/sci/ - Science & Math

Are lotteries time travel proof?

Let's say you have the winning numbers of a lottery and you travel back in time to purchase a ticket. Doesn't chaos theory mean that your actions in purchasing that ticket would affect the circumstances of ball/number selection selection? That you would throw things askew just enough to reduce your odds of winning? I mean, go into a store and buy a ticket, but in so doing cause every subsequent person to purchase theirs roughly 30 seconds later than they would have thus causing thousands of numbers to be different than they were.

Or is your contribution to the events that determine the numbers so small that you'll probably still win?

Some lotteries use machine generated numbers. Maybe they could add variables to their number generation like amount of tickets sold and at precise times to better protect against time travellers.

Lotteries should be enacting measures to protect against time traveler schemes, I would think. It would be really unfair to the rest of us standard timeline blokes who buy tickets if they didn't.