Question

If you had a time machine where would you go, and what would you do and
whom would you talk to?

Answer 1

Answer:

Going only 30 years into the future would be insanely interesting. The world might be totally different, but I’d also still probably understand things enough to quickly be caught up to speed. The world would still (probably) have the countries I was used to, I’d understand the language, and I could connect the dots enough to really get how our next three decades end up playing out. You’d learn a ton, but it would (probably) still leave a lot of mystery about where humanity is headed and the nature of the universe. We still might have a Fermi Paradox and it still might be a pre-ASI world.

Going 100 years in the future would undoubtedly be beyond belief—the technology we’d have, the things we will have learned, the way our present era will look through the clarity of 100 year hindsight… And while 30 years from now, the culture might resemble that of today, the culture of 100 years from now—the social norms and taboos, the music, the advancements in philosophies on life and happiness—would be vastly beyond our world and amazingly enlightening to learn about. I’m tempted to choose 100 years. 30 years has the possibility of being cool but not that cool, while 100 years would most definitely blow your mind.

It would, of course, be tempting to just go for it and pick 500 years or 1,000 years or something outrageous like 50,000 years in the future. But my worry is A) that humanity won’t be around, which would be so, so, so depressing, B) that I’ll learn of our demise or something else that will kind of ruin the rest of my life back in the present, C) that I simply won’t be able to comprehend the world then, and I’ll spend the whole day baffled and confused and just not get it.

It would be hard to not choose 1,000 years ahead because just imagine how interesting that would be. But I’d probably go with 100 years ahead—the year 2115—because that seems both boggling and potentially fathomable, while also leaving at least a reasonable chance that humans still exist.1 (I’d also take note of which companies to make sure I invested in over the coming decades.)

Explanation: