A godlike entity decides to put you into a time loop, where time will reset after a certain period. You will live in this loop for 1,000 years (fuck leap year), at the end of 1,000 years life will continue as normal (if you are in a 1 week time loop, after 52,000 loops, time just continues as normal).
The entity allows you to pick how long the time loop is. How long do you pick? One day? One week? One month? Maximum time loop period is 20 years, minimum is 1 minute. After you pick, you can’t change it.
What do you do with it? If I had 20 years, I could get a PhD, get married, start a family, etc. then reset. But if I had one week I could spend it all on hookers and blow, maybe do a crime spree. That would get old fast though.
I’m thinking one year. It’s long enough not to get bored to death, but short enough that I won’t form relationships that I will mourn losing.
(What happens if I die? What happens if I jump off a tall cliff? I don’t want to fight the hypothetical, but what are the limits of what I’m allowed to do?)
The shorter the loop, the more you relive it, right?
Give me a ten year loop, let me live it a hundred times, and I’ve be able to retire very, very rich without boring myself to tears.
And further: I assume you don’t keep aging, or the answer doesn’t matter. At the end of the loop, do you “continue” from the events of the first loop or the last? Do I have to enter “from now” (i.e. up to 20 years starting today), or can I “start” up 20 years ago and end at “now”?
As you might guess from my username, I’m a domain expert at this stuff, and you’re under-specifying the problem!
To actually answer, the resets would be disruptive, so I’d probably go for the full 20, but might tweak it a little based on what age I was and the answers to the above questions. In 20 years, I’ll likely be rather infirm, so I’d prefer the retroactive version, and if I couldn’t have it, I’d probably opt for ten years instead.
Whew! That makes sense, but it sure puts the kibosh on grandiose suicide scenes. I suppose I’d try that a few times anyway…but always toward the beginning of the time loop! (Once I figured out the rule.)
So the ideal is to play the game, maximize the pleasure, figure out the gimmicks –
I’m gonna guess that we can’t depend on “things happen exactly the same way every time” either, as from the movie. The exact same traffic accident doesn’t happen every single July 9th, etc. So we can’t “game the system” the way the guy did in the movie. (Amirite?)
So… Okay, a year is my vote. Time to do good things, do fun things, maybe run for office, maybe kill someone I really hate and go to jail, maybe take dangerous street drugs, just to see what it’s like…
(Just my luck, I do something dangerous or dumb…and find that that’s the loop-exiting condition, and I have to live with it the rest of my life!)
I’m thinking a year - I like the changing of the seasons.
Will it be the same year (i.e. the same weather etc every time around)? If so, I might go for 5 years to spread my bet. It would be a bummer to have 1,000 repeats of a year where summer was a washout, or there was no snow, or the autumn was so damp that all the ceps were ruined, etc.
A couple years, I think. I have enough money saved up (and could scrounge up enough more - who cares about interest rates on loans in this scenario, right?) that I could comfortably live anywhere I wanted for a while. There are way more than 500 interesting places in the world where a person could spend two years living and learning.
And somewhere in those loops, I’m sure I’d find a way to become fabulously wealthy after my last reset.
Cool question. I’ll say 2 years – enough time for a serious romance, or to learn about a complex world situation or academic subject, or really get to know a city or locale. And I’d do something different each time, with the intention of coming out of my 1000 year cycle wealthy, with a wonderful relationship, and the skills, knowledge, and resources to do great things for the world.
What would suck the most would be losing all my writing – 2 years is plenty of time to write a novel or 3, but every time I’d restart I’d lose all my work. That would be devastating and discouraging enough to possibly make me quit writing until the cycle is complete.
You can’t come out of the 1000 year cycle insanely wealthy, because on the last day of a cycle you wake up on the first day. You can’t invest in Apple 100 times, you can only do it once on the last time.
And anyway, planning for the end of the loop is silly. You’ve lived 1000 years, the last few decades after the time loop ends are just the epilogue of your life.
The epilogue–or the chance to set a legacy. With a thousand years, and the ability to set up social experiments with control groups, I’d hope to come out incredibly good at tweaking society in whatever way I’d want.
You noticed that “control group” bit, huh? Yeah, I suspect the loop thing would make me, well, loopy. I’d probably get a mad scientist vibe going on. Not saying I’d tweak society in a GOOD way, but I’d try it out.
10-20 years should be good. 20 might not give me enough iterations. 10 might be too short.
Can I choose at what point I can start my loop? Or does it have to be “now”.
If that’s the case, I would pick my date as the day before I go meet with my college advisor for classes and set myself up on a 5-year loop.
I can basically just re-live college however many hundred times. I would pick different majors, make different friends, do different…ahem…experiences.
Then once I “graduate” (or not…what the hell do I care?) I just pick a different major.
I also second living my first loop while taking meticulous notes about lottery numbers so that I can memorize (I can’t take a notebook or something with me when I reset right?) them and get rich a time or two.
Living in college with money as no issue? Yes, Please!
For wealth, I’m thinking lottery, followed by two-three incredible investments. Over my first several iterations I’ll figure out the best way to use this approach to maximize wealth without attracting too much attention or taking too much of my time. Lottery within a few months of loop’s beginning; an investment within the first quarter of my time; another investment a couple years later. I’ll become famous as the best lottery winner ever, but that fame will quickly become eclipsed by my infamy as a mad genius.
You’d have the memory of each book you wrote if it matters. However with time those memories would fade. I barely remember my life 20 years ago, I have no idea how I’d remember what I did 700 years ago.
Exactly – and if it’s like Groundhog Day, there’s no way to preserve the writing – no notes or memory stick or anything else I can take with me. If I can take things with me, then this changes a lot.