I mean, does my ID remain the way it is, and I just revert to my physical state at 16?
It’s easier to just think of my current mind appearing in my head at age 16 back when I was 16.
That would make the decision a lot easier for me, though in the opposite direction. Being 16 in 1993 would be a lot better than being 16 today, IMHO. If the choice is between the reverse Big scenario of being 16 today, even with all my accumulated knowledge and wisdom, vs. 5 million dollars, give me the 5 million.
For me it would be a matter of health (see the various obesity threads if you’re really curious). At age 16 I was was underweight, and though my diet wasn’t good, my body still hadn’t suffered the effects of an additional 30 years of eating unhealthy amounts of sugar and the likely permanent changes to my body that will make getting healthy extremely difficult. It would be a lot easier to go on a long term healthy diet and live a healthy life to a ripe old age (90 plus) as an underweight 16 year old in 1993 than as an obese 46 year old at the present time, where I’m likely staring down an earlier exit due to things like hypertension, T2DM, and their adverse health effects.
My 16+ wasn’t anything terrible; at least not like some people describe their late teens and high school experiences. I’ve been blessed up to this point to have gone through some hard times but not legitimate unavoidable tragedy to have to relive. But I also know a lot more about myself now and that some of what WAS bad about my earlier days was self-inflicted and wouldn’t mind the chance to do it again; both for me and for people who had to deal with my nonsense. In my case on the internet, it wouldn’t be THAT many years until access to Usenet and IRC and early WWW (which was arguably a lot more fun than modern commercialized WWW). And all the previously mentioned opportunities to idly amass wealth, etc.
Plus, let’s face it: Time Travel! It’s just a lot more interesting than “Here’s a sizable, but not extravagant daydream worthy, amount of money that could improve things provided you don’t get overly flashy with it”. I’d take $5mil over a lot of things but probably not time travel. If you want me to pass up on time travel, I’m gonna need “Private island and solid gold jet” levels of wealth.
As an idle hypothetical, I choose to envision a scenario where I’m not beset by a million other Red Pill Time People or some weirdly hostile butterfly effect that only lets bad outcomes happen from my knowledge of future events, or other terrible stuff people envision if they Red Pill it.
Same with me. My awkward years with the typical teenage anxieties were during my junior high years, when I was 11 to 13, and my first year of high school when I was 14. By the time I was 16 things were going pretty well for me. Looking back on things, junior year in high school is (or at least was for me) like the goldilocks zone. I had two years of high school experience under my belt, by then I was one of the older kids, but I wasn’t yet staring down the barrel of entering the full responsibilities of the adult world.
That would be interesting, if only to visualize the heartburn from the outfits that are on the hook for my life-term income annuities…
I already said red pill upthread. I had a good childhood but it would be fun reliving those years again but with the experience I have now. As the saying goes, youth is wasted on the young.