If you had a one-way ticket to Jan 1, 1999 that departs on Jan 1, 2024, and you are allowed to bring whatever fits into a backpack with you, what would you bring to use to take over the world, and how
If you had a one-way ticket to Jan 1, 1999 that departs on Jan 1, 2024, and you are allowed to bring whatever fits into a backpack with you, what would you bring to use to take over the world, and how
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.
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.
Grays Sports Almanac
I would have no inclination to take over the world. But if I could go back to that date, I would make a million different decisions over the next few years to steer my life in a much wiser direction.
Get every flagship CPU and GPU from 2000 to today that I can get my hands on. Also as much open source code as I can get hold of. And especially AI stuff - there's several fully open source models, so bring those, and as much technical writings on them as possible.
Speaking of which, download every science paper published since 2000 that I can get hold of, in every possible field.
Get as much info on the 2000 election as possible, to hand to Al Gore, see if he can win that election with a solid unassailable margin.
Research stocks, lottery, and everything else I can to get fast money within the shortest possible period of time after I get there, so I can get super rich before the butterfly effect makes predictions impossible, I need billions in seed money and I need it fast.
Then use that money to start a private research group, and hand them all the scientific papers I brought. Get those experts to work studying all this knowledge and figure out what can be turned into practical technology. Turn some of this into profit-making devices to fund continued development, but release as much as possible for free.
Essentially, deluge the world in as much new technology as possible, mostly free and open source, holding back only as much as necessary in order to fund continued research.
And oh jeez the pharmaceutical industry. Release for free every drug made since 2000, so the pharmaceutical industry can't get their patents in them.
Big list of stuff there, but if I pulled off even half of it, the world would probably be a much better place in 25 years than in my original timeline.
I've got no motivation to take over the world, nor am I sure it's really possible in a life time. I don't really have a non-boring answer to this hypothetical.
If the ticket is available anyway I'd happily take it, I'm single at the moment with no dependents and being younger and healthier would be huge. There are lots of ways to make money with the knowledge of future history, even if it'll change when you start impacting it, and any one of them could make me wealthy enough to never have to work again in my life and do so wherever I please.
I've never really understood the need of the rich to continually amass wealth or how they spend it.
I would bring Wednesday 6th January 1999's winning lottery numbers, five books chronicling the last 25 years of British history, history of businesses, history of the tech industry between 1998 and 2023, modern military history, and the history of Blackrock. Also I would choose a healthy 21-year-old body.
The plan is... win the lottery for some immediate starting capital, make well-informed investments, effectively become the Warren Buffet of Britain and weasel my way into the world elite, befriending figures like David Cameron, Tony Blair, Jeffrey Epstein, Bill Clinton, etc. I would make timely investments into new startups like Facebook, Twitter, etc, jump on the Bitcoin, Dogecoin and Ethereum bandwagons early and make it my aim to become the richest man in the world. With that wealth I'd then buy more shares in Blackrock, Blackwater and Lockheed Martin, seemingly be at the top of my game as head of a PMC. I would assist in conflicts that maintain the status quo as best as I could.
I would also do a tonne of work with African military forces, make loads of private investments in African firms and , and beat China to the punch.
With the exception of Blackwater, I would not aim to be a majority shareholder in any of these companies. I'd keep maybe... 5 to 10 percent of shares in the really successful companies, lose a bit of money in falls to not arouse too much suspicion, but I would otherwise climb to the top of the PMC ladder and put my fingers in as many NATO pies as possible.
That's what I'd do if my aim as a time traveller was to take over the world. In actuality, I'd rather just win the lottery, diversify my investments and retire comfortably. I don't desire world domination.
A computer with lists of winning lottery numbers, stock prices by day of all major companies, archived copies of webpages or, preferably, scanned in newspaper articles of all world events from 1999 until now, and lists of every politician and individual with net worths over $300 million.
Also patents for LCD screens, the microchips in use in the 10's and now, the efficient solar panels China cranks out if I can get a hold of that information, modern efficient wind turbines, etc. Also important scientific papers written between then and now, especially for Ozempic and Wegovy.
Also, this might be the one practical use for dumb shit like Chat GPT and its ilk, so we're bringing along a couple of GPUs and copies of each major open source AI I can scramble up.
I use this information to:
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Hopefully prevent 9/11
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Become filthy fucking rich
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Infiltrate the elite and start bumping off motherfuckers one by one Count of Monte Cristo style
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Distribute my ill gotten gains to the masses and use the rest to stop climate collapse
#EatTheRich
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A Lenovo P series with deepfacelab. I would work public perception of Dubya (and Jeb) to avoid the decades of war crimes.
To take over the world? I'd take the records of every international technology and medical patent. And, a cell phone. I'd get the local news interested in my new handheld PC, find the least scrupulous tech company which reached out to me, and hatch a plan to create a trillion dollar tech empire.
A modern desktop PC full with top of the line deep learning graphics cards.
I will flood the internet with helpful comments, exploits, anything that will take down the banking grid. I will sway online and print media discourse towards progressive politics. I will take down Murdoch media and ensure that he never again makes a cent spreading his rhetoric.
I will start a consulting company using my AI models as my employees and make unspeakable amount of money, whilst ensuring that large contracting firms never take off.
I will buy up large linear strips of country, and build railroads and rail stations everywhere, whilst building free accommodation above and below the tracks to ensure that the homeless always have somewhere to sleep, and to ensure that buy-to-let landlords can never return much on their investment.
I will crash weapon trading stock markets, exploit the emails of corrupt politicians and their billionaire donors. I will wage financial war on the 1% until the world gini index reaches 0.5
My phone, laptop, charging cables, ethernet cables, tons of SSDs to use with said laptop, Kali, and a bunch of cyber-sec resources.
Having a $2000 2023 gaming/workstation laptop would be an insane amount of computing power in 1999. Being able to use modern-day exploits and discoveries in 1999 would probably allow me to gather as much intel as I needed from my targets while not being discovered. If something gets patched by a Windows XP service pack, I'll still have an endless list of exploits that work. Hell, I'd even have access to something like Spectre and Meltdown, and that's something that still must develop organically.
I assume I get ID for a person born in '78 if I choose the adult body? I was born, but very young.
Hard drives of data compatible with old computers, and a few modern laptops for good measure. Maybe some electronics equipment too in case I really need to interface with something obsolete or proprietary. Some period-appropriate cash to live on before my first "job". The 2000's won't know what hit them.
I'm not going to be able to take over the world (shit, even taking over Afghanistan proved to be too hard), but I sure as hell can be a shadowy hacker figure that steers the course of history. I'll probably avert 9/11 assuming I can get up and running fast enough, and try to steer China towards reform and detente with the West. Russia's probably intractable. I wonder if I could tip the Florida election towards Gore, in order to get global warming taken care of faster. Giving a bump to renewables research could also help things along.
Edit: So, there would be a lot of phases to this, as I gradually shift from being anonymous to a hot item. Once I reach some point at or after present day, I'll publish my archives so the world can decide for itself, and I'll leave proof early on that it's genuine, for example as hashes of data in things like newspapers that are well archived. Then I'll dismantle my cabal and retire.
Reflecting on my own actions and the folks I met on the way, taking a better attitude would help a lot. I was young and had good conversations with different types of people but did nothing with that for close to another 15 years.
We had much of the information then, IMO. And I remember talking with much older folks who were willing to listen to teens/young adults about a variety of topics. I just wasn't willing to say anything. Even to my peers.
I would take a better attitude.
All I remember from this comment section is the John Titor threads.
I would bring a laptop with a good CPU and GPU, an ASIC Bitcoin miner and 10,000 in cash in case for some reason the miner broke or didn't work.
I would bide my time at pizza delivery jobs for 10 years paying rent living on ramen and buying small amounts of gold and silver coins. As soon as the first btc client was released by Satoshi I would start mining. I would be selling things on the cheap and performing services as much as humanly possibly. Id have a small gold and silver for BTC company, selling $50 gold coins for the equivalent of $25 in BTC at the time. I would not stop until I had at least 1,000,000 Bitcoin, or January 2017, whatever came first. As soon as the BTC rush of 2017 starts, I start selling my BTC en masse at the peak. Mail order, cash, in person, whatever. Claim what I need to on taxes. Sell the rest via an exchange before it's regulated as a security and needs to be taxed.
Now I am a big time multi-billionaire and no one even knows my name besides my financial advisors and closest friends from my pizza delivery days who now work for me doing "whatever the fuck they want" work for 100k per year.
I keep investing in companies who sell the most in online communications services (zoom, Microsoft, etc), mask production, hand sanitizer, laptops, gold and silver, and whatever else I can remember. As a ride out COVID, I've increased my 5-10 billion to 20-30 billion.
Now I live a happy "do whatever the fuck I want" life at roughly the same age I am now, only now I have total freedom and power because of "20 years of hard work and foresight -- I started as a pizza delivery boy, and you can too ;).”
A few useful books about electronics, devices and new inventions and all of the electronics I can fit into my backpack.
Like the other person mentioned their family, I would say that about my friends and other relations. I don't think it's possible for me to redo my life in a way that my decade old friendships would be the same (or even better) than what they became. I don't even know if I will feel the same about my friends if I decide to relive my life as memory is a precarious thing and I can't rely on how I feel about them to last until I meet them again and live life interacting with them while trying to change the world.
I could consider a 21yo body but as a millennial I would end up overaged for the people who were important in my life to have any meaningful relation with them.
I have considered the scenario of reliving my life, correcting my mistakes and maybe making some massive changes along the way, if I could somehow guarantee keeping the things that matter to me the same.
I forgot to write what things I would do, so here are some ideas:
- Investing is an obvious one which everyone else has also mentioned.
- I would download all the open source stuff, all leaked files, maybe even scour the dark web for stuff
- Buy NeXt to hire jobs as the CEO of my tech company (also any other corporations that I could buy back then, like Google)
- I'll create a note with ideas that were killed too soon or didn't last due to tampering by big corps, and products which got enshittified and implement them when there's no competition or wait for when I have enough money to not worry about people getting in my way.
- I'll create a note with mention of all the important events (multiple notes, encrypted, to prevent someone from using that information)
- Put an offline LLM and other AI on my phone (along with very reliable chargers and replacement batteries).
- (Kind of a sub point of above, but it got big) I'll try to take a phone with replaceable batteries and sturdy design. It would be great if it could fit in that time, I'll disable the touch screen to that effect and only use a stylus, and other changes to make it seem worse or maybe take a "bad" phone from the start. I'll also claim it's an experimental product if someone asks me about it.
- A list of my favourite recipes, so that I can be a food trailblazer
- Start my own music company and invest in artists which I know will be big in the future, give them better terms than my competition and use that roster to prepare for streaming. I'll already have Jobs and Ive to design iPod and take over that period.
- With RISC-V as my chip, I'll buy one of the fabs which went under back then and use it to establish myself as a chip manufacturer and once I have built up enough lead in the fab business with knowledge gathered before going back I'll open source RISC-V as an act of benevolence according to the world (I'll discuss the future fab knowledge with the researchers I will acqui-hire with the fab, they should be able to create something in a few years with whatever knowledge I can provide, I'll just have to act as a layman with more knowledge and if I go with my age they'll think I'm a smart kid)
- I didn't mention crypto because that might change with the chip info I bring back, so I'll see if that happens again and invest early and secretly to have enough of it to have a hand in that too.
- I'll also try to keep my identity hidden so that I can live the important parts of my life again as they were, and once I have lived those I'll consider if I need to be known to the world.
- I'll prepare media organizations to fight disinformation
- I'll bring back innovations in renewables that I'll slowly release into the world.
Winning lotto numbers for years.
Do the whole Back to the Future thing and take back a list of lottery winnings, stock picks, etc. Just keep slyly moving things around at the proper times and you'd have no trouble becoming the next Bezos.
Not a bottle of Vodka and Champagne, I mixed both of those to excess the last time around - never again
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