Imagine if you will that a person appears who claims he has come from 50 years in the future. He can’t provide any futuristic technology, nor can he make sweeping claims about the environment or geopolitics of the future. However, he is prepared to make predictions - not important ones, like if any presidents will be assassinated, or stuff that an ordinary person wouldn’t have access to (couldn’t go to the President and tell him all kinds of classified stuff), but stuff like the exact stock prices, sports scores, etc.
My question to y’all is, what would be your standard of evidence for such a person? If he handed you a piece of paper with the scores of every MLB game for the entire next season, and they all came true, would that be sufficient? Or would it need to be moreso?
I would walk him to a vending machine and ask him to predict what kind of soda I am going to get. I would, of course, order something else. If I get what he said I would, I would be somewhat impressed.
Maybe I’ve watched too many movies like The Terminator, but my first thought would be to wonder and worry about why someone from 50 years in the future would come back and look for me, or choose me to be the one he tells.
I’d be much more comfortable if he were the standard raver on the corner or under the highway overpass holding a sign and shouting out portents and warnings for the coming days.
>If he handed you a piece of paper with the scores of every MLB game for the entire next season, and they all came true, would that be sufficient?
That would certainly not be sufficient. One alternative explanation would be that the games are fixed and he’s in on it. Another would be that he’s saying or doing something that confuses and tricks me. A third would be that he’s interfering somehow with the information I’m using to check him. A minute’s work would give me more alternatives. And I think all of these are plausible, much more so than transporting information backwards through time (which would violate the principle of causality on which so many other principles are based).
I’ve had so many years of life helping convince me that information doesn’t flow backward in time that it’s hard to think of any brief demonstration that would contradict this.
I’d be satisfied if he gave me the winning numbers for the next Mega Millions and NJ Pick 6 Lotto drawings. If I win both, I’ll assume he’s right. If he’s not actually from the future and was lucky or manipulated the lottery somehow, I wouldn’t care, because I’M RICH!
Regarding the baseball scores and lotto numbers, I wouldn’t be so sure that he would have that information. Seriously, and without Googling the answer, what were some of the NL box scores from this week in 1957? What were the Powerball numbers from January of 1998?
You would need proof such as a video of Dick Clark watching the ball drop over Times Square in 2057.
Ask him some of the major cinematic blockbusters that will come out over the next couple decades. They’d be easy enough for him to remember and there is rarely ever a movie that is started that early in advance.
If I was going back to 57, I’d cite movies like 2001, Star Wars, Jaws, The Godfather…
What’s gonna be huge in 2018? This would of course take patience, but after the first 3 or 4 years of correct answers you’d start to get freaked out.
If someone wants to show me that he can travel forwards or backwards in time, he’d better show me proof that his time machine is specified in US patent #1.