Can you imagine if someone showed up and his party became ground zero for a worldwide pandemic of future diseases for which we don’t have cures yet?
Implications
Submitted 6 months ago by fossilesque@mander.xyz to science_memes@mander.xyz
https://mander.xyz/pictrs/image/e27ee598-21fe-4d42-aaf5-6cbd4b319dd9.jpeg
Comments
cyborganism@lemmy.ca 6 months ago
OldWoodFrame@lemm.ee 6 months ago
In the future we develop the technology to delay all Covid-19 symptoms for 10 years upon first infection.
Test_Tickles@lemmynsfw.com 6 months ago
The bad guy would have to be the Mr Glass guy from Unbreakable, or otherwise the chase scenes would be really really short.
dependencyinjection@discuss.tchncs.de 6 months ago
Nice work there.
wieson@feddit.de 6 months ago
It’s missing Harambe somewhere, but great so far
Diplomjodler3@lemmy.world 6 months ago
They want you to believe that nobody showed up.
OpenStars@discuss.online 6 months ago
They did not, bc the real party was somewhen else entirely…
Viking_Hippie@lemmy.world 6 months ago
And by They, you of course mean The Globetrotters, formerly of Harlem
Anticorp@lemmy.world 6 months ago
Hawking concluded it is impossible because nobody showed up to his party. Zero thought was spent wondering if it was a party worth showing up to.
Buddahriffic@lemmy.world 6 months ago
Yeah, now that I think of it more, I can’t see a single good reason for a time traveler to show up at this party. Going back in time to prove the existence of time travel to the past has a very good chance of handing control of time travel away to people who can undo your existence without you ever being aware of it.
Even if you just wanted a conversation with one of the brilliant minds in physics, it would be smarter to pick a random lecture or non-time-travel-themed party.
Rev3rze@feddit.nl 6 months ago
Yes, or someone did show up despite knowing the risks because they trusted Hawking to understand the dangers of revealing the secret of time travel and not sharing it with any living soul. If time travel were to ever become possible and somewhat commonplace then the chances are probably close to zero that everybody chooses not to attend this party (assuming the invitation remains famous for long enough). Perhaps the party was crowded with people thinking the same way.
It’s much more likely that it all just played out exactly the way Hawking said it did, of course. But it’s a fun thought experiment to play around with.
WhiskyTangoFoxtrot@lemmy.world 6 months ago
That assumes time-travelers are smart. Never a safe assumption to make.
lambalicious@lemmy.sdf.org 6 months ago
Correct me if I’m wrong:
I live in a timeline where time travel has not yet been invented. Even if someone invents it in the future and travels to the past to the party, that’d create an alternate timeline where the party is attended and civilization leaps bounds ahead in glorious post-scarcity, magical socialism fashion.
But nooooo since the timeline was forked at that point, no matter how many people do, in fact, attend the party, I’m stuck in the “strand” of the timeline when no one ever did because time travel has not been invented.
takeheart@lemmy.world 6 months ago
There’s different ideas on how time travel “could” work and one of them is the timeline-split notion upon which you base your idea. In that vain it’s solid.
Other ideas are that time travel always results in a loop or that its perhaps only possible under very specific circumstances (ie you can’t pick an arbitrary location or time to travel to nor to travel from).
My hunch is that even if time travel were possible there’s simply no practical experiment to tell whether you are in a split timeline (and if so how it differs from others), aka it’s outside of the realm of scientific // logical inquiry.
If y’all like exploration of time travel go watch the show Travelers some time. It has some interesting premises in that regard.
Kolanaki@yiffit.net 6 months ago
There is also the Paycheck method. There is no travel you can only observe by looking through a special “time telescope.” Maybe plenty of people observed the party, they just weren’t able to physically attend.
absGeekNZ@lemmy.nz 6 months ago
There is also the harry potter version, any time travel is woven into the only timeline. The past is “edited” to always have included the events time travel.
This can be considered similar to the branching method; where the original branch without the events of the time travel simply ends; only the “new” branch continues.
Rhynoplaz@lemmy.world 6 months ago
However, IF, your theory is accurate, then you are the prime instance of you. All time travel alternatives are just YOU in another scenario, not different versions of each other, they are all YOU.
That’s got to be worth something. 🤷🏻♂️
lambalicious@lemmy.sdf.org 6 months ago
It’s worth something to this me! Who so far is the Prime Me!
TachyonTele@lemm.ee 6 months ago
Eh, that’s more science fiction than actual theory.
banana_lama@lemm.ee 6 months ago
Depends on how you see it. It could also be that for some reason or another even with backwards time travel no one shows up. And thus you avoid having a paradox
Or it could be like a time portal so once you build one you an travel back to any point it existed in but one to a point where it doesn’t exist since you need time travel infrastructure
IzzyScissor@lemmy.world 6 months ago
Or the technology for invisibility arrives before time travel so they were there, just undetected. Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.
rips bong
mojo_raisin@lemmy.world 6 months ago
Bummer, I haven’t felt this sad since learning about thermodynamics.
lambalicious@lemmy.sdf.org 6 months ago
Damn rules of thermodynamics!
you can’t win
you can’t tie
you can’t quit the game
MashedTech@lemmy.world 6 months ago
My theory is, time travel is possible but humanity went extinct before we got to that point.
SendMePhotos@lemmy.world 6 months ago
Agreed. We are wiping ourselves out.
atyaz@hexbear.net 6 months ago
It would have been really awkward for everyone involved if someone stumbled into his party by mistake and freaked him out.
zaphod@sopuli.xyz 6 months ago
The problem is he only told us when it was, but not where.
Karyoplasma@discuss.tchncs.de 6 months ago
He did divulge the location afterwards.
lightnsfw@reddthat.com 6 months ago
Imagine having time travel and wasting it on going to some nerd party.
Ballistic_86@lemmy.world 6 months ago
I mean, it wouldn’t be like they waste any time, lol
faerbit@sh.itjust.works 6 months ago
Just because you can time travel, doesn’t still mean you don’t still age, get hungry, have limited energy to do stuff, …
Asidonhopo@lemmy.world 6 months ago
I mean when time travel is invented the story will change and we’ll hear about those visitors. Nobody has shown up at Hawking’s party yet.
Shampiss@sh.itjust.works 6 months ago
That’s the point though. It doesn’t matter when time travel is invented, only if it can be invented.
If time travel is possible even 10 000 years in the future someone would almost certainly show up at Hawking’s party since they have a time machine.
The fact that no one showed up it’s a reasonable argument that time travel is impossible
chiliedogg@lemmy.world 6 months ago
That’s like somebody saying in 1912 that fax machines could never be invented because no printouts were magically appearing on their desk. The technology had to be invented before it could be used. If a time traveler has to step out of a machine, that machine has to be invented first. The idea is that backwards time travel would only be able to travel as far back as the invention of backwards time travel.
That being said, from a physics standpoint I can absolutely see backwards time travel as being impossible. We can’t move negative distances across spatial dimensions, so why would we be able to move backwards in time?
ClockworkOtter@lemmy.world 6 months ago
Perhaps the time travellers came back as catering staff so they could polish it all off without having to engage in human interaction.
LaserTurboShark69@sh.itjust.works 6 months ago
I’m planning on going!
credo@lemmy.world 6 months ago
But you did not, in the future.
Slovene@feddit.nl 6 months ago
Well, it was a party, not an orgy.
Dagwood222@lemm.ee 6 months ago
[off topic]
“The Big Time” by Fritz Leiber is one of my all time favorite novels. His time travel works on the principle of 'The Law Of Conservation Of Reality." There’s only one timeline, and it’s possible to change it, but it requires a lot of work.
If you go back and kill baby Hitler, he’ll come back to life and no one will remember anything. It takes vast armies fighting thousands of secret battles to change one thing. But when a Big Change hits, look out!
higgsboson@dubvee.org 6 months ago
I’ve never read much Fritz Leiber, but he’s a major influence of Zelazny (and on Butcher, Donaldson, Stephenson, etc.)
Maybe today’s the day I dig up and read Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser.
Dagwood222@lemm.ee 6 months ago
Good place to start.
merthyr1831@lemmy.world 6 months ago
Or they found out about his time at Epstein Island and didn’t wanna fuck w that
Justas@sh.itjust.works 6 months ago
I’d crash the party to accuse him of that.
DragonTypeWyvern@midwest.social 6 months ago
Hawking: I literally talk with my cheek muscles, wtf
ZILtoid1991@lemmy.world 6 months ago
It depends on the tipe of time travel rules. One theory suggest going back in time creates a branch in the time-space continuum, one where the time travel happened, one where it did not.
With this branching time-space rule, there’s one timeline, where no time travellers appeared, and one where they did.
Kolanaki@yiffit.net 6 months ago
How would any time travelers have known about his party? Did he advertise it? Or did he assume he would invent the time machine?
voodooattack@lemmy.world 6 months ago
He publicised the invite after he hosted it
Kolanaki@yiffit.net 6 months ago
Time travelers were fashionably late by 2 decades.
ShellMonkey@lemmy.socdojo.com 6 months ago
So by the thought of infinite parallel universes though, shouldn’t there then be at least some in which someone did attend?
Sconrad122@lemmy.world 6 months ago
Pi is an infinite series of non-repeating digits, and yet you will never find the letter A in pi because there is a 0% chance of the letter A being a digit in a decimal system. By the same logic, infinite possibilities do not guarantee that every conceivable state occurs, if that conceivable state has a 0% probability. As finite beings, it is very difficult for us to accurately distinguish between a 0% probability and a infinitesimal probability, so we end up circling back to “we don’t know”
lengau@midwest.social 6 months ago
One the one hand you are correct.
On the other hand… Behold! An A in pi! www.spoj.com/problems/PIHEX2/
grue@lemmy.world 6 months ago
That theory suggest that everything that can happen, will — but even then, things that can’t happen, won’t.
HawlSera@lemm.ee 6 months ago
A party with no bitches, just some nerd who doubts your existence and would spend time asking you stupid questions? No wonder no one came…
Plus it would likely be taboo to visit the past because of how easy it’d be to spread future germs and get everyone killed.
flora_explora@beehaw.org 6 months ago
So you are apparently a time traveler from the past who still uses “bitches” to refer to women. A quick update, in this time and age this is considered sexist and you might want to get up to date with other expressions as well
HawlSera@lemm.ee 6 months ago
I mean bitches in a sex positive way. I’m a sophisticated cyberpunk transbabe looking to get some pre-historic lady fingers up in this cyborg snatch!
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fidodo@lemmy.world 6 months ago
What if time travel requires an anchor so you can’t go backwards before the time it was invented?
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stephfinitely@lemmy.world 6 months ago
Well, given what we have learned about Hawking, it’s not that shocking. Also, why would they reveal themselves like that.
JackGreenEarth@lemm.ee 6 months ago
There’s an innumerable number of reasons no one showed up, only one of which is that backwards time travel isn’t possible.
wewbull@feddit.uk 6 months ago
One of which is that Stephen Hawking threw a lousy party.
jol@discuss.tchncs.de 6 months ago
The other one is that most people haven’t herd of it, so I doubt the knowledge of this party will travel that far into the future.
brbposting@sh.itjust.works 6 months ago
Take that back!!
Image
Bishma@discuss.tchncs.de 6 months ago
We’re in one of the unlucky few possible resulting timelines in which no one showed. My friend from timeline 3f-1933847.12b told me that their party is still going. Every few hours more travelers turn up with a fresh keg, and whatever their generation’s party drug is.
lugal@lemmy.ml 6 months ago
It’s by far the most plausible but sure, if you ignore Ockham’s razor, sure, it’s only one of many explanations
el_abuelo@lemmy.ml 6 months ago
More plausible than there being rules around time travel that involve not attending parties? I think not.
Guy_Fieris_Hair@lemmy.world 6 months ago
Maybe future people knew about his supposed ties to Epstein and didn’t want to show up…
VirtualOdour@sh.itjust.works 6 months ago
Exactly, they’d know a lot more accurately what happened too, which raises another point as to why no one comes back here - imagine gong somewhere that you know horrible things are happening to children but you can’t say anything or save them because of the timeline…
Even if in the unlikely event Hawking didn’t know about it talking to him and not saying ‘that friend of yours epstine is a bad dude’ would be unbearable.
Ultraviolet@lemmy.world 6 months ago
For example maybe you need a working time machine at your destination, such that the earliest point possible to travel to is the moment the first time machine was switched on.
MonkderDritte@feddit.de 6 months ago
One of them that no one made a backup of the past.
Lucidlethargy@sh.itjust.works 6 months ago
I mean, maybe people did show up. Maybe he never told anyone else due to the implications.
meeeeetch@lemmy.world 6 months ago
News of his attendance at someone else’s party made all future time travelers give him a wide berth.