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26 April 2006

Ask mefi isn't for silly hypotheticals... but METACHAT IS! Let's hear your answers. →[More:] Your time-travelling self has arrived from 2011. Naturally, you make yourself feel at home. Do you let future you sleep with your partner, or do you insist that future you take the futon sofa in the spare room? Your partner doesn't seem to have a problem with it - they'd be sleeping with you, after all. What if you took the sofa route, but you found out your partner had slept with the future you anyway? Would your partner be guilty of infidelity?
posted by obiwanwasabi

I just couldn't let my comment go to waste.
post by: kyleg at: 23:29 | 39 comments
Sounds like the potential for a fun threesome to me.
posted by AlexReynolds 26 April | 23:40
Future me wouldn't put that kind of pressure on present me, but if it happened, I wouldn't see it as infidelity. However, if future me wants to be kept in the style to which she wishes she were accustomed, she won't waste time instigating bizarre psychosexual dilemmas; she'll come back and hand over a nice notebook of winning lottery numbers and words to the wise about places to avoid on certain dates. Then she'll spend the rest of her time begging me to floss.
posted by taz 26 April | 23:59
Sounds like the potential for a fun threesome to me.

The big question is, would your present-self give your future-self a high-five while doing the chinese finger cuffs?
posted by mullacc 27 April | 00:03
The big question is, would your present-self give your future-self a high-five while doing the chinese finger cuffs?


High-ten baby!
posted by arse_hat 27 April | 00:09
Sleep with...my partner? When I have someone there who knows exactly what feels great?

Hell no, I'd just have sex with future me and ditch the "partner".
posted by cmonkey 27 April | 01:01
Heck yeah! Present me would want to be shown all the techniques that future me will have picked up. And I'll definitely want to hear about how I joined the 100 Mile High club, because with the advent of cheap space travel, microgravity sex tourism is going to be awesome!
posted by Triode 27 April | 01:16
If you went the threesome route, wouldn't that basically be masturbation? Not that there's anything wrong with that, but I don't need to invent a time machine to masturbate.

Some of those answers really make my head hurt.
posted by dg 27 April | 03:01
Any "me" from any other time or dimension, that independently coexists apart from me, isn't me at all, anymore than identical twins are somehow the same person by some twisted logic.

In short, future "me" will not be granted "me" status and will not get my blessing in plowing my wife.

. . .In fact I will probably kill future "me" and have him frozen, so that I can have a fresh supply of spare and completely compatible organs on hand for real future me's potential health needs.
posted by dgaicun 27 April | 04:38
. . .if I had an identical twin, same thing.
posted by dgaicun 27 April | 04:41
dgaicun is making my head hurt; if he kills future him for spare parts, doesn't that mean that now-him will come back five years hence only to be killed by past-him and thus be trapped in an eternal loop of delayed suicide? ...Unless now-him, after killing future-him can return to the future by the same means as future-him returned to the past, and take the place of future-him, now with a handy supply of compatible organs, but a loss of five years.

Yeesh. I'm sticking to lottery numbers... Assuming she has enough money, future me will find someone to make me a spare-parts clone, and neither past-me nor future-me will have to do the heavy lifting of blunt objects.
posted by taz 27 April | 05:21
Also, dgaicun, just in case this should ever come to pass - keep in mind that if you want to kill future you for the spare parts, future-you probably has the same idea in mind, so you might want to go ahead and prepare to guard yourself against this possibility. For example, amputating both index fingers now will make operating a firearm much more difficult for future-you; poking out one eye now will mean future-you has poor depth perception, etc.
posted by taz 27 April | 05:27
Pretend Future dgaicun (FD) uses the time machine on June 1, 2016 to come back in time. Present dgaicun (PD) kills FD and stores his spare parts. This plan is great, as long as PD plans on living no longer than 6-1-2016. Because by that date PD becomes FD and dies in the past which means there is no more FD to go on living. It's not an eternal loop of delayed suicide, because the suicide happens in the past and as of 6-2-2016 dgaicun is gone, because this is no FD to come back.
posted by apoch 27 April | 05:36
Not necessarily - if you, as some do, believe that all times exist at once, future dgaicun exists in a different space-time continuum that is five years into the future, so he could kill him without any effect on the current dgaicun. It would just mean that the world in which future dgaicun used to exist would continue on without him and the butterfly effect would mean that that world would eventually become a completely different one. Of course, the world of current dgaicun would also eventually become a very different one for the same reasons.

Unless, of course, the effect of someone crossing over between worlds set up a ripple in the fabric of space-time that billowed both backwards and forwards, increasing as it went, resulting in both the present and the future dgaicun never having been born in the first place (and changing the lottery numbers as it went).

We're all going to die, aren't we?

*keeps eye out for fingerless, lame, half-blind, Internet junkie just in case*
posted by dg 27 April | 05:46
(and changing the lottery numbers as it went)

Noooooo-oooooohhhhhhh!!!!!!
posted by taz 27 April | 05:53
*Puts on Marvin Gaye. Waits.*
posted by safetyfork 27 April | 05:54
Why in the world, having already killed my future "self", would I volunteer his fate by chosing to go back in time to meet "myself"? I'm the one who invented the damn time machine, after all, I think I know a little about how time works.

Obviously the future time future "me" came from was also an alternate dimension as well. Garden of Forking Paths, Multiverse, the whole shabang. Therefore my future is open, and I can still stick around till age 86 when I can finally use my murdered clone's kidneys to stick around another 15 years.
posted by dgaicun 27 April | 06:11
apoch, you're saying that Present-Dgaicon would kill Future-Dgaicon for spare parts, yet might choose to die before he could come back as the Future-Dgaicon?

This raises so many questions... such as, what good are the spare parts? And, if he killed himself (or just died, somehow - but this wouldn't happen) before becoming Future-Dgaicon, then Present-Dgaicon wouldn't come back as Future-Dgaicon, therefore Present-Dgaicon wouldn't kill himself before he could become Future-Dgaicon, which means that he would simply would go on living his normal life... Which, obviously, is EXACTLY WHAT HAS HAPPENED!
posted by taz 27 April | 06:17
Obviously the future time future "me" came from was also an alternate dimension as well.

Wait, the future time would be an alternate dimension instead, not as well. I guess I still have some things to learn before I build it.

My future wife's ass must be expanding at an alarming rate if it pushes me so far as to invent time travel just so I can get some sex without the guilt of adultery!
posted by dgaicun 27 April | 06:18
oooh! Alternate dimensions!"

Now you're cheating, dgaicon! And that doesn't sound like you. Could this be Future Dgaicon we're dealing with now, trying to confuse us?
posted by taz 27 April | 06:21
Oh, come on, who could resist going back in time to warn your past self about all the stupid mistakes you are going to have made?

Of course, killing yourself to keep a ready stock of parts wouldn't work either - how would you keep them fresh? You would have to lock yourself in a cage, but feed you well and make you get plenty of exercise to be sure all those spare parts are in tip-top shape for when you need them. Unless you could put yourself into suspended animation, remaining youthful and beautiful then, by the time you have worn out your current body, hopefully science will have come up with a way to download your being into the (then) younger version of yourself and have another 50 years or so. You could then visit the past and repeat the same process, therefore living forever. Or you could go into a loop and disappear up your own arsehole. Or something.
posted by dg 27 April | 06:25
could mathowie be replaced by a time traveling greasemonkey script? please?


the standard response to people wanting content altering ponies is "use a greasemonkey script". so why doesn't HE use one instead of deleting stuff left and right?

meanwhile, what a lousy day. i got sucked into a vortex and landed on my own helmet. and my bald spot is getting bigger.



posted by quonsar 27 April | 06:27
*lands on quonsar's bald spot, kills future self to avoid this ever happening again*
posted by taz 27 April | 06:40
Your bald spot isn't getting bigger, your head is getting smaller.

*polishes taz's footprints off quonsar's bald spot, admires self in reflection*
posted by dg 27 April | 06:47
Actually, I am looking forward to my bald spot getting bigger, because maybe then some of the hair on my back will start falling out.
posted by dg 27 April | 06:59
It doesn't work that way, dg - as your future self would tell you. As the bald spot gets bigger, the hair on the back (or if not, at least in the nose and ears) becomes more dense. The female corollary is that as the ass becomes bigger, the hair on the chin or above the lip becomes more dense. Now, who can say there isn't a God? And that he, she or it doesn't have an incredibly warped sense of humor?
posted by taz 27 April | 07:08
Golly, I'd just be happy to know I'd lived another five years.
posted by tommasz 27 April | 07:08
taz, I don't need my future self to tell me that - my ears, nose, back and eyebrow hair have increased exponentially with the loss of hair on my head. I think that men don't actually go bald at all - the follicles just move around. [insert deity of choice] must surely hav a sense of humour just to have made us the way we are in the first place, never mind making us fall to pieces as we get older.

tommasz, if you haven't been visited by your future self yet, maybe it is because you don't have another five years left?
posted by dg 27 April | 07:18
Yo, I would so fuck myself. All night. And take pictures, and sell them on the internet, because nobody's ever seen that before. And who would know better how to pleasure me than an older, more experienced me?

The real question is, if you met your future you, who would be in the driver's seat?
posted by Hugh Janus 27 April | 08:04
Of course, what if there's a terrible fire in the next few years and I lose my dick? Then I'd have to kill the future me in self-defense, because I'm sure my only purpose in coming back in time would be to harvest my dick before it burned.

I'd still like fucking me, though, either way. And no matter how jealous the future me becomes, I'm sure I'd have the common decency....
posted by Hugh Janus 27 April | 08:07
What about a past you coming to visit current you? Would you let past you sleep with current you's partner?
posted by sisterhavana 27 April | 08:57
Only if past me was losing his virginity.
posted by Hugh Janus 27 April | 09:14
Have all y'all read The Time Travler's Wife? It's good, and deals with this important social issue.
posted by Capn 27 April | 09:20
Is there still hate in the future? If not, perhaps the emergence of autosexuality will really kickstart the religious right. "We must protect the sanctity of marriage - that is marriage between one man or woman and one completely separate, genetically dissimilar man or woman."
posted by mullacc 27 April | 09:27
Is there still hate in the future? If not, perhaps the emergence of autosexuality will really kickstart the religious right. "We must protect the sanctity of marriage - that is marriage between one man or woman and one completely separate, genetically dissimilar man or woman."
posted by mullacc 27 April | 09:31
dg, that's just the sort of thing that keeps me awake nights.
posted by tommasz 27 April | 09:37
More likely we'll see the birth of anti-sexuality, where all sex is out, and humans must reproduce by cloning only.
posted by dgaicun 27 April | 09:38
If not, perhaps the emergence of autosexuality will really kickstart the religious right.

Vroooooooooooooooooooooooooommmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm!
posted by trondant 27 April | 10:25
And by that I mean they should be kickstarted off a cliff. With rollerskates on their hands and feet and Roman candles up their asses.
posted by trondant 27 April | 10:35
she'll spend the rest of her time begging me to floss

cf. Peggy Sue Got Married.

with the advent of cheap space travel, microgravity sex tourism is going to be awesome

By 2011? NBL.

A threesome sounds tempting, assuming the hypothetical partner's up for it, but I know my classics. My dog gets to make that call. If future me freaks him out, forget it.
posted by tangerine 27 April | 19:28
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