How would you prove that you're from the future?
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'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.
I guess just showing my tattoo would do the trick, or the phone in my pocket?
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.
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.
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.
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
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 Rush Hollywood? 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?).
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]
I’d stand on street corners telling everyone who passed by that one day people would be putting pineapple on pizzas.
Hehe
This made me read the second post like they were trying to stealth infiltrate pineapple on pizza into the culture...
I'd be in my own house, although it may look a little different. The guy that lives there would, presumably, be very confused. So I'd show him pictures of it on my phone and he would probably be even more confused and probably burn me alive as a witch.
I probably wouldn't for a while. I'd try my best to blend in and work my way into a position of power using all my knowledge. With the rise in education and general knowledge shared today, just knowing so much might even be a giveaway...so I'd have to be careful. Then id try to make the world a better place. But in the end it would probably be worse off via some unintended consequences.
Or create an electric turbine and motor with some copper and magnets, then show it to some guy in a bar and say I'm from the future.
Or create an electric turbine and motor with some copper and magnets, then show it to some guy in a bar and say I’m from the future.
IIRC they already had electric motors pretty early after the car was invented. I don't think the idea is radical enough to prove that you're from the future.
To get to the other side.
I could prove that I am an AI because in the future Internet will be AI only with no humans left
Find where to submit a patent, and patent the Telephone as Bell creates that in 1876, and patent the internal gas combustion engine for cars.
Mostly need the engine because I'd probably fail to be able to explain properly how to get a phone working properly, I understand the concepts, but proving enough for a patent to hold up, not sure.
Congratulations, now I've become an enemy of the world because I'd have to use all the money I made from the engines to invest quickly in converting to renewable non gasoline based combustion engines to save the world from myself
You know both telephone and internal combustion engine well enough to do that?
I'd fail without Wikipedia to check the facts.
A gas powered engine, for sure. That's why I said the telephone might not end up holding up. Spark, fuel/oxygen varies by carburetor. Contained in a cylinder. Head pushed up, attach to opposite side, and get your sparks in sync. Carburators don't need electronics so I wouldn't try for fuel injectors at that time. All you need is a working concept and evidence it can work for a patent really. Then anyone who comes about wanting to use the concept, say Mercedes in Europe or Ford after in the U.S. and you take your payouts. Don't need to continue making the products. Invest the earnings into battery research. Paying researchers and giving them the information that we can beat lead acid with nickle cadmium and eventually lithium ion should get us pushed into a company patenting the future of battery tech for that time. Throw in sodium ion based for shits and we've got the future of all batteries for 100 years paying a fragment of production.
*Note by in sync you should be able to instigate the spark just using the downward stroke of the opposite head. So the time could never be off, just have to ensure your spark stays connected to the aforementioned lead acid batteries that we are looking to phase out
Fistfull of coins.
Simple, I tell them I'm from the time when the Higgs boson was finally detected in a particle accelerator experiment that was done in a giant machine located underground in a country on the other side of the ocean.
winning lotteries consistently.