Time Traveling Experiment

A long time in the making.
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David3
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Time Traveling Experiment

Post by David3 »

I am glad to see that I am not the only one who has tried this time traveling experiment before. I tried it a couple of years ago, but future me never showed up.

If it's really going to work, you'd have to be committed to either memorizing the exact date and time or keeping up with the paper you wrote it on. When I tried it, I wrote down the date, but didn't keep up with the paper. Even if future me becomes a rime traveler, I wouldn't know when I was supposed to go back to.

riothero
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Re: Time Traveling Experiment

Post by riothero »

I don't expect David, who originally posted this topic, to still be checking this site for a response, but I'll respond anyway. I forget where Claude and Justin (actually in my mind I remember Justin as the one who talked about it the most) refer to this time traveling experiment -- since LLD Podcast #50 was so long, I'm having trouble finding it, though I think it's towards the end... Anyhow, as someone who is just getting turned on to empirical research in the (social) sciences, I'm kind of intrigued by the idea and share David's concern that one must be committed to strict methodology.

Even so, I'm sure folks out there have tried this experiment, and had no trouble memorizing the exact date and time or keeping up with the paper on which it was written, but still found that no future versions of themselves showed up. So what's the problem? The first thing we would want answered is whether, in principle, everything checks out. If time travel were possible in my lifetime, at some point years from now, what's to prevent me from going back in time and satisfying my curiosity right now? Thank god there are so many paradoxes and complications associated with this... and we can argue forever and never have to concede the more likely possibility that time travel will never be possible. I'm perfectly content with just watching it happen on Lost...

It seems that time travel will be huge this season. I wonder if we're all prepare to re-engage this complex issue...

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