I would try to be less alone, would try to spend more time around people and be more open to them, even when they didn’t understand my sadness, my changing moods. I would try to spend less time crying in my room and more time exploring the world around me. Even so, your suggestion would still be no. 1 on the list 🙁
hmmm, well I could write a few paragraphs of investment hacks and high risk sure thing bets I could have made….. but that’s not a compeling story to tell, it’s Back to the Future 2, literally everyone’s least favorite of the trilogy (though I do get a bit of schadenfraude from seeing that Biff, even all powerful, can’t make his life work)
but it is a bit more interesting to consider where I would have made decisions differently. The interesting thing is that after age 22, all the decisions I made are logical following the past. I couldn’t talk age 22-32 me into doing anything differently.
So going back to recent history, Fall of 2019 (this assumes I can only change one event, and I don’t want to mess up causality by going back further) I would have changed my decisions to try harder on computer science archetecture. At the time I thought I could sidestep a terrible professor, turns out that was true, but only by ending my double major.
Knowing what I know now, I would have kept my nose to the grindstone. I would have shifted my efforts towards grad work in computer science. I still think I could have gotten in and gotten that paid for. But I went for my passion with the PhD in clinical psychology, and this is where that led; rejected, worked for the state and lost what little hope I had left, and now somewhat disabled.
I would do anything to avoid the private sector, including teach which is almost as bad as joining the military (which I can’t)
———
but suppose I’m having one of my worse days, and I want to become an entirely different person. Anywhere between middle and high school I would have gone all in on math. Focus on getting the highest cognitive output, stop trying to understand people. Math is the closest to pure philosophy it gets that one can study profitably.
With that, I wouldn’t have married my ex wife, I would have gone to school out of state, and I would now be quite wealthy without any hacks or shortcuts.
my first thought was to go back and bet on certain success, like go to the beginning of every football season and bet who’s going to win the super bowl. The odds that far out are so low, the return would be amazing. Same goes for real estate, one I thought of is that there was probably a particularly critical piece of land that Walt Disney needed to secure the land Disney World is on. He did it secretly through a lot of intermediaries, the knowledge alone would scare him sufficient to get a pretty big payday.
Or buying Apple stock any point before 1990. Amazon in 1999, Google in 2005 etc etc. at some point they were small, and their stock was so cheap that even someone like me could get a decent amount of it.
but then I had my big money idea; short histories greatest financial failures; Enron, Goldman Sachs, etc etc. I could short them and make way more money than I could ever have hoped to by betting on success.
My family was much better off in 1990, made the mistake of betting our future on our careers….. seemed like a good bet at the time. I’m still living on the scraps of the money we had back then. But come back from the future knowing all I know? That several million turns into hundreds of millions. That’s the difference between my neighbor the lawyer and the guy who has half the names of buildings in town named after him.
Heck, you didn’t limit it to traveling back in time, I could travel 50 years into the future and be a billionaire, if there even still are such things by then (personally I hope there aren’t.) But I could set my family up really well. We could at the very least return to our glory days. I could spend my golden years like my granddad did, driving around the country being loved by everyone he met.
Late 80s early 90s. That or mid 2000s. 80s and 90s were when the arcade scene was huge. To be able to go and play Capcom fighting games as they were coming out was probably really special. Late 90s and the turn of the century saw Third Strike, MvC 2, Tekken 3, House of the Dead, Alien v Predator, Time Crisis 2, Crazy Taxi, Daytona, etc. I love the arcade. I doubt playing them then would have made me any friends the way playing at my arcade now doesn’t really make me have friends, but being there when they were fresh must have been special.
Mid 2000s to experience the height of PS2 and original Xbox and the reveal of the 360 and PS3.
I’d attempt to make a fortune doing magic tricks.
During a show, you “disappear”. What’s really happened is that you’ve traveled back in time, though. Back before the magic show even started. Then you hide somewhere and wait, watching the show begin and progress to the point where your past self “disappeared”. And then you pop out and it looks like you’ve teleported. Magic. I’d try to make a killing like that.
I would go back to 2011 and stop myself from making a horrible mistake that might have cost another person’s life. I wish he was still here ? it hurts so bad that I don’t even know what to do
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I would try to be less alone, would try to spend more time around people and be more open to them, even when they didn’t understand my sadness, my changing moods. I would try to spend less time crying in my room and more time exploring the world around me. Even so, your suggestion would still be no. 1 on the list 🙁
hmmm, well I could write a few paragraphs of investment hacks and high risk sure thing bets I could have made….. but that’s not a compeling story to tell, it’s Back to the Future 2, literally everyone’s least favorite of the trilogy (though I do get a bit of schadenfraude from seeing that Biff, even all powerful, can’t make his life work)
but it is a bit more interesting to consider where I would have made decisions differently. The interesting thing is that after age 22, all the decisions I made are logical following the past. I couldn’t talk age 22-32 me into doing anything differently.
So going back to recent history, Fall of 2019 (this assumes I can only change one event, and I don’t want to mess up causality by going back further) I would have changed my decisions to try harder on computer science archetecture. At the time I thought I could sidestep a terrible professor, turns out that was true, but only by ending my double major.
Knowing what I know now, I would have kept my nose to the grindstone. I would have shifted my efforts towards grad work in computer science. I still think I could have gotten in and gotten that paid for. But I went for my passion with the PhD in clinical psychology, and this is where that led; rejected, worked for the state and lost what little hope I had left, and now somewhat disabled.
I would do anything to avoid the private sector, including teach which is almost as bad as joining the military (which I can’t)
———
but suppose I’m having one of my worse days, and I want to become an entirely different person. Anywhere between middle and high school I would have gone all in on math. Focus on getting the highest cognitive output, stop trying to understand people. Math is the closest to pure philosophy it gets that one can study profitably.
With that, I wouldn’t have married my ex wife, I would have gone to school out of state, and I would now be quite wealthy without any hacks or shortcuts.
lol what kind of investment hacks and sure bets?
my first thought was to go back and bet on certain success, like go to the beginning of every football season and bet who’s going to win the super bowl. The odds that far out are so low, the return would be amazing. Same goes for real estate, one I thought of is that there was probably a particularly critical piece of land that Walt Disney needed to secure the land Disney World is on. He did it secretly through a lot of intermediaries, the knowledge alone would scare him sufficient to get a pretty big payday.
Or buying Apple stock any point before 1990. Amazon in 1999, Google in 2005 etc etc. at some point they were small, and their stock was so cheap that even someone like me could get a decent amount of it.
but then I had my big money idea; short histories greatest financial failures; Enron, Goldman Sachs, etc etc. I could short them and make way more money than I could ever have hoped to by betting on success.
My family was much better off in 1990, made the mistake of betting our future on our careers….. seemed like a good bet at the time. I’m still living on the scraps of the money we had back then. But come back from the future knowing all I know? That several million turns into hundreds of millions. That’s the difference between my neighbor the lawyer and the guy who has half the names of buildings in town named after him.
Heck, you didn’t limit it to traveling back in time, I could travel 50 years into the future and be a billionaire, if there even still are such things by then (personally I hope there aren’t.) But I could set my family up really well. We could at the very least return to our glory days. I could spend my golden years like my granddad did, driving around the country being loved by everyone he met.
Late 80s early 90s. That or mid 2000s. 80s and 90s were when the arcade scene was huge. To be able to go and play Capcom fighting games as they were coming out was probably really special. Late 90s and the turn of the century saw Third Strike, MvC 2, Tekken 3, House of the Dead, Alien v Predator, Time Crisis 2, Crazy Taxi, Daytona, etc. I love the arcade. I doubt playing them then would have made me any friends the way playing at my arcade now doesn’t really make me have friends, but being there when they were fresh must have been special.
Mid 2000s to experience the height of PS2 and original Xbox and the reveal of the 360 and PS3.
I’d attempt to make a fortune doing magic tricks.
During a show, you “disappear”. What’s really happened is that you’ve traveled back in time, though. Back before the magic show even started. Then you hide somewhere and wait, watching the show begin and progress to the point where your past self “disappeared”. And then you pop out and it looks like you’ve teleported. Magic. I’d try to make a killing like that.
I would go back to 2011 and stop myself from making a horrible mistake that might have cost another person’s life. I wish he was still here ? it hurts so bad that I don’t even know what to do