Time 3.0
TLDR: The timeline is finite. The time available to time-travelers is infinite. Therefore time travelers can and will overwhelm the timeline to the point of its destruction, since anything finite approaches 0 from the vantage of infinity. I the timeline is not finite, and there are instead infinite timelines, then the timelines will degrade.
As I’ve somewhat poorly explained in the past, I don’t believe that sentient beings will ever get the ability to time travel. My reasoning for this runs thusly: to unlock the ability to time-travel is to unlock time as an unlimited resource. Given unlimited time, any action open to a time-traveler will, at some point, inevitably occur. This includes spilling the secret of time-travel to people who haven’t discovered it for themselves, violent conflict, and catastrophic accidents. Given unlimited time to access any point in time, these things will inevitably occur at any point in time, including the very beginning of the universe. In other words, a universe in which intelligent beings can freely travel through time is unstable.
There are numerous objections to the line of reasoning above. The first is that a time-traveler may create a tangent universe when traveling to the past by any actions they make to alter that timeline, leaving the original timeline safe. My answer to that objection is that it would be very unlikely that we are in the prime universe, given an unending string of tangent universes. The second objection I can think of is that perhaps, given the vast amount of time that time-travelers have to access, their chances of actually visiting any one moment in time is very small. To answer this I will simply repeat what I have said above- given unlimited access to time, it is inevitable a time-traveler will visit any period of time, or spill the secret of time-travel to someone else who will spill the secret to someone else who will visit that period of time… time-travel cannot by its nature be contained. Even so, I don’t wish to believe my conjecture. It’s kind of sad that I’ll never have any awesome time adventures. I am willing to stick my neck out to prove myself wrong. Hence, my decision to attempt to contact time-travelers.
In my first attempt, I decided on a date and time for any time-travelers to come meet me, as well as a pass phrase for them to recite to prove their identity. I decided that the time-traveler should already know the pass phrase without my telling them, but I later realized that this would cause a paradox. Therefore, on my next attempt, I invited people online to give me a series of numbers, which would later be generated by dice rolls. However, I did not pre-determine the time I would roll, or the number of dice I would roll, so the actions of the time-travelers in giving me the numbers may influence how I rolled, creating another paradox. Therefore, for my next attempt, I decided on 12 d10 dice -a 1 in a trillion chance of guessing the numbers correctly- and had someone else, who would not follow whether I’d been contacted, roll the dice. The results of those experiments are logged in Bridgett’s Time Travel Archive.
I took a break from these experiments, and during the break, I decided that the best way to really blind the experiments was to automate the whole process, instead of having someone manually roll dice -someone who could see how I excited I was and be influenced in that way- I created a bot to automatically generate an array of 12 numbers from 0-9 and post a message on twitter with those numbers and an invitation to tweet them to me during the previous week. Then I set up a cron job to run the bot automatically. At the time I write this, December 7, 2020 at 3:22 pm central time, the bot has run 13 times.
*** Update: these experiments have been suspended as of 03/02/2022. This decision was the result of an ongoing, half-joke that the world seems to be ‘in the bad timeline.’ This was not a rational decision, of course. I place an infinitessimal probability on time travel being possible at all.
Even so, the threat of nuclear annihilation seems to hang in the air, and however irrational, some part of my brain feels a great deal easier about the fate of humanity when I am not messing around with the spacetime continuum.
I’m not certain why this is the case. There are two ways I can see my experiments being dangerous. The first is time wars, which would eventually destroy the universe as it began, making that universe inherently unstable. The second is that, when a time-traveler goes into the past, they create a time tangent (which is one of the explanations of why I haven’t contacted any time-travelers- because I am still in the prime timeline.) By inviting time-travelers to contact me- tangent timelines get created more and more, pushing this timeline further along the continuum of possibilities. This seems, however, to be completely moot. There’s no reason to believe this timeline would end up being more dangerous or ‘bad’ than any other timeline created. The only problem that would arise from this is if creating too many tangents might, somehow, make the prime timeline less stable. We don’t know much about the fabric of spacetime. Is it something that can become degraded?
This doesn’t *feel* like a stable timeline, though I must admit human troubles are still very small on the cosmic scale. I’m human, however, and I care about humans, so I’m suspending the experiments. The results of the experiments will remain here, preserved for posterity. ***
*** Second Update: as of 11/07/2022 at 5pm central, my twitter account is deactivated. If you still wish to see the twitter feed, or to tweet the following dice roll results to me, you will need to use a time machine.***
Time 3.0 Results
| Time 3.0 Archive | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Experiment Number | Begin Date to Accept Roll Results | End Date to Accept Roll Results | Dice Roll Results | Correct Guesses |
| Experiment 1 | 8-25-2020 | 8-31-2020 | 0,9,1,1,4,0,8,8,2,2,0,4 | 0 |
| Experiment 2 | 9-5-2020 | 9-11-2020 | 7,3,2,3,6,9,4,5,2,0,0,9 | 0 |
| Experiment 3 | 9-12-2020 | 9-18-2020 | 3,6,2,5,7,2,2,1,2,9,2,1 | 0 |
| Experiment 4 | 9-19-2020 | 9-25-2020 | 0,2,3,3,2,0,9,0,2,8,8,9 | 0 |
| Experiment 5 | 9-26-2020 | 10-2-2020 | 5,6,0,8,3,1,0,7,5,6,0,7 | 0 |
| Experiment 6 | 10-2-2020 (experimental error – date overlap) | 10-8-2020 | 7,0,0,7,6,2,2,9,7,3,1,8 | 0 |
| Experiment 7 | 10-9-2020 | 10-15-2020 | 4,1,1,9,4,0,9,8,4,7,5,9 | 0 |
| Experiment 8 | 10-16-2020 | 10-22-2020 | 7,1,9,8,6,9,6,6,3,2,3,3 | 0 |
| Experiment 9 | 10-23-2020 | 10-29-2020 | 8,2,7,9,4,6,7,2,2,6,2,7 | 0 |
| Experiment 10 | 10-30-2020 | 11-5-2020 | 6,5,6,7,9,8,2,9,0,6,7,3 | 0 |
| Experiment 11 | 11-6-2020 | 11-12-2020 | 7,8,5,9,8,4,9,3,0,2,2,1 | 0 |
| Experiment 12 | 11-13-2020 | 11-19-2020 | 1,4,0,5,6,0,0,3,6,8,0,9 | 0 |
| Experiment 13 | 11-20-2020 | 11-26-2020 | 4,5,1,0,7,4,2,2,2,2,3,7 | 0 |
| Experiment 14 | 12-4-2020 | 12-10-2020 | 1,0,7,1,9,7,3,7,0,4,7,5 | 0 |
| Experiment 15 | 12-11-2020 | 12-17-2020 | 6,6,7,1,7,5,2,0,5,8,8,2 | 0 |
| Experiment 16 | 12-18-2020 | 12-24-2020 | 5,5,9,9,6,8,6,4,7,5,4,0 | 0 |
| Experiment 17 | 12-25-2020 | 12-31-2020 | 1,3,3,9,6,3,6,9,2,2,7,5 | 0 |
| Experiment 18 | 1-1-2021 | 1-7-2021 | 9,7,3,9,6,4,1,4,1,7,2,0 | 0 |
| Experiment 19 | 1-8-2021 | 1-14-2021 | 4,0,8,8,5,8,0,0,6,8,7,2 | 0 |
| Experiment 20 | 1-15-2021 | 1-21-2021 | 5,6,3,5,9,1,7,1,5,2,0,7 | 0 |
| Experiment 21 | 1-22-2021 | 1-28-2021 | 3,0,0,9,5,2,4,5,2,9,5,9 | 0 |
| Experiment 22 | 1-29-2021 | 2-4-2021 | 7,9,7,2,4,9,5,4,3,1,2,3 | 0 |
| Experiment 23 | 2-5-2021 | 2-11-2021 | 6,6,3,7,4,2,0,3,3,3,8,3 | 0 |
| Experiment 24 | 2-12-2021 | 2-18-2021 | 6,3,8,1,0,9,8,1,0,6,2,4 | 0 |
| Experiment 25 | 2-19-2021 | 2-25-2021 | 8,8,2,5,2,0,2,2,3,3,1,3 | 0 |
| Experiment 26 | 2-26-2021 | 3-4-2021 | 5,8,1,7,1,3,8,7,0,0,5,3 | 0 |
| Experiment 27 | 3-5-2021 | 3-11-2021 | 1,7,5,4,0,7,2,8,9,2,5,8 | 0 |
| Experiment 28 | 3-12-2021 | 3-18-2021 | 2,2,5,0,8,0,1,5,0,4,3,0 | 0 |
| Experiment 29 | 3-19-2021 | 3-25-2021 | 0,4,5,7,2,7,2,6,4,6,3,2 | 0 |
| Experiment 30 | 4-2-2021 | 4-8-2021 | 6,6,3,7,5,4,4,0,5,5,3,4 | 0 |
| Experiment 31 | 4-9-2021 | 4-15-2021 | 6,4,4,1,3,0,2,9,5,1,8,4 | 0 |
| Experiment 32 | 4-16-2021 | 4-22-2021 | 2,1,5,2,4,0,8,2,4,9,8,2 | 0 |
| Experiment 33 | 4-23-2021 | 4-29-2021 | 4,1,3,9,6,5,7,1,1,3,1,0 | 0 |
| Experiment 34 | 4-30-2021 | 5-06-2021 | 2,4,3,1,6,2,3,0,6,5,4,7 | 0 |
| Experiment 35 | 5-07-2021 | 5-13-2021 | 8,2,2,1,5,3,4,7,4,2,7,6 | 0 |
| Experiment 36 | 5-14-2021 | 5-20-2021 | 2,9,3,9,2,3,9,7,7,8,0,0 | 0 |
| Experiment 37 | 5-21-2021 | 5-27-2021 | 3,8,3,7,1,4,0,3,5,1,3,3 | 0 |
| Experiment 38 | 5-28-2021 | 6-3-2021 | 2,7,6,5,4,8,8,9,6,7,0,3 | 0 |
| Experiment 39 | 6-4-2021 | 6-10-2021 | 9,0,4,7,4,3,3,5,5,7,6,4 | 0 |
| Experiment 40 | 6-18-2021 | 6-24-2021 | 0,1,4,2,9,9,9,8,3,0,0,4 | 0 |
| Experiment 41 | 6-25-2021 | 7-1-2021 | 7,9,8,5,7,7,6,9,5,0,8,5 | 0 |
| Experiment 42 | 7-2-2021 | 7-8-2021 | 8,9,7,0,5,8,5,8,4,4,4,6 | 0 |
| Experiment 43 | 7-9-2021 | 7-15-2021 | 4,3,1,2,0,5,3,4,3,0,2,2 | 0 |
| Experiment 44 | 7-16-2021 | 7-22-2021 | 4,0,5,9,6,8,3,3,0,8,2,8 | 0 |
| Experiment 45 | 7-23-2021 | 7-29-2021 | 9,0,5,2,3,7,0,2,4,3,1,6 | 0 |
| Experiment 46 | 7-30-2021 | 8-05-2021 | 2,6,6,5,0,1,4,8,3,2,3,1 | 0 |
| Experiment 47 | 8-06-2021 | 8-12-2021 | 6,9,6,6,0,2,0,2,9,3,7,3 | 0 |
| Experiment 48 | 8-13-2021 | 8-19-2021 | 2,6,1,3,5,2,6,7,0,0,5,2 | 0 |
| Experiment 49 | 8-20-2021 | 8-26-2021 | 9,3,4,4,9,5,0,6,2,5,5,3 | 0 |
| Experiment 50 | 8-27-2021 | 9-2-2021 | 0,1,2,6,9,0,9,3,7,6,3,9 | 0 |
| Experiment 51 | 9-3-2021 | 9-9-2021 | 3,3,9,9,0,9,4,9,6,2,5,9 | 0 |
| Experiment 52 | 9-10-2021 | 9-16-2021 | 3,2,6,2,5,1,8,5,5,0,6,4 | 0 |
| Experiment 53 | 9-17-2021 | 9-23-2021 | 6,4,6,6,5,8,2,1,3,0,6,1 | 0 |
| Experiment 54 | 9-24-2021 | 9-30-2021 | 0,0,6,9,8,9,8,1,0,2,3,9 | 0 |
| Experiment 55 | 10-01-2021 | 10-07-2021 | 3,3,7,2,7,6,4,4,8,0,0,8 | 0 |
| Experiment 56 | 10-08-2021 | 10-14-2021 | skipped | 0 |
| Experiment 57 | 10-15-2021 | 10-21-2021 | 9,7,8,1,9,3,0,1,9,5,5,9 | 0 |
| Experiment 58 | 10-22-2021 | 10-28-2021 | 6,5,5,4,4,3,2,0,9,5,8,3 | 0 |
| Experiment 59 | 10-29-2021 | 11-04-2021 | 0,9,9,8,0,8,8,7,2,9,7,5 | 0 |
| Experiment 60 | 11-05-2021 | 11-11-2021 | 8,1,8,8,3,8,8,4,2,4,9,4 | 0 |
| Experiment 61 | 11-12-2021 | 11-18-2021 | 9,2,6,7,1,4,2,1,2,2,3,7 | 0 |
| Experiment 62 | 11-19-2021 | 11-25-2021 | 5,4,8,1,7,3,1,7,0,3,4,8 | 0 |
| Experiment 63 | 11-26-2021 | 12-02-2021 | 2,9,9,6,6,2,9,5,8,7,0,7 | 0 |
| Experiment 64 | 12-10-2021 | 12-16-2021 | 0,8,1,3,7,8,7,6,2,6,4,4 | 0 |
| Experiment 65 | 12-17-2021 | 12-23-2021 | 9,3,7,8,0,9,7,6,9,5,8,3 | 0 |
| Experiment 66 | 12-24-2021 | 12-30-2021 | 4,2,2,3,0,8,2,1,6,5,4,3 | 0 |
| Experiment 67 | 12-31-2021 | 1-06-2022 | 8,9,3,9,1,8,7,3,5,1,3,8 | 0 |
| Experiment 68 | 1-07-2022 | 1-13-2022 | 4,6,3,5,2,6,1,5,5,3,5,3 | 0 |
| Experiment 69 | 1-14-2022 | 1-20-2022 | 2,1,0,7,7,8,4,7,2,5,0,6 | 0 |
| Experiment 70 | 1-21-2022 | 1-27-2022 | 9,6,5,9,0,0,7,4,0,9,9,6 | 0 |
| Experiment 71 | 1-28-2022 | 2-3-2022 | 5,9,9,4,2,2,3,9,0,2,3,1 | 0 |
| Experiment 72 | 2-4-2022 | 2-10-2022 | 2,7,0,2,6,1,9,0,2,2,4,2 | 0 |
| Experiment 73 | 2-11-2022 | 2-17-2022 | 1,3,2,3,0,7,6,9,1,2,0,9 | 0 |
| Experiment 74 | 2-18-2022 | 2-24-2022 | 8,6,8,8,7,2,6,7,9,9,8,7 | 0 |
| Experiment Suspended | 03-02-2022 |
Ex Machina Revealed 