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Comment by jckt | Hacker News Reader

Slightly off-topic, but normally HN is scientifically sound when physics or any other science is mentioned. But when it comes to time-travel/FTL, I can't help but feel that half the posters here seem to almost want it to be true. Or at least seem to think that all of our physics knowledge is worthless when it comes to FTL et al. Or is everyone just having a laugh?

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The piece is more about the publishing process and less about time travel. See a direct quote from the author:

"First of all, the topic itself is a controversial one, as made clear immediately by the work's title "Searching the Internet for Evidence of Time Travelers" (Nemiroff & Wilson 2014). It is perhaps accepted common knowledge that people who believe in time travelers are crackpots and their ramblings are not to be believed. For the record, I do not believe that traveling back in time is possible, nor do I believe that time travelers are among us."

Yeah, that's why I said that my comment was slightly off topic. It was more concerned with the tech crowd (like HN I guess) treating the possibility of FTL/time travel with such seriousness, which is somewhat out of character for a crowd that is normally pretty well-educated about science.

You can implement "time travel" in the past by running a simulation of a portion of our universe and run it backward and then insert an avatar of yourself in the simulation and freak people out.

That opens up a discussion about the feasibility of such a simulation, but as far as time travel goes it wouldn't break any physical law (And yes, with that setting, you'd have plenty of other ways to freak people out other prescience)

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