If you were about to Time Travel and you couldn't stop it. The magic portal has already opened and is sucking you in; But you could choose an era to end up in. Where would you go and why?
Smart dudes posting to jump to pre-Bitcoin times coming in 3-2-1
You know, there's a variety of assets you could get in on the ground floor with.
And the smart move would be to spread it around anyways, no telling what a sizeable investment in - for instance - Apple might have had early on, maybe it would change history so that it didn't turn out successful
Better to do some bitcoin, some of each major stock you can recall, and funds for industries you know will take off
Four hours from now, because then I'd be off work for the day.
So you'd basically be gone for 4 hours? Not that I would recommend it but do you have a bathroom at your company?
Think big, how about 28 hours so you're off work for the weekend instead of just the day?
The real answer
1: Ten seconds from now, I have shit to do.
2: A week ago. "I bet you a billion dollars that sub implodes..."
My highschool days. Wouldn't change a thing either, except I wouldn't start smoking cigarettes.
But you aren't turning into your younger self, surely it's back to the future rules.
I believe in the multi-verse approach to backwards time travel. Solves the grandfather paradox. When you go back in time you branch to a new timeline. So if you went back to your high school days, you would be in a world where a version of you exists as a youngster and version of you exists in parallel as the guy who travelled back in time. You'd be two different people and you could talk to your younger self without creating a paradox. When travelling forward in time you stay on the same timeline. Quantum mechanics theorizes that's what happens.
1990s A.D. so I can enjoy the great music whilst also being able to see the birth of Linux.
Now I'm imagining Linus sitting in his basement and suddenly some nerd just pops into existence behind him. "Don't mind me. I'm just going to watch over your shoulder."
lol
I always think it would be cool to visit some historical moment. Then I remember I'm not white and that I would not be having a very good time.
You've just got to pick carefully. Race (as in skin colour as the determining factor for group identity) was invented in the 17th century, so before that you're just a foreigner like the rest of us would be. After that, yes, avoiding Europe and European-inspired places is recommended.
It's crazy that every point in history has its own blend of "suckitude" that don't want to deal with.
OK... where in the world would I pop up?
If where I live, in Paraná: 1300 then. I'd be teaching the local Kaingang: a few farming techniques, a bunch of food-preserving techniques, writing and paper making. Ah, and gunpowder too, so they can use it against the Spaniards coming from Asunción and the Portuguese from the coast. Past that I'd... marry a local girl and try to live a happy life? Language would be a struggle though, because even if I knew 2023 Kaingang or Guarani that doesn't automatically makes me know some older variety of the language.
If anywhere in the world: Republican Rome, around 150 BCE. I know basic Latin so it wouldn't be actually easier to adapt than the above. I'd probably find some craft to live from, either in a taberna selling food or blacksmithing. I actually know a few Roman recipes (thanks Apicius), I could even give them a bit of modern twist; they should already know pizza (Virgil mentions it) but a modern style pizza bianca would be new. Perhaps I should leave a note to the Julii that, if one of them conquers Gaul, he should watch out for potential killers.
You would fuck up history by preempting pizza? What kind of pizza would we end up contemporarily?
I wouldn't be preempting pizza, the Romans already prepared it. At most I'd introduce a specific type of pizza - bread, melting cheese, oregano. Perhaps topped with figs and onions and cured ham.
excerpt from the Aeneid, published around 20 BCE, telling tales that were already old back then:
Aeneas and his chiefs, with fair Iulus, under spreading boughs of one great tree made resting-place, and set the banquet on. Thin loaves of altar-bread along the sward to bear their meats were laid (such was the will of Jove), and wilding fruits rose heaping high, with Ceres' gift below. Soon, all things else devoured, their hunger turned to taste the scanty bread, which they attacked with tooth and nail audacious, and consumed both round and square of that predestined leaven. “Look, how we eat our tables even!” cried Iulus, in a jest.
I think I'd go paleolithic. Pre-agricultural, on the move finding food, being in nature. It'd be dicey obviously but like whatever, if you die you die. I feel like the physical activity, adrenaline, living in community, being in nature... Would just be nice. I feel like I probably wouldn't be depressed anymore eventually. Like who would have the time?
Also damn can you imagine seeing like 4000 lb armadillos and shit? Living among a bunch of now-extinct megafauna seems like it would be both thrilling and terrifying. Honestly I'd probably die by trying to Disney princess with a twelve foot tall deer or some shit.
I like how you just verbed the fuck out of Disney Princess.
30 years ago, to start creepily leaving teenage me notes to make better decisions
1491 to the soon-to-be landing point of Christopher Columbus. I would bring an arsenal of modern day weaponry and then arm and train the natives in anticipation for when his ships appear on the horizon.
Very excited to see what Italian people would cook without tomatoes.
Still a lot of pasta, which predates the Columbian exchange. But probably a lot more focus on herbal seasonings, cheese/dairy, oils, etc. Carbonara probably still popular. A lot more pesto on average.
Pizza would be white pizza with toppings, maybe with a pesto base. Fish, meat dishes, and European vegetable dishes probably still mostly untouched.
You're really just missing tomato sauces and gnocchi with the lack of the Columbian exchange, and tomato is essentially optional in many Italian dishes anyways. Surprisingly not as big a change as I would have thought.
I think maybe in North America we associate tomatoes more strongly with Italian food because it was more readily available for Italian-American immigrants than it was back in Italy.
Whenever I had the flu, I just went through it. Maybe some medicine to feel less sick, but nothing to actually prevent it from killing me.
We all have an immune system that is used to combating the flu.
The germs you'd get in contact with from a basic lack of hygiene, that's what will get you.
Note that I'm a healthy 30-something person, so the flu is not much of an issue for me. I don't want to disminish its deadlines on people with lower immune systems, but they would suffer in environments with bad hygiene even worse.
Holy cow, a million years into the future!
Early 1990s. Become the stockmarket god!
Agent Smith did say it was the peak of human civilization..
Buying $10000 of Apple stock in 1997 wouldn't really move the market. TSLA, GOOG, AMZN, MSFT, NVDA, and so on. Lots of stocks where I could buy a small about and get 500x-1000x returns some 10 years later.
Maybe? Some of it was already set to happen, though, and you can diversify between similar options if you're not sure whether to bet on Commodore this time.
California in the 1960's. Being a hippy during Woodstock sounds like the ultimate experience I missed out on just because I didn't exist at the time
Not human prehistory. That one would suck, I'm in no way built and trained as a hunter-gatherer. Either some civilisation, pre-humans or a recent era, then.
From the wording I'm assuming limited control of where I land, So I can't airdrop in behind a world leader or into a vault, but I can choose a region.
Gilded age is tempting, for classic "change history" reasons, and because I could kickstart semiconductors early and make a buck. The disadvantage is I'd be destitute on arrival, and my education, while extensive, is undocumented there, so maybe I'd die in a coal mine anyway. Perhaps I'd pick England and try to chat up Bertrand Russel, he could vouch for my knowledge after a quick conversation and might even be a good choice to explain my situation to.
If I'm going ancient civilisation, probably Rome. I could find some sort of industry to start and even just my clothes will be valuable. The Incas would be cool to but if I'm being adventurous I want more time to prepare.
Pre-human, maybe New Zealand. I'll eat local forage and hunt moa until I eventually die. It's better than starving, and I don't have to worry so much about large predators.
Not sure about pre-human NZ, I'd be worried about the Haast's Eagles wanting to turn me into a tasty snack.
IIRC they couldn't really lift an adult man very well. At that point, I can deal with them by carrying a pointy stick whenever I'm under open sky.
Plus at least with Rome you have running sewage and democracy / a republic system somewhere in there
At least a century after the 15th Millennium but at least a century prior to the 25th Millennium.
1 hour into the future so I can eat lunch early and avoid the dangers of going to some new reality I don't have the skills or resources to deal with.
1 week into the past so that you can put a bet on some event that you actually still remember, and avoid the dangers of the distant eras
Lame answer but I would pick the closest time I could back to my time as I could.
I don't think I could survive without modern day technology and I really don't want to try.
If going into future is an option maybe. That would probably be my next best option if I couldn't pick a past time within the last 50 years.
The future's looking pretty bleak, so…yeah, now would be the best choice.
By the way, this would be a great fit over here. https://lemmy.sdf.org/c/hypotheticalsituation if it's not indexed already.
I don't really want to miss my family for that long. Maybe I'd go back to when my kids were babies and become a live-in nannydad? I could see that getting weird though.
If I didn't have that level of control but I absolutely had to go somewhen, I guess I'd either go a few decades in the future to see how it shapes up, or to the neolithic era so I could finally find out a bunch of things we'd never otherwise have known. That era seems like it was pretty cool, and I happen to know enough baseline science to actually recreate some of my favourite amenities.
I'd like to see a lot of things in history but not sure I'd like to live in those times. I'd go back to 1980 because a bunch of cool stuff happens in the 1980s and 1990s that I could fully enjoy and exploit.
Few hundred years into the future, interested to see what people get up to
I'll choose to go back a few minutes so I can stop myself from getting sucked into the time portal...
Congrats, you are now stuck in a few minute time loop. Enjoy your new hell.
"Dormammu, I've come to bargain."