In which scenario would you last longer before being outed as a time traveller?

Scenario 2 is where you would be outed as a time traveller.

Scenario 1 is where you would be outed as a witch.

Not sure witch would happen first.

35

Scenario 2 you could probably get away with being a dumbfuck foreigner.

20
- Unless 500 years in the future travel has been so easy for so long that all cultures have merged into one. Then you'll be the only foreigner.
  
  17
Well with scenario 1, it would be fairly quick because people speak way different now than 500 years ago.

4
- They will also likely speak way different in 500 years than we do now. We have an idea what 1523 English sounded like. 2523 is uncharted territory.
  
  10
- That would be an interesting one, because I speak enough old norse and Latin to pass as a foreigner from the far east (until they realise I don't speak Arabic). But 2523 English will be unrecognizable, and worse, they'd probably recognize our "old" English. It's like if Shakespeare showed up today, vs some guy from the future who barely speaks English and pretends to only speak an uncommon foreign language.
  
  6
- European colonization of America wouldn't have started yet so a majority of Americans wouldn't even be on the same continent. Most of us wouldn't even speak the same language as our ancestors. My ancestors would most likely understand English but wouldn't speak it as their primary language. That may somewhat disguise the dialect difference but would cause all sorts of other problems. They may be actively fighting a war with England or they may be in a period of uneasy peace getting ready for the next war with England.
  
  4
- You could play dumb.
  
  2
European colonization of America wouldn't have started yet so a majority of Americans wouldn't even be on the same continent. Most of us wouldn't even speak the same language as our ancestors. My ancestors would most likely understand English but wouldn't speak it as their primary language. That may somewhat disguise the dialect difference but would cause all sorts of other problems. They may be actively fighting a war with England or they may be in a period of uneasy peace getting ready for the next war with England.

1
Scenario 1 is where you would be outed as a witch.

Unlikely, since I am a man :-)

-1
- I have some bad news for you...
  
  In fact, between 20-25 per cent of those we know to have been executed for the crime of witchcraft were men. In what is now Ukraine, Russia and Finland, up to 80 per cent of those accused were men.
  
  10

I mean this seems like an easy answer to me no? People in the past wouldn't suspect you're from the future, they'd think you were posessed or something. People in the future would be much more likely to think of time travel, plus they'd have records of old accents and stuff.

27

Time travel to the future is interesting but not harmful. Time travel to the past is disastrous. But no one had concept if it do you'd be free to overwrite the future.

1

I think it would be pretty easy to blend into the future than the past. Though I don't think in either case you'd necessarily be outed as a time traveler. The past, you're a witch. The future, you're just a crazy person.

18

Nah the future, you're like your grandparents who don't know how to Google, but so much worse. Technology has progressed so far, we wouldn't recognize it, but it'll have been taught from. Society will be so fundamentally different that we don't even have the context to discuss it here. The past, we can make suppositions, and while some will be wrong, we have some idea of what it's like, but the future, we'd be like a Napoleonic war veteran running out of gas in his car because he can't read the dials, didn't know what gas is, and can't use a gas pump because he has no bank account and cannot open one without a social security card.

6
- Technology still needs to be designed to be used. Think of all the technology that still retains its basic form and only the material it's made of significantly changing. The Boomers that call for annoying tech support questions are just refusing to learn a new skill.
  
  4

languages change over time but you can easily pretend to be mute

1 - pretend while you learn the language

2 - you're fucked, future tech cured this centuries ago

11

500 years in the past, I'd not survive long enough to be outed. It was not a good time to be a woman.

500 years in the future, hard to predict but I'd take that option if offered. Except with none of whatever currency they use and no ID would likely starve or be arrested for trying to evade identification.

11

Which ancestor? I'm a mutt of several different European ancestries, I don't speak a word of even modern Polish, Italian, or Albanian, let alone any archaic dialects, so I doubt they're going to be able to sus out that I'm a time traveler, what they do make of me is up for debate, probably nothing good but I doubt they'd land on time traveler from the future. If I end up in one of my Irish ancestors' villages, odds are they're speaking Gaelic, but can probably find an English speaker somewhere who might catch on that my dialect is very unusual, though unless I do something to tip my hand about my future knowledge, I still doubt they'd suspect time travel. Scientific knowledge could be written off in different ways, and I don't know enough 16th century history to really be able to say or do anything prophetic.

If my goal is to avoid being outed as a time traveler, I can probably play dumb well enough not to tip my hand. They might assume I'm an idiot, insane, a witch, a demon, a fairy, etc. but I can probably avoid being outed as a time traveler.

The future is harder, if time travel is a known technology/phenomenon, I imagine I'd be outted pretty quickly. If not, I suspect I'd probably be treated as insane or an amnesia patient or something, I can't think of any reason they would assume I'm a time traveler unless I make it a point to bring it up, maybe if they run some blood tests and notice I'm missing immunity to common future diseases or radioactive contamination from WWII or something. Even then they would probably assume I'm a descendant of a secret bunker cult or something along those lines that wouldn't break the laws of physics.

10

Similarly, my ancestry ranges from Portugal to Estonia, and Sweden to South Africa (arriving in 1664, so they were Dutch 500 years ago).

1

I think the language/dialect barrier would be a huge one in either case. To wit, the historical versions of the lords prayer- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Lord's_Prayer_in_English

Future would be rough with a near complete lack of knowing current cultural norms, lingo, history, and knowing how the three seashells work. Top that off with all the stuff developed in just the past 100 years vs. the amount of progress we could be making in 5 times that length of time, and I feel like the future would be a lot rougher then the past.

In the past you could excuse a minor faux pas by saying you didn't get off the farm much and maybe folks would just think you were a bit slow. Not being socialized in the present or future? Bit less reasonable.

9

You've got it. In 500 years we'll never advanced so much and there will have been so much current exchange and drift I doubt you could be understood at all.

In the 1500s you could get by as a foreigner who barely understood the language. You'd have zero cultural norms so most language that wasn't literal would be unintelligible.

1

So how about, you go to the future, look up a museum of your time, then just go and be yourself, like the people who do similar in museums now of the past.

Either way though, unless time travel has become widespread in the future, you wouldn't be outed, people would just straight think you're a bit odd. There's people now who straight up claim to be time travellers and we're just like, OK mate, suuuure.

9

You may look more than a bit odd if you go to the past and someone notices the phone you forgot to remove from your jean pocket. Or you start making predictions like Nostradamus that are all accurate.

2
- I think even then people are too skeptical. I could stand in Trafalgar square and start levitating and everyone will be like "Well done, clever trick!"
  
  2

Depends if the future is Star Trek type utopia or Terminator style post rise of the machines.

8

I wouldn't make it with the Vikings man. I wouldn't be outed as a time traveler but I would die

7

Is this like that "the 90s were 10 years ago" effect? The viking age was 1,000 years ago. More, really.

500 years ago the world had been circumnavigated

9
- Oh fuck me I didn't process the 500 year mark when writing this. In that case I'd probably just starve
  
  2

Ancestors, since they'd be far more likely rationalise my bizarre present-day manner as being possessed by demons or something to that effect rather than assuming I'm from half a millennium in the future, I can't say I have any specific guesses as to what the society of 2523 might look like, but I suspect that they'd be far more likely to jump to the somewhat improbable sci-fi explanation of time travel (or perhaps some other technological explanation like mind malware if brain implants become a thing) than assuming supernatural explanations of demons or witchcraft.

5

On the other hand, 500 years ago you would probably be taken for insane or possessed if you accidentally spoke and/or acted as people do today.

Back then that’s a high chance of getting burned on a stake or possibly lobotomized by some crude scholar experimenting on a perceived madman.

In comparison in the future, provided mankind still exists, you’d be taken as an interesting walking anachronism to be studied. Maybe someone who gets to talk about life in the past at a university. But either way you’d most likely live a comfortable life of futuristic luxury in either a utopian post scarcity society, or kept as some feudal dilettante's status symbol. Still better than dying of dysentery in the dark ages imo

4

I'm thinking past could work better, as you could pretend to be mute or have a very limited vocabulary. Future could be anything and will probably have an uninhabitable atmosphere.

5

In the past, I probably wouldn't be found out, but I'd probably also die more easily. I'd have to be in Tudor England to even have a chance of speaking the language. If it was a dice roll of going to where "my ancestors" lived, I could end up anywhere in Europe, and parts of western asia and north africa.

In the future, they might find me out, but I'd also probably have a much better time of surviving. I'd prefer to go to the future.

A translator app on a phone could probably make heads and tails of my English dialect (I mean, they can do that today), and travel would be as fast as modern travel or faster, so once I identified a locale that I thought I'd like I could try to get to it. Basically, more opportunity would mean more options to be safe, and to survive.

4

Making some pretty bold assumptions about what's going to be left in 500 years lol

3

So 500 years ago would put me just ahead of the warring states in Japan. Aside from me not speaking fluently, I am very well versed in sword.

I think I come out okay.

4

I think you have the advantage there. Japan's language and culture has been preserved better than many other civilizations.

1

My ancestors are from at least 6 different countries and many of them spoke languages I can't even really speak the modern equivalents of.

I think as long as I remain mute people will just think I'm a simpleton or the local equivalent (since I don't understand them and don't know how to work 16th century tech).

In 500 years from now, presumably they will know that time travel has been invented so they will be more likely to suspect it.

3

500 years into the future. Far easier to adapt and hopefully the English dialect hasn't changed severally or devolved into random internet jibberish.

1