Say that you suddenly wake up in the year 1875. You end up talking to someone and you want to convince them that you’re from the future. How do you do that?
Say that you suddenly wake up in the year 1875. You end up talking to someone and you want to convince them that you’re from the future. How do you do that?
First I tell them the proof to Fermat’s theorem.
(For those who aren’t familiar with it: it originates from 1637, but nobody in the world was able to prove it until 1994. Therefore it was known among scientists and scholars in all the world during these centuries as one of the greatest riddles in history)
I get world famous, instantly, with newspaper headlines everywhere.
Mathematicians in all countries are able to verify my words, so I gain endless credibility, and I can travel to all kinds of places where they want to hear me speak etc.
A little bit later they will find out that I am not that good at math. Well, not bad, but not good enough by far to find that proof. So there is the next riddle about me.
Then I can tell that I am from the future. And since I have gained credibility before, they are going to listen now.
This is one of the few answers that would actually work without you being thrown in a mental asylum. You get into any university, ask to get the math/physics teachers together and present it to them, this certainly will start a chain reaction.
To add something to that, after you’ve been “busted”, adding “in the timeline or universe I’m from, it’s been proven by Andrew Wiles in 1994”
The demonstration of the proof is actually incredibility complicated. You’d need to develop many new concepts of mathematics (all requiring proper proofs and getting your new contemporaries to agree with you) before you can preform it.
All without the use of a electronic calculator and modern computer graphing and visualization techniques.
I’m not convinced its actually feasible… You’d be recognized as one of the greatest mathematicians of all time from all the new concepts you’ve introduced, not just the proof for Fermat’s last theorem. I’d pick something else. Like predicting an earthquake or something.
Istr that Ramanujan claimed that Kali gave him ideas in his dreams. Maybe he was actually a mathematician from the future but decided that telling the truth would not be feasible.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Srinivasa_Ramanujan
I mean… Ramanujan was the GOAT, but he was still able to do his proofs. That’s more or less my point. He didn’t suddenly convert a bunch of Oxford mathematicians to Hinduism because he was able to do incredible math proofs (i think they would have been similarly unconvinced he was a time traveller). The proof was in the pudding… in the proofs.
In order to do Wile’s proof of Fermat’s last theorem, you have to invent 100 years of math from memory, something Wiles himself would (almost certainly) struggle to do, but maybe he could pull it off. I remember reading an article about Wile’s proof, and he was incredibly humble about it, and described it as a collaborative effort between himself and his peers IIRC. The proof itself wasn’t complete without a correction from another math academic IIRC. This thread is like, kind of a misunderstanding of math academics.
In 1875 you don’t have ZFC set theory and Cantor’s works are bleeding edge (I think Cantor’s work is controversial and incomplete in this time… fuck it, maybe you should just work with Cantor himself if you can find him. Maybe he’d believe you. I didn’t take math history IDK)
I cannot find a source to link to it now but I remember reading through Godel’s incompleteness theorem, a proof of Fermat’s theorem isn’t possible without the extensions of classical mathematics that were developed in the 20th century.
You’ll have to take my word for it on that last bit. I’m a time traveling dolphin, after all.
Anyway, that’s more or less my point, you’d have to basically be an incredibly talented math professor (in theoretical mathematics, not applied) to demonstrate this proof to satisfaction to a bunch of professors in 1875. You’d also probably have to be white and male. It’s just not something a casual lemmy poster can like, do, you know? There’s a reason that Fermat’s theorem wasn’t proven for 350 years despite being accepted as true.
(edit: I am tired so this is rambley)
Do you know the proof by heart? Would you be able to recite it like that?
It was purely a theoretical question, wasn’t it :)
No, the question was “How do you [prove that your from the future]?” You laid out a scheme, which you are likely not capable of doing, especially because you missed the bit about the terrifying complexity of that particular proof.
So I guess, if you take this seriously, you better start preparing.
Don’t get it twisted. I’m not taking the question any more seriously than anyone else in this thread (including you).
The flaw in the logic of your plan didn’t require any serious analysis. If you think it did, then “Thanks for the compliment, I guess.”
But how would you get a job without your social security number? /s (sorry, from another thread that someone took too seriously)
With a theoretical “suddenly”, so no time to cram knowledge in prep. In my reading of it, at least.