Re: How would you save mankind (was Re: What would make you believe?)

Jens Egon Nyborg wrote:
> I agree that there will be an element of hit and miss in the first
> tries, though. And that they will at first act on insufficient
knowledge.

If they can't stay for long in the past to research things (for whatever 
reason - paranoia, limited transit window, etc.) a better approach might 
be to pop back in time and kidnap a few people. Morally dubious, 
perhaps, but they've got a pretty important end in mind to justify that 
means. Maybe pull a "Millennium" and try snatching people who were about 
to get killed. There isn't a concern about adversely altering the future 
in this scenario but they're more likely to be grateful that way.

The kidnapped past-people could be interviewed and studied at leisure, 
giving lots of information about everyday life and helping them target 
more specific information-hunts subsequently. If the future-people can 
talk them into it the kidnapped past-people would make excellent 
time-agents themselves once they've had a little training. And once 
they're done they can "retire" to whichever timeline they feel most 
comfortable with.

If manpower is a limiting factor on this project they could even use 
cross-universe recruiting for that alone, never mind research.