America the Police State

[sachmo]

Baron Munchausen said:
A degree doesn't make you automatically right. The 'debunker' makes several obvious mistakes himself, such as the mass of the black holes. It is clearly stated in Titor's posts that they are around 200 pounds each, so that the machine is around 500 pounds total. And yet he insists on claiming that he couldn't possibly have a machine that size with a metric ton (2,200 lbs) of black holes in it. Well, since he doesn't claim to have one, the impossibility of this 'fact' doesn't amount to a 'disproof' of anything, does it? This is called the 'straw man' in logic. A fake rebuttal of something that the other party didn't claim.

I repeat, he didn't claim to know the science, so his knowledge of the science isn't a worthwhile test of his reliability. Would you like to compare "Titor's" description of how his time machine works with the current 'man on the street' description of things like nuclear power plants or even plain old consumer PCs or passenger cars?

The internal consistency of the predictions is much more interesting. There are some potential problems, but it's been a while since I read the material and don't have the time/motivation to go back and find the problems I had noticed again.

Your username just clicked with me.

I'm not going to get into a dragout over this, Baron. It seems that Titor has protected himself from skepicism by claiming "not to know much about" certain subjects.

In my experience, the most logical conclusion is generally the correct one. The simplest and most logical conclusion is that Titor is a fraud, and he did not time travel. Reading the explination of this scientists was more than enough evidence to support that conclusion for me, but as I've said before, you can slice it any way you wish, discount whatever you want, to make something true.

Sort of reminds me of the way religion works, but I think I'll let that one lie for now.

[Gozra]

Just an interesting article that appeared today
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/4229545.stm

I suppose a very well informed hoaxer who is probably a very intelligent person can create a lot of havoc when they have plenty of time to do reseach. I am amazed at this very intricate hoax that John Titor put together in 3 months. Makes me want to really study it closer to see what else he managed to get right or wrong.

[sachmo]

Gozra said:
Just an interesting article that appeared today
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/4229545.stm

I suppose a very well informed hoaxer who is probably a very intelligent person can create a lot of havoc when they have plenty of time to do reseach. I am amazed at this very intricate hoax that John Titor put together in 3 months. Makes me want to really study it closer to see what else he managed to get right or wrong.

They were building one of those in Texas, but funding was cut. It's now a mushroom farm.

[Ed Kolis]

Fang, Farmer Maggot's dog bites you. Fang, Farmer Maggot's dog bites you. Fang, Farmer Maggot's dog bites you. You die...

[narf poit chez BOOM]

Which roguelike is that?

[douglas]

Angband or one of its many variants.

[sachmo]

Ed Kolis said:
Fang, Farmer Maggot's dog bites you. Fang, Farmer Maggot's dog bites you. Fang, Farmer Maggot's dog bites you. You die...

I kell him with broken pottery!

[Baron Munchausen]

Gozra said:
Just an interesting article that appeared today
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/4229545.stm

I suppose a very well informed hoaxer who is probably a very intelligent person can create a lot of havoc when they have plenty of time to do reseach. I am amazed at this very intricate hoax that John Titor put together in 3 months. Makes me want to really study it closer to see what else he managed to get right or wrong.

There is the problem of verification. If the self-described time traveler 'predicts' things that you can see developing yourself, he looks 'convincing' because you already believe these things. The CERN super-collider has been in the works for decades, and they have been talking all the while of generating quantum singularities. No 'expertise' beyond reading some popular science magazines is necessary to have learned about this. So saying that quantum singularities were produced at CERN and led to time travel is already semi-believable because we're primed for it. Similarly, the split in US society has been apparent since at least the 1960s, and I think anyone who paid any attention to the Waco debacle and the aftermath (the 'militia' movement) can see the growing hostility (and numbers) of the anti-government groups on the fringes of our society. A civil war is a very real possibility for the future of the US, but I would have put the expected date a few more decades into the future -- prior to the 9-11 events, that is. So a prediction of a civil war in the US is not too difficult to believe either. Blend these trends and some other information (like the 'many worlds' hypothesis) into a coherent narrative and you've got a decent SciFi story -- or maybe a good hoax -- because it jibes with what we already expect of the future.

If the time traveler describes something completely off the wall, on the other hand, we don't want to believe it because it doesn't meet our expectations. The EU attacking Russia, for example. It's very difficult to figure out how this could come about, but it's one of the things that Titor claimed happened in his history. But who would have believed him if he'd said that a terrorist attack on the US mainland would kill thousands before the year was over? (And he gave good reasons for not being so specific, so the fact that he did not point out this obvious event is not an automatic disproof of his knowledge.)

So judging the 'veracity' of a claimed time traveler is a pretty tricky thing. Going by our expectations is not useful because the real world doesn't have to follow our expectations. John Lennon is credited with the saying 'Life is what happens to you while you're making other plans' but I think someone else said it first. We'll just have to wait & see how things develop.

[narf poit chez BOOM]

Everyone who beleives in time travel, you have -5 minutes to tell me, in person.

[Rasorow]

Sorry Narf, but I dont want to relive the last three days over again... so you are going to just have to accept that if I wanted to I could have done back to 2/4/05 8:00pm then traveled to tell you by 10:09 pm...

Rasorow