Mills, S. orcid.org/0000-0002-6698-0983 (2023) The Economics of Time Travel. Seeds of Science. ISSN 2768-1254
Abstract
The lack of time travellers visiting us may be seen as evidence that time travel is not possible. In this article, I argue an alternative explanation is that we are not economically important enough to our descendants to justify the costs of time travel. Using a cost-benefit analysis, I elaborate on this argument. I suggest that the major cost of time travel is likely to be the energy cost, whilst the largest benefit of time travel is knowledge which the present possesses, but the future has lost. Focusing on this benefit, I argue it is extremely unlikely that we possess a piece of knowledge which is sufficiently important to a future civilisation (system critical), but also has been lost by said civilisation. This is to say, we may not have been visited by time travellers because we are not important enough.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC-BY 4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Leeds |
Academic Units: | The University of Leeds > Faculty of Business (Leeds) > Economics Division (LUBS) (Leeds) |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Publications |
Date Deposited: | 04 Mar 2024 14:50 |
Last Modified: | 03 May 2024 10:28 |
Published Version: | https://doi.org/10.53975/7t49-r566 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | Seeds of Science |
Identification Number: | 10.53975/7t49-r566 |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:209802 |