People have been getting taller over time. Hawking didn't book a big enough venue.

the reason we don't have time travelers is that the past is no more concrete than the future. [Current science disagrees with the idea that] just like there are infinite potential futures, there are an infinity of potential pasts that could have evolved into the present [instead insisting that the entire past is fully embedded in the present]. [It's not supported by any current theories that] the probability of reaching a particular past is essentially zero.

What are the chances that visiting Steven Hawking is the most interesting/fun thing you can do, if you could freely time travel? I'd much rather go look at dinosaurs, or visit the construction of the pyramids, or go listen to Martin Luther King Jr.'s speech.

Even if my goal was to meet a single scientist, I think I'd personally pick any other. Pliny the Elder, Marie Curie, Albert Einstein...

Not to be rude to Mr. Hawking (well, maybe he deserves it, I don't know what got him in to the Epstein files...), but a thorougly average party is simply not likely to attract very many time travellers.

Yeah, but ol epsein wasn't just a monstrous blackmailing mossad pedo rapist killer. He was into science for the mossad.

Honestly, even if time travel were theoretically possible to be invented, there's also a high chance that we're just going to destroy ourselves before we get to that point anyway.

I have thoughts.

It was ridiculous that Hawking thought a time traveler would make it to his party for several reasons. There are a few models of time travel, and only one of them has an internal logic that allows for traveling without paradoxical consequences; multiversal divergence.

Our version of the time traveler party was one of an infinite amount of time traveler parties that hawking hosted throughout the multiverse. A time traveler would be traveling to that time like picking a grain of sand on a beach, where each grain of sand is a near identical party to the last.

As our version of the party diverges from the realities with time travelers who chose to travel to the hawking party, there would be a diminishing set of infinities containing time travelers that were attempting the journey.

Thus while the chances of a time traveler going to the party are 100%, the party being our version of the party approach 0 infinitely fast.

Now, I’m speaking hypothetically, legally, and for educational purposes only… you fast-forward a few decades and suddenly certain names appear in court documents and flight logs, not convictions, not proof of wrongdoing, just… associations. Enough to make a careful chrononaut say, ‘You know what? I’m not popping back in time to shake hands and eat shrimp.’

The absence at that party wasn’t evidence that time travel failed. It was evidence that it worked, and everyone who could come already knew how the story looked later.

History doesn’t just judge actions. It judges proximity. And no self-respecting time traveler shows up early to something that turns awkward in hindsight.

Spoiler Alert: the time travelers are the ones who took the picture of Hawking.

Is it because our solar system is hurdling through space at over 1.5 million miles per hour, so anyone who time travels will find themselves alone in an empty void?

There is also the idea that time machines work like telephones. You need to have a receiving end made first before you can call it.

Listen, dude: I’ve got a lot more concerts in my list before I get to your lame-ass party.

Would you have missed Metallica in Moscow for some party you assumed nobody would attend? Fuck no.

Now if you’ll excuse me I’m gonna go sell all your grandmothers some really strong modern weed to get into Hendrix, New Year’s Eve, 1969.

Can’t wait to hear Machine Gun live.