Back to the Future
In last week's blog, I told you I would take the next couple of months to stretch your imagination and rational thinking. Today I will expand on the many-worlds interpretation (MWI) of the multi-verse. Imagine if you spoke to a person from the future. What would you ask them first? Would it be about you personally, or would you inquire about the state of the world? Or would you even want to know your fate? These are the questions I will propose and plan to answer for you today.
I was a high school senior (1984) when the Terminator movie came out, and I was fascinated by it. Most importantly, a line delivered by a time traveler, Kyle Reese. He was delivering a message from the future unborn son of Sarah Connor. Thank you, Sarah, for your courage through the dark years. I can't help you with what you must soon face except to say that the future is not set. You must be stronger than you imagine you can be. You must survive, or I will never exist.
The future is not set; time is a linear construct, and there are infinite dimensions. What we do may have consequences in this timeline, but there is a chance that these actions will not affect the future.
Subsequently, in the paragraphs below, I will share the story of a man claiming our current timeline differs from the one fated for us.
Post to Post
John Titor is a pseudonym used by an individual who claimed to be a time traveler from the year 2036. The name first surfaced in 2000 on various online forums, where the individual posted detailed descriptions of future life and predictions
about historical events and technological advancements. Moreover, he claimed in 2005 that a civil war broke out in the United States regarding "order and rights." He described it as beginning with civil unrest surrounding that year's presidential election. He characterized this civil conflict as "having a Waco-type event every month that steadily gets worse" and would be "pretty much at everyone's doorstep" and erupt by 2008.
The Center
As a result of the war, the United States would split into five regions based on various factors and differing military objectives. This civil war, according to Titor, would end in 2015 with a brief but intense World War III, killing nearly three billion people.
Titor refers to the exchange as "N Day." Washington, D.C., and Jacksonville, Florida, were the main targets. After the war, Omaha, Nebraska, would be the new U.S. capital. Titor was vague about the exact motivations and causes of World War III. At one point, he characterized the hostilities as being led by "border clashes and overpopulation." He also pointed to the contemporary conflict between Arabs and Israel as not a cause but rather a milestone that precedes a hypothetical World War III.
Therefore, John's world is vastly different from ours. He states that the people who survived grew closer together. Life's focus is on the family and community. He could not imagine living a few hundred miles from his family. Furthermore, no large industrial complex creates masses of useless food and recreational items. Food and livestock are grown and sold locally. People of the future spend much of their time reading and talking with each other face to face. In other words, family and community support are the focus.
Traveler_;0)
Titor claimed that as a 13-year-old in 2011, he joined the Fighting Diamondbacks, a shotgun infantry unit in Florida, for at least four years. John also claimed that the "Everett–Wheeler model of quantum physics," better known as the many-worlds interpretation (MWI), was correct. According to Titor, this caused a new timestream to form because of his time travel. The posts generated significant interest and speculation, but Titor's identity was unknown.
He originally called himself time-traveler_0 on the Time Travel Institute and (entire thread here) Art Bell's Post-to-Post forums during 2000 and 2001 by a poster claiming to be an American military time traveler from 2036. The name "John Titor" was not introduced until January 2001. The Titor posts ended in late March 2001.
John claimed to be a member of a military time-travel unit, sent back to the year 1975 to retrieve an IBM 5100 computer needed to help debug a critical software problem in 2036. Incredibly, the year 2038 problem, also known as Y2K38 or the Epochalypse, is a time formatting bug in computer systems representing times after 03:14:07 UTC on January 19, 2038.
31-bit, 32-bit, whatever it takes
The problem exists in systems that measure Unix time – the number of seconds elapsed since the Unix epoch (00:00:00 UTC on January 1, 1970) – and store it in a signed 32-bit integer. The data type can only represent integers between −(231) and 231− 1, meaning the latest time that is encoded is 231 − 1 seconds after epoch (03:14:07 UTC on January 19, 2038). The problem is similar to the year 2000 problem.
John said the old computer was vital to debug various legacy computer programs in 2036 – a possible reference to the UNIX year 2038 problem. The IBM 5100 runs the APL and BASIC programming languages. Titor also said he stopped in the year 2000 for personal reasons to collect pictures lost in the (future) civil war and to visit his family, whom he spoke often.
He also made several predictions, including a nuclear war in 2015, the rise of a "United Nations of Earth" in 2028, and the development of a "gravity wave propulsion system" in 2034 that would change how we travel forever.
Time Machine: A stationary mass, temporal displacement unit powered by two top-spin, dual positive singularities", producing a "standard off-set Tipler sinusoid.
Not that Impressed
One of the most exciting aspects of Titor's story is his description of the nature of time travel. He claimed that time travel is possible using a "closed timelike curve," a theoretical concept in physics that would allow for the bending of space-time in such a way as to create a loop that you use to travel through multiple times. John also stated that time travel is impossible to go back 1000 years as it is too difficult for the distortion calculations (earth's position and world line) and the computer's clocks to match. Furthermore, he states that the technology is good to go back about 60 years in the past.
Did John have anything to share with us? Above all, he said; Do not use products from any animals that feed or eat parts of its own dead. Learn basic sanitation and water purification. Get a good first aid kit and learn how to use it. Get a copy of the constitution and read it. Eat less. Get a bicycle and two sets of spare tires. Ride the bike ten miles a week.
What does John Titor think of us, the people of the new millennium? John states that he watches us daily being apathetic about our constitutional rights dissolving away from us. He sees us eating poisonous foods willfully and buying products no one needs. The part that hurts him the most is that our culture turns an uncaring eye to the millions of people suffering around us.
Read all About It!
Consequently, John continues that his generation looks back at us as unlikeable. His generation thinks that we are lazy, self-centered, civically ignorant sheep. Finally, he states that we scare the hell out of him.
Even though Titor's story and predictions are under scrutiny, his posts continue to be a source of fascination and debate among those interested in the topic of time travel. Some believe that Titor is a real time traveler, while others believe he was simply a hoaxer or an individual with a vivid imagination. However, most will say that Titor's story is a work of fiction. The individual behind the pseudonym may have created the story as a way to explore the possibility of time travel or to provoke thought and discussion about the nature of time and the future.
Read all About It!
In any case, the story of John Titor reminds us of the human fascination with the concept of time travel and the potential implications it could have on our understanding of the world and our place in it. The question remains, is time set once an action happens? Can we change our past, thereby changing our future? Based on the MWI theory, why not?
In conclusion, John Titor is a mysterious figure who claimed to be a time traveler from 2036, whose story and predictions generated considerable interest and speculation. Most importantly, I feel John helps us see ourselves more clearly. We are many, led by a few, and for some reason, we think they know better than us. Like the fictional character Kyle Reese says, the future is not set.
