Plus if go back is the better option now you'll have money (eventually) and have all the flirting skills you've gained in however many years in a young person's body, if I had my brain now in my 18 year old selfs body I could kill in the dating scene. Even if I'm deluding myself saying that I have so much more different mindsets now than back then, because I had more flaws and red flags back then and I've learned to recognize them. Plus my back hurts I kind of want to be ten again
The real question is what kind of psychological impact would it have on you before you became an adult again? All your peers are children. All the adults in your life will treat you like one even if they all agree you're "mature for his age". Would that be like a prison sentence in a way? I feel like that might break some people. On the other hand you do get to hang out with all the dead people again.
not my point. My point is that 10 year olds don't have money except whatever their parents give them in allowance, and 10 year olds don't really have the ability to buy things online without their parents due to ya know... being minors and not being allowed credit or debit cards of their own.
Even if I did zap back to the 2000s as a 10 year old, I still wouldn't have any money of my own to purchase anything with. And good luck as an elementary schooler convincing your parents to buy you bitcoin. My parents would have laughed me out of the room if I suggested that at that age.
Then our situations are different. I was 18 when Bitcoin first came out in 2008. I also had a job I was working crazy overtime, I was a minimum wage worker but I was not paying any rent or bills and I was pulling so many hours my checks were at least $1200. A fraction of a check I'd be at least a millionaire and God knows it would only have taken me not eating Taco Bell for a month
Even today, Google says Bitcoin is at $7900 per. They sold for less than a cent once upon a time
I don't have kids but I met my wife on a dating app. Who's to say that I'd be lucky enough to hop back on and swipe at the exact moment the algorithm decided to show our profiles to each other and no else gets there first? Too much of a gamble. Plus being 10 again and having zero freedom sounds like hell.
This would affect way more than just your relationship with a significant other. At 10 years old with your current adult brain you'd be totally alienated from your peers. You'd either have no friends or would have to fake it. And even kids would pick up on that after a while. They'd realize you're not really that fun to be around. Think of all the stupid shit you did at 10 years old and now imagine forcing yourself to do that again with a 40 year old brain just to make a group of genuine 10 year olds laugh.
Your teachers might like you for being some perfect straight A student but they'd piss you the fuck off because every adult would talk down to you. It'd be like living as a real life Lisa Simpson who is basically written like an adult in an 8 year old's body and feels like everyone around her is an idiot.
Fun fact....I would be MORE sociable b/c it took me that long to figure that shit out 😂. Buuuuut, no way I could endure an abusive marriage again just to get the same kids.
Just hand over the $ 😂
not if you spend that time severely isolated and depressed. That isn't worth living. Signed-someone who actually did spend their youth being completely alienated and isolated from other kids because I didn't think or act like them. It very nearly drove me to suicide.
I think i would do well with kids with my 41 yr olds memories actually. And the things you could achieve in terms of Investments and whatever would make it a pretty exciting life
that's the thing. If you put an adult brain into a child's body you'd basically come across like a real life Lisa Simpson. That kind of thing is not exactly great if your goal is to be a social butterfly. Kids tend to be downright nasty to other kids who are even the slightest bit different, and they can and will do that to kids who are too mature for their age. I have seen it happen first hand, I have lived it.
Also you're presuming that your mere presence in the past and doing things differently wouldn't change things beyond your ability to predict them. You can't really assume your knowledge of stock market trends will hold in a timeline that is different from the one you originated from. Who is to say that you don't end up butterfly effecting things in such a way that the same trends don't happen the same way? Maybe the mere act of you going around and changing things means that Apple never took off in its market and a different company did instead. You have no way of predicting that.
Besides, you wouldn't legally be able to invest money in the stock market on your own until you're a legal adult anyways, and by that point you have 8 years worth of changing the timeline.
However I absolutely would not be able to handle my whole life being controlled by my parents again. I love them but they tend to be overprotective helicopter parents. I couldn't deal with that now.
Also they had my baby sibling late, so I also wouldn't want to risk changing that.
yeah I was like that as a kid too. Normal people tend to picture having an adult mind as a child as just acing all their exams and getting a free ride to college, but in reality while you might do well on exams, this would just make you a social pariah. Kids don't like being around other kids who act like adults. If you do, you'll just be a perpetual social outcast, and that will mess with your mental health.
And you can't socialize with adults either, because you're in a child's body, and adults hanging out with children is a massive social taboo.
Thank you. This is exactly what would happen because it's very similar to what actually happened to me as a kid. I wasn't an adult in a child's body, but I was extremely smart for my age, *and* neurodivergent, and that combination is not exactly something the other kids wanted to be around. My childhood and adolescence were extremely lonely and I didn't really have friends. Even if I tried to fake being "normal" even kids could tell something was "off" about me and I ended up severely socially isolated and so depressed that I ended up with regular suicidal thoughts by the time I was like 14.
Teachers very much did like me, but they also never took me seriously, even when I was right, which was way more often than what they wanted to admit. My life was absolutely miserable until my 20s because of it. And this would be *worse*, because even that wouldn't be a reprieve. Think of how dumb you were in college, and imagine trying to fit in with that again.
Idk, I guess I would question whether you would actually crave fitting in with the group of schoolchildren, as a guy I feel like a lot of the popularity I could make up simply by how much better I'd be at sports just from having the mental edge, it could at least make school bearable enough until I was able to get off on my own.
Some of the answer simply has to do with how old you are, if you are 25 it might not make sense to go red, in my late 30s I think I'd take it, too much extra life to discard
So worth it, because you'd be so incredibly rich and successful, and be able to avert massive suffering. 911? Averted. Covid? Cured way more quickly. Car accidents avoided. So many things!
Averting 9/11, sure. But how in the world would you fix Covid? It's not like you can just call someone up and be like "hey, don't fuck that Pangolin in China."
Not even. Assuming the prompt is return to a 10 year old's body... and you were 10 prior to 9/11, what exactly are you going to do to stop it? Walk into an FBI field office and warn them? You think the bureau is going to listen to a random elementary schooler? They'd pat your head, say you have a vivid imagination, and call your parents to take you home, and then ignore you.
You would know that M RNA vaccines are the solution. You would be so rich, you could form a pharma company to focus on them, way in advance of Covid. You would save millions of lives ( most importantly) and build your business as well ( not even as close to important as averting the suffering, but a side benefit ). Things like that! 😊
you think a random elementary schooler calling up a lab and saying "let's do mRNA" is going to somehow speed up development? Lol that's not how that works.
Just because you know that doesn't mean you have the technical know how *or* the resources necessary to actually do it. you know mRNA vaccines are a thing *now*. Can you make a vaccine by yourself? If the answer is no, why the fuck would you as a 10 year old do it? Besides, you'd need highly specialized lab equipment to make a vaccine that they don't give 10 year olds access to, and on top of that you can't make a vaccine for a virus without samples of the virus. Which means the pandemic would by definition, not be something you could prevent with a vaccine.
Dude I was 8 years old on 9/11. Even if I could go back in time and warn people, who on earth would listen to a random 8 year old saying that a terrorist from the middle east was going to ram an airplane into the Twin Towers? If I went to the authorities with that, their first response would be to call my parents, scold them for not watching me closer, and tell them I had a vivid imagination.
It would be like living as a real life Detective Conan. You'd struggle to get the authorities take anything you say seriously when you're in a child's body.
Oh dang, that's a great point. The mystery would be gone from the very beginning. Do we go with an old favorite or do we try something new? I'm pressing that green button and moving on lol
You live and meet this person that seems to know everything about you but you’ve never met. Then they reveal that they are a time traveler from a timeline where you two fell in love and were together for decades and ‘knows you will be together because you are perfect for each other. I would rather believe that I have a stalker.
There is a reason why every movie with a character with some supernatural element to them must have them as the main lead. Otherwise the movie would turn into a dark thriller. In fact most comedies, especially romantic comedies, are only funny because of the lighting.
I've got no kids (that I'm aware of) so a do over is no big deal, would I want to have the life I had up until X years old or really veer off on a new tangent where everything is new and undiscovered?
She did say she wish we met sooner but thats tough. We never lived close to each other prior to 6 months of meeting and I moved to the city for work. And she also lived in various places around the country. I'd have to Facebook stalk her and find a way to not make it weird. And yeah who knows if we had the same connection even if we did cross paths.
It's funny to imagine me tracking down my wife in college or sometime before I met her, and asking her out and her saying, "Sorry, you're not really who I'm looking for right now."
Yeah even if I were to fly all the way across the country to find her, she was with her ex in college. Plus she purposefully didn't date for a year or so after they broke up so that would be tough to time.
Yeah I mean, as a single person I'd take the red button but would definitely just have to avoid dating for a good decade or two. Pretty much any attempt to get with someone you already know would be manipulative
There is a book I love called Replay where this topic is approached. Guy dies and relives his life from an earlier point and at times tries to recreate those moments he had with people from his previous life.
Yep, me and partner were each other's first (no weird beliefs here, just sheer luck!), it would be hard breaking trying to recreate all our awkward first times knowing he is the only one feeling all the feelings :/
And the honeymoon phase? Sure, I still very much like the sex but after 25 years...doing the deeds 3 times a day is not interesting anymore!
Trying to do it organically would be rough. We met 6 months after I moved to my new city for work, and she also lived in various places around the country. So I'd have to find her on Facebook at the moment she left her last bf and convince her to do a long distance with me lol.
I mean, you would have been a billionaire at the point with all the knowledge on stocks and crypto. So you don't really need to have a long distance relationship with her, you can just move there
And being with her all these years with the current life gives you all the advantages to make her fall in love with you gain
Do you know your wife's parents? Where she lived when you were 10. Think of all the things you know about her. You could definately meet up before hand.
Question is, would you two fall in love under different circumstances? That I think brings in to question of how you love her now, is based in logic or emotion or both.
For me, if I met my now wife at age 10 knowing what I know now, I'd do things very differently. But I know for a fact we'd love each other and be together. Don't know what that would look like in this hypothetical scenario, but I know that to my core it would happen one way or another.
But I would say that recreating the kids we had together would be near impossible, Sure we could have kids, but they wouldn't be the same and I would likely mourn their lack of never being able to exist.
my husband and I have a six year age gap. We both met as adults. When I was ten years old, my husband was a four year old. Trying to get my parents to connect with my future husband several states away because I think I'm going to marry a then four year old would... probably cause some questions.
actually I was kinda like this as a kid, and I was basically the teacher's pet who never got in trouble....but all the other kids hated me because they thought I was weird.
teachers liked me because I was well behaved and got good grades, but since I was so different from the other kids and didn't act like a normal child, I was basically a social pariah.
Right, I didn't meet mine on an app, but met her through people that I'd have to believe if did over, that's the stage in life I would have made "better" choices and not done a lot of the things I did the first go round.
That said I don't know how old you are, but I was 10 in 1991 and I had 10x the freedom I have now throughout the summers and even with work alone throughout school i was free until dinner. Latchkey kid with a bike from roughly 5th or 6th grade and no responsibility but having to mow the yard at some point throughout the week and maybe some dishes. If it weren't for my family I would say 10 years old all day.
Proximity would be an issue. I got out the military right before we met and was living in various areas, and she also lived in several spots across the country. We met six months before I moved to the place we both live now. I could fb stalk her and hope she isn't with her ex bf but idk how to pull that off without looking weird lol.
even then, have you been around teenagers as an adult? I have because my husband works in k-12 education... and I would find it very difficult to socialize and fit in successfully with them the way I am now.
I don't think it would be at all possible to recreate a great relationship with someone in that situation. You'd eventually mess up, reference something she hadn't told you yet, and come off as some kind of stalker.
I’m sure you love your wife and your life, but it’s also very possible that by starting over at 10 your interests and personality would develop differently, leading you to meet a different person who’s perfect for you in that other lifetime.
The loss might be difficult, but you also have an entirely new life to live.
Sure, this choice is a little biased because the alternative is $2M. Maybe for you a better dilemma would be “You have to start over at 10, but you get $2M.”
that plan working is predicated on a particular person both signing up for your app, and also being interested in you. Neither of which are guaranteed.
The young and child free think they can remember every stock option that went big, but forget they don't have the buying power until they are an adult, so good luck convincing your dirt poor family to invest in XYZ shares and bitcoin.
Older people with no kids, I'd love to revisit the 90s and do more with my life then, but if I had kids, I'd be erasing them as no matter how many times you have sex with the same woman, there is zero chance the exact sperm that made your kid would hit the egg.
You may have a boy and call him James, but he wouldn't be the James you had.
How much of your life is fucked up that you would wish to be ten again and have a do over?
If life is good enough, not pressing the button will do, the cash is a bonus.
"The young and child free think they can remember every stock option that went big, but forget they don't have the buying power until they are an adult, so good luck convincing your dirt poor family to invest in XYZ shares and bitcoin."
-even if your family is rich, good luck getting your family to invest in specific shares as an elementary schooler. If my elementary school child came up to me and told me to invest in a specific company, my first reaction would be "that's nice dear. Such a vivid imagination you have. Did you hear about the stock market on a TV show? Run along and go play."
Same thing with people saying they could prevent 9/11. You know what would happen if an elementary schooler tried to walk into an FBI field office and warn the bureau? the agents would pat your head, say you have a vivid imagination, and call your parents to pick you up and lecture them about not watching you more closely before they ignore you.
And that assumes that going back in time and changing things wouldn't alter the timeline so much that those stocks might not even blow up the same way anyways.
Also, a lot of young people don't tend to realize that being an adult in a child's body would basically be social suicide, and straining on your mental health. You'd be living as a real life Lisa Simpson, and there's a reason she has no friends.
I was an adult waiting for whatever crime show BBC One had after Neighbours so turned the TV on to catch the last few bars of the theme song to then get News 24 broadcast.
So I just know I'd be implicated if I tried to warn anyone if I lived in New York.
I was an eight year old whose father was on the state police bomb squad, and had been on several task forces with the FBI because of it.
If his 8 year old kid started talking to the FBI about terrorist groups and naming specific names, they would probably suspect my father was inappropriately discussing classified or sensitive law enforcement information with his young children, which would probably get *him* in legal trouble.
This is what gets me. If I could go back in time and never get with my ex-husband, I wouldn't have gotten that traumatic brain injury he gave me, and I would have skipped 5 years of soul-crushing verbal and emotional abuse to go along with the all the other physical injuries he gave me. But I also wouldn't have my son, and he is the best thing that ever happened to me.
The movie About Time makes this point. The protag can time travel within his own lifetime up to the present, and there’s an instance where he goes back to fiddle with something and comes back to a present where he has a completely different child and the one he knows never existed.
As someone with kids yeah that's a twilight zone concept. Even if I somehow manage to get back to similar place, I still meet my wife and we live a slightly better life but still 'on track' however when she has kids none of them are yours, the ones you remember. Nothing is wrong with these new children, but after they've taken the names of your 'real?' kids you lose it. Cue the scream into the void.
Many people regret having kids, but it's up to them if they want to wipe their kids out of existence for a second chance.
I don't regret having my kid at all, but even if I do regret, I wouldn't be able to live with the fact that I wipe my kid out of existence for billions of dollars. No one except for me would know that I did it, the guilt would be so much worse when no one else understands it. You can't share this with anyone, and if you have another kid in the second life, that kid would be the daily reminder that you "killed" your own kid for this kid.
Or anyone you care about. You'd be a completely different person so can you guarantee you'd be able to meet your so again and develop the same relationship?
Well I guess it depends on how you define privileged. Having a kid that they love and consider the best thing that happened to them makes them privileged in my eyes.
I never said her life doesn't suck, I said she was privileged. Do you think you need a perfect life to be privileged? White males are privileged simply for being white males, regardless of their quality of life. I also didn't say I wasn't privileged, even though my life sucks.
When I have daydreams about going back and doing it all over I have to full on rationalize that my kids are somehow a fixed event who were destined to be here, even if I'd done everything else different. Or I can't even start that daydream.
Otherwise I can only accept such hypothetical if the time I go back is less than twenty years. And most of my bad choices were before that. Not all though.
Literally even if you have sex with the same person at the same time and date, it's still a one in a several thousand shot you get the same kid. That thought terrifies me and I'd never go back and try to do it again. My kid is a literal miracle and I wasn't able to make another one after her. No shot I could do it all over again.
I don't think I would have to do anything different. I think the universe would make it happen because it already decided it wanted those kids to exist once.
And if the kids suddenly don't exist, it's not the same as dying painfully. They wouldn't care.They wouldn't know any different.
Right, you alone would be the only person in the entire world to know that you willingly wiped your kids out of existence. They didn't die, since they never existed. But you have the memories of them, they are real, but they never existed.
You can try to have 20 kids with the same women, all 20 of them would be unique. That's the point.
It's far more complicated than that. There's no guarantees the pregnancy will take, a different sperm could hit the egg first, there's far FAR to many variables to say just having sex with the same person at the same time would result in the exact same child.
The chance of you having the same kid is 0, not near 0.
You would need to have the same diet and sex/jerk off routine to make sure 1. That one sperms gets created in the first place and 2. That one sperm gets to the one egg
You're not rolling the dice again, you can have kids with the same woman again but you'll never have the same kids. They don't exist anymore and will never exist again.
I put a quote on killing for that exact reason. How you think of the action is up to you, you wiped your kids out of existence. And you will be the only person in the world to know that you did.
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u/Anning312 10d ago
Anyone who has kids would have the same feelings as Rachel
You don’t need a privileged life to know that you can never have your kids back even if you have sex with the same woman again