Say that you suddenly wake up in the year 1875. You end up talking to someone and you want to convince them that you’re from the future. How do you do that?
Say that you suddenly wake up in the year 1875. You end up talking to someone and you want to convince them that you’re from the future. How do you do that?
First I tell them the proof to Fermat’s theorem.
(For those who aren’t familiar with it: it originates from 1637, but nobody in the world was able to prove it until 1994. Therefore it was known among scientists and scholars in all the world during these centuries as one of the greatest riddles in history)
I get world famous, instantly, with newspaper headlines everywhere.
Mathematicians in all countries are able to verify my words, so I gain endless credibility, and I can travel to all kinds of places where they want to hear me speak etc.
A little bit later they will find out that I am not that good at math. Well, not bad, but not good enough by far to find that proof. So there is the next riddle about me.
Then I can tell that I am from the future. And since I have gained credibility before, they are going to listen now.
This is one of the few answers that would actually work without you being thrown in a mental asylum. You get into any university, ask to get the math/physics teachers together and present it to them, this certainly will start a chain reaction.
To add something to that, after you’ve been “busted”, adding “in the timeline or universe I’m from, it’s been proven by Andrew Wiles in 1994”
The demonstration of the proof is actually incredibility complicated. You’d need to develop many new concepts of mathematics (all requiring proper proofs and getting your new contemporaries to agree with you) before you can preform it.
All without the use of a electronic calculator and modern computer graphing and visualization techniques.
I’m not convinced its actually feasible… You’d be recognized as one of the greatest mathematicians of all time from all the new concepts you’ve introduced, not just the proof for Fermat’s last theorem. I’d pick something else. Like predicting an earthquake or something.
Do you know the proof by heart? Would you be able to recite it like that?
It was purely a theoretical question, wasn’t it :)
No, the question was “How do you [prove that your from the future]?” You laid out a scheme, which you are likely not capable of doing, especially because you missed the bit about the terrifying complexity of that particular proof.
So I guess, if you take this seriously, you better start preparing.
Don’t get it twisted. I’m not taking the question any more seriously than anyone else in this thread (including you).
The flaw in the logic of your plan didn’t require any serious analysis. If you think it did, then “Thanks for the compliment, I guess.”
But how would you get a job without your social security number? /s (sorry, from another thread that someone took too seriously)
With a theoretical “suddenly”, so no time to cram knowledge in prep. In my reading of it, at least.