27 KiB
[BST] Accidentally, without any preparation, you are sent 24 hours back in time. What are some clever ways to exploit this situation to benefit from it?
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Author: u/raymestalez *
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URL: https://www.reddit.com/r/rational/comments/3cp2h3/bst_accidentally_without_any_preparation_you_are/
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Score: 11
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Created: 2015-07-09T17:05:11
Post:
Variation - you had 5 minutes to prepare.
More specific rules and mechanics(whether it's parallel timelines, or your consciousness is transported into your body, or there's a second version of you that can interact with you from the past) are up to you - whatever is more exploitable/interesting.
Comments:
u/jgf1123 [+14] (5 hours later)
To: jgf1123
From: jgf1123
Recognition code: TimeTravellerVersionOfMyself.
You will be sent back in time in a little under 24 hours. Here's what we've cumulatively learned over the last 271828 iterations...
u/pastymage [+10] (2 hours later)
Two bodies is much more exploitable, even with no preparation.
After you've gone back and realized what the hell's going on, plan carefully. You will wait until the next big lotto drawing (hope this is a day of the week a big lotto is actually drawn on...use the biggest-payout one available, obviously, even if it's a "crappy" daily). Make careful note of the numbers. Now contrive to send these numbers back with the original you in some way you won't have noticed...while original-you is asleep, slip them between your gym and blockbuster cards in your wallet, or safety-pin them into the hem of the pants you're going to be wearing (ideally both, lest things devolve into a comic hunt for the hem-note that fell off and was caught by a gust of wind or something). Code the numbers in some simple way so someone else who finds them will not have the actual winning numbers.
Examine your plan for any obvious flaws, adjust as necessary. Think about it for at least five minutes, but 30 would be considerably better. Every time you find and patch a flaw, add five minutes. Once you're confident, check your wallet (and/or your pants hem, etc).
If you find numbers, go buy your ticket. If you find mysterious bloodstains, you're probably screwed (given a fixed timeline, abandoning the plan at this point won't help, that blood's gonna come from somewhere), but don't give up...pick up some emergency medical supplies and soldier on. Consider concealable body armor as well if your current finances permit.
Assuming you did find numbers, when you get to the lotto place, you may be tempted to buy more than one identical ticket so if there are other winners you will get a bigger share. Consider carefully how officials will react when you claim your winnings in that manner...do you want those questions asked? Decide you want at least a small hedge against sharing. Buy several camouflage tickets with one of the numbers increasing incrementally, then skip a number, then buy two of the winning ticket, then several more cover tickets increasing normally. "I had a dream but I couldn't remember the last number exactly...weird fluke that I accidentally bought this ticket twice, eh, Lottery Commissioner?"
When you catch up to "the present", you may be tempted to try to observe original-you at the moment original-you was transported back. Consider whether this knowledge is worth the unknown risks of being present - take into account you are now wealthy and have "more to lose". Even if you decide it's too risky, consider setting up video equipment in your stead...even a slim possibility of learning how to trigger the event again would be of extremely high value...
At all times remain hyper-vigilant for the sound of your own voice. Record it and play it back so you're sure you can recognize it. Remind yourself to react instantly to any shouted warnings from yourself, as they will probably be in your best interest. Try not to look around too much though, so as to leave hypothetical future-yous as much room as possible for stealthy assistance should additional loops somehow occur. Do not allow the latter caution to result in you being hit by a car or something - be sensible, insofar as the context permits it.
u/Geminii27 [+2] (19 hours later)
Consider carefully how officials will react when you claim your winnings in that manner...do you want those questions asked?
Pretend to be a slightly unhinged psychic. It came to you in a DREAM, you saw the RIVER of BEING and the DRAGON of KNOWLEDGE, and he SPOKE to you, and you were BLESSED by his PRESENCE!!!!1!!
(This is why you bought 20 tickets with the same numbers.)
Seeing as how there is zero evidence available to link you to any kind of scam or pre-knowledge of the numbers, the most they can do is get the cops to administer a drug test to you. You come up clean, and there's no actual rule against being bonkers.
u/pastymage [+2] (20 hours later)
*shrug* It's not that they're likely to find a way to invalidate your claim, just that it's sensible to avoid additional scrutiny if you can (if there are reliable strategies for keeping lottery winnings private even in the face of media interest - "Officials report 21 winning tickets were sold for Thursday's Big Lotto draw" - it'd be a good idea to use them anyway).
At the very least, you might create a bitter nemesis out of the other winner, who still has 1/21th of a lottery jackpot to work with. :)
u/Jiro_T [+1] (4 hours later)
This is also a good time to have a time travel password.
u/Geminii27 [+2] (19 hours later)
It's always a good time to have an entire set of time-travel passwords. Some will only be accepted on certain days of the year, or certain years in the century, or at certain times of life. Others will only allow a holder of the password to declare themselves a genuine time-traveler but not be assumed to be telling any other truth (in case you need to give a password to someone else who travels back and you don't know if they have your best interests at heart). Still others will allow a traveler to obtain certain levels of assistance from you quickly.
...did no-one else set this up when they were a bored kid?
u/Chronophilia [+1] sci-fi ≠ futurology (a day later)
Others will only allow a holder of the password to declare themselves a genuine time-traveler but not be assumed to be telling any other truth
This should really be your default assumption. A time-travel password can also be given by mind-readers, duplicate selves, memory-manipulators... all it shows is that something impossible has happened, you can't guarantee that it was under your control (any version of you).
u/GaBeRockKing [+1] Horizon Breach: http://archiveofourown.org/works/6785857 (5 days later)
I made a "password" (it's not in any way, shape, or form a password, exactly, but the concept is the same) so I can reasonably have an excuse for positively identifying myself if I make a self-insert time travel (or, for that matter, dimension travel, fanfiction.)
I haven't determined whether I'd cooperate with myself (because lying about a closed time loop would be exactly the sort of thing I'd do, because past me can go fuck myself since I won't be affected) but it's still a fun thing to think about.
u/pastymage [+1] (8 hours later)
Sure, against the possibility of additional loops, anyway. It won't help you with original-you at this point, since you'd need to have established it 24 hours earlier. Though I'm assuming a fixed timeline in my response, which implies you will not interact with yourself anyway, because if you will (had), it presumably wouldn't then have been unexpected when you traveled later.
If it's not a fixed timeline, you'll discover that in due course, but explicitly testing that (by deliberately trying to make a change) is a bad idea, because if it is fixed, whatever happens to prevent you from your intended change may be unpleasant or indeed fatal.
u/imyourfoot [+10] (30 minutes later)
With no preparation the question comes down to "What information did I learn and remember during the past day that I could exploit 24 hours ago?", which is almost entirely dependent on what happened in your life in that period (and perhaps how good your short-medium term memory is).
With 5 minutes of preparation the most obvious answers would be lottery numbers (if a drawing in your jurisdiction occurred in the period in question), or failing that stocks that gained or lost a lot of value in that period.
Alternately you could use the 5 minutes to gain information you wouldn't normally be able to get without unacceptable consequences. You probably wouldn't be in a position to do anything like corporate espionage, but if you had something you wanted to ask or tell somebody but were afraid of their reaction, you could use that 5 minutes to call them on their cell phone (assuming they have one) as a test run.
If you physically went back such that there were two copies of you that opens up some other possibilities. You could establish an ironclad alibi if needed, or simply try to come up with an epic prank or magic trick that left everyone wondering if you had a secret twin. If you're in a relationship you could even give your SO a special threesome :)
u/None [+3] (8 hours later)
[deleted]
u/imyourfoot [+3] (10 hours later)
After checking a list of today's biggest winners and losers on the stock market, which were only in the ballpark of ~20% changes, I agree.
Going for a trifecta would be a good way to go, especially if the winning horse had longer odds. I don't know if any longer sports odds are regularly available.
u/autowikibot [+1] (11 hours later)
#####
######
#### Trifecta:
In American and Australian horse racing terminology, a trifecta is a parimutuel bet in which the bettor must predict which horses will finish first, second, and third in exact order. The word comes from the related betting term, "[perfecta](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perfecta_(gambling))". A trifecta is known as a tricast in the United Kingdom, as a tiercé in Hong Kong, as a trio ordré in France and as a tris in Italy.
====
^Relevant: ^Trifecta ^Entertainment ^& ^Media ^| ^Devil's ^Trifecta ^| ^The ^Trifecta ^| ^Trifecta ^(Judge ^Dredd ^story)
^Parent ^commenter ^can [^toggle ^NSFW](/message/compose?to=autowikibot&subject=AutoWikibot NSFW toggle&message=%2Btoggle-nsfw+csy8ogd) ^or [^delete](/message/compose?to=autowikibot&subject=AutoWikibot Deletion&message=%2Bdelete+csy8ogd)^. ^Will ^also ^delete ^on ^comment ^score ^of ^-1 ^or ^less. ^| ^(FAQs) ^| ^Mods ^| ^Call ^Me
u/triangleman83 [+3] (an hour later)
Well, I did just have a poor house inspection yesterday. I'd turn the AC down ahead of time so it didn't have to struggle in the hot afternoon during the test.
u/TimeLoopedPowerGamer [+2] Utopian Smut Peddler (2 hours later)
Reddit has long been a hot spot for conversation on the internet. About 57 million people visit the site every day to chat about topics as varied as makeup, video games and pointers for power washing driveways.
In recent years, Reddit’s array of chats also have been a free teaching aid for companies like Google, OpenAI and Microsoft. Those companies are using Reddit’s conversations in the development of giant artificial intelligence systems that many in Silicon Valley think are on their way to becoming the tech industry’s next big thing.
Now Reddit wants to be paid for it. The company said on Tuesday that it planned to begin charging companies for access to its application programming interface, or A.P.I., the method through which outside entities can download and process the social network’s vast selection of person-to-person conversations.
“The Reddit corpus of data is really valuable,” Steve Huffman, founder and chief executive of Reddit, said in an interview. “But we don’t need to give all of that value to some of the largest companies in the world for free.”
The move is one of the first significant examples of a social network’s charging for access to the conversations it hosts for the purpose of developing A.I. systems like ChatGPT, OpenAI’s popular program. Those new A.I. systems could one day lead to big businesses, but they aren’t likely to help companies like Reddit very much. In fact, they could be used to create competitors — automated duplicates to Reddit’s conversations.
Reddit is also acting as it prepares for a possible initial public offering on Wall Street this year. The company, which was founded in 2005, makes most of its money through advertising and e-commerce transactions on its platform. Reddit said it was still ironing out the details of what it would charge for A.P.I. access and would announce prices in the coming weeks.
Reddit’s conversation forums have become valuable commodities as large language models, or L.L.M.s, have become an essential part of creating new A.I. technology.
L.L.M.s are essentially sophisticated algorithms developed by companies like Google and OpenAI, which is a close partner of Microsoft. To the algorithms, the Reddit conversations are data, and they are among the vast pool of material being fed into the L.L.M.s. to develop them.
u/Uncaffeinated [+1] (11 hours later)
Or something really unusual happens that day (e.g. 9/11, though good luck convincing them to evacuate for no reason)
u/ulyssessword [+3] (11 hours later)
You could probably prevent 3/4 planes from hitting buildings on 9/11, though you may get disappeared for doing so. Grab/buy a bullhorn, and go to an airport, near a police station, or even a public place like a mall, and shout out basic information about the event.
"Four commercial planes will be hijacked this morning with the purpose of flying them into buildings. The targets are World Trade Center North Tower, World Trade Center South Tower, The Pentagon, and an unknown fourth target. The fuel and impact from the planes will be enough to bring down the WTC towers."
Repeat your message until you (probably) get arrested. They will probably start believing you after the first hijacking is noticed.
u/Uncaffeinated [+1] (12 hours later)
Sadly, I'm not sure the word of a crazy kid would even reach the right channels in time.
u/ulyssessword [+1] (12 hours later)
That's why plan A and B are an airport and a police station. It still might not be enough, but it cuts out a fair number of steps.
u/callmebrotherg [+2] now posting as /u/callmesalticidae (4 hours later)
Um... I had a couple of donuts with my breakfast and watched some television shows, so I could have a mildly more productive and much healthier day.
Oh, and yesterday was pretty horrible, so yay, I get to do that one over and make that productive too!
u/eaglejarl [+1] (20 minutes later)
With 5 minutes to prepare, my first thought is sports bets. Easier to memorize a winning longshot horse than a stock list for day trading, although I'd try to get that too.
u/Nepene [+1] (23 minutes later)
I very quickly bet a lot of money on something like "Andy Murray beats Vasek Pospisil by 6 7 6 since I heard that." and maybe Serena winning 6 6
That's the only obvious exploit I could do.
u/Transfuturist [+1] Carthago delenda est. (4 hours later)
And then we get to discover the effects of quantum randomness.
u/Nepene [+2] (5 hours later)
Probably not an especially large affect over a few hours.
u/Transfuturist [+2] Carthago delenda est. (5 hours later)
That's utterly unsubstantiated. Fluctuations in a referee's brain and arm could affect a coin flip. Fluctuations in neurons could affect the exact pattern of neural activation, affecting the exact pattern of pretty much any muscular activity on the planet. It would be pretty silly to find out that the game started entirely differently from your foreknowledge. And then you owe a lot of money very quickly.
u/notmy2ndopinion [+1] Concent of Saunt Edhar (2 days later)
If the outcome of all sports games boiled down to random quantum effects determining the outcomes of the game as opposed to higher order effects like physical conditioning, experience, and cerebellar coordination/skill... there'd be a lot more 'game upsets' by newbies.
Then again, if you're stating that at an elite level of sports, all of these aspects are truly equal, then its just like a quantum coin flip. Schrodinger's Tennis Court.
u/Transfuturist [+1] Carthago delenda est. (2 days later)
the outcome of all sports games
It most certainly is. Luck plays more of a role the closer two players are in skill, and the precise score between two players is affected by chaotic divergence in quantum-sensitive components for all that we know. Just because it is not the only thing does not make its effects negligible. Even if quantum effects were not truly random, the effects of going back in time
a lot more 'game upsets' by newbies.
I am claiming the nature of our universe is probabilistic, which lies on the spectrum between determinism and randomness. More specifically, I believe that the determinism we do see is a result of emergent effects from the quantum state, which is in fact the case. I have said nothing that would imply that newbies would win against professionals any more frequently than they already do. Citing the MWI doesn't do anything for this either, as that pushes the random effect from "what happened in reality" to "what reality am I in."
u/Nepene [-5] (6 hours later)
Ah, another personal insult from you. Goodbye.
u/Transfuturist [+3] Carthago delenda est. (6 hours later)
...
I would like to ask literally anyone else, where was there an insult in my reply?
u/gommm [+4] (7 hours later)
Not really an insult as such but the first sentence "That's utterly unsubstantiated" comes out as rather harsh.
u/Transfuturist [+3] Carthago delenda est. (7 hours later)
I guess.
u/None [+2] (a day later)
That's one of those things you get to say when you have tenure. Not before.
u/BSaito [+2] (7 hours later)
I certainly don't see one, though of course with the star next to your post I can't know if you included an insult then later edited it out, or just noticed and fixed a typo or grammatical error.
u/Cariyaga [+1] Kyubey did nothing wrong (7 hours later)
...Maybe "pretty silly"? Not sure.
u/Nepene [-1] (20 hours later)
Yep, that was it. Silly meaning "having or showing a lack of common sense or judgement; absurd and foolish."
And since earlier he called me an asshole I'm not keen to give him the benefit of the doubt.
u/Transfuturist [+1] Carthago delenda est. (a day later)
I was calling the situation silly, not you. You seem pretty intent on finding anything possible to take offense to in order to disregard my arguments.
u/TimeLoopedPowerGamer [+1] Utopian Smut Peddler (12 hours later)
Reddit has long been a hot spot for conversation on the internet. About 57 million people visit the site every day to chat about topics as varied as makeup, video games and pointers for power washing driveways.
In recent years, Reddit’s array of chats also have been a free teaching aid for companies like Google, OpenAI and Microsoft. Those companies are using Reddit’s conversations in the development of giant artificial intelligence systems that many in Silicon Valley think are on their way to becoming the tech industry’s next big thing.
Now Reddit wants to be paid for it. The company said on Tuesday that it planned to begin charging companies for access to its application programming interface, or A.P.I., the method through which outside entities can download and process the social network’s vast selection of person-to-person conversations.
“The Reddit corpus of data is really valuable,” Steve Huffman, founder and chief executive of Reddit, said in an interview. “But we don’t need to give all of that value to some of the largest companies in the world for free.”
The move is one of the first significant examples of a social network’s charging for access to the conversations it hosts for the purpose of developing A.I. systems like ChatGPT, OpenAI’s popular program. Those new A.I. systems could one day lead to big businesses, but they aren’t likely to help companies like Reddit very much. In fact, they could be used to create competitors — automated duplicates to Reddit’s conversations.
Reddit is also acting as it prepares for a possible initial public offering on Wall Street this year. The company, which was founded in 2005, makes most of its money through advertising and e-commerce transactions on its platform. Reddit said it was still ironing out the details of what it would charge for A.P.I. access and would announce prices in the coming weeks.
Reddit’s conversation forums have become valuable commodities as large language models, or L.L.M.s, have become an essential part of creating new A.I. technology.
L.L.M.s are essentially sophisticated algorithms developed by companies like Google and OpenAI, which is a close partner of Microsoft. To the algorithms, the Reddit conversations are data, and they are among the vast pool of material being fed into the L.L.M.s. to develop them.
u/Nepene [+1] (14 hours later)
The tennis has been on the news and people have been talking about it all day. Today and yesterday were good days for time travel.
u/Kishoto [+1] (an hour later)
Yea. Clearest opportunity seems to be some sort of wager. If there's a big sports game that you know the result of, you could find a bookie and make a large bet, assuming you have the connections.
u/ArgentStonecutter [+1] Emergency Mustelid Hologram (an hour later)
There would probably be a couple of minor crises at work I could get ahead of, there always are. Otherwise, I don't keep track of stock prices and the like. Having two of me to split the workload would be worthwhile, but I'd have to do something about getting additional meds for my new clone.
u/Transfuturist [+1] Carthago delenda est. (4 hours later)
With two mes? Easy. I'll never be lonely again.
Seriously, that would probably be the most benefit long-term. In five minutes, let's see... I think I could look for the stock that gained the most in the last trading session, then go back, pile my measly ~500 dollars (more, since I'll probably be able to convince my parents that I have future knowledge with two of me) onto that stock, and reap like 100 bucks of profit before tax. Not too impressive.
Having to support two mes would be just about as expensive cost and effort-wise as having to support one me. Now, if I could merge and split at will...
u/callmebrotherg [+1] now posting as /u/callmesalticidae (5 hours later)
Oh goodness. I didn't even think about whether or not there'd be another me for any long period of time.
Wow.
Um. This is probably going to suck. Dangit.
u/BekenBoundaryDispute [+1] (8 hours later)
Well, now, If I'm sent back 24 hours in time within the next 16 hours, I'm going to make an encrypted prediction of this submission, also explaining the situation, post it to /r/rational, and release the key when it is submitted or if it fails to be submitted.
Then spend the next week discussing the implications of this sort of thing. Who cares about minor exploits when some bizarre, paradigm-shattering facet of your local reality presents itself?
u/None [+2] (23 hours later)
how would you prove that you're not OP?
u/None [+1] (10 hours later)
The version I'd most be able to exploit:
- You're on a brand-new branch of time. Nobody in this new branch needs to go back on schedule or anything like that.
- You get sent back bodily rather than just memories.
I get a permanent clone. That's the main benefit of this scenario. The clone has limited future knowledge; in the best case scenario, we can use that to win a lottery, clean up on some sports bets, etc. In the expected scenario, we draw lots to see who keeps a 9-5 job and who does something else. Maybe one of us would go into consulting and work from home -- having an extra me would mean somewhat increased cost of living, plus having two of me working would mean an earlier retirement (assuming shared living expenses).
The worst case, of course, is if I find I can't stand living with myself, my employer finds out I'm moonlighting (despite using a different body), and I find I'm not sufficiently self-disciplined to handle working from home.
u/jakeb89 [+1] (13 hours later)
Taking that I am sent back now by 24 hours with no prep, here's what I can currently leverage:
- Let my roommate know that he's gonna have a really shitty day at work, and he should just call in sick. Seriously dude, it wasn't worth it today.
- Post the general summary of new chapter updates to fanfics I read on Spacebattles/Sufficientvelocity ahead of time in an effort to prove my time travel. Actually, no, write out the details in a password-protected archive which I post before the chapters go up, then give the password a few hours later.
- Be irritated that I've lost a lot of really good work on the game I'm making in Unity.
- Be happy that I lost absolutely no real (job) work since I got nothing done on that front in the last 24 hours anyway.
u/thedarkone47 [+1] (21 hours later)
Post front page links for sweet sweet karma.