Ask Lemmy

I'd rather just make it easier for the assassin to get me and end the bullshit on day 1.

I don't.

I'll try to send text to the very beginning of the seven-day period, sending each message on two-hour intervals sent to the point in time one second after the last message.

Let's assume that the seven-day period starts on 2025-05-12 08:00:00.

• The first message will be sent two hours after the seven day period starts, and every two hours thereafter. This first message will be sent on 2025-05-12 10:00:00 and will include:

  1. the timespace-stamp of when and where the message is sent. the time part of this would be written in way that only I can encode and decipher.
  2. all the rules as I understand it so far
  3. what I've done from the the start of the seven-day period.
  4. something only I know that will convince myself that I indeed sent the message from the future

• The messages will be sent to the time one second after the previous message was sent. Hence, continuing the example, the next message would be sent on 2025-05-12 12:00:00 to 2025-05-12 08:00:02, and so on.

• The messages will follow the same format as the first one:

  1. timespace-stamp (when and where I sent the message from), the time portion written in the same code as the first one.
  2. any updates to my knowledge of the rules
  3. where I've been and what I did since the last message
  4. something only I know, and will reassure myself that the message is indeed from me

• If for some reason I am unable to send any messages (for example, I have been asleep, or out of network coverage area) when I should (two hours have passed since the last message), I will send a message immediately when I'm able. This message will be sent to the time one second after the last sent message. So continuing the example, if the last message was sent on 2025-05-12 22:00:00, to 2025-05-12 08:00:07, and I'm asleep until 2025-05-13 09:00:00, I will immediately send a message to 2025-05-12 08:00:08.

With this, assuming I survive for seven days (exactly) and stay awake the entire time, I will receive the last message before 2025-05-12 08:01:24. The timestamps of the last message will also give me a good indication if I survived the seven days, or how long I survived. If I continue receiving messages past that, maybe my future self messed up, or there's something more going on, or my future self just decided it's a good idea to just continue. Nevertheless, I have advance notice of what happens to me.

Of course I will try not to lose my phone. With advance notice, I will try to stay as safe as possible without deviating much from the timeline. Also, I will try to figure out what's going on, but only up to the point that I can keep myself safe.

I roll to seduce the assassin. If that fails, I'll barrel roll instead

Every hour send a message back to the start of the 7 day period + 1 second for each elapsed hour "still alive at " At the first one hour mark send a message to three minutes after the start of the period. 168 hours in a week, texts with survival status will be done a bit before the three minute mark of constant messages. This message describes the situation. Now I have insight into when the assassin will get me, to an hour. Don't change my behavior until the hour span leading up to the last still alive message, go nuts traveling randomly during that time until the number of still alive text messages changes After surviving for a week send a final message back in time to the very start "your phone is trying to kill you"

I don't.

Wouldn't this depend on why the assassin is after me?

But how does that help? If I send past me a message, can past me change anything? What happens to the me that sent the message if past me receives it and changes stuff? Seems like you're creating a classic time travel paradox.

Nice try assassin! As if I would reveal my plans.

I wouldn't warn myself because I don't want to get caught in a groundhog day, butter fly effect scenario.

What time travel rules? See: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TemporalMutability

Going with “overwriting the timeline,”

• buy yourself an hour to live on the first day, should be easy enough

• make fat cash with options trading in minutes

• buy hella security

• repeat until the seven days have passed

I would also rig a “dead man’s switch” on my phone in case the assassin ever does get me, to reset things (by telling my past self of my current situation, so they can avoid it).

Is this question inspired by the steins;gate anime/VN ?

"I found the assassin. She's a 5'10” blonde, 120lbs, with a pixie cut. She's staying at the Royal Stag. You know what to do."

Step one: I clone my phone allowing two phones to contact my past self.

Step two: "Lose" one phone, after turning on find my friend on the lost phone.

Step three: Send past self false information while keeping constant tab on the assassin who believes they have an edge.

Step four: Hit the assassin before they hit me.

First of all, if it's my number sending messages back in time to myself, I could easily convince myself it's me by sending a list of my passwords back in time.

Second, tell myself that I'm screwed no matter what because there's no way I could defeat a professional assassin (assuming it's professional), especially one from the future, and to probably just hang myself or some other form of suicide in order to mock the assassin by not letting them get the kill.

I might be reading this wrong but I'm not convinced it helps. My read of this is basically we get 1 free go at surviving and can send messages back to the start point for the second go to try and survive.

You could keep a running commentary of what you're doing and where you're going which would give you a little bit of notice of where and when you die but unless you can time loop and continually adjust the plan until you find something that works I don't see how knowing 1 point of failure is enough to keep you alive.

Maybe someone smarter than me has a better idea though, or I've got the prompt wrong.

Id get the the hashes of the next few hundred blocks of Bitcoin and send back in time, my past self could use that to pre-mine tons of Bitcoin, with each block reward being ~3 BTC and the price arround 90k each, I could sell all that for millions and millions of dollars

with all that money I'd just hire another assassin or something to kill the first guy. or just invest in a ton of security, body guards and stuff

edit: actually on second thought I could use almost any financial mechanism to get tons of cash, this is just the first one that came to me

Assuming you can change the future, you can send a message with your location history every x minutes to your 1-day (or more) ago self. You will have to encode it (and I guess this should be done outside the phone) in a way that the assassin can't spoof a message. You'll have to figure out that encoding as soon as you find out about the assassin since that's your message travel limit anyway. When you start receiving messages you follow that location history and then stop following it when you stop receiving them because something went wrong there. Eventually some instance of you might make it 7 days.

Do I have any information at all about the assassin? Sending back the only info I know, "there is an assassin", won't help much, will it?

The problem is that I can't wait for the assassin to make a move in order to learn about them. It'd be a lot easier if I was trying to prevent someone else's death, but I can't send a message after my own death, can I?

I see you're going for a Steins;Gate reference but this is a significantly harder scenario.

Send myself the history of all stock movement within the past week, make sure my past self uses it to become multimillionaire in the first day using leverage trades. An assasin could likely kill me if I'm anywhere public, so I need to get myself arrested without being seen. Fastest way I can think is that call the emergency hotline, tell them I've shot multiple people and come pick me up, in which will dispatch the officers immediately and I can safely stay in jail for a week throughout the confusion.

I'm leaving my phone somewhere very far away from my actual location. Check and mate, assassin.

If someone with access to time travel is hunting me, the last thing I want is a device known to be associated with me speaking to every cell tower I’m near, time breaking qualities or not. I leave my phone at home and spend only cash as I take a random bus tour of the country.

How did that banana become green?!

This is similar to the premise of a great game called Shadow of Destiny. Highly recommend it for adventure games fans.

I don't. I'll share this technology, preferably with trustworthy competent people. At last, I'll probably figure out how that decision lead to my assassination.