Go back in time.....and get rich !

Ponster

And idea stolen from Vulpiner's thread about time-travel.....


Imagine that you had a machine that allowed you to go back in time, just the once, stay for 7 days, and then it whisks you back to the future where you started out. It doesn't allow you to transport any objects besides your body and the machine only works once and there isn't an infinite of universes nor parallel universes.


If your goal was to make sure that when you returned to 2006 that you were either rich or sucessful or both, what would be the best way of going about it?


I was thinking that you could go back and tell yourself in 1985 to invest in certain shares or stocks but you may end up changing your future to cause more harm than good. You go crazy seeing your future-self or you get rich on Microsoft shares and die when your private jet crashes.

Would there be a way to go back and do something (e.g. rob a bank) so that when you returned you could just go and dig up the cash (bad example I know) ?

jhegarty

Ponster wrote:

And idea stolen from Vulpiner's thread about time-travel.....


Imagine that you had a machine that allowed you to go back in time, just the once, stay for 7 days, and then it whisks you back to the future where you started out. It doesn't allow you to transport any objects besides your body and the machine only works once and there isn't an infinite of universes nor parallel universes.


If your goal was to make sure that when you returned to 2006 that you were either rich or sucessful or both, what would be the best way of going about it?


I was thinking that you could go back and tell yourself in 1985 to invest in certain shares or stocks but you may end up changing your future to cause more harm than good. You go crazy seeing your future-self or you get rich on Microsoft shares and die when your private jet crashes.

Would there be a way to go back and do something (e.g. rob a bank) so that when you returned you could just go and dig up the cash (bad example I know) ?

a few hours in paddy powers should cover it....

Vokes

jhegarty wrote:

a few hours in paddy powers should cover it....

You would need to find a part-time job to earn money to bet with

FLOOPER

Good God man, All you would have to do is go forward one hour, or to be completely sure, 12 hours and get the sps of the days horse racing.

Could be up to 10+ meetings on any given day here and across the Irish sea to accumalate 1 Billion starting with a 10 euro bet!

Ponster

The OP only refers to going back in time. And as you can't take any cash with you, if you went back in time, would you get enough cash together from family friends to gamble it @ PaddyPowers and win enough to ensure that when you got back you'd be 'rich'?

By the time you got a certain amount together you'd be watched by all the bookies.

John R

Ponster wrote:

The OP only refers to going back in time. And as you can't take any cash with you, if you went back in time, would you get enough cash together from family friends to gamble it @ PaddyPowers and win enough to ensure that when you got back you'd be 'rich'?

By the time you got a certain amount together you'd be watched by all the bookies.

You could start with 10p. a 20 event accumulator would get you an enormous payout.

Sleepy

Go back in time a week and buy a euro-millions lotto ticket with last fridays numbers, leave it in my room and have my past self wonder where the hell that came from, check the numbers and be gobsmacked at the winning lottery ticket that literally came from nowhere.

Gosh

SofaKing wrote:

You would need to find a part-time job to earn money to bet with

See here ...

thelordofcheese

SofaKing wrote:

You would need to find a part-time job to earn money to bet with

Seeing as we've just broken the laws of physics and time, i doubt some petty crime would matter much...

astrofool

Sleepy wrote:

Go back in time a week and buy a euro-millions lotto ticket with last fridays numbers, leave it in my room and have my past self wonder where the hell that came from, check the numbers and be gobsmacked at the winning lottery ticket that literally came from nowhere.

or just put it in your room in a place where you know you didn't look for the past week, and get it from there when you get back.

Kermitt

Don't all those Sci-Fi quacks say that the laws of time travel don't allow it to be used for personal financial gain? Remember seeing it in a few different things about time travel.

Though I'd go back and steal a really rare old car from the 1890's or something, and hide it ..Would be worth a fortune now.

Mossy Monk

Kermitt wrote:

Don't all those Sci-Fi quacks say that the laws of time travel don't allow it to be used for personal financial gain?

there are laws of time travel?

Hobbes

Mossy Monk wrote:

there are laws of time travel?

Yea they send Jan-Claude Van Damme back to kick your head in.

If you were to go back in time, it would have to be the shortest amount of time possible to prevent major contamination of the future.

Ponster

Kermitt wrote:

Don't all those Sci-Fi quacks say that the laws of time travel don't allow it to be used for personal financial gain? Remember seeing it in a few different things about time travel.

Though I'd go back and steal a really rare old car from the 1890's or something, and hide it ..Would be worth a fortune now.

So you go back to 1890, steal a rare car (by our standards) and hide it somewhere for the next 100 years where no one will ever find it?

Sorry, I don't think that'll work.

jhegarty

SofaKing wrote:

You would need to find a part-time job to earn money to bet with

you only need a bankroll if there is a chance of loosing...

find 1p ... put it on a horse @100/1 you now have a pound

second horse @100/1 £100, then £100,000 then £100,000,000....etc...etc...

Ponster

Hmmmm...

Well firstly I'd say that you may have a job of finind enough races to win the money quickly enough. For example yesterday the best winning odds I could find were 16/1

Also I'm pretty sure though have no evidence, that as soon as you make that €100,000 in a bookies you won't be welcome to make any more bets with them, nor with any others either. Am I paranoid in thinking that if I start betting with 1p and win 100,000 that every bookie in the country will know about me?


Edit: Just looked at Ladbrokes online site and their maximum bet is £250,000 so scratch that, but could they refuse you if you were winning too much?

Mossy Monk

go back in time leave the results of sporting events somewhere where you yourself would find them. all you need to do is go back in time for 10 seconds. stis would be similar to what happened in Back To The Future

monkeyfudge

The stock exchange is the best place to make money with knowledge of the future.

Have a look for a film caller Primer. It's a time travel film that actually makes sense... but it is confusing and hard to follow.

Ponster

Mossy Monk wrote:

go back in time leave the results of sporting events somewhere where you yourself would find them. all you need to do is go back in time for 10 seconds. stis would be similar to what happened in Back To The Future

True, but my point is that you shouldn't do anything that may wreck your future. Remember what happened when Marty actually went back with the sports results and who found it? It's a bit of a risk to take but I accept that you may be able to leave it somewhere that you'll find it. Once you've broken into your home without been seen first of course

monkeyfudge

You could go back in time and invent the Crazy Frog ring tone before anyone else.

Kermitt

Ponster wrote:

So you go back to 1890, steal a rare car (by our standards) and hide it somewhere for the next 100 years where no one will ever find it?

Sorry, I don't think that'll work.

Beacuse Time travel would so work:D

And AFAIK there are theoretical laws of time travel, mostly constrained by laws of conventional physics. Can't find a link at the mo.

Dustaz

forget sports betting.

Just tell yourself 20 years ago to invest in Pfizer/Apple/Sun Dried Tomatoes etc. Youll probably need to explain to yourself what the hell they are (particularly the tomatoes- whoever heard of sun dried ones and now theyre everywhere), but youll be a very rich person once you get in ahead of the game

tq

Go back in time 10 years with a copy of The Vinci Code and all the Harry Potters.
Get them published and watch the money roll in

the_syco

Put $300 dollars into a bank in the US in the past. Come back to the present, and take the money out. Plus lots of intrest

aidan_walsh

the_syco

aidan_walsh wrote:

http://www.aidanwalsh.net/nonsense/images/almanacfront.jpg

Ripping off "Back to the Future"?

aidan_walsh

the_syco wrote:

Ripping off "Back to the Future"?

It worked, didn't it?

The Bollox

I would go back about 10 years, go up to myself incognito, so that I don't go insane from seeing myself from the future, and tell myself what was going to happen (9/11, the Washington Sniper, bla bla bla) and come back to the present looked upon like a God for being able to predict the future

the_syco

Marts wrote:

I would go back about 10 years, go up to myself incognito, so that I don't go insane from seeing myself from the future, and tell myself what was going to happen (9/11, the Washington Sniper, bla bla bla) and come back to the present looked upon like a God for being able to predict the future

Well, how would you know that someone you saved didn't kill you?

The Bollox

I don't plan on changing the future by publicising the incidents, I will just tell a few friends that I had a dream that planes hit the twin towers, or a nightmare that some men in a white van were after me, trying to shoot me

Dirk Gently

I would go back to the start of 1980 and put all my money on an accumulator bet predicting football winners in all competitions that year. I would also bet my ma that she would give birth to me on a certain day at a certain time that year and keep the money so as to get back at her taking money off me in the future when I had to hand up money to her while living at home. Ha, there you go ma, her not realising I won it off her years ago. Not sure how the temporal mechanics work on that one though, might have some difficulty occupying the same time of my own unborn self.

Anyway, I reckon I would make quite a tidy sum off that little accumulator bet and would then invest my winnings by buying houses around Dublin. Gaffs went for less than 10k back then.

Rovi

Marts wrote:

I would go back about 10 years, go up to myself incognito, so that I don't go insane from seeing myself from the future, and tell myself what was going to happen (9/11, the Washington Sniper, bla bla bla) and come back to the present looked upon like a God for being able to predict the future

Hmmm...
Proclaiming accurate prior knowledge of these incidents would get you lots of attention all right, but perhaps not in the way you envisage.

Can you say: "Extraordinary Rendition" and "Guantanamo Bay"?
How do you look in an orange jumpsuit?

Ponster

Just tell yourself 20 years ago to invest in Pfizer/Apple/Sun Dried Tomatoes etc. Youll probably need to explain to yourself what the hell they are

The problem you risk is maybe slight madness from having your future self turn up and give you stock advise

Go back in time 10 years with a copy of The Vinci Code and all the Harry Potters.

You can't bring anything back with you and you only had 7 days anyhow (besides the fact that one of the books is a rewrite of another which came out in 1982)

Put $300 dollars into a bank in the US in the past.

You'd have a week to find an address and make fake I.D. to open the account. And I'm sure that when you go to collect the interest 50 years later they would expect you to be 50 years older too

Ripping off "Back to the Future"? - It worked, didn't it?

Nope it didn't. You can't bring anything back in the Time Machine and in the movie someone else found the almanac and got rich from it.

ando

id go back to 1994, buy some land in Donnybrook... come back to today and sell up