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.

117 points

Simple. Im ripping up the ticket.

Since my actions have knock on effects and the ticket is 1 way that means Id have to abandon my wife and child and given how much my actions would change things, effectively unmake my daughter.

The worlds fucked, I might be able to unfuck it but theres a better chance Id just create a different flavor of shit sandwich. But to know Id never hear “Dayyydeee come pway wif meeeeee” again.

Fuck it. Let it burn.

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22 points

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16 points

If you got a camping backpack maybe you could bring them! That’s my plan.

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12 points

What would your response be if you could take your family with you?

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12 points
*

Id need seed money so Id get the lottery numbers for the biggest win shortly after I arrive, digital copies of the worlds financial newspapers for 25 years, some targeted stock info on companies like Google, Amazon, Apple, Intel, facebook and other “Big Tech” and media firms. Knowing when to buy certain stocks and when to dump them would allow me to slow grow myself into someone that could have serious levels of control over a vast number of industries with far reach.

To make an impact with that reach, Id also have a serious SHITLOAD of research papers for anything related to green energy, cancer research and any other medical research that could save a shitload of lives. With 25 years of “leaps and bounds” in tech and medicine up my sleeve Id start a green energy company that knows which competition to buy and when, what “suggestions” to offer my researchers when I stop by for a visit. Same with biotech and medical research.

Given 25 years Id be a global renewable energy mogul who has done more to cure cancer (especially in kids) aids and a host of other diseases than any other man in history, controlling significant portions of the mass media in every first world country I could get my hooks into AND with the ear of very serious people in academic circles… Id be a fucking kingmaker with such an amazing public persona that to come at me would be career suicide for anyone in politics.

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5 points

You could theoretically also download every single patent that has been filed in the last 25 years and then go back and patent them earlier.

I’m pretty sure being able to release lithium ion batteries in 2001 would make a dramatic change in the world and make you a billionaire in and of itself.

Perovskite solar cells would be a great follow-up to that, and you could revolutionize computing by knowing how to make raspberry pi’s.

Obviously as you work your way up the tech tree you need more and more money and more and more time but once you have the blueprints for the technology everything after that is money and manpower.

For instance, risc v is Open source hardware. You could quite easily develop the lithography processes needed to create the CPUs and be a thousand steps ahead of Intel in developing cutting edge top of the line computers. Combine that with releasing a modern Linux kernel with an OS to match for free along with the hardware purchase and you could completely destroy Microsoft, Intel, AMD, Apple and Google in a fell swoop.

In 1999 I think the fastest processors were at what 300 MHz, maybe 600 something like that, Risc V processors are commonly available today running at 1.85 GHz along with graphics abilities that would blow away anything that existed in 1999.

You would also need to redevelop flash storage and RAM to match, and it would probably be a good idea to roll out Wi-Fi as well, but if you had a billion dollars by the year 2000 and all of the equipment you could easily see these things being released by 2005 and not be beholden to any shareholders.

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7 points

Uh, no one said save the world. The assignment was to take it over.

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7 points

Dont want to do that either if it means abandoning my daughter. If I was going to do it I’m doing it benevolently.

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6 points

Chad

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4 points

We don’t really know what would happen to this reality. It might just flicker and vanish away. But if you had a new daughter, she might be awesome too and without the time travel, would have never existed.

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1 point

That’s cool and all, but they love this daughter now.

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2 points

That’s kinda where I’m at. My wife is probably the entire reason I’m not either dead at my own hand or crazy. And meeting her was a complete accident.

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2 points

There is a subplot in the INVINCIBLE comics that follows this very premise, and chooses the same decision you do for the exact same reason

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72 points

Gray’s Sports Almanac

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25 points

Just hope your school bully doesn’t find it.

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19 points

God forbid we end up on the 1985 timeline. Can you imagine if someone like Biff became rich and powerful?

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10 points

Looks at every billionaire… Yeah imagine that.

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7 points

Why don’t you make like a tree and get outta here.

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4 points

It’s leave, you idiot! Make like a tree and leave! You sound like a damn fool when you say it wrong.

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1 point

Oh la la!

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6 points

It only had information up until 2000 so better make good use of it for that one year

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69 points
*

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!

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40 points

Sure, Mr. Gore.

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6 points

[Monkey’s paw curls]

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15 points

We already had that evidence by the 1960s!

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4 points

I’m pretty sure someone wrote about it in the 1900s, like 1908 even

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10 points

Honestly it might be better to bring proof gore is better than bush or they he won florida

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1 point
Deleted by creator
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6 points

LOL. It would be easier to just become the richest man in the world and buy politicians

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3 points

This time will be different

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1 point
Deleted by creator
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49 points
*

Lottery numbers and a historical record of the stock market: first, win lottery then invest based on performance

Become a billionaire, then join the oligarchy and use my stock knowledge to bankrupt the rest of the oligarchy

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39 points

At some point, wouldn’t having future knowledge of the stock market either lead to you changing the stock market with the presence of your money until your predictions lose their accuracy, or else get you investigated for insider trading due to it being statistically insanely unlikely to be that lucky?

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9 points

You could just spread it across a bunch of GICs and then ETFs that were solid performers. You have your lottery money, you just need to earn enough to live the way you want. With enough invested but diversified you could make a fortune without influencing anything as a result of personal choices.

If anythjng, the initial lottery win will have the biggest impact on the timeline, assuming you lay low afterward.

Now, here’s the thing. I’d say you would be sharing those winnings with the original winner unless you prevented them from getting the ticket so find a jackpot twice as big as you need and hope a bunch of yous from alternate timeline don’t get the same idea.

That’s what would happen to me and I’d end up winning about $3.50.

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8 points
*

You could also find some of the lottery winners that absolutely hated what happened to their lives after they won and win the draw right before their ticket would have won.

That way you spare them the misery that the money brought them and you get a nice chunk of change for yourself in the process.

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3 points

Now, here’s the thing. I’d say you would be sharing those winnings with the original winner unless you prevented them from getting the ticket

The January 2nd Powerball draw was not won by anyone and paid $39M.

That’s plenty of seed money to invest in Google, Bitcoin, et al with perfect knowledge of stock trends. Even if it’s only short term knowledge due to breaking from the original timeline, you could easily grow your investment into the billions overnight.

Perhaps the most amazing stock of the year was Xcelera.com, formerly known as Scandinavia. Once a closed-end fund specializing in Scandinavian stocks, and then an operating company that owned a hotel in the Canary Islands, it made a small investment in an Internet company last year. Before it disclosed that investment, the family of Alexander Vik, the company’s chief executive, was given options to buy a million shares of stock, at a price of $3.25 each. The shares ended 1998 at $3.75, or $1.25 adjusted for two subsequent splits. They ended 1999 at $139.50, an increase of 11,060 percent. The Viks’ option position is now valued at $415 million.

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2 points

If a bunch of you’s from another timeline can come too, that opens the door to more interesting shenanigans anyway, like if they all get unique valid IDs, one of you could run for political office and get enough alternative selves to come back and vote for them to win. Or get different versions of yourself to run for all the political offices in a given area while bringing enough copies to win all their elections, and completely dominate the politics of the area by having everyone in office have the same or very similar views.

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4 points

I think as long as you’re careful you could avoid crashing the market until you are ready, and they would have to prove insider trading. I could spread my stock purchases through a bunch of shell corporations as well

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3 points

Don’t go all in to try and be the majority in a ton of things, and good luck PROVING insider information.

Besides if you make enough money, you can just make investigations go away as long as you aren’t too flashy about it. Or have a convenient distraction story waiting elsewhere to divert attention away from yourself.

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14 points

… It freaks me out that is exactly my plan that I’ve spitballed in the shower several times.

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11 points

Cia_chatbot knows.

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6 points
*

Bear in mind that logically, the longer time goes on and the more you interfere, things will diverge. You might only be able to win the lottery a handful of times before the butterfly effect starts giving you numbers which don’t match your predictions from the future. I figure the same thing happens with investments. If someone buys a tonne of shares using billions, the history of the stockmarket will change and over time be unreliable outside of certain events. Might be wise to buy up aquire certain talent though.

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1 point

make your billions by buying lots of small, but super profitable investments.

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5 points

Yeah, just buy Apple, Amazon, Google and Facebook when it comes out and you’re all set.

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6 points

Also, start generating Bitcoin in late 2009 and sell it all on Nov 10, 2021.

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6 points

Sell it when it’s in the 10,000 range the first time, circa 2015, then buy back when it drops to 400 in late 2016 and then hold

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3 points

Just buy Apple and Microsoft. You’ll be fine.

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32 points

All of Wikipedia on a thumb drive

List of winning power ball numbers for the past 2 decades.

$20 cash to buy bitcoin

That’s enough. More than enough money to never work again and info to help stop 9/11, etc…

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16 points

$20 cash to buy bitcoin

Bring a 2023 model computer back with you and you could just mine all the bitcoin yourself.

Hell, you could even temporally-plagiarize Satoshi Nakamoto and invent it yourself.

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20 points

This is a great idea but it requires effort and if I were to mine 10billion bitcoin very early, that may change the future of bitcoin such that it never hits 30k+ value per. It seems safer to simply buy 1000 of them at a $0.10 to resale at 10k+.

My plan is minimal effort, minimal impact to anyone that isn’t me, and to get all the money I could ever need.

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5 points

But on the other hand we could maybe stop NFTs from existing if Bitcoin never gets popular

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7 points

Your smartphone probably has a comparable amount of processing power to some of the earlier mining farms. May as well just mine the bitcoin

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2 points

Win the Powerball more than once and someone will be doing an investigation.

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2 points

Oh yeah, definitely. I’d take all the numbers because I’d assume at some point history would change such that the record wouldn’t be perfect forever.

I’d win one that is over a billion. Then quit.

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