If you were going to do so, he'd have already gone back in time and invested such that he'd be filthy rich enough to afford to pay you for the device. The fact that he isn't is proof you won't, of course.
Independence Day: Resurgence
If you were going to do so, he'd have already gone back in time and invested such that he'd be filthy rich enough to afford to pay you for the device. The fact that he isn't is proof you won't, of course.
except where we are in the timefork where Morrus hasn't got the time machine yet, only having just been offered one. In the other branch, Morrus is bathing in money like Ritchie Rich.
Ryujin
Legend
You have just discovered the dirty little secret of trying to go back in time and make money: All the money to be made is in the selling of the device itself, because time is immutable
That only works if both the delivery and the time he goes back to to make his money are in the future. If, say, he takes delivery in 2020, and then knows of something in 2017 that'll make him swim in cash, we'd still be in a time when he was the pauper-owner of a gaming website.
If he does something sensible, and goes back to buy stock in Apple, IBM, and such, he's already be rich now, no mater when he accepts delivery. The fact that he isn't is proof we are in a fork in which there never is delivery.
You have just discovered the dirty little secret of trying to go back in time and make money: All the money to be made is in the selling of the device itself, because time is immutable
That claim would require you to prove a negative ("time cannot be changed"), which is probably not a place you want to be, rhetorically speaking.
Ryujin
Legend
I'll take it. There don't seem to be any people who are massively wealthy to the point of truly controlling the world, so I would say that we have a finite number of situations possible:
1) Time travel is impossible.
2) Time is immutable (everything that has/is/will happen already has/is/will.)
3) So many people have done it that it's like everyone who prayed to win the lottery in "Bruce Almighty"; a million people splitting a million dollars.
#2 is as plausible as #1 and #3, and makes a reasonable approximation for the lot. I'm a technologist, not an engineer. "Close enough for practical purposes" is totally a thing for me
#2 is as plausible as #1 and #3, and makes a reasonable approximation for the lot. I'm a technologist, not an engineer. "Close enough for practical purposes" is totally a thing for me
Actually, #1 and #2 are equivalent. If time travel is impossible, then the past is immutable. If the past is immutable, then you cannot insert yourself into it, as that itself would be a change. Being able to travel back in time at all implies a mutable past.
Ryujin
Legend
Nope. #1 means that you simply can't do it while #2 means that even if you can travel, you're simply part of the preordained pattern
tomBitonti
Adventurer
Heh, are you *sure* the equivalence follows?
If I rearrange some light cone such that a different initial event is predicated, didn't that change the past?
Of course, that sounds harder than time travel.
But maybe there is some equivalence there.Thx!
TomB
Ryujin
Legend
The only real question, I think, is what deus ex machina they'll use to save the world this time
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