
Future Posthumous Autobiography - glenscott1
https://sivers.org/abio
======
benologist
One of the interesting side effects of Microsoft buying GitHub is whatever we
leave behind might just sit there for centuries or even millennia for
historians and the curious and AI to explore. We kind of have this opportunity
to make our own time capsules and maybe in a thousand years some enthusiast is
like, wow I got this ancient project to compile!

~~~
silverdemon
Way back in the 90s, when everything was still in sepia, I thought all the
Geocities and Angelfire personal websites would be doing this exact thing.
Hanging around as a time capsule in perpetuity, accessible by future
generations as easily as the current. It turns out eternity is approximately
10 years by this measure. Maybe Github will fare better.

------
johnfactorial
I can use this.

I make prophecies. I write them down and seal them in envelopes, then I wait.
When one is proven false, I just throw it away. When it comes true, I put the
still-sealed envelope into an old shoebox.

My posthumous autobiography is going to be filled to the brim with stories of
receiving messages from beyond, writing down what the voices say, and putting
the notes in sealed envelopes inside a shoebox.

~~~
kyle-rb
How will you prove that you'd written the prophesy before the thing happened,
instead of just immediately before putting it in the shoebox?

Wouldn't it be easier to just write down things that happened already and
pretend you predicted them?

~~~
jerf
With the scheme given, it's no challenge to prove that you wrote it down.

Write down every possible winner of the 2020 Presidential election in an
envelope. Include people who are still massively long-shot candidates and not
even running right now, like Oprah Winfrey and Michelle Obama. Provide
whatever proof you like that you wrote these down today. Throw away everything
that doesn't fit in another year and a few months. Boom, you're psychic.
Especially if one of those long shots pans out!

This scheme generates the proof that you wrote it down early, unlike the
"claim prophecy after the fact".

~~~
yathern
> Provide whatever proof you like that you wrote these down today... This
> scheme generates the proof that you wrote it down early

But what proof is there? Newspaper clippings from today's news in the
envelope? That's hardly conclusive proof it was written on that day.

One solution would be to encode the prophecy into a blockchain, and reference
that in the envelope. This way there's multiple witnesses that you did
something that day at least.

~~~
GrinningFool
Mail it to yourself.. You'll get a postmark with a date/time it was processed.
Don't open the envelope once it arrives, and now you've got proof of when you
mailed it.

~~~
lkbm
I remember people suggesting this as a poor man's "copyright" on an email list
back in the day.

Others quickly pointed out that you can mail yourself an unsealed envelope and
put something in it after it arrives.

~~~
GrinningFool
Pardon me while I apply palm to forehead with middling force.

------
sfblah
Why is someone posting this garbage?

