I recently had a discussion with some friends while we were talking about nostalgia, the millennial era, the way of life back then, pokemon, etc. We couldn’t reach a consensus so I’m curious to know the general opinion on a larger scale.
We end up the discussion with a fun “Would you rather”, and was a 50/50 :
So, would you rather ?
Go back to your childhood
Stay here and keep going with +$1M
0voters
Also, with this option, you can’t keep any of your memories (so you won’t buy 200 Bitcoins in 2010 or keep pokemon packs from the late 90’s !).
So what about you ?
For me, I’d jump in that space-rift without a doubt. I love my current life, but doubling your lifetime is insane. As a kid everything was simple, I would love to find the ‘slow life’ of the 90s again and the childhood innocence.
Maybe it’s all about nostalgia and I’m idealizing this period of my life, I don’t know
+memories would be a no-brainer back to childhood. But otherwise nah gimmee that milly. No memories = no additional appreciation of that era if I re-did it.
If there was a compromise along the lines of “you don’t get to keep specific memories, but you instead go back to relive childhood with a strong, unwavering sense of conviction for collecting pokemon…and a troobeliever in bitcoin…” then yes take me back Jack.
If I went back in time, would I eventually reach the point in my life again where I have to choose between going back in time (again) and the million? If so, it seems like I could just live my childhood over and over as many times as I wanted. So now I’m seeing the choices as either get a million dollars or live the same 25 -30 years in a temporal time loop for all eternity.
Its not even the money. Imagine having a wife and kids and then saying “Yeah let me ditch all of them for a chance to live for myself again”. Or saying “Yeah let me go back to my childhood to relive nostalgia” Either way you are pursuing your own desires at the cost of what you already have, and even if you didn’t have much today, 1M is more than enough to get you back on track.
Sacrificing everything to go back to childhood is just delaying the inevitable and it will most likely lead you in a worse predicament. Taking the 1M will 99% help you get back on track or at least increase your chances. Paying Student Loans? Buying a house? Investing in stocks? Starting/Expanding a business? Having a comfortable inheritance to give to your future children? A chance to start over with your family? All of these possibilities are infinitely important than your childhood desires.
If you can’t bring any memories or affect the past whatsoever, then maybe going back isn’t so interesting.
But if there were a very limited way to make a specific change to the past, and then relive childhood from that moment onwards, I’d possibly choose that.
I am an only child. For much of my life I have wished I could have had siblings. Maybe it’s natural to want what we don’t have. “Grass is always greener”. But if I could replay childhood with that one change I’d probably take the opportunity.
I’m a little surprised so few people on a pokemon card forum would go back to their childhoods. But I think that’s an encouraging sign that people are building lives they’re satisfied with.
If I couldn’t retain any memories Erased-style then nah, I’ll take the money.
I can’t pretend that the desire to keep memories has nothing to do with potential financial gain, but that’s secondary to other choices I regret. I do see the appeal of reliving some things, especially positive memories that are very vague to me now. But I don’t know that I’d cherish or improve them any more the second time around if I can’t have some meta-cognitive reason to try.
Edit: Perhaps instead of fully retaining memories, we got a cryptic hint or strong feeling to choose differently when we come to critical moments? Professor Oak telling us it’s not the time and place to ride our bike?
That way we avoid the Cassandra Syndrome of knowing the impending doom that would make it impossible to enjoy the good times. That might make the choice a bit harder, though the butterfly effect of it all…
Pokémon is pretty much the only thing from my childhood I still interact with, it’s in many ways the connection to my child self.
If we were to go back to our childhood without any knowledge, you’d just relive the same things, not really adding anything to your experience because you’d be ending up in the same place with the same memories. It’d be like groundhog day but forgetting every day.
If you were to have your memories/experience, it would be miserable because you’d essentially be an adult in a kids body. Having to deal with all the child things that now seem childish to you. Doesn’t sound very appealing.
There’s like a tiny sweet spot in which you get to keep only specific memories or basically communicate with your younger self that would make it remotely interesting.
Also, we tend to forget crappy things that happen in the past, leaving us with rose-tinted glasses when we regard it. I had a great childhood, but as a child, it wasn’t always great I reckon.
For the flaws my life has (everyone has theirs as nobody is perfect), I’d take the million to take care of things now. I love my wife, my family, and pets (yes) so much that it would be so selfish of me to turn back the clock and relive my childhood. What makes childhood so special to me was that it was a once in a lifetime experience and that is what drives my nostalgia in the present.
