John Titor
 

Anyone else familiar with this?
This short version is a man called John Titor appeared in a number of forums in november 2000 claiming to be a time traveller from 2036, preceeded to engage all comers, give details of a time travel device that is in line with current scientific research. He also said there would be the roots of a civil war in the US in 2004/5, open clinflict by 2008 and nuclear war in 2015.

Yea, sounds like I've been hitting the berocca pretty hard I know but he had no agenda to speak of, wasen't trying to sell anything and everything he said so far has come true. It's not waffly predictions, it's full of hard facts and what can be checked out. If he was a fraud he was a damn smart one with a real dedication. Prohpet, time traveller or fraud I believe given the evidence it's worth keeping an open mind. As you read though there is something strangely haunting about the whole thing, as a fraud it would be masterful on all levels. I don't know what I think, but I thought it was worth discussion.

Think of it this way, imagine what would happen if this election was more of a disaster than the last?

Here

There is also a very good meta-discussion here

http://www.johntitor.com as well. Obviously. :)

Never heard of the story before. Interesting stuff. Like the author of the site says, it's the easiest thing in the world to test him, just wait a few more months and see if his predictions come true.

But wouldn't it be really funny if the guy were just a staunch Democrat, angry about the outcome of the election in 2000 and making these dire predictions of chaos and suffering--unless, of course, we "change our future" and vote against Bush in November? I mean for Christ's sake, he said his family's from Florida. :)

I wonder why he advised people of ways to change the future by working to prevent the United States from becoming a police state, but decided not to mention September 11th?

I would Wolf has met several John Titor types.;)
Titors posts were written before 9-11, the Columbia accident and the second Gulf War.

But the sure to foreshadow the era of the patriot act well don't they.
Put it this way, i'm not died in the wool beleiver but I find it interesting from multiple perspectives and at worst, a very, very clever hoax.

Maybe I didn't read enough of it, but I'm assuming they're pimping a movie. Hype the story online, Make sure it's copyrighted so nobody rips you off...

So did Orwell's 1984.:)

If he appeared in 2000 and managed not to mention 9/11, he's a nut or a fraud.

It's interesting that he claims to have come from the year before the end of the Unix epoch.

But mentioning 9/11 would have invariably altered the future. And since 9/11 DID indeed happen, he couldn't have mentioned it anyways. Or something like that. Time travel laws are weird. :confused:

Not according to him. According to him, there are infinite world lines, which means it wouldn't matter to HIS world if he mentioned 9/11 to us or not, we would be off in a different future than he was anyway. It's very important that your story always has a way out like that if you're going to be a successful conman.

Plus, he could claim that he was only 3 when it happened, so it didn't seem to be as important of an event.

If I came back from the future, I'd have a plan. I wouldn't just post messages on Usenet. I'd take the information I have from the future. Every morning I'd buy every stock listed that gained 20% on the day. With the money from the previous day, I bet every trifecta listed in the horsey results tables. After the first month, I have enough money to fund my campaign, better than any dumb message on a website. I also have the religious belief of everyone who I wanted to help me in the operation. "Hey kid, if Thome hits a homer in the 5th, you'll know I know what I'm talking about."

[Titor] After the nuclear war, stock prices and horse race winners from 36 years ago weren't readily available. Also, I couldn't predict things like Thome's batting because this past is slightly different than my own, about 2% in fact. How did I calculate that? Uh, move along please, move along... [/Titor]

He could have told us when some smart chick scooped up UT.:)

if he lived (will live) in a differnet world line, then maybe 9/11 never happened in HIS world. And maybe all of the rest of the stuff he's warning us about won't happen either. kind of undermines his whole argument in a way. maybe THIS world line will be 'discovered' by benevolent toadlike aliens, and we'll all live happily ever after ( as long as we dont' break the 4 rules ;))

And how the hell come didn't they just siphon the gasoline from the 1885 Delorean and put it into the fucking 1955 Delorean? Fuck!

I wonder when someone would bring up BTTF II. If no one else did, I was going to.

Brian

That was actually BttF III, mostly. :)

The logic behind why they didn't siphon the gasoline out is pretty sound actually, but I won't go into it, because that would be threadjacking. :)

Waitjustagoddamnedaminute! No it's not. Fuck! I'm never gonna be free of this fucking movie.

not what.....? threadjacking, or that's not from that stupid fucking movie you always talk about? :)


what was your deal with it? your kid watches it over and over?

No, I blame Case. I was never really into the BttF trilogy until she got me into it. So I watch it and enjoy it on a pretty regular basis, but then I get all pissed off over the plot holes and lay awake at night trying to figure it out. III is my favourite, but it's also the worst one. As near as I can tell, that movie should have been about 5 minutes long.

you should switch to watching the Princess Bride repeatedly....or The Holy Grail.....at least thay have funny quotes in them

"Never bet with a Sicilian when Deatttthhhh is on the line!"

"cut your own 'ed off, do us all a favor"

"you keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means"


"bravely ran away away, Sir Robin" o/` o/`

The Princess Bride is cute, but the astoundingly poorly done scene with Fezzik wearing the cloak pretending to be the Dread Pirate Roberts always grates on me.

Holy Grail. Yeah, near-perfection. I just picked up Life of Brian for 7 bucks at Target. In some ways, I prefer it to Holy Grail.

By the way, You're the threadjacker here. At least I kept it on the "time-travel" topic. :D

yeah, i'm doing it on purpose. I'm 'testing' Jag. he likes to hijack my threads, and taunt me when someone else does it too.

Well, it's almost a noble thing, isn't it? A successful threadjacking can bring so much to a conversation.

would it be apropos at this point to start a thread about threadjacking, and see how many times it can be threadjacked?

or funnier still, threadjack this thread into a thread about threadjacking?

how do you feel about threadjacking? personally, I am for it unless it's one of mine, and then, I'm against it. ;)

I'm a big fan of the threadjack. Even in the threads I post. Makes it seem more like a freeform conversation. More importantly, I don't think anything can be done about it without a lof of heavy-handed moderating.

I do think, however, that the first 4-5 posts in a thread should remain pointedly on-topic. The poster obviously wanted to discuss something, and it's only polite to carry the conversation as far as it can go. I have noticed that if there's more to say regarding a topic, even a successful jacking can be brought back around to the original topic.

Interestingly, Snopes has no comment on John Titor... I was curious to see how many holes they might have poked in this story. It's quite an elaborate maze of information, and I have only begun exploring it, but it IS highly interesting so far.

Get back off topic!

I love a successful jacking but I try never to do it if the topic is serious real-life stuff for the poster. Sometimes the urge is undeniable, so don't deny it. A thread that changes repeatedly has its own spirit, I like that, a little text driven lifeform...

For reference i don't mind a bit, the thread has mostly served it's purpose (though i'll be curious to see what hot pastrami think when he finishes reading) and should be recycled for the greater good into mindless crap ;)

I just re-hijacked the thread, man. If you can't take the heat, stay off the sidewalks... or something like... bah.

sometimes, the best way of hijacking a thread is to link it to something totally fucked up and random and see where it goes.

My thoughts on John Titor from my reading thus far... LONG post...

His story is a hoax which was executed with great creativity and discipline. The writer was not only creative, but very knowledgable in computer technology and physics. I know a person (a scientist, in fact) who possesses the creativity and knowledge to execute such a ruse, and I can imagine that he might delight in the philosophical and scientific discussions such a ruse would spawn (I'm not referring to myself, by the way... I am only superficially knowledgable in this sort of advanced physics).

The writer knew from the outset that there would be unanswerable questions and unforeseen holes in his tapestry, so he wisely set up a number of traps, from the very beginning, to capture and disarm such questions:

1) His "three rules," which are morally driven, and prevent him from disclosing names, catastrophic events, etc (That's why he didn't predict 9/11!)

2) His very true assertion that the disclosure of a future event by a time traveller could possibly prevent that event from ever occurring.

3) Similarly, the argument that his presence and actions have already altered the timeline, and so as time ticks away, this timeline's events become more and more different from those in his own remembered history.

4) The "I'm not a physicist, I'm just a time-travelling military agent with a little physics knowledge" argument.

5) The "I would really prefer that you didn't believe my story, for the sake of the discussion" argument.

He also uses a fair share of misdirection, and feigned misunderstanding. It's brilliant, really... he suggests an outlandish idea ("I am a time traveller from the near-future!"), then whittles away the disbelief slowly, and replacing it not with facts, but with safe fictions, and very believable, well-thought-out reaons why a time traveller might not disclose the truth. These believable excuses sneakily lend false believablity to the whole story.

A few holes...

1) He asserts numerous times that he doesn't want those he is discussing the subject with to believe him, because then the discussion could not continue. He claims that if the others knew he was a time traveller, they would no longer be able to discuss the philosophical points, and would be too wrapped up in trying to learn details of the future from him. This is a dumb, incorrect assumption, because for one thing, intelligent discourse on the subject would increase if everyone could drop their fear of making a fool of themselves (by public admitting that they believe the story), and discuss it openly. For another, he himself admits that his predictive abilities are pretty much screwed by the fact that he has already irreversibly altered our timeline.

2) Would a government time-travel agency ever send an individual, alone, with a highly expensive "time machine" and a critical mission? There would be at least two people on the mission. He himself said there was a three-person capacity to his device, yet he claims they sent him alone.

3) He claims that "The War" crippled the development of technology badly.... so without technology, how did they create and capture singularities and develop sophisticated computer systems to manipulate them? They have the capacity to build that, but they need a computer from 1975 which has 16K of RAM and less processing power than a modern Palm device?

I'll not bore you with any more of my lengthy thoughts on the matter. I am impressed by the delivery of this hoax, however, and I hope that the instigator is never discovered. I intend to keep reading about John Titor, because although it has some holes, it is a highly engaging read. And I like to think that I have an open enough mind to believe something like this if it were to really happen.

Ok, I'm done. This thread re-jacking is complete.

edit: clarified a couple points

Wow, I can't believe this is the first I've heard of this. I read three websites. One was a messageboard where he left messages, one was the titor site itself, and one was a sight going through what he said and analysing it, including the plans and photos of the time machine.

I've been saying we'll have a civil war for years, and if there's any irregularities in the election this year (from touchscreen voting for instance), it might be the catalyst that starts it.

I am skeptical, but he was very detailed and didn't seem to contradict himself and what he was saying seemed more than plausable, they seemed inevitable.

Perhaps I should look for a place in Australia or Africa. It seems like most of the destruction is supposed to happen in America, China, Russia, and Europe.

At the very least it's a clever bit of fiction that gives us good reason to re-evaluate what's happening in the world around us and it offers a hopeful future for those that survive. They even get rid of government social welfare systems and people become self-reliant.

Well I agree that if there was any truth to this, a major fuckup in this election makes the most sense and dodgy voting machines the most obvious reason (judging by the way the diebold machines have handled things so far, it makes a certain amount of sense).

Read the meta-analysis I posted with it, it gives a good idea of who might have a vested interest in writing it an it's potential impact, you fit perfectly in it's target category.

I know of one direct contradiction... he stated at one point that John Titor was his real name, and at another that it wasn't. Not a big deal, but makes you start taking his statements with a bigger grain of salt.
He said that Africa is a mess... I'd stick with Australia.
The ideas he imparts from the future seem to have a lot of Libertarian leanings... maybe there's hope for the loonies after all! ;)

You seem to have read it all hot, what do you think? Inconclusive? What did you find most compelling? Name aside, what most far fetched?

A major fuckup in this coming election will NOT result in a civil war.

Only half of all people bother to vote, so right off the bat, you have 50% of the population that doesn't care at all. Of the rest, most folks just don't care strongly enough. I hate Bush, but I didn't uprise violently when he stole the election last time, and I won't do it this time if he steals the election again.

When you figure that the Diebold machines are being pushed by the Republican controlled government and the company is owned by Republicans, I think it's safe to assume that any hanky panky is going to be in favor of the Republicans. That means that Democrats will be the ones getting screwed. Democrats don't own guns, so they won't be doing any revolting. Besides, Democrats don't have any balls. Even if they did own guns, they wouldn't use them.

The only way there would be civil war would be if the Democrats somehow stole the election. The Republicans do have guns, and would use them. Rudolph anybody?

It's more complex than that, it states quite clearly it would start on a very small scale and slowly spread, being an 'undenyable war' by 2008, that's 4 years to slowly boil.

Ok, lets play scenarios.
imagine there is a major fuckup, on a big scale, calling say, 15-20% of the votes into question, the republicans claim the votes are theirs and refuse a recount, small groups start low level gurilla warfare, street defacement campaigns, the militas start getting more recruits, civil rights get futher restriced due to another terrorist attack or due to the campaign itself, causing further support. Play out.

When you look back at history the roots of so many things are not obvious at the time.

If anyone is interested in an actual discussion of the upcoming crisis period they will want to read a non-fiction book on it

The Fourth Turning

The authors make a case for generational aspects driving historical cycles that we don't see because we're in them. They use concrete examples to show how generations differ and then attempt to predict what this means for the present and the future. They show how a crisis period inevitably comes around in the cycle. Past US crises: depression/WW2, civil war, revolution.

Their crisis period begins 2005, but these things are allowed to be off a few years.

I haven't read it all yet, but quite a bit. Mostly I have read his original postings, not much yet by way of others' analyses... though I'll probably start reading the rest of that stuff soon.

His story suffers the same problem as many a science fiction novel... the theory is good, but the motivation is flawed. That's where it's far-fetched. He tries to use the shroud of mystery to preserve the possiblity in the reader's mind that maybe there is something special about the IBM 5100 from 1975 that is worth coming back to get one. It supposedly possesses a feature unknown to the public, undocumented, and so difficult to reproduce with modern hardware that it's worth the expense and risk (loss of time machine, loss of agent, etc) to get one. So, two questions arise:

1) If the feature was never made public knowledge, undocumented, never previously exploited... and there are NO working IBM 5100s from his time period, AND the War supposedly destroyed a large amount of data... how could they possibly know about the feature? Possible, but highly unlikely. We don't know about it today, and we have some still working, as well as some engineers who developed it still breathing.

2) What can this IBM machine, which is clunky and primitive even by today's standards, possibly do for the folks in 2036 which they cannot reproduce at lesser risk and expense? Keep in mind these are the same people who created a computer which can manipluate a pair of singularities, and use a local gravity field to measure in pretty exacting detail what their location in time is.

The idea that a computer from the 1970's could possess some unknown and unreproducable ability is technically ridiculous, but appeals very much to the writer's target audience (Internet users/computer geeks/conspiracy theorists), so they are more apt to buy into it. He keeps saying he has nothing to gain by lying, but he does.... it's just intangible gain. Imagine if you pulled off a ruse so elegantly... this is a singularly interesting and unique piece of artwork of which the artist should be proud, even if he did use a pen name.

The most compelling aspect is his descriptions of the relationship between time and space, and "worldlines," but of course everything he says about those things is based on current scientific theory, science fiction, and recent discoveries. Equally compelling is his ability to see and communicate from a fictional time traveller's perspective, and lead the reader through interesting reasoning paths.

He uses "God's Excuse" (TM) a lot... basically, "I am unable to prove to you who or what I am, so you may believe me or accept the consequences which you equally doubt... And I will bury any evidence of mistruth by claiming that you simply lack information, understanding, and/or faith." It's a catch-all. If you can't prove something, nor disprove it, it MUST be possible.

The faults in his story are few and necessary... it's still a fascinating tale. And if I'm wrong, then that's awesome, but so far I have no reason to believe that I am.

But the conservatives are the ones with the guns.

Liberals, by and large, don't have guns.

There are no liberal militias.

The most extreme uprising by liberals consists of throwing bricks at a World Bank protest.

The most extreme uprising by conservatives consists of bombing abortion clinics, bombing government buildings, and having militia standoffs against the government.

The only way a civil war would work is if the liberals take over the government and supress the conservatives enough to make the lead fly.

Conservatives have the resources to wage civil war. Liberals don't (unless they control the government and military.)

If there was a fairly obvious election grab, you'd see a fair portion of the concervatives up in arms as well, not to mention radar's people on the warpath.

hot_pastrami, you're dead on the money.

*at a Starbucks™

most of those are 'anarchists', which means that you're too apathetic to form a consistant opinion on anything and are against everything.

I agree that Radar's people would be on the warpath.

I disagree that if conservatives grabbed power through a blatently fraudulent election, there would be a violent uprising by conservatives. That's nuts.

There are a fair portion who are deeply alienated by bush's position, combined iwth other actions an election grab would b enough to start something, it only needs to be started, as it's clamped down on it'll grow, from there it's close to unstoppable.

I'm not saying any of this would happen, I just enjoying gaming scenarios out, it's something I do almost every day.

Radar's people are permanently on the warpath. It would be amazing to see something take them off it.

The milita movement has shrunk back in recent years though, post-oklahoma increased pressure had it's effect, in this kind of scenario you'd steady growth.

I think the militia movement was a reaction to having Clinton in the White House. Now that there is a comrade in the White House, the fine folks in the militias feel no need to hole up with their guns.

I don't know enough to answer that question but it's amazing how quickly situations can change and balances of power and swing to and fro. I remember on 9/11 I woke up and got told that someone had launched an attack on the US, my first that was 'what? noone would be THAT stupid'.

The blatant violations of the Constitution, the war in Iraq, the highly questionable means in which Bush took office, the attacks on our civil rights, etc. already have people of all types whether conservative or liberal or somewhere between upset, edgy and on high alert. Blatantly rigging another election, might be the catalyst required to get people off thier asses to start a revolution including myself.

Someone keeps saying liberals don't own guns and that's not true. I'm not a liberal or a conservative and I own and know how to use guns and so do many people who are liberals.

It might only get a few off thier asses, and when the rest of America sees them slaughtered by the government for exercising their rights, it might inspire them to join the cause. Waco & Ruby Ridge were small, this would be very big and get a lot of attention. It may take a few years to get organized enough and to get enough people educated and armed enough to make a serious and viable revolution but it all starts with one event.

The situation the author provided is very plausable. In fact it's more than plausable. Given what's been happening in America, I believe it's probable.

While I won't comment on the likelyhood, I agree with radar's scenario. The difference is more how things are carried out, a more likely scanario is increased civil disobedience met with increased force, leading to an escalation that draws people in as the reaction becomes more draconian.

I think both of you are wrong.

You talk to like-minded people on the internet enough, and you get a skewed perception of reality.

The overwhelming majority of people just don't care. They see a couple hundred soldiers dying in a war, and they are sorry about it, but it's not a big deal. They see some rights on paper being taken away, but it isn't changing their daily life. Only the Arabs are being thrown in jail. Joe average is seeing no change. The only change Joe average is seeing is gas prices are going up. That's all he cares about. It's not enough for him to pick up a gun.

If the election is rigged again, it will bother him, but not to the point of getting a gun.

Of course, if I'm wrong, Bush steals the election, and people freak out about it - isn't the ban on machine guns in the US set to expire soon? If Joe average is mad as hell and doesn't want to take it anymore, and machine guns are legal again, that could be interesting.

This is not a topic I'm usualyl talking about on the internet, I do however do a lot of wargaming style scenario planning on a very regular basis as part of my work, as I said, I'm not saying these scanarios are likely, only possible given the right input. I think you're thinking too narrowly, you need to expand things out, make them more gradual, from the perspective it's more likely. It's not uncommon for things to simmer for a long time before they explode.

Even if the election is rigged I don't expect there to be firefights in the streets of Boston or NYC anytime soon.

We touched on this in class last night. The discussion was about racist hate groups. They were saying that McVeigh wasn't accepted by the militia folks, he was just a good old fashioned white sepratist. Either way I'd say that's what sent the militias underground. The fear of government didn't do it, it was the fear that they'd thrown in with the wrong kind of people.

As far as leftists with guns go, the original Black Panther Party along with a bunch of your sixties radicals were armed. The new Black Panthers are armed but look a lot more like Nazis... The left in the US is too in love with state power to take up arms, they'd rather harness the beast for their own purposes. Of course, it is cocktail hour in Grifftopia so I may have to retract chunks of this in the morning.

If you're not armed when it starts, you won't be. That's the first thing they'll do, is cut off guns and ammo.
No, it's assault rifles your thinking of. Machine guns have been withheld from the general public, forever. ;)

"Forever" in this case being "since 1938."

and "assault rifles" in this context means "single fire, semi-automatic rifles made out of scary-looking black plastic."

OK. I'm not really interested in opening up a huge can of worms and starting a gun thread, but...

What's the difference between the assault rifles that were banned and are about to be legal again, and the rifle used by the DC sniper? The DC sniper, if I recall correctly, used a Bushmaster semi-automatic rifle. It looks like an M-16 to my untrained eyes. I would consider it an assault rifle.

I know the assault weapon ban had something to do with the size of clips, but did it also have some sort of rate-of-fire wording too? You mention plastic, I guess that had something to do with it too.

The "assault weapon" ban (which will probably be renewed in lame duck session, the bastards) covered magazines which held more than 10 rounds of storage, and semi-automatic rifles with detachable magazines which had at least two or more "ugly" features -- a folding stock was one, a bayonet lug (?!) was another, there were more. It also banned certain guns by name.