Say that you suddenly wake up in the year 1875. You end up talking to someone and you want to convince them that you’re from the future. How do you do that?
Why the hell would you want to do that? Just do lots of cocaine and invent coca cola
If they speak in hillbilly, valleygirl, inner-city slang and various grunts.
I guess just showing my tattoo would do the trick, or the phone in my pocket?
I’d probably be burned for witchcraft or be shot for it, but let people listen to my mechanical heart valve.
I imagine the average person would 100% freak out over hearing it. A ticking sound? Inside a person’s heart? In a time when mechanical body parts aren’t normal or really all that existent? That’s a burning as a wizard or being shot as an overreaction.
Wait, can you please explain it further?
With that description I imagine it like a ticking clock/watch, is that accurate? How loud is it, do you hear it yourself, or is it only audible when resting an ear on your chest?
I never thought about this, but it’s fascinating.
I don’t know how exactly to describe the ticking, what to compare it to. I can always hear it, but that’s probably because it’s an internal noise for me. I cannot say exactly how loud it is to other people. One time when it was quiet enough and I was right next to my brother, many years ago, he thought he was hearing some sort of time bomb ( probably because he was playing The Godfather ), but you can hear it a lot more clearly and more easily if you stick your head to to my chest. I presume it mixes with the sound of my heartbeat.
First I tell them the proof to Fermat’s theorem.
(For those who aren’t familiar with it: it originates from 1637, but nobody in the world was able to prove it until 1994. Therefore it was known among scientists and scholars in all the world during these centuries as one of the greatest riddles in history)
I get world famous, instantly, with newspaper headlines everywhere.
Mathematicians in all countries are able to verify my words, so I gain endless credibility, and I can travel to all kinds of places where they want to hear me speak etc.
A little bit later they will find out that I am not that good at math. Well, not bad, but not good enough by far to find that proof. So there is the next riddle about me.
Then I can tell that I am from the future. And since I have gained credibility before, they are going to listen now.
This is one of the few answers that would actually work without you being thrown in a mental asylum. You get into any university, ask to get the math/physics teachers together and present it to them, this certainly will start a chain reaction.
To add something to that, after you’ve been “busted”, adding “in the timeline or universe I’m from, it’s been proven by Andrew Wiles in 1994”
You get into any university, ask to get the math/physics teachers together and present it to them, this certainly will start a chain reaction.
The demonstration of the proof is actually incredibility complicated. You’d need to develop many new concepts of mathematics (all requiring proper proofs and getting your new contemporaries to agree with you) before you can preform it.
All without the use of a electronic calculator and modern computer graphing and visualization techniques.
I’m not convinced its actually feasible… You’d be recognized as one of the greatest mathematicians of all time from all the new concepts you’ve introduced, not just the proof for Fermat’s last theorem. I’d pick something else. Like predicting an earthquake or something.
Istr that Ramanujan claimed that Kali gave him ideas in his dreams. Maybe he was actually a mathematician from the future but decided that telling the truth would not be feasible.
I mean… Ramanujan was the GOAT, but he was still able to do his proofs. That’s more or less my point. He didn’t suddenly convert a bunch of Oxford mathematicians to Hinduism because he was able to do incredible math proofs (i think they would have been similarly unconvinced he was a time traveller). The proof was in the pudding… in the proofs.
In order to do Wile’s proof of Fermat’s last theorem, you have to invent 100 years of math from memory, something Wiles himself would (almost certainly) struggle to do, but maybe he could pull it off. I remember reading an article about Wile’s proof, and he was incredibly humble about it, and described it as a collaborative effort between himself and his peers IIRC. The proof itself wasn’t complete without a correction from another math academic IIRC. This thread is like, kind of a misunderstanding of math academics.
In 1875 you don’t have ZFC set theory and Cantor’s works are bleeding edge (I think Cantor’s work is controversial and incomplete in this time… fuck it, maybe you should just work with Cantor himself if you can find him. Maybe he’d believe you. I didn’t take math history IDK)
I cannot find a source to link to it now but I remember reading through Godel’s incompleteness theorem, a proof of Fermat’s theorem isn’t possible without the extensions of classical mathematics that were developed in the 20th century.
You’ll have to take my word for it on that last bit. I’m a time traveling dolphin, after all.
Anyway, that’s more or less my point, you’d have to basically be an incredibly talented math professor (in theoretical mathematics, not applied) to demonstrate this proof to satisfaction to a bunch of professors in 1875. You’d also probably have to be white and male. It’s just not something a casual lemmy poster can like, do, you know? There’s a reason that Fermat’s theorem wasn’t proven for 350 years despite being accepted as true.
(edit: I am tired so this is rambley)
Do you know the proof by heart? Would you be able to recite it like that?
It was purely a theoretical question, wasn’t it :)
No, the question was “How do you [prove that your from the future]?” You laid out a scheme, which you are likely not capable of doing, especially because you missed the bit about the terrifying complexity of that particular proof.
Wiles’ demonstration of Fermat’s simply stated proposition is more than a hundred pages of complex math involving such esoteric concepts as Selmer groups, Hecke algebras, elliptic curves, modular forms, Euler systems and Galois representations. 350 Years Later, Fermat’s Last Theorem Finally Proved
So I guess, if you take this seriously, you better start preparing.
Don’t get it twisted. I’m not taking the question any more seriously than anyone else in this thread (including you).
The flaw in the logic of your plan didn’t require any serious analysis. If you think it did, then “Thanks for the compliment, I guess.”
But how would you get a job without your social security number? /s (sorry, from another thread that someone took too seriously)
With a theoretical “suddenly”, so no time to cram knowledge in prep. In my reading of it, at least.
I would show them Fortnite dances unimaginable to their primitive minds.
Elvis Presley dancing was considered borderline obscene not that long ago comparatively, so you might end up in the sanitarium if you said “hey, watch me floss!”
Historical knowledge would come in handy, though IDK much about the late 19th century. And it would probably take a while until an event you predict actually happens, even if you’re a bit of a 19th century history nerd.
Beyond that, might be a lost cause. People are generally not going to believe that kind of thing even if you present some amount of evidence, and even if they do they might react badly to it.
I’d go with as-yet-undiscovered scientific knowledge. Your predictions might alter historical events, but they shouldn’t change the way nature operates.
That’s a real quick way to get chemically castrated and tossed in a “sanitarium” /hj
IMO, scientific knowledge isn’t that useful if you only have a surface-level understanding of how things work. Either way, let’s say you know enough to get a reputation as a genius inventor or something like that, maybe some people would actually believe if you claim that you’re from the future then, but I think there would be more people who just think you’re crazy (or “eccentric” if you’re lucky).
I won’t. My best hope is to find an engineering firm and convince them to hire me as a calculator. I won’t have any credentials, but it was common for people without a formal education to perform the basic calculations under the direction of a licensed engineer.
So, as far as a casual one on one conversation, I don’t know. But some sort of formal petition to the public or a person of power, I would look for known geological activities like earthquakes and volcanic eruptions before going back in time. Weather events are too fickle. We can’t really affect geological events though.
It looks like Mount Iliamna had a known eruption in 1876. You could spend a few months getting attention before it happens. The same way people who give very specific doomsday predictions do. This way, once the eruption happens everyone will be certain you’re telling the truth. Or at least, most people won’t think you’re crazy. They may still be skeptical, but this will be enough to get people to lend you and ear and take warnings seriously. It is probably too early in the industrial revolution to really get people to slow down their progress if you want to stop climate change. A similar stunt around the time the first suppressed reports of climate change happened would be better at that.
Holocene eruptive activity from Iliamna is little known, but radiocarbon dating seems to indicate at least a few eruptions, all before the European settlement of Alaska. Prehistoric eruptions have been dated to 5050 and 2050 BCE (VEI-4), 450 BCE and 1650. Historically observed eruptions took place in 1867 (VEI-2) and 1876 (VEI-3), with unconfirmed eruptions in 1933, 1947, 1952 and 1953.[7]
Hmm. I would need to first be vaccinated vs. yellow fever, because apparently that hit so hard right then it left only a few hundred people. My own house is from 1940, though it’s in the city now it was not developed yet. Holy fuck, it’s also Reconstruction right after the civil war.
I don’t think I would even try. Would be enough of a struggle finding a way to survive. And if we have learned one thing from science fiction, it’s don’t mess with the timeline.
If I wake up in 1875 right where I am and a birch tree hasn’t appeared through my chest, then I’m a half hour hike away from Fort Saskatchewan. A North West Mounted Police outpost+jail and they’ll speak English I can understand in 1875.
In 1879 they’ll hang a whiskey addicted Cree man who killed and ate his six children, his wife, mother, and brother. Swift Runner or Ka-Ki-Si-Kutchin. Got kicked out of the fort (I think he worked there? So he might be around already), and then his own tribe kicked his dysfunctional ass out too before he did this.
From Canada Day I wandered through a few times the new replica Fort the city built and read the history placards. So I’d also know a few of policeman names, some trivia about them, and how some of them would die. Mostly by fighting natives. Most of them were cunts frankly. Yes yes very surprising to nobody.
I would speak Polish and it would be enough proof with the right story to convince someone. I would be then immidietely killed for danger to the Russification and Germanisation efforts.
(Poland didn’t exist in 1875)
Hey, Ludrol. “A bip a shap a slip a tap a eyshioni” [I am from the year 4877 and I speak Bippy, a language of the Bipp Republic of Darkness a country that won’t exist for another thousand years.
It won’t work for Bipp Republic of Darkness in 2025 but for Poland in 1875 it would. Recently the January Uprising of 1863 has failed. The people will want to believe that Poland will exist in the future and that their sacrifice wasn’t/was* in vain. Due to emotional baggage of occupation it will work as people want hope and believe that they will win. I am not calling to logic but to emotions.
Poland is a country with thousand years of history.
*Depends if I will tak to Pozytywista or Romantyk
I guess I don’t know enough European history. Which means that when I say “that makes a lot of sense. You have convinced me” it means very very little and you should not feel like you have won any debate.
Just kidding. The Bipp Republic supports your methods.
Wouldn’t they just identify you as a subversive from 1875, instead of a liberated person from the future?
I wouldn’t try and prove anything.
I would “invent” a few basic tchotchkis and nick-nacks to get money, then out to California ahead of
the Gold RushHollywood? to …something, I dunno, and buy land.Invent a couple variations on heat pumps and electric motors. By 1928 sail away to New Zealand.
California’s gold rush was 1849.
Aw, dammit. See, I would have showed up as late to that party as if I had done it today.
I don’t think I would try to prove anything, why would I want people to know that I’m from the future? but if for some reason I had to prove it, it would depend a lot, like a lot, of the place I’m in. What country and what type of population? I’ve discovered at a very early age I had an allergy to angry crowds and their willingness to lynch whatever they hate and fear (if there was ever a difference?).
