this post was submitted on 04 Feb 2026
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Now, I’m speaking hypothetically, legally, and for educational purposes only… you fast-forward a few decades and suddenly certain names appear in court documents and flight logs, not convictions, not proof of wrongdoing, just… associations. Enough to make a careful chrononaut say, ‘You know what? I’m not popping back in time to shake hands and eat shrimp.’
The absence at that party wasn’t evidence that time travel failed. It was evidence that it worked, and everyone who could come already knew how the story looked later.
History doesn’t just judge actions. It judges proximity. And no self-respecting time traveler shows up early to something that turns awkward in hindsight.
The issue for me is that, let’s say that one day a magical device does allow time travel, it would also have to do teleportation relative to some point since everything is in motion. What would all of time and space use for a relative location? Can’t be the earth or sun since those are moving. Even our galactic cluster is moving. So if you went back in time a year, the earth wouldn’t be at the same point in space even though it’s done a full revolution. I’m no space scientist but I don’t imagine we have a solution.
Uh, why can't it be relative to the Earth's surface? We're already trapped in that gravity well after all, we don't drift off it because of normal time travel in real time.
More pragmatically, time travel for a casual party would be risky because you’re carrying germs many generations apart. Time travelers would wear full-body suits or risk dramatically altering history. They could not drink or eat anything.
Okay yes but there's also a bit of dissonance, if I learned that Vlad the impaler had a time travel party to prove it and I had the capability to do so, I wouldn't give a shit, would go see him and also take a gun just to keep myself safe. Safe. But it's somebody from hundreds of years ago, why do I care about any of that?
Sure. This statement seems harsh but I'm playing devil's advocate here, the further you get away from the situation, the less it really matters
Congratulations you took back covid19 and wiped out humanity.
I'd argue it's the other way around: The further you travel in the past the bigger becomes your impact on current times.