That definitely does not look like a time machine. More like a radio.

Actually, it is a radio. And you're right, it's not a time machine. It doesn't travel in time but only detects sounds from the future.

Can you prove that you're not just tricking us?

Of course. It's completely open source. Everything is scientifically sound, pun not intended. Take a look for yourself.

Yeah, I saw your Youtube and all the claims they had against you, and your reply. I was at the public debate last week, and I brought my own parts, and then tried it at home. But there's something that still bothers me. Are you claiming we can't have free choice or free will? Is there no such thing as "now"?

No no. We have free choice. Even though there is no such thing as now. It's an emerging phenomenon like will itself, and like the self itself. The thing is that if we choose to point the time radio at a certain version of the future now, that means that we chose to listen in on a certain future. Nothing in the past changes but by pointing it at the location we point it to, our "current" decisions are changed. And that decision changes the future outcome.

That's exactly what I don't get. What happens to our free will during all the points in time from the time we heard the radio and on the way to that future?

Here! Listen to this conversation to be heard in this very room sometime in the future. Probably 20 minutes from now. We'll record it so we can check it again. There's no way to tamper with that recording. If you want we'll also put it down in writing. Then we'll try to change the course of events so that the future will defer from what it had recorded. If we can do that, it will prove that this machine of mine is no more than a dream. Bringing me a possible future, one of many possibilities, and not the one-and-only definite future.

Right! So you found something scientific but not interesting. You are wasting time for half the world.

First of all, nobody besides you is even mildly interested. They have three wars on their heads and the wildfire crisis which surprised everybody this winter. Secondly, there are no other futures. I tried it already, and can show you that once we listen ed to a future on this machine there's no way back.

So if there's a murder in the room?

If there's a murder in the room it cannot be stopped. But why should there be a murder? Why violence? We can try it out on simple things like a glass being broken. I have here two different glasses. This one is blue and this one is tainted orange. I will throw a coin which will decide which one should be broken. Heads will decide the fate of the blue glass, and tails the orange one. I will then wait till 11 o'clock and then announce which I broke. We'll listen to the future, now, before we start doing anything, and then we'll have five minutes to try and change the fate of the world.

And if we do change it? If at 11 am we say something else, or nothing at all?

We'll try it out three times. And we'll try hard to change the course of events. Would that convince you?

I think so. What if the future doesn't sound like you expect?

That happened to me. I recorded myself getting into a cough attack once. But there's nothing to it. Just repeat it again, later.

OK, lets start. I'm not sure I understand where this is going. It sounds a bit boring. Maybe I'll add music, or just cut out some of the conversation. You have the very first and only time machine in the world that really works. I'm the first guy in the whole universe to make the first movie about it, and here we are getting into all this technical crap. Give me a few minutes to think about it. What if I decide now to sabotage the experiment?

That's ok. If you succeed in going through with it, say you yell that the blue one broke, even though the orange one was the one that broke, that doesn't prove anything. We'll just have to repeat the experiment.

OK, I see. We have to stick to the protocol of throwing the coin and saying the actual outcome at the designated hour. Otherwise, we can't confirm that the future detector is detecting the actual future. Wait, No! That can't be! We'll hear the "future" detector and all we have to do is to say something that isn't what we heard. And that will prove that the future detector got it wrong.

Let's see. Instead of talking so much let's just start an experiment. I must say that I also thought like you. Here goes.

"The time is now 11 o'clock. hey! what do you think you're doing? Stop that!!"

OK, now we take the coin. Where did that hammer come from. Hey. Stop. Stop! Breaking the time radio won't help us in any way. We have the plans. Everybody knows how to make it. They'll just try it again and again, and prove that... no! stop! please!
-- pashute, Nov 21 2023

This would be a lot easier to follow if you had some quotes around who was talking. At first I thought you were responding to some sort of weird email.
-- RayfordSteele, Nov 21 2023


//There's no way to tamper with that recording// hold my glass of champagne...
-- pocmloc, Nov 21 2023


tl;dr: A man murders his friend as a way to interrupt an experiment?

Is the killer trying to defend Free Will?

If he is, then there's probably a less violent way to do that, using phenomenology.

However, I have not yet been able to sell movie rights to that version.
-- pertinax, Nov 21 2023


How would we know? Crime, evidence, investigators, investigation, data, all gone into alternate non-reality. It’s not a loop; it’s a truncated branch.
-- minoradjustments, Nov 23 2023



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