Assume that the future can change based on your actions, so any historical information that you bring along with you from the intervening 25 years may quickly drift out of the new realities history.
Edit: also assume that you can be given a healthy 21-year-old body if you want or take your previous self’s place.
Further, identification will be provided for you if you were not born at that time.
An entire offline copy of Wikipedia up to Jan 1 2024 on a tablet. Having all the world events up to that date available to consult at my fingertips, I could use it in so many ways.
Don’t forget a charger, otherwise you’ll be screwed for awhile
I come with scientific evidence of the impeding doom that will be brought by climate change and urge the world’s powers to reduce greenhouse gas emissions while there is still time! Surely everybody will listen to my proofs and act to protect the world!
Sure, Mr. Gore.
A healthy 21 body and 1999? Fuck taking over the world, and I don’t need your stinking backpack, just tell me where to get that ticket and where to show up, I’m not going to miss this! I’m taking a cyanide pill though when 2020 rolls around; I’m not doing this shit again.
So prevent it from happening!
One of the reasons why the coronavirus vaccine was created so quickly was that the work was already 90% done.
If you orchestrated things that you would be a billionaire by the 2010s, you could purchase the company that designed the vaccine and make sure that they are appropriately funded so that the vaccine for coronavirus would already exist at the time the pandemic struck.
Get every flagship CPU and GPU from 2000 to today that I can get my hands on. Also as much open source code as I can get hold of. And especially AI stuff - there’s several fully open source models, so bring those, and as much technical writings on them as possible.
Speaking of which, download every science paper published since 2000 that I can get hold of, in every possible field.
Get as much info on the 2000 election as possible, to hand to Al Gore, see if he can win that election with a solid unassailable margin.
Research stocks, lottery, and everything else I can to get fast money within the shortest possible period of time after I get there, so I can get super rich before the butterfly effect makes predictions impossible, I need billions in seed money and I need it fast.
Then use that money to start a private research group, and hand them all the scientific papers I brought. Get those experts to work studying all this knowledge and figure out what can be turned into practical technology. Turn some of this into profit-making devices to fund continued development, but release as much as possible for free.
Essentially, deluge the world in as much new technology as possible, mostly free and open source, holding back only as much as necessary in order to fund continued research.
And oh jeez the pharmaceutical industry. Release for free every drug made since 2000, so the pharmaceutical industry can’t get their patents in them.
Big list of stuff there, but if I pulled off even half of it, the world would probably be a much better place in 25 years than in my original timeline.
It’s a really smart way. Very interesting, and I agree. It would probably be the best course of action.
I only wonder how quick the butterfly effect would have effects on your “future” documents.
For example, helping Al Gore win could drastically change the imminent future.
That’s why most of the stuff is technical or scientific information for the researchers; things that aren’t subject to change, just technical info. The money stuff I would hope to manage in less than 6 months from my arrival, because even in that short time I’d expect a lot to change by the end of it.
It’d just be a question of getting that initial funding off the ground with which to set up my research institution. After that, the few things I don’t release for free should cover expenses.
Sidenote since I didn’t address it in the original reply, taking over the world is impractical even with future knowledge, but as the person in charge of this outfit that would quickly be the world’s most advanced research tank, I’d probably have a lot of influence, which is the best anyone can practically hope for, I imagine. A lot more than the last 25 years of advancement would be needed to actually take over I figure.
Not a bottle of Vodka and Champagne, I mixed both of those to excess the last time around - never again
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A computer with lists of winning lottery numbers, stock prices by day of all major companies, archived copies of webpages or, preferably, scanned in newspaper articles of all world events from 1999 until now, and lists of every politician and individual with net worths over $300 million.
Also patents for LCD screens, the microchips in use in the 10’s and now, the efficient solar panels China cranks out if I can get a hold of that information, modern efficient wind turbines, etc. Also important scientific papers written between then and now, especially for Ozempic and Wegovy.
Also, this might be the one practical use for dumb shit like Chat GPT and its ilk, so we’re bringing along a couple of GPUs and copies of each major open source AI I can scramble up.
I use this information to:
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Hopefully prevent 9/11
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Become filthy fucking rich
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Infiltrate the elite and start bumping off motherfuckers one by one Count of Monte Cristo style
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Distribute my ill gotten gains to the masses and use the rest to stop climate collapse
#EatTheRich
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Information is power. A simple smartphone loaded with major historical decisions, sports results is enough to make you a billionaire. Take some tech textbooks to stay ahead of the game, maybe some newly developed medicine.
Given that the AIDS epidemic was still in full swing at the time, just being able to teach medicine makers how to make pRep would make you a billionaire just from the licensing fees.
What’s that? Profilactic?
You can just take back the experimental vaccine and save some people.
Prep is an anti-hiv pill.
If you engage in practices likely to expose you to HIV you should use prep.
If you have pRep in your system and you are exposed to HIV there is a high likelihood that the pRep will destroy the HIV and prevent the infection from ever taking hold.
Of course, it won’t do anything to protect you from the other potential negative consequences of risky behaviors that would expose you to HIV, but considering that it helps protect you from one of the worst potential outcomes it’s essentially a godsend.
I’ve got no motivation to take over the world, nor am I sure it’s really possible in a life time. I don’t really have a non-boring answer to this hypothetical.
If the ticket is available anyway I’d happily take it, I’m single at the moment with no dependents and being younger and healthier would be huge. There are lots of ways to make money with the knowledge of future history, even if it’ll change when you start impacting it, and any one of them could make me wealthy enough to never have to work again in my life and do so wherever I please.
I’ve never really understood the need of the rich to continually amass wealth or how they spend it.
Do the whole Back to the Future thing and take back a list of lottery winnings, stock picks, etc. Just keep slyly moving things around at the proper times and you’d have no trouble becoming the next Bezos.
Reflecting on my own actions and the folks I met on the way, taking a better attitude would help a lot. I was young and had good conversations with different types of people but did nothing with that for close to another 15 years.
We had much of the information then, IMO. And I remember talking with much older folks who were willing to listen to teens/young adults about a variety of topics. I just wasn’t willing to say anything. Even to my peers.
I would take a better attitude.
Greys. Sports. Almanac.
All the FLOSS software i could put my hands on (with source code), a couple awesome smartphones, wikipedia dump, sports almanac, and a stable-diffusion rig.
I’m curious how stable diffusion plays into taking over the world.
I don’t know about stable diffusion but I know deep fakes would be handy. Being able to release videos to the public while retaining my privacy would be invaluable.
And if the CIA or the KGB decided to assassinate my alter ego they would have a hell of a time even finding the fucker and if they did find somebody that looked just like them and executed them that wouldn’t have killed me.
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Probably a backpack full of smart phones, go sell them and retire.
Then cry that it’ll be a long time until I can use USB C again.
That’s a good idea but I wonder if anyone would buy them? Obviously the technology inside of it would be a quantum leap for any tech company that could get their hands on it. AT&t or ma Bell or Motorola would all easily fall over themselves to hand you several million dollars for it just so that they could have their top researchers reverse analyze the equipment.
The downside to that issue though is that it would be very difficult to get in contact with the right people to sell these devices at the right price.
That kind of technology is hard to get any value from. Nothing in modern phones is innovative, and most of it would be an obvious evolutionary step to any specialist in their field.
Mostly, though, the phones would be useless. Cellular networks were in their infacy, and none of the standards or technology existed to charge them. Reverse engineering anything in them would be hugely expensive, for little return.
Smart phones would be interesting, but far less interesting than the existance of a person who has access to future technology. I think op would dissappear into a government facility not long after trying to pawn their goods.
