Context: He's in the files
What the fuck is he in the files for? What did he allegedly do? He’s bound to the chair!
this post was submitted on 04 Feb 2026
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Likely lots of people who had contact with Epstein did nothing wrong, at least not on that level.
He was collecting powerful people, in science, business, government, anything. One way to do that is to offer access to other important people. The ability to say to someone "I can connect you with Stephen Hawking" is currency.
The pedophilia ring and sex trafficking is the exact same thing -- just a way to appeal to certain people.
I think it's more interesting to talk about who the fuck gave Epstein a private island in one of the most stupidly expensive spits of sand on the entire planet. Likely the same people who killed him.
It's because if it were actually possible and they did it, then all of space and time would have collapsed into something akin to a giant black hole, obliterating everything, bringing a violent and inescapable end to it all.
Just more reason to build a time machine, I guess.
People have been getting taller over time. Hawking didn't book a big enough venue.
What are the chances that visiting Steven Hawking is the most interesting/fun thing you can do, if you could freely time travel? I'd much rather go look at dinosaurs, or visit the construction of the pyramids, or go listen to Martin Luther King Jr.'s speech.
Even if my goal was to meet a single scientist, I think I'd personally pick any other. Pliny the Elder, Marie Curie, Albert Einstein...
Not to be rude to Mr. Hawking (well, maybe he deserves it, I don't know what got him in to the Epstein files...), but a thorougly average party is simply not likely to attract very many time travellers.
I think his party would attract at least a few curiosity seekers.
On the other hand, it would likely include time travellers from various future eras, perhaps hundreds, or even thousands of years apart. Future time travel would have to be heavily regulated, to keep unauthorized people from screwing up the time line. So perhaps future time travellers are expressly forbidden from having contact with other time travellers, making Hawking's party the one place that time travellers are NOT allowed to visit.
That all depends on what time travel theory ends up being correct. There's the one where it's all the same timeline, and there's the one where you spawn a new universe by traveling back and making changes.
So, a person traveling back might not be impacting the future they left.
It would be a real bitch to try and coordinate a party with multiple time travelers with the forking system. Each one might end up as the only traveler in their new universe. Unless they carpooled, I guess.
What are the chances that visiting Steven Hawking is the most interesting/fun thing you can do, if you could freely time travel?
Not only that, apparently the machine he used to speak was rather difficult to use quickly, and drafting responses could take hours or days depending on how much needed said. Pretty much all of his appearances after he was unable to use his voice were heavily scripted ahead of time.
So unless you're visiting Steven Hawking when he still could talk, it'd be pretty boring as you couldn't have a proper back-and-forth conversation
the reason we don't have time travelers is that the past is no more concrete than the future. [Current science disagrees with the idea that] just like there are infinite potential futures, there are an infinity of potential pasts that could have evolved into the present [instead insisting that the entire past is fully embedded in the present]. [It's not supported by any current theories that] the probability of reaching a particular past is essentially zero.
Looks like somebody has read Anathem.
I love that book.
Every word Neal Stephenson ever wrote is fucking classic
Except The Big U , that was tripe
I vehemently disagree with many worlds theory. I think its a total mindfuck. However I do think that the future influences the present and the past.
Honestly, even if time travel were theoretically possible to be invented, there's also a high chance that we're just going to destroy ourselves before we get to that point anyway.
Also, what if it uses a lot of resources and potential time travelers didn't want to waste them to go to parties (thus further progressing your hypothetical conundrum)?
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Yeah, but ol epsein wasn't just a monstrous blackmailing mossad pedo rapist killer. He was into science for the mossad.
Now, I’m speaking hypothetically, legally, and for educational purposes only… you fast-forward a few decades and suddenly certain names appear in court documents and flight logs, not convictions, not proof of wrongdoing, just… associations. Enough to make a careful chrononaut say, ‘You know what? I’m not popping back in time to shake hands and eat shrimp.’
The absence at that party wasn’t evidence that time travel failed. It was evidence that it worked, and everyone who could come already knew how the story looked later.
History doesn’t just judge actions. It judges proximity. And no self-respecting time traveler shows up early to something that turns awkward in hindsight.
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Is it because our solar system is hurdling through space at over 1.5 million miles per hour, so anyone who time travels will find themselves alone in an empty void?
There's no universal frame of reference. Any theoretical time travel would likely need a beacon of some sort to calibrate their arrival point, meaning you couldn't travel back beyond the point time travel was established.
That's not really true. First, if you can invent time travel you can probably do the math to calculate positions of objects. Second, even if you do need a beacon, you could use something that already exists. For example, radio waves. Earth has been shooting off radio waves for a fair amount of time now. That could be used as a beacon. Also, you could do something like having your time machine do small jumps, check it's relative position, then adjust. This would solve just about every issue.
So you have no idea how time travel would work but youre certain that traveling through time will be simple heliocentric math and radio waves can be used as a beacon?
You can easily cross calculate between various, inertial frames of reference. The problem is that earth isn't sitting still in an inertial frame. We spin around the sun, and we orbit the center of our galaxy. We also get nudged about by the pull of other stars.
Tracking a time jump (or technically a time-space jump) would be easy, if you just wanted to be within the solar system. With measurements the earth-moon gap would not be too hard. Hitting a surface exactly would be another story. Miss by a meter and your cut in half by a wall or floor.
Just so many assumptions for a science that isnt real or known. Say time travel requires dimensional shift, where do you land when you enter a new dimension and how do you navigate when you try to return.
Shout out to time bandits.
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I have thoughts.
It was ridiculous that Hawking thought a time traveler would make it to his party for several reasons. There are a few models of time travel, and only one of them has an internal logic that allows for traveling without paradoxical consequences; multiversal divergence.
Our version of the time traveler party was one of an infinite amount of time traveler parties that hawking hosted throughout the multiverse. A time traveler would be traveling to that time like picking a grain of sand on a beach, where each grain of sand is a near identical party to the last.
As our version of the party diverges from the realities with time travelers who chose to travel to the hawking party, there would be a diminishing set of infinities containing time travelers that were attempting the journey.
Thus while the chances of a time traveler going to the party are 100%, the party being our version of the party approach 0 infinitely fast.
Hawking knew no one was going to show up. It was done as a sort of proof against it. He just thought it was more likely then the existence of god.
it would frankly be dumb not to throw the party, because at worst you just have a bit of a weird boring party, and at best you meet some fucking time travellers
But what if the time travellers start asking for your clothes, your boots and your motorcycle?
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You're missing the point completely.
You do not actually know if "paradoxical consequences" are a thing. Logic might, like everything we believe right now, turn out not to be how the world works.
Stopping yourself from doing an experiment because "current knowledge makes it seem impossible" is how science never advances.
I have no idea what you're arguing against, or what point you think I've missed.
Have you assumed that I have discounted other models because of the model I chose for my comment? Bah! You assume too much.
I did not state that doing the experiment was a bad thing; my comment was in humor even!
Well, usually if people call something "ridiculous" they mean that it's so bad that it's funny, i.e. not worth considering.
In any case, I'm not really arguing either, you assume too much!
You can spend your entire life thinking about it and you Will never reach a definitive answer. Or, you can spend a day to set up an experiment and throw a party.
Yup
There is also the idea that time machines work like telephones. You need to have a receiving end made first before you can call it.
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Listen, dude: I’ve got a lot more concerts in my list before I get to your lame-ass party.
Would you have missed Metallica in Moscow for some party you assumed nobody would attend? Fuck no.
Now if you’ll excuse me I’m gonna go sell all your grandmothers some really strong modern weed to get into Hendrix, New Year’s Eve, 1969.
Can’t wait to hear Machine Gun live.
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