Time travel fund

10 Comments

The idea: you give $10 to The Time Travel Fund. They put "a percentage" of that money into a trust fund that they're maintaining. (They don't say how big a percentage. I'm guessing about 10%.) Through the miracle of compound interest, that money will turn into billions of dollars in five hundred years. If time travel is ever invented (and legal), the money will be used to pay the people who control the technology to bring the people who contributed to the fund forward in time.

If nothing else, the FAQ is amusing. For example, among the restrictions listed:

You will not be retrieved if you die by suicide. Sorry, but we don't want your family blaming us for you killing yourself because you think you will get to the future sooner.

And there's a section at the end where they talk about how you can use this fund to be reunited in the future with a dead loved one (because people can be retrieved moments before their deaths—there's no mention of potential paradoxes involved). But there are restrictions there as well:

The other person must be a close family member. Sorry, but we don't want you bringing Adolph Hitler or someone else evil like him back.

They don't say what the rule is if a close family member is evil, though.

10 Responses to “Time travel fund”

  1. Anonymous

    hello im here from 2661 jan full 4 any questions post them here I will do my best to answer. I am here to pick up someone and I was asked to show proof for everyone now. the super bowl 2006 is what your time called the colts vs seehawks. score colts 46 shawks 28.

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  2. Benjamin Rosenbaum

    Actually, there’s a very clever spambot attack possible here:

    1) Find a bunch of blog entries containing the words “time travel” using google blog search. You’ll need a few thousand.

    2) Post messages similar to the above, each time picking a different pair of teams and a different plausible superbowl score (football scores are not evenly distributed — touchdowns are more common than safeties — so you can weight the probabilities)

    3) After the 2006 superbowl, if any of your predictions hit, return to the blog in question. Now that you’ve established your credibility as a time traveler, charge for information about the future.

    This is a variation of an old stock market newsletter scam.

    However, I hope Anonymous is for real. Hi Anonymous! Is the universe a set of closed causal loops, or is it acausal, or what?

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  3. Jay Hartman

    Interesting comment from Benjamin. I think that it’s possible that someone is doing it for money, but I just don’t think there enough time travel sites out there for this plan to be workable. And if it was a scam for money, the person would have likely waited until the two Superbowl teams were chosen before predicting the score…this joker may have the wrong teams, let alone the wrong score. (btw, imho, the best thing about the Time Travel Fund Site is that it teaches the power of compounding.)

    The stock market scam that Benjamin mentions used to be good one until too many people heard about it. In case you don’t know it, I have described it below; make sure you don’t fall for this! (I think this is the same or closely resembles what Benjamin is referring to).

    A scammer gets a list of 10,000 names (or pick a number). Sends out a letter to each touting the scammer’s ability to predict the monthly direction of the Dow Jones or S&P. To half the names, the index in question is predicted to go up, and the other half, the prediction is down.

    People who got the incorrect prediction receive nothing further; people who rec’d the correct prediction get another letter the following month.

    After six months, the scammer has a list of 156 names that have received six consecutive months of accurate predictions.

    To these 156 people, the scammer sends a note that for the low low price of $1,000, they can receive the next 12 monthly newsletters and the mark can “make a fortune” by shorting or going long every month on the index in question, based on the scammer’s future monthly predictions.

    Pretty shady stuff, but in 1989, my finance professor told me that that this scam was done successfully in the 1970’s.

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    • tindog

      It’s not a scam… it can’t be a scam, they state all possible disclaimers up front… it’s for fun, you either participate or you don’t… you look for it, they don’t come looking for you. Of course it’s not real, and even if they believe it themselves, it’s still not a scam, they tell you right up front that it’s strictly speculative. If you were to sign up for this and then feel you got taken for your $10, you did, but you were taken by yourself.

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  4. Anonymous

    anonymous, will there ever be a united Ireland?
    Did jesus actually exist?
    what is the weed like in 2661?

    cheers

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  5. Michael Raynard

    Time Travel is very tricky, an authentic prediction for the super bowl could alter our time line. For example, placing wagers on the results could alter the teams odds, create wealth where there was suppose to be none, enhance a teams fan base hence unnaturally increasing that teams budget; furthermore, a skilled zealot with a gift for communication who believes in time travel could cause quite a dramatic tremor of support and wide spread unquestionable proof of the existence of the time machine. If we predict the game in advance and call the score along with other impossible statistics, it would be indeed be undeniable proof. On a side note, one thing the time travel sites rarely mention is divinity controlling the power of time. The operators of the time machine will discover everything …

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  6. Epoch

    Okay if there was someone that did come from the future I would ask for some very undeniable proof that they were from the future, something that would not be able to be disproved…. so easily anyway

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  7. Lothario-John-Ross-Johnson

    I find this concept very interesting and intriging.$10 for a chance for freedom,total financial securement and a chance to star a new life in the distant.Personally I think it would be worth it.I hope I am permitted to join.I just donot want to get left behind.To all nay sayers donot knock something until you try it,and I have a strong feeling this is ”it”.I really,really would like to join if I am permitted.I recently had my e-mail account broken into(about 1year ago) and someone posing as me wrote some horrible stuff say it is a scam.Believe it is not,just cannot explain it(more of a gut and intuitional feeling)but it is not a scam one bit.I since changed my e-mail password(randomly) to prevent a next hacking into.

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  8. Anonymous

    ‘The obvious flaw’ – whatever the interest rate, inflation will affect spending power. (Adverts stating ‘Your investment will be worth [£/$ xxxx] in [20 years hence]’ – which is wealth at the start, but not much when the investment matures.’

    Given that the site is well written and seems to actually dispense the certificate, more a ‘fun thing’ than a scam.

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  9. CUTEL

    I discovered a new one called voyage in time: http://www.voyageintime.com a friend of mine wrote them twice on two seperate occassions and they never respond back.Beware of this next site.It is a 100% scam,and charging almost twice the amount of the time travel fund

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