> They only need to act with secrecy in their home time.
How would the USA react if, say, it discovered Russian time-travel agents from the future in our time?
> How useful are those to individual people? Nuclear bombs are basically only useful as a deterrent (or as leverage, e.g. making demands in return for halting your nuclear program), and that only works for countries.
The only reason it only works for countries is because only countries have the resources to build nuclear bombs. There are certainly other groups and organizations that wouldn't mind using them as deterrents, or companies that wouldn't mind selling them to the highest bidder.
Even if they were easy to build though, they'd still be dangerous superweapons. Like a time machine.
> Supercolliders are also incredibly specialized and only useful to a small group of scientists, and there's zero incentive for an individual person to attempt to build one. What use would a private person have with a supercollider?
Perhaps they're a component of a time machine. :) My point is even if supercolliders were not useful only to a few people, they are incredibly difficult to design and build regardless. Bill Gates or Elon Musk can't just tspend some money and get one. They would have to invest large sums of money and hire legions of engineers and scientists. We don't know that a time machine isn't similarly extremely difficult (indeed it seems more likely that it is extremely difficult to build.)
I can't emphasize the "time machines are superweapons" enough. A time machine might be useful to average individuals but you'd be insane to ever let them have their hands on one. It would effectively be suicide for everyone involved. Why would you ever let anyone have one?
How would the USA react if, say, it discovered Russian time-travel agents from the future in our time?
> How useful are those to individual people? Nuclear bombs are basically only useful as a deterrent (or as leverage, e.g. making demands in return for halting your nuclear program), and that only works for countries.
The only reason it only works for countries is because only countries have the resources to build nuclear bombs. There are certainly other groups and organizations that wouldn't mind using them as deterrents, or companies that wouldn't mind selling them to the highest bidder.
Even if they were easy to build though, they'd still be dangerous superweapons. Like a time machine.
> Supercolliders are also incredibly specialized and only useful to a small group of scientists, and there's zero incentive for an individual person to attempt to build one. What use would a private person have with a supercollider?
Perhaps they're a component of a time machine. :) My point is even if supercolliders were not useful only to a few people, they are incredibly difficult to design and build regardless. Bill Gates or Elon Musk can't just tspend some money and get one. They would have to invest large sums of money and hire legions of engineers and scientists. We don't know that a time machine isn't similarly extremely difficult (indeed it seems more likely that it is extremely difficult to build.)
I can't emphasize the "time machines are superweapons" enough. A time machine might be useful to average individuals but you'd be insane to ever let them have their hands on one. It would effectively be suicide for everyone involved. Why would you ever let anyone have one?