Comment by renewiltord
5 years ago
We used to joke about this as friends. There were definitely times in our lives where we'd be willing to die for a cause. And while now-me isn't really all that willing to do so, 20-28-year-old-me was absolutely willing to die for the cause of world subjugation through exponential time-travel duplication.
i.e. I'd invent a time machine, wait a month, then travel back a month minus an hour, have both copies wait a month and then travel back to meet the other copies waiting, exponentially duplicating ourselves 64 times till we have an army capable of taking over the world through sheer numbers.
Besides any of the details (which you can fix and which this column is too small to contain the fixes for), there's the problem of who forms the front-line of the army. As it so happens, though, since these are all Mes, I can apply renormalized rationality, and we will all conclude the same thing: all of us has to be willing to die, so I have to be willing to die before I start, which I'm willing to do. The 'copies' need not preserve the 'original', we are fundamentally identical, and I'm willing to die for this cause. So all is well.
So all you need is to feel motivated to the degree that you would be willing to die to get the text in this text-box to center align.
> The 'copies' need not preserve the 'original', we are fundamentally identical…
They're not just identical, they're literally the same person at different points in their personal timeline. However, there would be a significant difference in life experience between the earliest and latest generations. The eldest has re-lived that month 64 times over and thus has aged more than five years since the process started; the youngest has only lived through that time once. They all share a common history up to the first time-travel event, but after that their experiences and personalities will start to diverge. By the end of the process they may not be of one mind regarding methods, or maybe even goals.
Indeed, and balanced by the fact that the younger ones are more numerous by far and able to simply overrule the older ones by force. Of course, all of us know this and we know that all of us know this, which makes for an entertaining thought experiment.
After all, present day me would be trying to stop the other ones from getting to their goals, but they would figure that out pretty fast. And by generation 32 I am four billion strong and a hive army larger than any the world has seen before. I can delete the few oldest members while reproducing at this rate and retaining the freshest Me as a never-aging legion of united hegemony.
But I know that divergence can occur, so I may intentionally commit suicide as I perceive I am drifting from my original goals: i.e. if I'm 90% future hegemon, 10% doubtful, I can kill myself before I drift farther away from future hegemon, knowing that continuing life means lack of hegemony. Since the most youthful of me are the more numerous and closest to future hegemon thinking, they will proceed with the plan.
That, entertainingly, opens up the fun thought of what goals and motivations are and if it is anywhere near an exercise of free will to lock your future abilities into the desires you have of today.
> … the younger ones are more numerous by far and able to simply overrule the older ones by force.
By my calculations, after 64 iterations those with under 24 months' time travel experience make up less than 2.2% of the total, and likewise for those with 40+ months experience. Roughly 55% have traveled back between 29 and 34 times (inclusive). The distribution is symmetric and follows Pascal's Triangle:
where for example the "1 2 1" line represents one member who has not yet traveled, two who have traveled once (but not at the same time), and another who has traveled twice. To extend the pattern take the last row, add a 0 at the beginning to shift everyone's age by one month, and then add the result to the previous row to represent traveling back in time and joining the prior group.
> I can delete the few oldest members…
Not without creating a paradox. If the oldest members don't travel back then the younger ones don't exist. You could leave the older ones out of the later groups, though.
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