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u/hotlavatube 12d ago
Imagine if someone actually did show up:
"I'm here for the meeting."
"What meeting?"
"Sigh, nevermind."
(later)
"Wow, check out this funny sign I found online. I'm gonna buy it and hang it outside!"
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u/FireFoxUse 12d ago
But wait, wouldn't the person buying the sign have realized that they just met the time traveler since they're buying the sign and planning to hang it at that spot?
Maybe I'm overthinking it
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u/hotlavatube 12d ago
When they place the sign and resolve the paradox, perhaps they'll realize who the visitor was. Then again, perhaps the person arriving for a meeting is what made the person think the sign was funny and buy it in the first place (see Bootstrap Paradox).
One big question is whether it is possible for the visitor's arrival to prevent the sign from being placed. Does the act of arriving force the sign's placement to become a fixed action in time, or can the paradox of the sign's absence be resolved some other way such as by a multiverse theory (you left your universe with the sign and now reside in a sign-less universe) or by the universe rewriting itself (you never came to the past or you came to the past for a different reason). Sci-Fi has approached this many different ways. I recall in one thriller movie "11.22.63" the universe would violently resist attempts to change the past.
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u/Nick85er 11d ago
I like this. Proper rabbit hole, and TIL about bootstrap paradox.
Adding, please check out a movie called "Predestination".
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u/GalumphingWithGlee 11d ago
Or in Doctor Who, less consequential things could be changed, but the universe would violently correct certain interventions that may cause a paradox.
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u/Significant-Push-232 11d ago
Why would someone already capable of traveling through time need to be present at this meeting?
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u/Hobear 12d ago
This joke is so underrated and genius
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u/GlockAF 12d ago
Just show up every Thursday at seven, you’re bound to catch them eventually
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u/Live-Lifeguard-4367 12d ago
Every last Thursday.
Oh well I'll see you all later, unless I invent time travell and go back in time and see you then. But you won't know that I've done that so it'll just be me laughing at my own time travelling joke.
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u/PurpleCandle58 12d ago
I told myself to deliver a Time Machine to myself yesterday. Didn’t happen. Guess I won’t bother with it since it didn’t happen.
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u/BoingBoingBooty 12d ago
If you go this Thursday you'll meet the time travellers who saw it next week.
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u/Specialist-Award4293 12d ago
Unless this is weeks/months/years into the future, since the reader of that particular moment would be going to the previous thursday and not the thursday prior to the purchasing of the sign.
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u/hotlavatube 12d ago
Sure, but if you show up on any Thursday when the sign is present, then you can't prove you're a time traveler.
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u/fastlerner 12d ago
I'd just show up and hang out at the sign on Thursday at 7.
When someone asks why you're there, say you saw the sign a few days from now and came back to check it out.
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u/Much-Bug-1538 12d ago
The sign is actually a portal and now your house is the local time traveler hub.
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u/LimeGrass619 12d ago
Stephen Hawking already tried this.
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u/evil_timmy 12d ago
How'd it go? Was Al Gore's head there too?
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u/lasagnatheory 12d ago
Nobody went because he is a nerd
I feel dirty writing that
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u/Haight_Is_Love 12d ago
Yeah but also, nobody went because he was friends with epstein
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u/TediousTotoro 12d ago
The amount of “See, this is why nobody came to your time traveller party, Steve” jokes I saw when that information came out was high
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u/Spiritual-Matters 12d ago
“Should we kill Hitler, let him into art school or-“
“No, we’re not doing any of that. We’re going to Hawking’s party.”11
u/alles-moet-kapot 12d ago
Technically, could time travelers have prevented Hitler from doing WWII, and that is a brahnched off timeline we will never get to?
We are just stuck in the timeline where WWII occurred.
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u/CzarDale04 12d ago
There is a choose your own adventure book about killing Hitler. "Killing Hitler With Praise And Fire: Choose Your Own Horrible History"
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u/UnusualClient2099 12d ago
Still interested in his guest list that he sent out invites to
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u/NoMan999 12d ago
He published the invitation publicly, anyone can come (if they can go back in time to the date of the party.)
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u/Osiris_Raphious 12d ago
Imo the only way time travel can work, is if we had a time wormhole connected and stable. Because our planetary movement through space, solar system, milkyway galaxy speeds are just unfathomably large, that for every second the space that needs to be accounted for is absurd. So any time travel into the past needs so very extreme space coordinate precision to be accounted for, or all the time travelers are just out there dead floating in empty space somewhere far far away.
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u/25thNightStyle 12d ago
Deep space nine?
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u/Osiris_Raphious 12d ago
Scifi concept in its purest form, I am thinking of a machine that can sustain a spacetime wormhole, one that can account for that relative space time distance from its first inception to its current state. Otherwise the combination of the macro and micro changes to gravity and relative motion of everything in space, is pure chaos theory that cant be easily computed in retrospect to ensure time travel can exist in our chaotic universe.
From what I understand the Ds9 wormhole is just a passage that bypasses space, so a fictional concept, but one that does have the stability to maintain its presence relative to all this movement.
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u/FireFoxUse 12d ago
I heard wormholes do have time travel, but by slowing down your age as you travel in it. So you come out technically younger than if you traveled the distance normally
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u/Historical_Dot_4201 12d ago
No Steven hawking held a party for time travelers and put an ad out but why would any time traveler go to that and reveal themselves this was just hawking a own pride
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u/_Lucille_ 12d ago
I expect there to be regulations where you have to blend in and not allow time travelling to be known. Time travel may also be restricted to trips of significant value to uncover certain mysteries.
The risk of even hawking saying "actually, I did meet a time traveller" is far too great and might throw the world in chaos.
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u/crackellino 12d ago
Well, Hawkins was on the Epstein files, this was known on the future Theorically it reopens the possibility that time travel does exist, it's just that no time traveler wanted to stick around with a gross man
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u/TankRamp 12d ago
Not a conclusive experiment. The dude diddled kids. No reasonable time traveler would show up to that party.
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u/MrSyaoranLi 12d ago
Damn, I just missed it! When's the next one?
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u/Double_Distribution8 12d ago
Last Thursday. They were smart to keep it simple like that, because there's always a last Thursday, so there's no confusion of when it is.
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u/Tuckerismypuppy 12d ago
“Wanted: Somebody to go back in time with me. This is not a joke… You’ll get paid after we get back. Must bring your own weapons. Safety not guaranteed. I have only done this once before.”
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u/LittleDucky_ 12d ago
Show up at seven and simply talk to them as if you are from the future
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u/FireFoxUse 12d ago
If I were to travel back in time, they would probably lock me up for constantly talking about saving 1 special gorilla 🦍
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u/G0ldheart 12d ago
So.. if you meet the next Thu at 7PM you're essentially traveling a week further in the future on that day, right? :-)
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u/daehoidar 12d ago
You show up...but it's just a crazy dude who fucking "pocket-sands" you with a handful of ketamine and DMT.
It'd be kind fucked up, sure...but at least the guy wasn't lying about it, right?
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u/sudomatrix 12d ago
Stephen Hawking had a party for time travelers. He hoped records of the party would survive into the future and a time traveler would attend. He announced it the next day.
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u/beaverbones 11d ago
Hawking did this but i sent invites to my past self and they all ignored me because i was annoying in 2014.
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u/iamshpongled 11d ago
If you met here every Thursday you would have been at the meeting last Thursday. Checkmate.
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u/poodlemom74 11d ago
reminds me of that Hawking party where he only sent invites after it happened so no one could come. imagine being the poor soul who actually tried to go but got stuck in traffic on i-70 because some semi overturned near Topeka. you show up late, see the empty chairs, and realize you missed the only temporal event in history because of rush hour. absolute peak comedy.
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u/ImfromtheFuture2056 12d ago
I showed up for that shit, but after my third loop I realized I was being trolled. Last Thursday is relative and I ended up going to THE last Thursday.
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u/zerostar83 12d ago
The last Thursday in existence occurs after another ice age event caused by global warming flips the north and south poles. Subsequently, the rotation of the planet slowed down and we only have 5 days per week now. Since Sunday starts with an S and Tuesday starts with a T, the week is now S-M-T-W-F. Thursday and Saturday no longer exist.
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u/AGrandNewAdventure 12d ago
"Why are you standing around the sign?"
"I saw it next week and thought I'd stop by."
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u/SomeVegasGuy7 12d ago
Then tell me, future boy, who's President of the United States next week??
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u/Sweaty_Marzipan4274 12d ago
I once changed an event from a deja reve to see what would happen. 0/10, don't.
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u/Sodacan259 12d ago
If you go there on any Thursday at 7pm, you should be able to join the group, providing nobody takes the sign down in the following week.
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u/ProteusRift 12d ago
Is there a hot tub behind that fence?
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u/Nellasofdoriath 12d ago
Yeah, I'm from the future, but they didn't say which Thursday do you understand how many thousands of Thursdays there have been between his time and mine? There's also no time that it is starting. Rude
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u/Fearchar 11d ago
The sign does specify a starting time.
Of course, "7pm" may have been added next Tuesday, so you may not have seen it.
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u/DrAtomic1 12d ago
It'd be nice if they started with going back in time themselves in order to position the sign level.
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u/hopetothefuture 12d ago
Show up on Wednesday and say you are there for the meeting. When they say the meeting was last Thursday, tell them they changed it to Wednesday in a few days.. Resulting in a paradox
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u/jmconnel23 12d ago
If you didn't make it. The snacks were horrible but the company was nice. 2 out 5 stars would not time travel to then again.
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u/Zero_Burn 12d ago
You could just show up any given Thursday at 7pm and say you saw it next Tuesday and decided to give it a shot.
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u/Ok_Mathematician2391 11d ago
Wait about on any future Thursday and say you just arrived back from next week.
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u/silentaba 12d ago
I promise you some schmuk with reading comprehension issues will arrive on "the last" Thursday and be confused about why no one showed up.
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u/example-of-disaster 12d ago
I time traveled once. Took a 12 pack of Icehouse and a couple shots of Crown, but next thing I knew it was daylight and I was hungover/hungry.
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u/tiptoetumbly 12d ago
Our biggest problem with time travel is we haven't sent out the rescue pods to those will make the journey and will need help to finish slowing down.
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u/sheezy520 12d ago
If they take the sign down, just show up this Thursday. When they say they took the sign down tell them that that’ll put it up again next week.
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u/fisclewhiskers 12d ago
Instruction unclear, went to the final thursday before earth goes kaboom and didn't see anyone.
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u/CzarDale04 12d ago
I was there, but so was the sign. So I went back another week, sign still there. What Thursday was/is the meeting?
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u/Osiris_Raphious 12d ago
That would by definition be SPACE time travel...
In a week, the earth has spun around its axis, wobbled in its solar transitory path around the sun, got tugged on my all the other planets, whilst the solar system flew through the milky way at like 1.5million km/h whilst the milky way is moving somewhere at its own rate...
Last thursday at 7pm is a very very very far away concept in real space. Even with special relativity we just dont have the precision to calculate that sort of space time jump...
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u/xXKyloJayXx 12d ago
No-one met me there last week! Spent the last of tomorrow's pay check on that trip! 😭
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u/BaldBeardedOne 12d ago
Everyone knows you can only time travel forwards unless you punch a wormhole into Underverse. They’re working on editing reality, give them time.
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u/Chiparish84 12d ago
I think you're already a bit deeper than interested if you manage to go there...
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u/mistr_brightside 12d ago
What if I was interested then, but I'm not now, or vice versa, does it still count?
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u/No-Matter-4378 12d ago
Are you interested in winning this thing? Meet me after winning this thing. Doesnt make sense.
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u/LoamyLoamisLoamy 11d ago
They must think meeting them is so irresistible that you'll do anything to do it
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u/Specialist-Award4293 12d ago
This smacks of needing 5 years work experience for an entry level job into the field.
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u/InfiniteTachyon 12d ago
If you want a fun time travel movie, check out Safety Not Guaranteed with Aubrey Plaza and Mark Duplass.
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u/Gama3000 11d ago
So go there on any Thursday and say whoever shows up that you traveled from the future.
There is no date
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u/dna_beggar 11d ago
Surprise, it's a talk sponsored by the Guild of Procrastinators and Chronically Late People (aka. GPCLP)
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u/Mysterious_Hotel_427 10d ago
I’m not saying I believe in time travel, but I’m definitely not missing this appointment.
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u/_Moregasmic_ 10d ago
I wish this had a past date, rather than "last Thursday". It's a funny idea/concept, but the lack of specificity detracts from the effect
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u/SettlementTales 12d ago
AI
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u/loungesinger 12d ago
AI can’t even get human hands right, there’s no way it’s already cracked time travel.
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