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Gozra said:
Just an interesting article that appeared today
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/4229545.stm
I suppose a very well informed hoaxer who is probably a very intelligent person can create a lot of havoc when they have plenty of time to do reseach. I am amazed at this very intricate hoax that John Titor put together in 3 months. Makes me want to really study it closer to see what else he managed to get right or wrong.
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There is the problem of verification. If the self-described time traveler 'predicts' things that you can see developing yourself, he looks 'convincing' because you already believe these things. The CERN super-collider has been in the works for decades, and they have been talking all the while of generating quantum singularities. No 'expertise' beyond reading some popular science magazines is necessary to have learned about this. So saying that quantum singularities were produced at CERN and led to time travel is already semi-believable because we're primed for it. Similarly, the split in US society has been apparent since at least the 1960s, and I think anyone who paid any attention to the Waco debacle and the aftermath (the 'militia' movement) can see the growing hostility (and numbers) of the anti-government groups on the fringes of our society. A civil war is a very real possibility for the future of the US, but I would have put the expected date a few more decades into the future -- prior to the 9-11 events, that is. So a prediction of a civil war in the US is not too difficult to believe either. Blend these trends and some other information (like the 'many worlds' hypothesis) into a coherent narrative and you've got a decent SciFi story -- or maybe a good hoax -- because it jibes with what we already
expect of the future.
If the time traveler describes something completely off the wall, on the other hand, we don't want to believe it because it doesn't meet our expectations. The EU attacking Russia, for example. It's very difficult to figure out how this could come about, but it's one of the things that Titor claimed happened in his history. But who would have believed him if he'd said that a terrorist attack on the US mainland would kill thousands before the year was over? (And he gave good reasons for not being so specific, so the fact that he did not point out this obvious event is not an automatic disproof of his knowledge.)
So judging the 'veracity' of a claimed time traveler is a pretty tricky thing. Going by our expectations is not useful because the real world doesn't have to follow our expectations. John Lennon is credited with the saying 'Life is what happens to you while you're making other plans' but I think someone else said it first. We'll just have to wait & see how things develop.