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Ring ring ring ring ring- Tomorrowphone!
01-05-2012, 11:49 PM
Assume some method is developed to pass information through time, and (after exploiting it for himself, by winning every lottery and sports event bet in $region) the inventor has set up a telephone sevice so anyone can call themselves up 24 hours in the future. What changes does this cause? The idea occurred to me while cooking just now, but actually mapping out the consequences has me boggled, beyond utterly killing the business model of lotteries and sports betting as mentioned above, accidents and disasters could be headed off or mitigated, and restaurateurs or similar make-and-immediately-sell businesses would be able to prepare exactly as much as they needed, reducing waste. Paradoxes are forcibly ironed out, frex a policeman calling Tomorrowphone would be told by his future self that he stopped two burglaries and a murder because his past self called and found out where and when to be to do so.
Discuss?
- CD
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"Anko, what you do in your free time is your own choice. Use it wisely. And if you do not use it wisely, make sure you thoroughly enjoy whatever unwise thing you are doing." - HymnOfRagnorok as Orochimaru at SpaceBattles
woot Med. Eng., verb, 1st & 3rd pers. prsnt. sg. know, knows
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I expect car accidents to go up as people try to hold VITAL!conversations and drive at the same time.
I would also expect several religions to claim it was inspired by $DEITY, and several others to denounce it as being against $DEITY.
crime would also go up as people figure out new ways to use said information to game various systems.
(am I being too pessimistic? anyone else see shades of minority report in this?)
-Terry
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Futurephone + Modem = Singularity by Thursday
"No can brain today. Want cheezeburger."
From NGE: Nobody Dies, by Gregg Landsman
http://www.fanfiction.net/s/5579457/1/NGE_Nobody_Dies
The Stock market would probably go into a melt down ans people try to buy and sell according to what the future says.
So a new Depression?
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I don't know about anyone else, but I would be on the phone the instant the service was available with myself a day in the future - call it Midnight, day 1. Then again at 11:59 pm that night, and 11:58 the following day...etc.The me a year down the line has been spending the last few weeks researching the specific events that happened on the day the futurephone was invented (I assure you it will be well documented). He will then compile a list of things that I will need to do in the next ~23 hours, with exact times and places, encoded so that it can be passed on in about a minute.And in the chaos that comes in the following day, I will quietly conquer the world. I may have to share with other people that are also forward thinking enough to work with themselves, but I doubt it will be very many.
For further information on how this style of time travel works, look up the Continuum RPG.
"Not this again!" Minerva said. "Albus, it was You-Know-Who, not you, who marked Harry as his equal. There is no possible way that the prophecy could be talking about you!" - Harry Potter and the Method of Rationality, Chapter 84
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I'd do something similar, but instead of conquering the world, I'd set up a small country on an archipelago in the Pacific, near the equator, and use the massive amounts of money obtained via temporal shenanigans to turn it into a paradise for scientific research. The reason its on an island in the middle of the Pacific? Good Launch location for the spaceships. Then, once we get our Moon colony going...
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Jorlem Wrote:I'd do something similar, but instead of conquering the world, I'd set up a small country on an archipelago in the Pacific, near the equator, and use the massive amounts of money obtained via temporal shenanigans to turn it into a paradise for scientific research. The reason its on an island in the middle of the Pacific? Good Laurnch location for the spaceships. Then, once we get our Moon colony going... But... but... but International Rescue doesn't have a Moon colony! They just have a space station...
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Are you asuming that this tomorrowphone works in such a way that you can only call forward, and never have to answer a call from your own past?
Because if so, I can see them either being ignored by everyone except for those who are so rich/powerful so as to PAY someone to be on the phone 24h/day.
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it'll change everything, but nothing. As people find out that knowing the future also simultaneously changes it. After all, take your average Bookmaker's, and a race. If everyone knows beforehand that the long-shot will win, they'll put their money on the long-shot. The Bookmaker, not wanting to lose thousands, doesn't need to look to the future. He just needs to set his odds based on a sudden glut of people betting on what was once a long-shot. By the time the race runs, it's become the odd's-on favourite.
And of course, there's the ultimate terror of ringing yourself.... and getting no answer. Did I just leave my phone off tomorrow, or has something....unfortunate happened?
Or predestination paradoxes, where ringing yourself in the future causes your future self to die.
Or deliberately introducing a paradox, like destroying the phone you called the future on, right after making the phone call. Some idiot will doubtless find a way to crash this particular simulation of the universe....
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My assumption was that the service is set to dial back to the number that calls it, so it would be the same phone line whoever was or wasn't there to pick it up. You can only talk to your past self when the call comes from the past.. Still kind of boggling on higher-order consequences, though. As for generating paradoxes, assume a sturdy Tonka-built universe, not a Star Trek dance on the monoknife's edge. Causing a paradox gives you a headache bad enough to make you not want to do it again, like if your little brother (form yesterday) beat you over the head with said Tonka, but that's it. There's no reason Yesterdayphone couldn't work too, though of course you can only call starting the day after Tomorrowphone service starts being offered, so you can try to call yourself before you called yourself and set up a paradox by not calling yourself to tell yourself not to do that becasue all it does is give you a migraine, but you'd probably just get a busy signal or be diverted to call waiting. Isn't that always the way?
- CD, "Tonka," that's the sound your head makes when a paradox slams into it, right? Or when you slam it into the top of your desk. Coincidence? I think not.
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"Anko, what you do in your free time is your own choice. Use it wisely. And if you do not use it wisely, make sure you thoroughly enjoy whatever unwise thing you are doing." - HymnOfRagnorok as Orochimaru at SpaceBattles
woot Med. Eng., verb, 1st & 3rd pers. prsnt. sg. know, knows
There are a *lot* of "what if... time travel?" stories out there, and a lot of stuff depends on paradox and how it works, and how it is prevented. For a straightforward example - person A wants to find person B. Person B does not want to be found by person A. Both call their future selves to find out where the other will be, so they can avoid the spot (in a setup where persons A and B would both know their respective locations after the fact). Suddenly, the might of the tomorrowphone directly opposes the might of the tomorrowphone.
Thing is, though, that causality gets *real* squirrely at that point, which makes it effectively impossible to meaningfully plan or predict things.
Kestrel, aside from the difficulties inherent in everyone else mucking with the plans that you've built, I think it might be pretty entertaining to try to run a take-over-the-world plan (or, indeed, any plan) off of the results of a 365-person game of *literal* telephone.
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Well, Person B has a really bad headache and doesn't get around to running, but Person A does too and doesn't get around to looking for B that day. Status quo prevails.
- CD
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"Anko, what you do in your free time is your own choice. Use it wisely. And if you do not use it wisely, make sure you thoroughly enjoy whatever unwise thing you are doing." - HymnOfRagnorok as Orochimaru at SpaceBattles
woot Med. Eng., verb, 1st & 3rd pers. prsnt. sg. know, knows
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I'd just link the Tomorrowphone with a high speed fax machine. Those things are already designed to send data via an audio compression algorithm, so I'd send faxes to my past selve to avoid miscommunications.
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Stand between the Silver Crystal and the Golden Sea.
"Youngsters these days just have no appreciation for the magnificence of the legendary cucumber." --Krityan Elder, Tales of Vesperia.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steins;Gate
Microwave Phone! (hyperlink embedding is broken!)
The second it gets proven to work is the second all bets are required to be made 72 hours in advance. Same with other time sensitive business. In the long run its a minor thing in this field.
The other issue is that governments like the US government already have laws against this kind of thing having large scale effects. Already computer technology is on a delay to the public... this is so the government can have time to make counter measures and defenses against new things and not implode because two companies are having technological one-up-manship wars that destroy everything. I am for these laws. These laws are also why it seems that computers and such are upgrading at such a standardize pace.
From a personal/civilian level, use the tomorrow phone get fired. Those whippersnappers will love this doohickey... to the point of not hanging up the stupid tommorrowphone. Idiots can't stop walking and talking to themselves in the future. Idiots do not wield Reading Steiner and therefore can't avoid getting Darwin awards by talking to their future selves. As Darwin award winners that aren't just sterile can't report that their phone had a dead battery... and morons are stupid... I'm expecting large portions of Tommorrowphone addicts to be paranoid and suicide prone.
I expect the most basic issue is that addicts keep spoiling movies and shows for themselves and keep not watching things, because they already did and it sucked... or was good and now they know the good parts. As a happy side effect I'm seeing the quality of TV and Movies going up as if it sucks people won't actually go to watch it in the first place,... as they already wasted that time on it and want their hour and a half/two hours and their money back.
Given that response, Classic, "Ability to function under temporal headaches" suddenly becomes a useful life/career skill for some.
Point is, though, that once you have the phone/temporal reality actively preventing people from using the news they get, the question stops being "what could your future self tell you"(ie, most anything) and starts being "what will temporal reality let you get away with exploiting (arbitrary, and currently ill-defined).
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It's not really arbitrary at all - if you try to do something that will put abnormal stress on reality, the tension headache starts with you. The ordinary violations of causality like calling yourself to ask if that new movie was any good and deciding not to waste the money when you tell yourself it was crap, that's minor, barely noticeable even, it's something that could be waved away with a case of deja vu. Specifically thinking about trying to break the universe for kicks, like by calling and getting an answer and them planning to specifically not pick up the phone when it rings with your past self, is bout as obnoxious as a shift on the cash register at the toy store during christmas shopping season. Sure, you can push through it, could every day for weeks if you had to, but why would inflict that on yourself unneccesarily? Bigger exploit, bigger headache. Actually pulling off something that would cause a physical paradox might well become a health hazard - finding a way to be in two places at once would probably mean you're both unconscous, and if you actually shake your own hand your head a'splode!
- CD, play nice with the time machine and it will play nice with you, try to screw around and you'd best be prepared to be the first one getting lubed up
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"Anko, what you do in your free time is your own choice. Use it wisely. And if you do not use it wisely, make sure you thoroughly enjoy whatever unwise thing you are doing." - HymnOfRagnorok as Orochimaru at SpaceBattles
woot Med. Eng., verb, 1st & 3rd pers. prsnt. sg. know, knows
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A lot depends on whether you are calling "a future" or "the future". In the first case, you may make different choices and go a different route than the version you talk to. In the second, the only time loops that exist are stable ones, so that even if the events of that period go through a number of itterations, the only sequence of events anyone will remember is the one in which you will go through whatever your future self has been through. The second case still allows for a lot of "cheating" in various ways. See Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality for a good portrayal of this.
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