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Phone Calls From The Future
Here’s a fun speculative scenario I was talking about with a friend of mine last night. Imagine for a moment that you received a phone call from yourself in the future. First of all, how would they prove that they were really you, and second, how would they be able to prove they were from the future? So maybe they know secrets about your life - but maybe that just makes them psychic and manipulative. Is there any way to be sure you’re really talking to yourself? If you were somehow sure, would you flip out? I think I would. I think I would be terrified actually.
Because you would know that if you were getting a telephone call from the future, that it must be important. You more than likely wouldn’t risk disrupting the time-space continuum just to chat. It must be a matter of great urgency, of life and death. Perhaps even the fate of the world hangs in the balance. And the fact that you’re calling yourself to tip the scales probably indicates that ordinarily would be acting very differently, or else you wouldn’t need to influence yourself. So that probably means that you’re about to be told to do something that you won’t like or understand. When you ask for an explanation, they’ll probably give you one which further strains your credulity over the whole situation - which would be too risky given the delicacy of the situation. So more than likely, you’ll tell yourself that you can’t say why. You’ll hear yourself say, “Just trust me.”
If that was the case, would you go ahead and trust yourself? What if you weren’t sure yet if it was really you? What if it was some kind of alternate-dimension/trickster version of yourself trying to get you to do something stupid or dangerous? Would you have any choice but to ignore their advice and carry on as before?
If you determine that you can’t trust yourself in the future, on what grounds should you therefore trust your current self? How do you know you’re really yourself? Reminds me too of a fun Sufi parable where Nasrudin walks into a shop, and the shopkeeper says, “Can I help you?” Nasrudin asks: “Did you see me come into the store just now?” To which the shopkeeper answers yes. Nasrudin replies, “But have you ever seen me before?” When the shopkeeper says that he has not, Nasrudin rebuts, “So then how do you know it was really me?”
October 21st, 2005 at 2:44 pm
nasrudin was quite the motherfucker, wasn`t he?
about a phonecall from yourself in the future. you either begin with 100% trust with yourself and go from there, or, you go from 100% distrust and go for proof which will never be enough because of your position of 100% distrust, or, some point inbetween. frankly, i`d choose to 100% trust the call or just hang up and go play x-box with the kids, ironic uncertainty is triresome.
October 21st, 2005 at 11:15 pm
If “future me” asked me to do something really outrageous, I think I would require more of an explanation than “just trust me”… if it was something that I might not normally think about doing, but nothing that I’d object to doing, then I’d do it. If it was something that I had serious doubts about, and “future me” didn’t have me totally convinced of her legitimacy, then I think I would probably ignore her advice and act according to what seemed like the best course of action in the present. But I would also make a mental note that if something awful happened as a result, I should remember to say something more convincing when I figure out how to telephone through time.
October 22nd, 2005 at 3:52 am
I don’t know, getting a phone call from my future self could actually be quite reassuring. It would, after all, be proof of my survival up to at least that point. Say if I was calling myself from 20 years in the future, it’d mean I have at least those 20 years of life ahead of me. Although, to be sure, they could be 20 years of shit, in which case it wouldn’t be reassuring at all…
October 23rd, 2005 at 6:20 am
Think about it the other way around. If you were calling yourself in the past, you’d probably know the sort of person you’d be calling, the sort of things that you were worried about, the things you really enjoyed, etc. So it shouldn’t be too hard to gain my own confidence.
The first thing I’d do yhen is tell me the winning lottery numbers for the next draw. Followed by stock tips to invest the winnings in. Followed by any other advice that could disrupt the timeline enough to significantly improve standard of living.
Wouldn’t everybody?
October 24th, 2005 at 8:49 pm
The best way to prove to your Past self that you are the Future self is to call at a moment when you are absolutely certain that an event is going to occur– say, the morning of 9/11. You call five minutes before the first plane hits the tower and tell yourself what is going to happen.
This may sound loony, but I have conversations with my Future and Past selves all the time, although not by telephone. They exist in the mental realm, the same realm I access when I write fiction. It’s an act of imagination to do so.
What have I told myself on such occasions? Well, my Future self tends to tell me to stay the course I’m on (nor matter what), and my Past self tends to remind me not to make the same mistakes I made in the past. That’s about the gist of it.