an extremely intelligent time traveler and may be indistinguishable from what actually happened.
Have you ever thought how little you could do to impress people if you went back in time? I wonder if most of us would have more in common with the village idiot. Seriously even if you were smart where would you begin with this stuff?
I think you haven't the slightest idea.
>>17889529
Who?
>>17886288
One person wouldn't be able to do much.
Maybe if you could take books with you and you had a background in engineering this would work.
You would really have to do everything from the ground up, which is the problem.
I know how to build a motor. I don't know how to forge the materials for a proper motor. I don't know how to refine fuel. I could maybe produce a small amount of coal gas??
>>17889665
I think the hardest part would be convincing them you weren't a loon.
>there's little germs, you can see them with a microscope
>what's a microscope?
>err...well...
And so on. It would be like opening a can of worms that being all the knowledge and work of humanity we take for granted. There's just so many different highly complex systems that go into apparently simple things needing numerous highly intelligent people.
There was a programme about a bunch of scientists on an island and they had to accomplish quite simple things and struggled and often failed. That along with the naivety of the otherwise intelligent people and I think you'd be rendered a magician of novelties at best. Knowledge and technology is emergent and needs to be nurtured.
Not entirely sure why I've thought about this so much.
>>17889719
...thinking about it you might even get yourself crucified!
>>17886288
One of two things will happen to me.
1. I do a bunch of cool shit and then get killed for being a witch.
2. My glasses break and I die because no one gives a shit about the handicapped.
>>17886300
You need to go back /pol/
>>17887494
this
>>17886288
>how would the world be different today?
We wouldn't exist in that timeline. Changing things on the level of the economy would alter the fabric of the bloodline irreparably. No amount of clever manipulations to their fate could restore the bloodlines to their pre-intervention state.
>>17887494
this is correct, though it's not really a theory in technicalities.
It'd be a new quantum state. Causality in time travel is impossible otherwise we'd have proof of time travel right now.
>>17886288
It'd be more religious. They'd use that technology to worship their gods to a greater degree rather than recognize that time makes a god of us all.
Either that or they'd worship the guy that did it as a god of time.
>>17890831
>proof of time travel right now
I'm working on it. You can't rush perfection.
>>17890843
If time travel works causally the timeline would open up to an infinite amount of uses at the moment of it's inception, it's unavoidable.
So unless you are somehow going to assure me that until the very heat death of the universe your time travel mechanism works causally and somehow doesn't impact the timeline in a catastrophic sense due to the infinite ramifications of causal looping from all points in time...
Well, you can have fun in your new timeline.
>>17890870
>an infinite amount of uses
>at the moment
>of it's inception
>unavoidable
Your logic is correct, but you're not understanding how it arranges itself such that it can be valid.
In order for all those divergences to happen, they must occur from a future moment. If that moment doesn't affirm its own cause in the new timeline it creates, then both timelines will see different sets of events leading up to the first moment of time travel. What might look like infinite potential for recursion is actually hidden by the mass of possibility that composes the divergent multiverse. From a multiversal perspective, such divergence is common, yes. But from a linear perspective, ie., in the events leading up to the moment that causes the divergence, this timeline is timeless from the perspective of the future that causes the divergence. We are already part of the history of the future that would cause a divergence in our own past. The infinity of uses only ever exists because each individual timeline made it that far to begin with. Even if a billion versions of us have seen time travelers appear "out of nowhere," there will always be that one version of us that lived in the timeline that led up to the creation of divergent possibility.
Your logic is correct *in the future,* but until we make that logic apply to reality, we can't see the multiverse that the future creates. It'll be true only after people like me force it to be true.
>>17890930
I suppose I'm too mired in fiction that recites the same old tropes of time travel recursion and affirmation (see: primer) to realize the longform timeline divergences. I'm no master of thought experiments on time travel, but you seem like you've got this down.
>It'll be true only after people like me force it to be true.
Planning anything specific?
>>17886288
I sometimes qonder if there was an advanced civilization long long ago. Like what if dinosaurs had electronic circuitry and computers and all the traces of such have just disappeared with time? And if not dinosaurs, perhaps another species or race that is just not found in tne fossil record. And I'm not talking flintstones. Also I know this thought isn't original to me, I just haven't read or seen much about it
>>17890938
>Planning anything specific?
Everything I do is deliberate and specific, even if that means posting something that sounds like completely vague gibberish. A lot of people wouldn't be able to understand anything I just said, even though I consider it basic to understanding time travel. When even the basics can sound like made up bullshit, you have a severe PR problem.
Part of the reason I post on /x/ had nothing to do with time travel being undiscovered or paranormal. Part of it is just because even something like /his/, which would be the logical place to discuss time travel if it were known to exist, has trouble with the non-standard causal logic involved in time traveling systems. /x/ is the only place you can easily find people with enough suspension of disbelief to get an audience that will actually understand. /sci/ is the runner-up for conceptual competence on time logic but obviously they aren't going to pay me any mind until I produce a schematic or some other comprehensive body of work to really dig into. For casual chats about possibility on this level, /x/ is the only place to come.
>>17890831
I learned about time travel through reading the John Ttor posts.
>>17891501
John Titor is sort of awkward, he made predictions which were wrong, which makes you think that he was using some sort of quantum time travel that just put him in a new timeline everytime he jumped, but when you look at the timeline he puts forward, it is very causal.
The theory he propogated way back when would have worked until the first prediction he made didn't come true, at which point you can safely say he was false.
Hint:pre-flood technology.
