TE
科技回声
首页24小时热榜最新最佳问答展示工作
GitHubTwitter
首页

科技回声

基于 Next.js 构建的科技新闻平台,提供全球科技新闻和讨论内容。

GitHubTwitter

首页

首页最新最佳问答展示工作

资源链接

HackerNews API原版 HackerNewsNext.js

© 2025 科技回声. 版权所有。

Why are people from the future not time traveling to our period? (2012)

48 点作者 samet超过 8 年前

22 条评论

jerf超过 8 年前
There&#x27;s an error that people make when discussing the Fermi paradox, where they explain how one civilization might collapse and then move to claiming that that&#x27;s why there&#x27;s nobody out there. But to explain the Fermi paradox, you must explain why <i>all</i> civilizations collapse before colonizing the galaxy. It&#x27;s one thing to make a fashionably self-loathing claim about how easy it is to screw up your environment... but is <i>every</i> alien race going to make that error? Even in their different environments? Probably not, no.<p>Similarly, in this case, the question is not &quot;Why doesn&#x27;t a particular time traveler never visit us?&quot; The question is, why don&#x27;t <i>any</i> time travelers ever (seem to) visit us? Yes, it may be the case that we aren&#x27;t anywhere near as interesting as we think. On the other hand, in all the future billions of years, which may very well include the evolution of a new intelligent life form on a <i>currently lifeless planet</i> that will come to find Earth and be interested in its past, <i>none</i> of them <i>ever</i> show any interest in our era? Not even one particularly weird pure-human fetishist subculture which attracts hardly more than one out of a quintillion sentient beings but results over time in a subculture that actually dwarfs our entire population right now, all of them with access to our time?<p>Yeah, it&#x27;s probably just that time travel as conceptualized in this question is simply impossible.
评论 #13466549 未加载
评论 #13467329 未加载
评论 #13466364 未加载
ksenzee超过 8 年前
A whole bunch of people from 2017 just descended on this 2012 post. Does that count?
评论 #13466511 未加载
评论 #13465846 未加载
JohnJamesRambo超过 8 年前
I disagree with the notion that our time period would not be considered special to people from the future. Our recent history is the birth of the modern human- computers, technology, the industrial revolution, nuclear bombs, landing on the moon. I think it would be a time travel historian vacation hotspot.
评论 #13465931 未加载
评论 #13466122 未加载
评论 #13466387 未加载
CognitiveLens超过 8 年前
If you go with the pop-sci idea that intervening in the past changes the future, then we are just on the timeline in which time travel never occurred in our recorded past, by definition. It&#x27;s not that people from the future _don&#x27;t_ time travel to our period, it&#x27;s that each time they do travel to our period, a timeline branches off that we don&#x27;t have access to.<p>We _might_ be on a timeline in which some time travelers appear some time in the future, but maybe not.<p>It&#x27;s sort of like the question &#x27;why did life arise on Earth and nowhere else that we are aware of?&#x27; - the only reason we can ask the question is because we are the result of exactly the factors that would produce a consciousness that _could_ ask that question.
评论 #13466010 未加载
评论 #13465959 未加载
评论 #13466046 未加载
bdavisx超过 8 年前
Occam&#x27;s Razor answer: Because time travel to the past is never invented because it&#x27;s impossible.
评论 #13466280 未加载
评论 #13466266 未加载
Arizhel超过 8 年前
The answer is simple: time-travel technology is never developed, because human society implodes within a few decades and humans go extinct, or at best, revert to a more primitive existence and then evolution makes them progressively less intelligent (Kurt Vonnegut wrote a book about this, I think it was &quot;Player Piano&quot;). Personally, I think human society will look much like &quot;The Walking Dead&quot; within 10 years.<p>The other possibility is that reverse time travel is physically impossible, and the best we can do is peer into the future with wormholes (as in Arthur C. Clarke&#x27;s book &quot;Light of Other Days&quot;), but unable to actually affect the events of the past.
评论 #13466428 未加载
评论 #13467403 未加载
评论 #13466224 未加载
woofyman超过 8 年前
If you traveled back in time, the earth would had moved on, not to mention the solar system and galaxy. Wouldn&#x27;t you have to travel in time and space?
评论 #13467088 未加载
the_watcher超过 8 年前
There are two thoughts I had while reading this very thoughtful (and entertaining) answer:<p>* The corollary that comes to mind is that the absence of time travelers indicates the relative unimportance of today in history. The author addresses this in her claim that we likely live in the temporal equivalent of flyover country.<p>* Alternatively, time travelers are highly skilled at not revealing their roots as time travelers.<p>My guess is that the second is more likely to be true, but that they are not mutually exclusive (and odds are good that both are true).
gchokov超过 8 年前
TL;TR: So the likely reason that time travelers from the future aren&#x27;t visiting our period is (other than time travel perhaps being physically impossible) that we&#x27;re just not that interesting, and we&#x27;re not really that large. It&#x27;s only temporal-centric egotism that makes us believe otherwise. --- Interesting answer nonetheless. Reminds me of numerous scams of people traveling from the future, including faking of very old photographs with people wearing modern Prada glasses..
ImTalking超过 8 年前
I suggest that they visit all the time. The first thing a truly intelligent species would do is discard the physical form since it&#x27;s inefficient and it decays over time. Think of the movie &#x27;Lucy&#x27; where, at the end, she discards the body and just disappears. This could be the answer to the Fermi paradox since a civilisation would get to the point where this is possible and would basically disappear from the universe. Once the &#x27;being&#x27; is part of the fabric of the universe then they could do anything and could &#x27;exist&#x27; right in front of our noses.
douche超过 8 年前
In a society technically advanced enough for time travel to be a reality, I would expect that the StarTrek holodeck or some other incredibly immersive VR system is already widely available. Why go through the hassle and potential danger of actually going back in time to experience another era, when you could just dial it up and have a safe and tailor-made experience?<p>I could potentially see historians wanting to do such a thing, but again, why go yourself, when you could send a swarm of virtually undetectable spybots instead?
PaulHoule超过 8 年前
Because closed timelike curves aren&#x27;t allowed.
hobarrera超过 8 年前
Why would you want to do that? You can see the past from the future. For example, grab a super-powerful telescope, move 100 light-years from earth, and you can see 1907. For a sufficiently advanced humanity, the past is totally visible, no need to <i>travel</i> to it.
turc1656超过 8 年前
Because we&#x27;re in 1985 while they are in the new 1985A where all the changes happen.
评论 #13466250 未加载
评论 #13468125 未加载
cestith超过 8 年前
Perhaps technology advanced enough to travel through space and time instantaneously is more importantly used to cover vast distances in space instantly than vast units of time to a more or less circular orbit of a single planet.
interfixus超过 8 年前
Physical transportation backwards in time may well be forever impossible or simply irrelevant.<p>I sort of assume that a chronoscope is possible, may one day be built, and that everything we say or do is under potential future scrutiny.
评论 #13466570 未加载
pessimizer超过 8 年前
Because there&#x27;s no such thing as time, it&#x27;s just a fudge to account for cause and effect. Its best definition is a circular one, the function of the distance travelled.
imchillyb超过 8 年前
Time is not a universal component, it is a measurement.<p>Time is a tool we use in order to understand now. Only now exists, nothing else does. No past. No Future. Only now.<p>Until science embraces this simple truth, all of the compiled understanding we&#x27;ve accumulated will be flawed.<p>Time is a rock splashing in the pond. The rock exists, and the pond exists. The ripples are mere effects of the rock meeting the water. They do not exist as entities of themselves, they are representations of the action between rock and pond. There is only now. There is only rock-and-pond.
评论 #13466034 未加载
iamleppert超过 8 年前
We <i>are</i> here, us people from the future (and other &quot;planets&quot; and spaces quite far off)...
ENTP超过 8 年前
They did, and saved Nelson Mandella from death in prison in &#x27;91! ;-)
hex20超过 8 年前
I, for one, welcome our new time traveling overlords
johansch超过 8 年前
Yishan Wong..<p>Hey, I recognize that name :)<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Yishan_Wong" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Yishan_Wong</a>