
John Titor - dhruvkar
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Titor
======
rossdavidh
So, in the late 90's I went to a goth convention in New Orleans, where my wife
met a time traveller named "Butterfly". I saw her talking to a weird looking
guy, and swung by to see if she needed help, but she had that "oh this is
going to be a great story" look on her face and kind of shooed me away. Later,
she told me he had claimed to be from the future. He made some predictions:

\- there would be a war in Iraq, but it was not actually as big as the one
that happened later

\- after the Big War, there was a disease that forced everyone to live
belowground

\- he had a computer chip in his hand

\- he had a son in the future named Gandalf

This all seemed pretty wacky, if harmless. My wife enjoyed relating it all in
our Yahoo Groups email group. Then, in the next few years:

\- the implanting of computer chips in pets became commonplace

\- we started hearing about new viruses every few years

\- we went to war in Iraq

\- Lord of the Rings movies came out, which made it more likely someone would
name their son "Gandalf"

So, I asked my wife, "what else did that guy say would happen?"

She said, "I don't remember it all now, but I put a really detailed list in my
email to the Yahoo Group."

So, we look in the Yahoo Groups history, and...that month was missing from the
history.

Oh, well. If he had said anything more significant than a global pandemic and
WW3, I assume I would have remembered it.

~~~
eindiran
Weirdly, I met someone in Ojai, California in 2010 who also claimed to be a
time traveler named "Butterfly". He was a weird looking dude who also claimed
he had a computer chip in his hand. I only spoke with him for a moment but it
was a very surreal conversation.

~~~
tetris11
What did he say, and did he look young?

~~~
eindiran
He needed a ride from Libbey Bowl (a big park in the center of town) to some
other location in Ojai (which is a small enough town that giving a stranger a
ride isn't completely weird). My buddy and I drove him to the place he wanted
to be dropped off while he talked for a bit about being a time traveler. He
was wearing a ton of different bracelets, and when we commented on that he
gave us each a bracelet (in the same style as those yellow Livestrong
bracelets people wore in the 2000s). Both bracelets were identical black
bracelets with red symbols, that looked kind of like they were off of Led
Zepplin IV.

I'm not sure how old he was. I've never been very good at estimating people's
ages, but I'd guess maybe in his 30s or 40s?

------
echohack5
Steins;Gate, a Japanese light novel and anime, includes John Titor in the
story in an awesome way. It also includes some bit of hacker culture that I
think is more real than the typical American movie "hacker". I recommend it!

Edit: As pointed out in the comments, this was originally a visual novel!
There are many ways to enjoy this story.

~~~
dilippkumar
Strong agree.

Stiens;Gate is the only time traveller story that I know that establishes
rules for time travel early on and actually sticks to these rules till the
end.

~~~
time0ut
You might enjoy the movie Primer [0].

[0]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x_HHnXeMWT0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x_HHnXeMWT0)

~~~
as1mov
Just a heads up, the video is blocked everywhere except USA/Canada. Here's a
link to the trailer if anyone is interested[0]. It's a fantastic movie by the
way, a definite watch if you're interested in hard sci-fi.

[0] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-vD-
yj9o664&](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-vD-yj9o664&)

~~~
time0ut
Ah, that is too bad about it being blocked. It is an incredible movie. I've
watched it a few times over the years and always find something new.

------
tzs
What time travel might look like from the other side [1].

I remember a great short story I read about the first time traveler. They
decided the first visit would be the Shakespeare. Shakespeare has no problems
accepting that he's being visited by a time traveler, and asks what gifts the
traveler brings.

The traveler is a bit confused, so Shakespeare explains that the early ones
all bring gifts. The traveler has brought some gives, including a nicely bound
volume of Shakespeare's plays. Shakespeare looks at it, comments on the nice
binding, says something about maybe he can sell it, then decides probably not,
and tosses it on a pile of other such volumes brought by other time travelers.

The first time traveler is now getting pretty confused, and says something
like "but I'm the first time traveler!", to which Shakespeare answer "but not
the first to arrive". This is something often overlooked in time travel
stories--just because you are the first to leave for a given destination
doesn't mean you are the first to arrive.

Shakespeare mentions that he's frequently bothered by time travelers, but at
least doesn't have it as bad as Jesus--that guy can barely do anything without
a time traveler showing up. Shakespeare explains he knows because a time
traveler thought it would be interesting to take Shakespeare to meet Jesus
once. All the great figures of history are frequently visited.

Somewhere in there Shakespeare provides some drink and tries to calm down the
inexperienced time traveler, who is freaking out over all this. Shakespeare is
an old hand at dealing with newbie time traveler freak outs.

Then a bunch of other time travelers arrive, but not to see Shakespeare. They
are reporters from the first time traveler's future, there to interview him
about his historic visit to Shakespeare.

[1]
[https://www.tor.com/2011/08/31/wikihistory/](https://www.tor.com/2011/08/31/wikihistory/)

~~~
UncleSlacky
Reminds me of a story where it turned out that the entire Passover crowd where
Pontius Pilate asks who should be pardoned are time travellers that have been
told to do what everyone else does.

~~~
scarejunba
My god. Google is amazing
[https://i.imgur.com/XRknZWf.png](https://i.imgur.com/XRknZWf.png)

"Let's Go to Golgotha!"

~~~
UncleSlacky
That's the one!

------
Mtinie
In April of 2004 I attended a multimedia performance at George Mason
University called "Time Traveler Zero Zero - A Story of John Titor." It was
directed by Kirby Malone and is still one of the more interesting theatrical
productions I've ever seen.

Was anyone else here at the same showing?

Here's a review of the performance if anyone is curious --
[http://www.timetravelreviews.com/theatre/traveler00.html](http://www.timetravelreviews.com/theatre/traveler00.html)

------
Razengan
Time travel is like UFOs:

If there are aliens out there, why haven’t we met some by now?

If there are time travellers, why isn’t anybody making accurate predictions?

If rich people exist, why hasn’t one given me a million dollars?

~~~
rafaelvasco
Several people say the have met some. But it's like, it isn't true until it
happens to you personally.

------
jeffadotio
Anyone who ignores an invitation to have a drink with Stephen Hawking[1] has
nothing to say that is worth hearing.

1\. [https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/stephen-hawking-
time-t...](https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/stephen-hawking-time-
travelers-party)

~~~
JorgeGT
Time travel will be highly controlled by the authorities, probably that party
was surrounded by future cops looking out for rogue amateurs.

~~~
Bombthecat
More like that you need tons of resources, skills and knowledge to do it.
Nothing a private person could do.

~~~
benibela
But if the time machine itself travels through time, an unbounded number of
people could use the same machine at the same time

------
peter_d_sherman
Related:

IBM 5110 PALM (Put All Logic in Microcode) CPU from 1978

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14483823](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14483823)

(The HN discussion in this article is great, in my opinion...)

~~~
neonate
Sorry if I'm missing the obvious but how is that related?

~~~
codezero
John Titor claimed to come back in time looking for a part for this type of
computer system (If I am remembering correctly)

------
chrsw
How does time travel work with the Earth spinning, the Earth orbiting the Sun
and Solar System orbiting around the center of the Milky Way? By the time you
finish reading this comment you've moved thousands of miles with respect to
the galactic center. Or am I missing something?

~~~
themodelplumber
I like this question. It broke my mental model of time travel because I like
to think of time as tied to space, maybe. If you want to rewind a thread of
time, you can't really stay in the same place and poof, like Christopher Reeve
laying in bed. Because the old hotel isn't in that place anymore, at some
physical-historical-galactic-geography level.

Maybe it's not meant to work that way though; maybe you can uncouple time and
meditate, and your other-conscious travels but in some other way than normal
physical travel with forward time, or something like that.

~~~
dorkwood
I think that's a cool idea for a story. It also addresses the question of "if
time travel were possible, wouldn't we have seen some time travellers by now?"
Perhaps somewhere out there in space is a graveyard of time travellers who
ended up landing in the empty void that the Earth once occupied in the time
they were travelling to.

------
starpilot
Patent application, since abandoned, of his time machine:
[https://patents.google.com/patent/US20060073976A1/en](https://patents.google.com/patent/US20060073976A1/en)

> A method for employing sinusoidal oscillations of electrical bombardment on
> the surface of one Kerr type singularity in close proximity to a second Kerr
> type singularity in such a method to take advantage of the Lense-Thirring
> effect, to simulate the effect of two point masses on nearly radial orbits
> in a 2+1 dimensional anti-de Sitter space resulting in creation of circular
> timelike geodesics conforming to the van Stockum under the Van Den Broeck
> modification of the Alcubierre geometry (Van Den Broeck 1999) permitting
> topology change from one spacelike boundary to the other in accordance with
> Geroch's theorem (Geroch 1967) which results in a method for the formation
> of G{umlaut over ( )}odel-type geodesically complete spacetime envelopes
> complete with closed timelike curves.

~~~
haolez
I'm not a physicist and this looks legit to me. High quality mumbo jumbo!

~~~
jerf
As I recall, he did fairly well overall. But there were still some errors in
the presentation. He provided several pictures, in 1990s-grade postage-stamp
quality, which could cover over a lot of issues. One of them was of him
shooting a "laser pointer" in his time machine powered by a black hole, and
the beam being visibly quite bent. The low resolution covered over the fact
this was kinda obviously one of those strings of little lights wrapped in a
tube with enough plausibility to believe if you want to. But if the laser
pointer's light is getting "bent" like that, _all_ of the light ought to be
getting bent, not just the laser pointer, and you ought to be getting
_immense_ visual artifacts due to the fact that your picture is itself being
taken with light that is bending like crazy (see stuff like [1]). Not to
mention the implied gravity field at such bending rates is beyond anything
atomic matter can take. But even if we handwave that away, there really isn't
a way to handwave away the fact that if the light from your laser pointer is
getting bent, _all_ the light ought to be getting bent, to massive effect on
the resulting picture.

Still. Valiant effort. Better than most I've seen. Most of them are basically
"Hi, I'm from $INTEGER years in the future and it turns out that you all are
exactly right about everything and all the fashionable social concerns of your
day/culture/sub-culture are in fact exactly correct! In the future, everybody
who didn't (eat vegan / believe in BitCoin / get concerned about the landfill
crisis / accept pholostigon theory) is dead because (they where all executed
by super ethical governments for the crime of eating animals / died in
pauper's prisons / literally buried in garbage / of the great Pholostigon War
of 1773)! Ask me anything about how right your current social fashions are!"
Not that Titor didn't more than dabble in that himself, though.

[1]:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4LHYUt9hGQc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4LHYUt9hGQc)

------
29athrowaway
John Titor made poor predictions. He also said that his timeline could have
been different than this one, as a way to justify prediction failures.

He said an organizarion pays him a paycheck then said he lives in a society
based on bartering. There are contradictions in his posts.

The Mad Cow disease epidemic never happened, neither did the civil war he
predicted, or any if the other stuff.

He also talked about using ancient IBM computers to fix some software bug from
the future. Why on earth would you use that rather than a more power
efficient/powerful computer?

~~~
3fe9a03ccd14ca5
The bug was y2036, which he said we knew was a problem even then. It is
definitely still a problem.

~~~
n0rbwah
How that problem can be solved by an IBM 5100, a computer that has never ran
any flavor of unix is a mystery though.

I guess we'll find out when we have to send someone into the past to retrieve
one so we can fix the bug.

~~~
29athrowaway
You may not be able to open the files to be fixed in such ancient computer.

~~~
Nextgrid
My understanding is the opposite.

To me it seems that in the future they for some reason need to access files
that can only be opened on that computer.

If time travel is indeed possible and relatively common, it might be a better
business decision to just send someone back in time to fetch a working version
of that computer than try to recreate one from archived documentation (if any
of it survived).

~~~
29athrowaway
If there is something special about that computer it can surely just be
executed in an emulator running on any future computer that is more powerful
and uses less power, like a Raspberry Pi or its future equivalent.

~~~
Nextgrid
This would still require having the original documentation on how the computer
operated. Not to mention, some software (notably some retro console games)
rely on quirks or flaws in the silicon itself, and don't actually run on a
"perfect" emulator.

If time travel is common and either of these issues is raised then sending
someone back to bring the real computer might be the easiest option.

------
motohagiography
My favorite article from a "traveller,"

[https://www.ft.com/content/760546b6-c903-11e6-9043-7e34c07b4...](https://www.ft.com/content/760546b6-c903-11e6-9043-7e34c07b46ef)

(submitted link as post as well, since it's really that interesting)

~~~
ColanR
Paywalled.

~~~
motohagiography
Odd, I am not signed in or subscribed to it.

~~~
andai
Also paywalled for me (maybe because I'm in the EU?)

~~~
SL61
It's paywalled for me too, in the US. If you paste the URL into Google and
follow the link from there, the article will come up.

~~~
andai
So _that 's_ how that works :) Thank you.

------
bArray
I think the US government missed a trick by not making the logo for the United
States Space Force [1] the logo of John Titor's military insignia [2].
(Although I do appreciate the Star Trek looking seal nevertheless.)

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Space_Force](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Space_Force)

[2]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Titor](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Titor)

------
Angeo34
I really enjoyed Steins;gate zero just saying

~~~
dilippkumar
+1

------
benibela
4chan has investigated that and discovered that John Titor is actually Donald
Trump who choose the alias after his uncle John Trump - an MIT professor - who
obtained the blueprints of the time machine from Nikola Tesla: [https://i.kym-
cdn.com/photos/images/original/001/214/676/8aa...](https://i.kym-
cdn.com/photos/images/original/001/214/676/8aa.jpg)

------
mmhsieh
I always wondered why Doraemon didn't just bring Nobita some lotto numbers.

------
Pigo
I wouldn't just normally post to a youtube video, but this seems rather
relevant [https://youtu.be/YJYFlI4ytbU](https://youtu.be/YJYFlI4ytbU)

------
hyfgfh
El psy congroo!

------
airesearcher
Can someone explain why this is trending on Hacker News today?

~~~
Seirdy
It's the choice of Steins Gate. The spread of the truth is a necessary measure
to bring the actions of The Organization and SERN to light. El Psy Kongroo.

~~~
Seirdy
In case you didn't get it:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22558727](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22558727)

------
mekster
The way he didn't mention crypto currency that must have effected their future
economy already sounds sketchy. See they still using paper bills everywhere?

------
euske
To believe that time travel is possible is to believe that the universe keeps
all the snapshots of every moment in some backup storage. From the economic
viewpoint, it is very unwise. I don't think the universe is that dumb.

~~~
mekster
What do you know about the universe's economic viewpoint?

------
daruton
Steins;Gate

------
haunter
People should play the game first. Significantly better than the anime.

~~~
smichel17
I enjoyed the anime more, but I also watched it first, and I think that
tarnished my experience. If I were going back I'd definitely do it in the
reverse order.

------
notlukesky
A Netflix show beckons....

~~~
qubyte
If you count Steins;Gate (anime available on Netflix in the UK, in which Titor
is important), there already is one.

~~~
stordoff
> A Hollywood live-action adaption of the game Steins;Gate is in the works.

> Anime News Network reports the big reveal came during the live concert
> celebrating the 10th anniversary of the series. During the Science ADV Live
> S;G 1010th Anniversary, a teaser video was played revealing a live-action
> recreation of the game is being made by Hollywood for television.

[https://uk.ign.com/articles/steinsgate-live-action-show-
adap...](https://uk.ign.com/articles/steinsgate-live-action-show-adaptation-
announced)

------
swalsh
How is this so high on the news feed? This is old, and not relevant.

~~~
Vesuvium
It's still funny!

~~~
jvagner
I was unfamiliar.. but this made me laugh:

"Subsequent closer examination of Titor's assertions provoked widespread
skepticism."

Ahh, it was the _closer_ examination that lead to the skepticism.

~~~
6510
“My “time” machine is a stationary mass, temporal displacement unit
manufactured by General Electric. The unit is powered by two, top-spin, dual-
positive singularities that produce a standard, off-set Tipler sinusoid.”

Stuff of legends

------
3fe9a03ccd14ca5
I think about JT from time to time (no pun intended). It looks like things are
starting to go the way he described, but about a 10 year time shift
difference. Thankfully no CJD outbreaks but with its latency who knows.

~~~
ColanR
I've often wondered if the mass shootings count as the violence he predicted
in the US.

~~~
3fe9a03ccd14ca5
Waco like events that get worse, according to him. He said the “civil war”
starts in 2005, which would be 2015.

The occupation of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge was Jan 2nd 2016
(starting slightly earlier in 2015). If there’s an event that might closely
mark a start of a civil war that ramps up, that’s high on my list.

We’ll see.

