I think the discussion that made time loops my brand was entirely confined to Twitter, so since this website has gone all in on time loops of late, here, have the story:
Several years ago, I suggested to my wife that we have an agreement that if either one of us ever came to the other and said that we were in a time loop, we just accept that it’s real and get on with things, thereby eliminating the frustration of the looping partner having to convince the other one every day.
She REFUSED. Because “time loops aren’t real.”
Well, we had this debate on and off for several years, and finally, she got tired of me bringing it up and agreed. So now we have a deal: We’ll believe each other, but if I ever do it as a joke, the deal’s off.
It turns out that the reason that my wife has been refusing to make this agreement is less that time loops aren’t real, and more that she’s concerned I would come to her one day, claim to be in a time loop, and then the next day declare the time loop had finally broken. And since that is, of course, exactly what it would look like to her if I really was in a time loop, she’d have no way of proving it.
I explained to her that she’s completely right, that would be incredibly funny, but I’d never do it because there’s a part of me that is legitimately nervous that I will actually end up in a time loop one day, and I need her to believe me.
This won’t help YOU, but it will help anyone who knows you and gets stuck in a time loop if you come up with a code phrase that means someone is in a time loop, commit it to memory, and NEVER tell anybody what the phrase is.
Then, if someone comes to you and tells you the code phrase (which, again, you have NEVER revealed to anyone), then you can trust that in a previous iteration of the time loop they must’ve successfully convinced you that they were in a time loop and so you gave them the pass phrase to speedrun in future iterations.
You can even just commit to giving it to anyone who says they’re in a time loop, right? But you shouldn’t believe them if they use it afterwards.
But you say “hey, here’s the passphrase; use it on the next time through the loop and that me will believe you.”
Tags:
#I recommend having more than one #multiple security levels and all that #time travel #101 Uses for Infrastructureless Computers
Brinens and Things 