4 ms·

and my favorite refutation is that they've been here for a while now.

ghayes 12y ago
E.g. the fellow in this photo from 1940: http://www.dailygalaxy.com/.a/6a00d8341bf7f753ef01347ff60cea970c-pi http://www.dailygalaxy.com/.a/6a00d8341bf7f753ef01347ff60cea...
- ekianjo 12y ago
  Nice fake picture :)
  - ghayes 12y ago
    Consensus seems to be that the photo is actually real, just not so out of place. From the Wikipedia page "Time travel urban legends" [1]: > Further research suggests that the modern appearance of the man may not have been so modern. The style of sunglasses first appeared in the 1920s. On first glance the man is taken by many to be wearing a modern printed T-shirt, but on closer inspection it seems to be a sweater with a sewn-on emblem, the kind of clothing often worn by sports teams of the period. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_travel_urban_legends#Modern_man_at_1941_bridge_opening http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_travel_urban_legends#Moder...
    - ekianjo 12y ago
      Not sure how one can confirm the photo is actually real, it's so easy to fabricate picture nowadays and to add noise to make it seem like it belongs to the original. It's be interesting to actually have an in-depth article on the methods to detect fake pictures, I have seen a couple on HN but they only focused on a few examples.
eridius 12y ago
It strains credulity to believe that we do in fact have time travelers living among us and 100% of them have managed to completely escape detection. For what it's worth, there actually have been serious attempts at determining whether there are time travelers living among us, including at least one study[1] looking at Twitter for evidence of time travelers tweeting [1]: http://www.cnn.com/2014/01/03/tech/innovation/time-travel-twitter/ http://www.cnn.com/2014/01/03/tech/innovation/time-travel-tw...
- Amezarak 12y ago
  Who says they have escaped detection? There have been alleged time travelers like John Titor. Additionally, Titor and some other claimed time travelers have said the many-worlds hypothesis is correct, meaning that own history and experience does not necessarily provide them with the ability to make accurate predictions about our future. Additionally, we don't actually have any way of detecting time travelers if they decide not to do silly things like leak future information on Twitter. To be clear, I don't actually believe there are time travelers living amongst us, but studies of Twitter posts are very far from being conclusive, and there might be very good reasons why time travelers do not or cannot predict the future or just aren't very common anyway. For example, perhaps time traveling technology is legally controlled and extremely expensive, like nuclear weapons. The future of humanity is not infinite, so there's no guarantee that even if time travelers exist they should amount to any substantial number of people visiting any substantial number of times for trivial reasons like time travel conventions.
  - eridius 12y ago
    > There have been alleged time travelers like John Titor John Titor is the only one I've heard of, are there others? And Titor's predictions, even the really short-term ones, were so off the mark that there's no reason to think it's anything other than a prank. Note that even the many-worlds hypothesis would have the short-term predictions coming true and only the longer-term predictions becoming more and more inaccurate (more importantly, any differences should be due to his presence, and his presence did not e.g. cause CERN to fail to discover the basis for time travel in 2001). > Additionally, we don't actually have any way of detecting time travelers if they decide not to do silly things like leak future information on Twitter. We don't have any way of detecting time travelers if they behave in a fashion indistinguishable from people who aren't time travelers. But it's pretty safe to assume that's not the case. They are, after all, from the future, and had a reason for coming to the past. That reason alone should cause observable differences in behavior. In addition, knowledge about future events should be detectable in some fashion, their lack of a real fleshed-out personal identity. Heck, even just their manner of speech should give them away. > For example, perhaps time traveling technology is legally controlled and extremely expensive We'd still see people breaking the rules, and such people would in fact be far more likely to attract attention. We live in a world where teenagers have successfully built nuclear reactors; no matter how legally controlled it is, someone is going to figure out how to do it anyway. If it's a matter of cost, some billionaire would figure out how to build it even without government approval. If you had billions of dollars to your name, and time travel was real, wouldn't you be tempted to build a time machine no matter what the government says? --- As far as I'm concerned, the only two really valid reasons why we haven't seen time travelers are: 1. Time travel is impossible, or 2. Time travel is possible but you can only go back as far as the point where the machine is first switched on.

E.g. the fellow in this photo from 1940: http://www.dailygalaxy.com/.a/6a00d8341bf7f753ef01347ff60cea970c-pi http://www.dailygalaxy.com/.a/6a00d8341bf7f753ef01347ff60cea...

ekianjo 12y ago
Nice fake picture :)
- ghayes 12y ago
  Consensus seems to be that the photo is actually real, just not so out of place. From the Wikipedia page "Time travel urban legends" [1]: > Further research suggests that the modern appearance of the man may not have been so modern. The style of sunglasses first appeared in the 1920s. On first glance the man is taken by many to be wearing a modern printed T-shirt, but on closer inspection it seems to be a sweater with a sewn-on emblem, the kind of clothing often worn by sports teams of the period. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_travel_urban_legends#Modern_man_at_1941_bridge_opening http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_travel_urban_legends#Moder...
  - ekianjo 12y ago
    Not sure how one can confirm the photo is actually real, it's so easy to fabricate picture nowadays and to add noise to make it seem like it belongs to the original. It's be interesting to actually have an in-depth article on the methods to detect fake pictures, I have seen a couple on HN but they only focused on a few examples.

eridius 12y ago

It strains credulity to believe that we do in fact have time travelers living among us and 100% of them have managed to completely escape detection. For what it's worth, there actually have been serious attempts at determining whether there are time travelers living among us, including at least one study[1] looking at Twitter for evidence of time travelers tweeting [1]: http://www.cnn.com/2014/01/03/tech/innovation/time-travel-twitter/ http://www.cnn.com/2014/01/03/tech/innovation/time-travel-tw...

Amezarak 12y ago
Who says they have escaped detection? There have been alleged time travelers like John Titor. Additionally, Titor and some other claimed time travelers have said the many-worlds hypothesis is correct, meaning that own history and experience does not necessarily provide them with the ability to make accurate predictions about our future. Additionally, we don't actually have any way of detecting time travelers if they decide not to do silly things like leak future information on Twitter. To be clear, I don't actually believe there are time travelers living amongst us, but studies of Twitter posts are very far from being conclusive, and there might be very good reasons why time travelers do not or cannot predict the future or just aren't very common anyway. For example, perhaps time traveling technology is legally controlled and extremely expensive, like nuclear weapons. The future of humanity is not infinite, so there's no guarantee that even if time travelers exist they should amount to any substantial number of people visiting any substantial number of times for trivial reasons like time travel conventions.
- eridius 12y ago
  > There have been alleged time travelers like John Titor John Titor is the only one I've heard of, are there others? And Titor's predictions, even the really short-term ones, were so off the mark that there's no reason to think it's anything other than a prank. Note that even the many-worlds hypothesis would have the short-term predictions coming true and only the longer-term predictions becoming more and more inaccurate (more importantly, any differences should be due to his presence, and his presence did not e.g. cause CERN to fail to discover the basis for time travel in 2001). > Additionally, we don't actually have any way of detecting time travelers if they decide not to do silly things like leak future information on Twitter. We don't have any way of detecting time travelers if they behave in a fashion indistinguishable from people who aren't time travelers. But it's pretty safe to assume that's not the case. They are, after all, from the future, and had a reason for coming to the past. That reason alone should cause observable differences in behavior. In addition, knowledge about future events should be detectable in some fashion, their lack of a real fleshed-out personal identity. Heck, even just their manner of speech should give them away. > For example, perhaps time traveling technology is legally controlled and extremely expensive We'd still see people breaking the rules, and such people would in fact be far more likely to attract attention. We live in a world where teenagers have successfully built nuclear reactors; no matter how legally controlled it is, someone is going to figure out how to do it anyway. If it's a matter of cost, some billionaire would figure out how to build it even without government approval. If you had billions of dollars to your name, and time travel was real, wouldn't you be tempted to build a time machine no matter what the government says? --- As far as I'm concerned, the only two really valid reasons why we haven't seen time travelers are: 1. Time travel is impossible, or 2. Time travel is possible but you can only go back as far as the point where the machine is first switched on.