An interesting story:
Joh Varley wrote a book Millenium about time travelers.
The story behind the story is this:
Varley was inspired by a brilliant but somewhat obsessed scientist who hypothesized that time travelers might be visiting us.
What could a time traveler do? What couldn’t they do? Why would they visit?
He gave these interesting thoughts the benefit of his intellect and came up with some compelling ideas.
A time traveler from the far future would be in constant danger of destroying his future and himself because of paradox (killing your own Grandpa.) So in order to make the trip worth while the stakes would have to be very high. He would be looking for something valuable he couldn’t get in his own time. The scientist could only speculate what it might be, but it was probably live humans and intact DNA from our period that the time traveler sought.
In order to be safest the time traveler would need to restrict his visits to places that were shortly about to cease to exist. Pompeii, the Titanic, airline crashes are all good examples. At such places the time traveler could work with relative impunity, remove people and artifacts, and replace them with the kind of debris likely to turn up in such instances and pass casual scrutiny without fear of creating paradox. This would be the kind of place to look for such travelers.
The scientist thought about the kind of mistakes such a time traveler might make, the kind of evidence he might leave behind by accident.
He did a couple of lectures and received some modest funding to pursue his interesting ideas.
He turned up absolutely nothing.
The funding dried up and that was that until the scientist reexamined his evidence, or more precisely his lack thereof. According to the scientist he should have had some false leads. Statistical anomaly, and experimental error suggested that he should have found some of the “evidence” he was looking for. Since his ideas had been published, was it possible that time travelers became aware of his efforts and covered up? Had they covered up to well, and by doing so betrayed their existence?
This was suspicious enough, that he gave some more lectures and got some new funding to pursue this train of thought and revisit his researches.
Oddly enough he soon found exactly the type of false evidence he had lacked the first time around.
Hmmm.
This suggested the interesting hypothesis that time travelers had become aware of his researches and made sure that they left none of the evidence the scientist sought. When the scientist pointed out that some of this should have been found by accident, the time travelers realized they had been too thorough and produced some of the false evidence to cover up their mistake.
The evidence in question pertained to matching up DNA found on clothing remnants, and in verifying the originality of the clothing from its manufacturer on the victims of airplane crashes.
Yeah right! thought his backers who were beginning to suspect that the scientist was getting a little wooly in the head. They cut the funding.
Undeterred, the scientist devised a plan to gather evidence to prove the existence of time travelers. In order to do so he needed to operate in total secrecy because once the nature of his evidence became known, the time travelers would become aware of it, and could simply go back in time and discredit it.
So he implemented his plan and after a time he declared success. Of course, he could not submit his evidence for scrutiny for the above mentioned reasons. He did make an interesting offer though. He would let a few mutually agreed upon experts examine his evidence. They would swear not to reveal the nature of this evidence in order to protect its integrity, but would only rule on its validity.
The terms were worked out and the experts examined the scientist’s evidence.
They found it to be wholly without merit.
Of course! Said the scientist. Obviously one of them had leaked information about the evidence. It had become known to the time travelers, who then went back in time and discredited it!
This in itself was proof that time travelers had been interfering.
What more evidence did they need?!!!
It was largely agreed upon that the scientist had flipped his lid and gone mad.
Of course it was entirely possible that everything the scientist said was true, and his experiments were being sabotaged by time travelers. The far more likely explanation however was that the scientist had come across some interesting anomalies, concocted a theory to put them together, and desperately wanted it to be true in spite of evidence to the contrary.
Unfortunately the theories did not pass the test of Occam’s razor. The facts could be explained quite easily with currently understood phenomena. No time travelers were needed.
The problem was that the scientist started with a theory that he wanted to be true. When the evidence did not completely disprove his theory he took that as proof, even though it could be explained otherwise.
The story is probably not true. Maybe DavidB or somebody else heard it before.
After having heard this story, do you now believe in time travelers?
If you do you are foolish.
By extension, if the existence of life and the universe can be explained with current biology, and physics, why do we need to posit a creator, or creationism? Isn’t the explanation that most credibly fits the known facts the preferable one? Why is this seen as a threat to faith? To me, the idea of big bang followed by billions of years of evolution points to a much more subtle and majestic, and grander God then the hokey God of Genesis who slaps the world together in seven days, floods it, and is constantly meddling in the affairs of humans.
I have no idea if this kind of thinking displayed by our unfortunate scientist has a name, but I see a lot of it both on this board, and in life.
Denial ain’t just a river.
