On Sun, 24 Feb 2008 10:47:16 -0800 (PST), Luke Campbell
<lwcamp@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
>On Feb 23, 8:54 pm, Wildepad <noreplies> wrote:
>> They first would go through a series of mental hospitals and/or jails.
>>
>> Even if they are eventually believed, they wouldn't be going home,
>> which is the same as a death sentence to many.
>>
>> In the meantime, someone is going to be extracting as much information
>> as possible from him and/or his proofs, and that creates an imbalance
>> in world power, and imbalances lead to war, and the principle behind
>> the exercise is to prevent war.
>>
>> So carrying proofs leads to the agent being lost as well as causing
>> the thing you're working so hard to stop.
>
>Nope, sorry, don't buy it.
>
>"Hey, folks. I am a representative of a super-high-tech time
>traveling civilization. I stopped by to chat because of blah blah
>blah. Here are a few colored glass beads ... err ... high tech
>widgets amazingly far beyond your technology level."
>
>At which point dollar signs start appearing in people's eyes as they
>realize they can get rich by trading with the time travelers, and no
>one wants to piss them off by imprisoning their emissary because you
>never know what they might be capable of.
In some cities, you don't have to go very far before meeting someone
making those claims. Mostly they're ignored.
Those few who do get attention find themselves in a padded room. It
happens, somewhere in the US, nearly every day. Check your local state
hospital and see how many time travelers they have. (The nut hut in
Norfolk, NE once had three at the same time.)
>So the time traveler spends a few weeks hobnobbing with important
>officials and heads of high tech companies, does a few interviews with
>high profile media warning people of their impending doom (and giving
>a list of things that should be done to prevent that doom to the
>media), and then gets back in his tardis and vanishes.
Giving, or even the impression that you're giving, high future tech to
anyone is going to make those who don't get it, or are given the
information and don't have the resources to exploit it, quite angry as
well as fearful. A logical course of action in such an event is to
attack before the givees have time to integrate the tech into their
weapons systems.
Having a list of things that could be done to prevent an upcoming
conflict would be great, but it's a complete nonstarter -- if they had
such a body of knowledge, they wouldn't have taken the approach in the
op. It would be far easier for them to pinpoint a crucial group and
modify their actions directly, either through subtle aid or by
introduction of a virus.
The premise in the op was that travel had to be initiated from the
originating universe (agent had to wait for transit). Considering the
amount of power it would probably take, that is only reasonable.
Reinforcing that is the fact that a link of some kind would have to be
maintained between the universes, so that every time one universe
split, the other would also split (if universe A, which sent an agent
to universe B, didn't become universes A1 and A2 when B became B1 and
B2, then there would be more agents than homeworlds, or vice versa).
While I am a fan of finesse rather than brute power, it seems more
than likely that the amount of energy required to maintain such a link
would be huge.
>In the meantime, this conspiracy "lock 'em away" idea for anything
>that seems out of the ordinary is pure nonsense, and makes me lose all
>suspension of disbelief.
Then you don't believe in the real world, because things like that
happen every day.
How about this idea -- a woman has to be hospitalized. Because she
can't care for her children while she's sick, they're taken away, put
into a detention facility, and labeled as troublemakers. Does that
break your suspension of disbelief? Sorry kiddo, but you have to open
your eyes. A recent occurrence involving a British tourist hit the
news, but it took a reporter less than a day to find 87 similar
incidents in that city.
How about this idea -- a woman is gangraped, and she's given a stiffer
prison sentence and more lashes than the men who raped her. Does that
break your suspension of disbelief? Sorry to say, it's common. A
particularly nasty example has been in the news lately, but there are
hundreds of such incidents every year.
etc. etc. etc.
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