I’d go for the 20-year loop. If things go pear shaped, just off yourself. I could study and become expert at everything that interests me. Learn most languages on Earth. Of course memorize all the best winning lotto numbers and various investments. I could have all kinds of friends and lovers and figure out the best ones, and the ones to avoid.
I’d avoid having kids, which isn’t difficult. You’d never get the same biological kid twice so it would be a bummer losing them each loop. I guess you could adopt though. You’d get the same kid and you could figure out the best way to make the kid grow up almost perfect.
With all the people, cities and cultures around the world, I can’t imagine ever getting bored. Jaded maybe.
Then there’s all the books, movies, tv shows and video games. Shoot, that’d take a 1000 years all by itself.
Well, Mnemnosyne brought up some great counter-points to my argument. But simply living in another locale doesn’t do all that much for me. I’m not saying it wouldn’t be novel or interesting to live in Thailand for 20 years, then Italy the next and so on. But like Mnemnosyne mentions, unless I proactively alter some things in world events (which would be a very interesting way to live out the loops), being stuck in the same 20 year period of history would just become old news after your 10th time around the horn.
I find the progression of humanity itself deeply profound and interesting. Without that element, I can’t help but feel I’d get pretty bored knowing everything that happens in X-year, over and over and over again.
All sorts of weird negative things could happen too at the end of your loops, and you want to use that knowledge to make the world a better place. Like, trying to thwart off another 9/11-like attack or something. But you’d have to be very careful using that knowledge effectively in alerting authorities so they’d take you seriously. Say I tried to alert them anonymously. Would that be enough? If not, then I’d have to come forward, I’d be questioned, what do I say? Would it incriminate me as a co-consirator? Would I spend my last days in prison?
Or you might be injured or killed in trying to stop other dangerous events from happening. The only way to mitigate or avoid these things, is to use your loops as an obsessive study and practice on what will work most effectively for every disaster. What changes in world events might occur if I effectively stop one school shooting — does another successive tragedy still happen? Might I create a new one? And how to warn people about horrible disasters like big quakes? Would these events make you numb to it all, or would you feel a strong responsibility to save hundreds of thousands of lives, like in the Indian Ocean Tsunami of 2004?
The reason I said suicide negates the loop was because I was thinking suicide could be a way to vastly accelerate escape from the loop.
For example, if you don’t want to be caught in the loop you just pick 20 year periods, commit suicide on the first day, wake up and do it again. Do that 50 times and you are done. I wanted to make that loophole not be effective.
Every day roughly 300,000 humans die. And another 300,000 are born.
The largest natural and man-made disasters in all of history are mere background squeaks against the steady roar of routine human turnover.
The idea of paying any attention to mitigating future disasters as some kind of a life mission is entertainingly naïve. You, and I, and all our neighbors aren’t numb to yesterday’s 300,000 deaths. Neither to today’s nor tomorrow’s. Instead we’re simply indifferent. Because we need to be for our sanity and because turnover is simply the way of the all things living.
One can live one’s life in thrall to the sensational 24 hour news cycle, or one can realize that everything they talk about is still just the tiniest fraction of all the tragedy in the world. And given their bias towards bad news, an even more negligible fraction of the good in the world.
Actively contribute to the good. Leave the bad to statistics. Burdening yourself with responsibility for superhuman bad-mitigation is a recipe for depression and insanity. And failure. Great heaping gobs of failure.
Said another way, you and I are very different personalities. Choose what works for you. Go forward in happiness however you define it.
I’ve been drinking and thinking. Usually an interesting combination.
This would be the perfect scenario to explore alternate realities. What if I used my knowledge to abort the 9/11 attack? Or whatever the next major terrorist incident is if 2011 is outside the loop. But going with historical data… I know about Osama bin Laden far enough in advance that I can approach and nullify him before he becomes a major figure. I get to see if it leads to a better or worse outcome and adjust my actions in the next loop.
Maybe I get to influence the outcome of one or more presidential elections.
I think I may pick 20 years, because you can advance science by doing that.
Example, the first loop maybe do a couple PhDs in fields you want to revolutionize. Make sure you understand what tools you need to learn about. Also memorize some lottery numbers.
Then in loop 2, basically you have a 20 year head start in science. So use the money you got from beating the stock market, investments and the lottery to start some companies. This will advance science even further since people will not have to reinvent the wheel. You will be advancing several fields by decades, leading to even more advances.
Go back and do it again. I wonder if by doing that you could really advance the world in the final loop.
Sure you’ve got a theoretical head start, but at the beginning of the loop, you’re no one special. The only thing you can take back with you is what you’ve got in your head. You might know how to create carbon nanotubes, but you still have to build the equipment to make them and that’s not going to happen in a weekend. You’re going to spend the first few years building up credentials and a reputation.
I’d go for the 20-year interval but wish it was slightly longer at say 30 or 40 years since that allows me to start from early childhood and go on until the “prime” of my life in the mid-thirties or forties when I’m successfully established in a career. I don’t see why people wouldn’t want to prevent at least some disasters since that involves not only saving lots of lives but also potentially gaining fame and fortune. Since I’m interested in alternate history, I’d also be intellectually interested in the effects of my attempts at changing history.
I came here to recommend this book as well. The protagonist lives his life over and over. When he dies, he is born again and at some point during childhood remembers everything from all his previous lives and starts all over again.
The premise of the book also includes (naturally) that there are a handful of others like him. If you think about it, it becomes obvious that if I remember everything from a previous life, I can easily “invent” things next time around, but decades earlier. So, the pace of technology begins moving forward as this occurs. Interesting book.
What struck me was the question of, if I was faced with living the same life over and over, how many times would I attempt at a better version of the first life (marrying the same person, doing the same job but doing it better with the knowledge of the previous times) vs. doing something completely different?
Second year: Day 1, buy a lottery ticket for the numbers I knew would come up next.
End of that week, cash in the winning ticket, quit my job, and do something useful or enriching with the rest of the year.
I could take college courses one year, travel another, and so on.
Given the death stipulation 20 years definitely. The first few cycles I would probably play straight, since in the back of my mind I would have doubts as to whether it really does always repeat. After that I might start taking more risks, cashing out and offing myself early in the cycle etc. I don’t think the monotony would get to me, there is to many interesting things to experience. So near the end there may be a lot of 19 year 11 month trips.
For the long trips I would keep a diary of important information and spend the last year or so of the trip memorizing it.
I’m definitely going with the 20 year run. That’s enough time to get incredibly wealthy, have meaningful relationships, and change the world. While movies and TV would get to be pretty boring after only about two loops, I’d become a much more avid reader, and I’d start living each progressive loop after the first few in a new country and learn new languages. I do like the idea of advancing scientific fields with the knowledge you gain from the previous loop, which would do a lot to provide personal satisfaction and keep things fresh. Yes, maybe my chosen scientific field would require equipment that hasn’t been built yet, but you know who just won the lottery 20 times in a row that could fund parallel research into the development of that machine too? points finger at himself. I already know who the manufacturer of that machine is going to be, so why not fast track it with them?
And while I would try to avoid a lot of attention (such that winning 20 lotteries would probably not be my actual approach), even if I did get a lot of attention, what happens? Oh no…you mean a really attractive gold digging woman might want to have sex with me because of my fortune? Meh. And yes, I’m sure a bunch of people would sue me for frivolous stuff. Worst case, someone thinks I’m the Devil and shoots me. So I just start my loop again earlier than I had planned.