What if you could do it all over? (2020)
136 comments
·June 4, 2025kxter
If I could do it all over again, I would say screw the startup, the money, the IPO and all that crap. I'd run away to an island and spend maximum time with my first partner - who I lost far too soon in life. No money will ever bring them back. The time lost was not worth it. It's the biggest regret in my life that can still bring me to tears as a write this. I would give up everything to go back and tell my younger self to change that one fateful decision.
jmathai
Family and children eliminated thoughts of my “unlived” lives.
Life is hard. Focusing on gratitude helps me be thankful for what I have instead of thinking about what may have been.
anonzzzies
Never needed that: I like life because I know I will die soon and nothing I do matters. That is the thing I would've liked to know earlier.
vharuck
>I tell you, we are here on Earth to fart around, and don’t let anybody tell you different.
- Kurt Vonnegut
hirvi74
Reminds me of the quote:
"The meaning of life is just to be alive. It is so plain and so obvious and so simple. And yet, everybody rushes around in a great panic as if it were necessary to achieve something beyond themselves."
~ Alan Watts
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xyzzy9563
If you have children you can help continue a chain of humans millions or maybe even billions of years long.
jebarker
Sometimes when I'm struggling with the day to day mundane aspects of early years parenting I reframe it as the work of continuing the human race. Somehow makes it easier to keep pushing on as something so significant _should_ be challenging.
anonzzzies
Why would I want to? But let's say I want to, we have been here for a few 1000 years and our trackrecord is absolutely horrifying. We kill people not even to eat but for some religious madness... You really believe your offspring will live in a billion years?
hshshshshsh
That's a long chain of suffering you are creating. What do you do with that length?
jajko
Children are great under normal circumstances, its spouses and living with them 24/7 who create friction which easily dissolve even best relationships, one atom at a time.
Many reasons for that, but most I've seen could be summed up as "women expect men to change in marriage, and men expect women to not change", and it fails all over that statement in relationship over time, when kids and responsibilities come knocking at the door of your free time and energy.
Conscat
I will be childfree, so will my sister. Both of us are queer. As far as I know, all my three cousins (two of whom are queer) feel the same. There's no reason to expect that your children will want to reproduce, and it is pretty selfish to project your own dissatisfaction with life onto another human that way.
more_corn
The counterpoint to this is quite important. Sure, maybe nothing matters without someone there to make it matter. We are the only creatures in the known universe who believe in abstract universals (love, hope, truth, beauty, meaning as well as the negative abstract universals). Which means things only matter insofar as they matter to us. But obviously things matter to us.
If/when we disappear, meaning itself might get erased from the universe. In that sense nothing means anything.
In another sense, if we are the only source of meaning that’s potentially the most rare and precious thing imaginable.
Giving a shit is literally our superpower. So give a shit about something because meaning only exists when we bring it into being. And it only exists as long as we make it exist. Far from being depressing this might be the most uplifting thought possible. Because it makes you fucking matter. As much as you want to matter. (And as little)
y-curious
So, why continue living? The nihilist pit is something I recommend you claw your way out of, ASAP.
patching-trowel
For me it’s not a nihilist pit. The fact that I’m gonna die and nothing I do matters that much alleviates some dread. It’s not a deep and endless ocean I’m swimming in, just a comfy little pool.
interroboink
This is one of those interesting galvanizing points where different people's POVs are fascinating to me.
To abuse your metaphor a bit...
I get the sense that some people see the "nihilist pit" (or somesuch) as a dark scary thing (it is). Maybe they have gotten lost in it a little bit, did not like the experience, got out, and so advise everyone else to avoid it, too.
Other people have spent more time in the pit, whether by choice or the lack of it, gone deep down, and found the bottom. And that can be a wonderful, freeing feeling, to get to the end of that hard journey.
I guess for my own part, at the bottom of my pit, I found that there is something to stand on down there. It was an absolute relief to find, life-affirming, and has helped me ever since.
YMMV of course (: Different people are different.
anonzzzies
I like life, I said. I just know its useless which frees me of many things others are bothered with.
dagw
So, why continue living?
Because there are lots of fun things you can only do when you are alive.
jampekka
Just ask why not instead?
khazhoux
How so? Not everyone needs a cosmic scale Greater Meaning in order to go about their lives.
MangoToupe
[flagged]
badc0ffee
This is basically the lesson in About Time (2013).
(I liked that movie)
HenryBemis
I remember the "Beatle that got away" saying that "the best thing that happened in my life was to leave the Beatles, and I would never change that" (I don't remember the precise quote, but it was something along those lines). He then went on explaining how "if I was still with the Beatles he wouldn't have the kids he now has, and there is no price for that.
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futureshock
I think the fantasy of going back hides the reality that new possibilities are always stretched out ahead. I have lived many lives. New careers, new cities, new countries, new friends, new families. By my count I’ve lived 14 iterations of life and counting. New lives are always beckoning. After awhile you get good a recognizing the ones worth stepping into.
FinnLobsien
It's true that life can always evolve and change, new opportunities open, responsibilities appear, etc.
But in other ways it's not true. For example, there's no way to be 19 again and be in college, date the person who, looking back was clearly into you. Study the thing you really wanted to study (not what you thought would be best for your career), etc.
I think the fantasy of going back isn't about being unable to change, it's about "getting it right this time"
card_zero
Central to the plot of Back to the Future Part II (for some reason not referenced in the New Yorker) is the sports almanac with information about future results. Any fantasy of going back and getting it right hinges on this kind of transfer of knowledge back into the earlier situation. The problem is then whether the information is subtle enough to be interesting, that is, to prevent the fantasy from devolving into a mere cheat to get rich by knowing things in advance. In practice the time traveller would at least attempt to invest early in bitcoin, learn the skills that will be in demand, befriend the awkward person who is going to be cool and successful later, and other cheaty stuff.
I suppose a better fantasy would involve going back into a similar but rearranged situation, with all the variables and trends changed to prevent predictions.
FinnLobsien
Plus the question is also whether things would actually be interesting, even if you could port over all of your knowledge and wisdom.
Of course with sports betting, investing etc. most people would decide to get rich to make sure they don't struggle materialistically. But after that?
I think a lot of things would be extremely boring because you already know it's going to work.
It's adjacent to the idea that if you could live forever, nothing would have meaning because you can live in any city for a thousand years, marry anyone for a thousand years and do any hobby, job etc. for a thousand years. And if you can choose any option and have zero opportunity cost for it, then does any option really matter?
A long quote, but one I love:
> “Let's suppose that you were able every night to dream any dream that you wanted to dream. And that you could, for example, have the power within one night to dream 75 years of time. Or any length of time you wanted to have. And you would, naturally as you began on this adventure of dreams, you would fulfill all your wishes. You would have every kind of pleasure you could conceive. And after several nights of 75 years of total pleasure each, you would say "Well, that was pretty great." But now let's have a surprise. Let's have a dream which isn't under control. Where something is gonna happen to me that I don't know what it's going to be. And you would dig that and come out of that and say "Wow, that was a close shave, wasn't it?" And then you would get more and more adventurous, and you would make further and further out gambles as to what you would dream. And finally, you would dream ... where you are now. You would dream the dream of living the life that you are actually living today.”
SkyBelow
It is an interesting thought experience, what would you do differently if you have your current wisdom, but not your current knowledge. This isn't a clean distinction, because people see different boundaries on what is wisdom and what is knowledge, but I think it is an interesting thought experience all the same.
If I had my current wisdom but not my current knowledge, there are still some big differences in what I would do. Not on the level of bitcoin as that seems fully on the knowledge side, but things like getting healthy habits started earlier, waste less time on certain entertainment pursuits, and take certain opportunities much more serious even when they didn't align with my expectations.
Sometimes I wonder what I would do different today if I had the wisdom of me from 20 years in the future.
nonameiguess
Similar to the other top-level reply, without perfect foreknowledge, there is no way to know you're "getting it right this time." I dated the person into me and studied what I loved. We got divorced and I ultimately ended up with a person I didn't meet until I was 30. I had to go back to school and change careers later in life because the job prospects sucked for what I loved.
Given I ultimately ended up in a good place anyway, I don't even regret anything. The only thing you can't come back from is death. As long as none of your bad decisions kill you, I don't see much to fret about.
owebmaster
> I think the fantasy of going back hides the reality that new possibilities are always stretched out ahead.
It also hides the incapability of many to do what they should to succeed. Most people already know what they should do different to succeed without going back in time but still they do not have the will power to do it and they probably would still not have if they had a time machine.
MangoToupe
Ironically, I think characterizing life as a question of success-or-not was THE major barrier in my life to finding the contentment I was actually looking for.
owebmaster
Did you succeed in finding contentment after realizing that?
jampekka
What do you mean by succeed? I find learning to not care so much about succeeding - at least in the usual criteria imposed by the society - is maybe the best thing I've learned since touch typing.
owebmaster
> What do you mean by succeed?
Having an objective and achieving it. Not an overall expectation of winning in life but saying "I want to go to the gym 5x a week for 1 year" or "I want to be able to run 10km" and achieve it.
glimshe
My life turned out alright. Full of problems, pains and questions like everyone's else's but, in the grand scheme of things, I'm incredibly fortunate given the amount of poverty and misery in this world.
I always liked the thought experiment of living my life again. However, I'm much more interested in the thought of living in the future. If I could do it again, I'd take the risk of living 1000 years from now. I know this could be a mistake, but I'm an optimist.
kgwxd
It'd just be the same game in a different environment, with an inventory of items from a different tech tree.
i_love_retros
people would still be trying to understand how to upgrade node dependencies
glimshe
Do you think someone from 1025 would feel this way if they came here? Serious question.
owebmaster
Do you think people in 1025 weren't living happy and fulfilling lives?
People are happy in Africa, Latin America and the poor parts of Asia now, many places people are happier than in the US actually.
jajko
Maybe you are tech nerd so all the probable tech progress would amaze you. But unless you yourself would literally do time travel (and be treated like a primitive Neanderthal), your level of satisfaction would most probably be the same since all amazing and cool becomes a new baseline rather quickly, and curiosity and longing for next future would be there again.
We could also end up in millenia-spanning dictatorship of immortal piece of scheize egomaniacs like stalin, hitler, puttin', trump and so on and on. All of them would kill millions to achieve that, in a heartbeat with no remorse.
We could also destroy our ecosystem beyond easy repair and live in postapocalyptic mad-maxesque world (sure it will bounce back in a million years or two, but we would most probably be wiped out along the path). I look out of window on a dense beautiful wild forest in full bloom, doesn't get much better than that.
Nah, these are pretty good times we, most of us at least, have right now. If you are not happy now, chances of being happy some other time are slim.
glimshe
I'm happy now, but I have a more optimistic take. I believe that humanity could make progress in conquering unhappiness, disease or even death. While happiness levels possibly didn't improve as much as we expected in the last 1000 years, we did eliminate much misery in the world. Losing loved ones to diseases is bad, among many improvements we made. So, I think that in 1000 years, our descendants may be living in an objectively better world - possibly even without the gadgets we rely on so much for our happiness today.
999900000999
Once upon a time a certain someone wanted to come over,in reality I had to decline, but in an alternate timeline she does. We have fun, she decides to keep it, but signs over custody to me. Our daughter is a musical prodigy. With her sights on Juilliard.
I can play out a similar scenario with quite a few slight variations. But this what if stuff is almost always positive.
It's never what if I never downloaded Unity and taught myself to program.
It's never, what if that eviction was a bit faster.
For most of us reading this our lives are modern miracles. I came from nothing and I've made a comfortable 6 figure salary for a decade.
Be content with where you're at, you will never have everything you want.
FinnLobsien
That's true. We always imagine if we could go back we could correct our mistakes (and usually it's about regrets of what we didn't do).
Yet if we could, we'd also make new mistakes that we'd then want to rectify by going back.
ryandrake
I believe that our "success trajectory" is something like 10-20% our own choices and 80-90% pedigree / where we start from. And probably some percentage of "other luck." So I don't really think too hard about doing it over because I don't feel like I've made many really bad decisions. I've gotten about as far as I could have reasonably expected, given being born to a family of school teachers living in a rural middle of nowhere, where success meant getting a decent job at the local mill. No do-over would make my father a rich, well-connected businessman. No do-over would get me into Phillips Exeter Academy as a high schooler and then Harvard or Yale. No do-over would land me in Goldman Sachs post-graduation. So I really don't dwell on what might have been.
If I could go way farther back in time and bend my entire family tree's trajectory such that I started out on 3rd base, that would be a different story.
rwmj
If you had perfect future knowledge (which is what this article is really about) you wouldn't want to invent Slack (or Google), which lets face it would have been a ton of work with a very uncertain outcome. You'd want to invest in Slack / Google at some early stage, do no work whatsoever, and enjoy the proceeds.
jeremyjh
I'd probably join Slack early, successfully rail against Electron and kill the whole company.
racl101
Pretty much.
I always find it funny when people say: "I'd invent Google" when they could barely pass their first year Calculus class. As if stating the idea is all it took but not the engineering and well ... the actual difficult work.
But everyone can invest. That much is totally doable.
badc0ffee
Do those people know what PageRank is? Even if they did, could they implement it? (And would they be able to come up with their own name for it, given they are not Larry Page?)
rwmj
Yup, by far the hardest bit is working out which 7 star ski resort to go to next. In this alternate reality you'd be cosplaying as a VC, because that would give you the creds to raise money and meet the right founders. But the only work you'd be doing is passing on pets.com, and choosing to invest in thefacebook.
tayo42
The difficult work is easier to grind through when you know there's a pay off.
I think alot of people aren't passing calculus and doing hard work, not because they're dumb but there's no clear pay off, it's hard to stay motivated
anonzzzies
Yeah, I would say most past life choices for me would be investing in the right things. If you know, then risk is not needed.
verzali
It would be a lot faster to buy a lot of lottery tickets, or become a professional gambler. Once you've done that you'd have enough to make meaningful investments for long term returns. Or to short the stock market before certain big events...
matwood
There's a great book called Replay that tackles the ground hog day problem but at a life scale. I read it every few years and it always gives me some perspective about what is truly important in life.
https://www.amazon.com/Replay-Ken-Grimwood-ebook/dp/B0F9MY5M...
FinnLobsien
One of the most impactful books of my life. I think it's so important to realize that even if you could go back and rectify your mistakes, buy Bitcoin, invest in Google, whatever, you'd eventually run into the exact problem that nothing means anything and what you actually want is some permanence.
There's a quote I love from The Remains of The Day:
> I can't even say I made my own mistakes. Really - one has to ask oneself - what dignity is there in that?”
runamuck
I "died" in 2018 and it felt like waking up from a dream. This world just melted away like an amusing afterthought. That helped informed my attitude to life: enjoy it, make life enjoyable for others, spread love.
stormfather
Please say more
ivape
Can you explain that. Was it a near fatal experience? I've heard from someone similar that once they processed nearly dying, they pretty much got all the perspective they ever needed.
runamuck
Yes - near fatal. I floated away from my body, and saw myself in 3rd person view about 100 feet up. The vision became grainy, like a VHS tape. I had the same sensation that I have when I wake up in the morning after vivid dreams, and the memories (and world/ physics) of those dreams fade away - this world faded away. I remember thinking "oh, why did I worry so much down there?" and found it funny.
os2warpman
>For some people, imagining unlived lives is torture, even a gateway to crisis.
I was either born without the gene or raised to not do this for myself but I do, quite often, dwell on the unlived lives of people I knew who were never given the chance to live their lives.
My best friend was murdered at school when he was 16. In the Army there are several guys I considered to be "old men" at the time who I am now decades older than.
Now I'm the old man.
Others have taken their own lives or had it stolen from them by drunk drivers or disease.
But me? I just happily (for the most part) stumble through my own life, knowing the past is immutable.
The utility of "what ifs?" seems very low when looking at the past.
The present is a different story, but the convoluted fantasies people seem to build in their minds about going back and marrying that person or taking that risk seem futile because anything you create in your mind is as real and likely to happen as a myriad other options and knowing how that path would have unfolded is impossible.
"I would have been happier/better off/more X if only I.." No. That is unknowable.
Yeah. Go back in time and invest in a sure bet. You got fabulously wealthy and Very Important but ended up dying in your comfy first class seat sitting next to the cofounder of Akamai on 9/11.
"No with my time machine only good things happen"
richev
Very sorry for the loss of your friend.
mgh95
I have always found this question haunting. I would imagine if I had the ability to forever banish a single though from my head, this would be it.
rxtexit
I think it is that the alternate paths are just so easy to romanticize.
I have been doing this lately with how maybe I should have went into the military after high school.
Of course, the romanticized version doesn't include losing a limb in Afghanistan.
It just easy to take the good fortune that did happen for granted.
Etheryte
Maybe an alternative perspective helps. If you could always do it over, an infinite redo so to say, nothing would matter. Every choice and outcome would become insignificant, because you could just redo it until it was just right. On the flip side, there's always going to be something that you miss out on, no matter how many times you could do it, some choices simply exclude other outcomes and you can't have both. The fact that you can't simply redo things is in a way what gives them value and meaning — what you choose matters.
CMCDragonkai
Another way to think about this is playing a video game with cheats on. You get to infinitely restart until you "win". Life isn't really like that though. The win conditions in one life doesn't match the win conditions in other lives.
westcoast49
> If you could always do it over, an infinite redo so to say, nothing would matter. Every choice and outcome would become insignificant, because you could just redo it until it was just right.
The movie Groundhog Day comes to mind.
https://archive.is/pbWhS