Question of the Week
Another new feature, though I think it actually started with last week’s posting, Optimism.
I’m sure I’ll go back to cribbing questions from The Edge Foundation pretty soon, but I was inspired by this website that lets you send an e-mail to yourself in the future. Believe me, my future self no more wants to hear from me than I want to hear from the kid I used to be. Give me a website that lets me send an e-mail to my past self, and I’m there.
Until such a website exists, I will offer that service here, though I cannot guarantee delivery. But if we post our responses in this thread, we just might learn something new about each other and the human condition.
And I’m not talking about time travel science fiction ideas like “Bet on the Red Sox to win the 2004 World Series” or “Warn everyone about 9/11.” You can’t divulge information about the future for your past self to act on. But you can send an e-mail, and expect it to be accepted as authentic. So…
If you could send an e-mail to yourself in the past, how far back would you send it, and what would you want to say?
January 17th, 2007 at 11:48 am
How picky are we being about what information about the future we can’t divulge to our past selves? Subtextually, doesn’t an e-mail from our future selves by definition convey information about the future to our past selves? Isn’t there some sort of prime-directive that should be followed here?
Ignoring all of that, my e-mail to my past self, at any point in the last 20 years or so:
“Everything you know is wrong.”
Actually, I don’t even need to send that. Nevermind.
January 17th, 2007 at 12:21 pm
Yeah, there’s not much point in sending an e-mail to the past if you can’t use ANY information from the future, but I was trying to steer responses more towards the kind that you gave, and less about what stocks people should tell themselves to buy, which is far less interesting.