John Titor

[hot_pastrami]

Originally posted by Griff
Get back off topic!

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

[lumberjim]

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

[hot_pastrami]

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

[Radar]

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.

[jaguar]

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.

[hot_pastrami]

Originally posted by Radar
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.

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.

Originally posted by Radar
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.

He said that Africa is a mess... I'd stick with Australia.

Originally posted by Radar
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.

The ideas he imparts from the future seem to have a lot of Libertarian leanings... maybe there's hope for the loonies after all!

[jaguar]

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?

[glatt]

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?

[jaguar]

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.

[Undertoad]

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.

[hot_pastrami]

Originally posted by jaguar
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?

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.

[glatt]

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.)

[jaguar]

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.

[wolf]

Originally posted by glatt

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

*at a Starbucks™

[jaguar]

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