this post was submitted on 02 Aug 2024
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Started as a shower thought (literally in the shower), but decided to make it more open-ended.

My answer to this would be "watch future seasons of anime that I am waiting on".

I don't see how that could cause a huge ripple through time.

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[–] [email protected] 48 points 3 months ago (5 children)

The world has yet to notice me traveling one day into the future every 24 hours.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 3 months ago (1 children)

There's a quote in a book I like along those lines, that goes: "First of all, we are all time travellers. The vast majority of us manage only one day per day."

I've always really liked that

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 months ago (1 children)

We travel into the future at the blindingly fast rate of one second per second.

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[–] [email protected] 30 points 3 months ago (5 children)

Going back a few hours and getting some more sleep sounds nice

[–] [email protected] 9 points 3 months ago

A full night’s sleep every night does sound good. I wonder what that’s like.

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[–] [email protected] 28 points 3 months ago (2 children)

Rewind the last 15 seconds of a meal to enjoy the last bite again.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Wow. Great idea! You get to enjoy a great meal again, but without getting overfull

[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (1 children)

Thank you! I think the same idea could be applied to any short, fleeting moment where you'd take no different action, like an enjoyable sunset or a sweet smell, though being able to experience those again and again may diminish their value.

That would just affect you, though, not the timeline as a whole.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 3 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Aaand we've created a new addiction problem

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 months ago

But then you'd have to fight yourself for that last bite! Oh the paradox begins, who was it that took the last bite then?!

[–] [email protected] 22 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Let's just say no one's noticed anything yet

[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 months ago (1 children)

I wrote a novel where in future people time travel back in time to watch movies in the theater like the original Star Wars. It's book one of a series.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 3 months ago (1 children)

It's book one of a series.

So naturally it's called part IV, right?

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[–] [email protected] 21 points 3 months ago
[–] [email protected] 19 points 3 months ago

"Alright, it says my microwave meal takes four minutes..."

[–] [email protected] 15 points 3 months ago

Instead of rewinding the video, just rewind causality.

And when you skip ads you really skip ads.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Watch Primer, that's the whole point of the movie, how a couple of engineers who discover time travel try to profit from it while causing the least impact possible.

Also easily my favorite time travel movie by a long shot, and I'm a time travel movie fan.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 months ago (2 children)

Isn't that the one where the guys who are supposed to be engineers do not even seem to know what a capacitor or battery is? Like they unplug the device and it is still showing signs of being "on", and they say "what does that?" to imply it must be time travel.

I very rarely stop watching movies. I have suffered through some awful movies. But this was so stupid I just couldn't continue. Me and my partner now have a running joke where if we unplug like a power cord with a little light powered by a capacitor then we point to it and go "look, time travel".

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 months ago

The guy who wrote the movie is a mathematician who's worked as a programmer, I studied years of electrical engineering before switching to computer science, and doing a masters in Material Engineering, Perhaps it's you who didn't understood something.

I looked up that part of the movie again to see exactly what you were talking about, they're putting 24V into the machine, but the machine is using more than 24V, even after they unplug it the machine is still pulling more than 24V, perhaps you missed the point that they're looking at a voltmeter (which is never shown on screen), which one of them suggest it's busted and the other tells him that he's tried 3 others. Or perhaps you missed the point that they built the machine, so they know what's in there, they know the machine shouldn't be doing that, so when they ask "What does that?" it means "What part of it does that?" or "What's making it do that?" and not "What other things do that?", the phrase can be interpreted both ways, but only one of them makes sense. The thing is that the movie doesn't try to hold your hand and explain things in detail, the engineers talk like engineers, and that's a very valid question in that situation, in fact I've asked that exact same question of several programs, it's a very common question to ask when trying to understand what's the cause for something.

And no, they're not hinting at time travel there, in fact they go for days not knowing what the machine does, if you had bothered to keep watching you would know the process of them discovering time travel is a lot longer than that, that's just the first mystery behavior from the box, which in fact has nothing to do with time travel but just an inherent way of how the box powers up and down, because it takes time to get into and out of the feedback loop.

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[–] [email protected] 11 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Time travel to 12 hours ago so I can get more sleep

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 months ago

It'd feel too weird sleeping with myself, which would result in lower quality sleep, requiring another trip back in time for more sleep, which would put more people in my bed...

[–] [email protected] 11 points 3 months ago

Future time travellers going back in time to the moment the first time machine was invented to figure out how that one worked because in the future theirs suck and are locked down to prevent abuse.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 3 months ago (2 children)

Anthropology while cloaked, as the Temporal Prime Directive requires

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[–] [email protected] 8 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Going forward three days to when it's $2 beer night at the bar.

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[–] [email protected] 7 points 3 months ago

We are all travelling through time right now with very little impact.

Yes I know, I suck.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 3 months ago

By doing it in the vastness of empty space.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 3 months ago

Cheap and easy food storage.

Make a dozen extra servings of whatever I'm cooking and just leave it in the pot on the stove. When I'm hungry in the future I'll come back and serve myself up another bowl. When I take the last serving, I leave a note saying when I came from so I know to prepare another batch by then.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Go back in time and prevent your time machine from working.

Nice tight little loop. Minimal interference, hopefully.

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 months ago

I am seeing this comment right after I finished 'Life is Strange'...

Tap for spoilerI think I will stay away from time travel for now

[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Going forward at all seems less harmful than going back, but perhaps more dangerous.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Agreed, but going forward would also then open the risk of trying to capitalise on/prevent what you saw, once you return to your present, which probably wouldn't end well.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Safer way would probably be going forward and staying there, like another comment said. Maybe use it to skip boring stuff, like waiting in line at the DMV, or waiting for your food to be served, etc.

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 months ago (2 children)

Traveling a second back in time to scratch that itch before it even happens. Maybe going back in time to tell yourself not to order that taco bell. Skipping forward in time to skip a hot pocket cooking in the microwave. Traveling a couple of minutes into the future to skip a boring conversation with the officer that pulled you over.

Here's the real question, if it's possible to time travel isn't it just part of the timeline even if it doesn't seem like it. If you could traverse forward and backwards in time like a tape deck isn't it already laid out including all of the time traveling you'll ever do.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Oh wow, skipping a microwaving hot pocket just reminded me of the movie Click and how SPOILERS FOR CLICK it just adapts and starts fast forwarding through shit it doesn't think he wants to see until he realizes he misses those things

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Traveling a few minutes into the future to skip a boring conversation with the office that pulled you over

Skips time ... Cuffed on the floor

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 months ago

Go back in time and fill the lottery, but don't check the winning numbers before going back.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 months ago

To me the rules of time travel are that it is time travel only. Go forward or back more than a few seconds and you'll find yourself floating in the vacuum of space rapidly dying as the earth, the galaxy and the universe continues moving.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 months ago

If it were ever possible, I'd say, just as an observer. There are lots of things I'd love to experience for the first time again but I personally have little desire to change the past.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 months ago (5 children)

Going massive events that are either completely void of people or full of people.

Star exploding? No one around, nothing to change.

Parade for the astronauts coming back from the moon?

What's another guy standing around, just minding my own business.

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 months ago (1 children)
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[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 months ago

Travel forward in time to when the shower is warm.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Depends on which model of time travel you subscribe to.

If you're working under "Back to the Future" logic, then the best way is to not use time travel at all. Butterfly effect and all that.

If you're working under "Avengers: Endgame" logic where you're actually in an alternate reality, then you could muck around a bit without destroying your own "present" though you would be meddling with the destiny of that parallel universe (assuming you subscribe to the Prime Directive, that would be a bad thing).

[–] [email protected] 7 points 3 months ago (2 children)

Or the Bill & Ted's time travel where any changes you make were supposed to be there in the first place so you didn't really change anything.

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