Hard to say. Without some knowledge to fix some mistakes, then what’s the use. That coin I flipped on some decisions is still going to end up tails. Gonna end up the same place at the same time. But I miss having a body that responds when I tell it to, how I tell it to. But I wouldn’t be smart enough to enjoy it more, like I should have.
Now, if you tell me I have the opportunity to fix even 1 mistake, then I will be much more tempted.
No. As others have said, there’s simply no way to read this other than “my current self dies.” All my memories and experiences are lost, like tears in rain. I don’t understand how anyone could say “yes” as written. It’s not “fighting the hypothetical,” the literal wording of the OP is that you don’t get to keep your memories.
If I were exactly the same as I was at 16 (no keeping the memories of my future life), and the rest of the world was also exactly the same as it was then, the it would NOT be possible for me to make new mistakes. My life would work out in exactly the same way and I’d eventually end up right where I am now, with no memory that I’d done it all before. This question is basically “What if, at the age of 16, you only had the knowledge and experience you had gained in the first 16 years of your life and you were totally unable to predict the future?”, which isn’t even really a “what if”. It’s just what life is like.
Or are you asking if we’d want to be 16 again now, in the year 2014? That’s a more interesting question, but still not a very tempting offer. If others still knew who I was then I’d seem to be suffering from a serious case of amnesia* and I’d probably wind up in a mental hospital. If others didn’t know who I was, I’d be a homeless, undocumented teenager with no friends or family.
*Although I’d look great!
Yes, the literal wording of the OP is that you don’t keep your memories. That’s not the same thing as “you die”.
While memory is undoubtedly a big part of personal identity, I can lose some of my memories and still be the same entity, otherwise I’d have to conclude I die every time I go to sleep at night (memories are culled as we sleep).
I wake up every morning knowing exactly who I am and how old I am and where I work and who all my friends are… I have never died, but I’ll bet it’s nothing like waking up from a night’s sleep.
What the OP is essentially asking is “would you live your life over again from the age of 16?” Your answer will depend on how happy those teenage years were. I was socially awkward and quite insecure. I wasn’t miserable, but I have no desire to do it all again. That sounds exhausting.
I’m with the crowd that sees this as the current me dying. I don’t see any appeal.
With memories, it’s an interesting question. I’m a much better person than I was the first time through, and I’d make different choices, but I’d already have the memories of all of the choices I’ve made, so I wouldn’t be regressing.
But my husband would be creepily young. Damn.
Not to you, watching from the outside. For me, the result is exactly the same. This isn’t forgetting a phone number, or even a tragic loss of memory like Alzheimer’s. Everything that I have been since 16 is now gone. All of it. Even my body isn’t there any more. If this isn’t death, then vaporization in a nuclear explosion isn’t, either.
Hell no! 16 was miserable the first time around. Why would I willingly put myself through that again?
I was finally diagnosed with clinical depression at age 26. At 16 (and 13, and 14, and 15, etc.) I was just a “moody teenager” who needed to get over myself, snap out of it, etc.
If someone suffers a brain trauma and loses a large chunk of memories, we don’t say they’ve died and/or been resurrected. It’s the same person in the numerical identity sense.
Now obviously that person has qualitatively changed. But you qualitatively change throughout your life. I am not seeing why a big qualitative change = death. Maybe if you lost all your memories, not just those from 16+, maybe there’d be some justification of using the word “death”. But even there, I’d say that’s only death in a figurative sense; I’d still be a living, breathing human being.
I wouldn’t do it. I’ve made a lot of mistakes in my life, and I would love to have a second chance at life. However, if I was 16 again, being the same person in the same situation, with no additional information, there is absolutely no reason why I wouldn’t simply make those same mistakes all over again.
(Which means that in addition to the very interesting questions about personal identity, this also raises issues of free will. If you give my brain a set of inputs, and I just produce the same outputs the second time around as the first time, how you can say that I even have choices or make decisions?)
how could the hypothesis in the OP be one of numerical identity? your present body would not exist anymore, neither would your present mind. nothing from the you that is now would get carried over to the past 16yo you. there is no way to read it but as abandoning the present you and travelling back in time and replaying events once more.
time travel would bring its own jar of pickles. if it’s a single timeline, everyone in the present would be killed, or if you would prefer, be disappeared / cease to exist. if we’re talking about a multiple timeline, what happens to the current 16yo you in that past timeline? would he be disappeared as well so that you could replace him?
magic is a cool word used when you don’t want to face the logic behind certain things, but this being a regular subject on the boards, it makes it difficult to suspend disbelief in favour of the OP.
that said, to answer the question as intended, the OP is basically asking if i wish to be reincarnated as my 16yo self. sure - provided that i was dead, and wherever the ether i am was not be as fun as not existing anymore.
If you ignore the philosophy, the OP is really just asking: “Did you enjoy being 16?”
In which case the answer is: Of course not, are you mental?
The OP didn’t specify any mechanism (just said magic).
So personally I went with the interpretation that leads to an interesting question / dilemma, because I assume that people want to start interesting threads and discussions.
The interpretation where numerical identity is not preserved would be “Would you choose to just die right now, if we could make a clone of what you were like at 16?”. I am sure the answer would be trivially no for most people.
And the question “Would you like it if we rewound time so everything just played out just as it did?” is of course pointless. For all we know that scenario may have played out thousands of times. The space-time continuum could be an LP with God as an 80s hip-hop DJ.
But if you really require a more specific mechanism for the OP, let’s say I invent a cell rejuvenation therapy that unfortunately has three drawbacks:
I was off to university at 16, away from family, friends, and other loved ones. It was a good year, soon to be followed by a couple very bad years.
Without the knowledge of what was to come it would seem like a cruel hoax to perpetrate on myself to go back. As much as I would love to see certain people again for just a moment I don;t think I could go through losing them again.
So I’ll pass.
I was one of the few folks above who said “hell yes I’d do it.”
Everybody seems to be focusing on the “16” aspect. You don’t *just *get to be 16 again. You get to be 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, … 30, 35, 40, 57, whatever up to and perhaps through your current age.
Further, you’ll start over at age 16 just as you were the last (and presumably first) time. But that does NOT mean you’ll make exactly the same decisions at exactly the same moments resulting in a precise do-over, all the way to whatever you ate for breakfast the day before your most recent birthday.
Yes, per the OP the next time around I’d still be a callow 16 yearold making silly 16 yo decisions. And 2 years later I’d be a slightly wiser 18 yo making typically poor 18 yo-quality decisions. Etc., etc.
But at each juncture they’d be subtly *different *decisions. With therefore wildly different outcomes by the time I’m, say, 30. By my current age of 55 things would be utterly different. Maybe I choose a different college. Maybe a different major or minor. Meet different people, have a different career path, different spouse.
the family & immediate friends around me behave a little bit differently when I first “return”. Not a miraculous changing of the leopoard’s spots, but a subtle difference, within the random noise of daily behavior decisions. And so we all spin off into a different tree of consequences. Maybe Uncle Jim does kick the bottle this time. Maybe Suzy next door doesn’t get hit by that car. Maybe I have a big fight with some long-forgotten girlfriend & she does get drunk, crash her car, and die. Who knows what will be different? But it will be different this next time around in a thousand ways; some major, some subtle.
Particularly for the folks above who said “It was awful then, I’d never do it again”:
You’re precisely the people for whom the random noise of daily life offers the most chance for a better outcome the next time the dice are rolled.
Somebody who had what they think is a picture-perfect life up to the present would be exactly the person with the most to lose by trying again. Those who had the bad luck, the crappy situation, the worst pain and suffering are exactly the people with the most to gain by trying again.
Obviously my attitude is in the minority here. I’m just struggling to understand why. I’m assuming it’s mostly that most of us have chosen to be content with our lot today and think we have more to lose than to gain by playing the game of life a second time.
I’m content enough as I am, but the chance to get a second shot at life, even with no advantage gained from the first time is just too compelling a proposition to turn down.
Not a chance. I wasn’t that crazy about being 16–I didn’t have a bad life by any means (actually I had a pretty good one) but at that age I had no idea what I wanted to do with myself.
Plus, you couldn’t pay me to be a teenager in 2014. I often say that one of the things I’m most happy about in life is that I got to live my teenage years mercifully free of the internet. Much as I love it now, no way would I have wanted it then.
Being allowed to go back with one’s memories is a pretty common plot device in SF - typically it doesn’t end well. E.g. there was one episode of Star Trek TNG where Q gave Picard the chance to go back and change an arguably “stupid” choice he made when he was young - getting into a bar fight that resulted in severe injuries and lifelong health complications. Picard relived the experience and decided to escape the conflict - the result being that he then grows up to be a loser, and certainly not captain of anything. The point was that the fight was a turning point in Picard’s life where the severe injuries he sustained gave him a new perspective on life that made him into Captain Picard.
But that doesn’t make any sense. If I keep my memories, I already HAVE that new perspective on life.
But you get no advantage from the second time, either, because you don’t know you’ve succeeded or failed. As written, the existence of current 16 year other people is actually a better way to “roll the dice.” At least you can compare their experiences and choices to your own.
Without my memories, I wouldn’t do it. With my memories, I probably would: especially if time reverted with me, I’d be fantastically rich today unless the butterfly effect is a lot larger than I think it is, and could reconnect with my loved ones at the “appointed” times. I could memorize a couple of lottery numbers ahead of time to make it even easier. But aside from all else, I’d probably be adding three decades to my lifetime (maybe more, because I could make different health choices back when it was easier).
Consider an interesting middle ground, though: You lose your memories when you “go back,” but you gain them back at the same rate you get new ones (i.e. you gain one day’s worth of memories back per day). I think that would give you the benefit of past experiences (possibly even soon enough to revert mistakes or recognize positive outcomes), but none of the benefits of “precognition” or extended lifespan. It would be less and less useful as a life guide as the two “lives” diverged over time, but still give you the benefit of skills and information you learned in the other lifetime.
16? No. 15? Yes. That’s the year my dad died and my life changed forever. Knowing that I’d been able to say good-bye and that I loved him would more than make up for all the stuff that’s happened in the 50 years since.