A Science Fiction Conundrum...

So I'm watching "Raiders of the Lost Ark" and drinking abusively. And for just a second, I remembered what it was like to be 12[ish], the age I was whenI saw the film in St. Croix Falls, WI.

And it hit me: Would you, if given the option, take your current consciousness, and insert it into your 12 yearwou old body?

I mean, on the one hand, that means 5-6 years more stuck in my mom & dad's farmhouse, 10 miles from nowhere with no car, no job, and no drivers license. It means going back to a time with no cell phones or Internet.

On the other hand, it would allow me to avoid some of the costly mistakes I'd made. I could've got a job earlier. I could've got through college in 4 years. I could've made it through OCS on the first try. Maybe my paintball business would've been successful. I could'a got a helluva lot more pussy in college.

It's an interesting conundrum. If you could take your current consciousness and stick it into your 12 year old body, would you?

Oh fuck no.

I'm just 20, so what could I turn it back too?

I'm not exactly keen on the last 19 years of my life. There are a lot of things I've done where I can look back and say 'fuck I'm glad that is over.'

No possible way. For a number of good reasons.

1) I made mistakes, but they were my mistakes, and I learned from them.

2) No way would I want to live in a kid's body again, and have to pretend to be a kid. Could you imagine going to Junior High School, and having to try to keep people from figuring out that you've been through all the learning experiences of over 4 more decades, in a dozen countries?

3) What would become of my current life? The man I am, known and respected as a man? The husband and father? I can just see trying to convince my wife that this little kid with buck teeth and ears that stick out like a Volkwagen beetle with both doors open is really her husband and she should let him share her bed...

4) If it was really a question of going back in time, it would be even worse. I am much more convinced of the "Butterfly Effect" concept of time change than the "End of Eternity" concept. And I wouldn't for anything in the world want to take a chance on not having the kids I have now, or not being married to the wife I have now, or not being in the work I am doing now.

Now, if you could propose to me to stay the person I am, looking pretty much the way I do now, in the same situation I am now, but having the stamina, health (including the knees!) and strength I had as a young guy, that I would go for. I could actually run again...

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Strangely, I think about this scenario a lot. Not so much back-to-12, but back-to-about-20 sometimes seems tempting. Some different turns to take, and close enough to my current career that I could do almost everything I can do now, but with more experience, and thus better.

But most of Async's points crop up when I dream about it.

This one, I thought, was interesting in an SF genre type of way:

Why do we assume so easily that we have to keep it a secret? Sure, we won't advertise it lest they take us for mad, but if they figure it out themselves, what's the problem? There's no law against it. Many popular SF tales now seem to take that topos for granted: Pssst, you can't tell anyone! Why not? Storytellingwise, this protects the narrative world, allowing it to stay close to that of the reader/viewer/player and still let you dream about this miracle hidden within. But in an increasing number of stories, there doesn't seem to be a good reason for secrecy.

Frankly? I would like to do it just to see how much different I would be.

I could always meet the same people (I remember their names, after all) and know just how futile most of my school career ended up.

Unless it is something that "can be done," the results would be disastrous. People would think you are crazy, demon possessed, an alien from outer space, or something. Despite all the "tolerance" of our modern world, "different" is acceptable only as long as it is a recognized form of difference.

Look, on this very board, how people react when told by those of us who have personal experience in the matter that God has spoken to us. And that is in a world where probably 75% to 90% of the people believe in God. It gets you called mentally deranged and all kinds of other things. Anything that doesn't fit in with your worldview is unacceptable, and produces very strong feelings of aversion to those who claim to have experienced it. That is true even for the most "rational" people around.

I can just see trying to explain to people that I have "come back from the future" into a kid's body.

As I said, if it is something that happens widely enough that people accept is as a "normal procedure," sure. But if it's a unique experience, there is no way you would ever want anyone else to know it. No one needs that kind of problems.

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Would I? Absolutely.


J.

If I did so, I would absolutely make choices that would mean I had not met the woman I married or had kids.

I cannot bring myself to say I would consciously chose to wipe them out of existence, as much as I would LOVE to be able to go back and make some choices differently.


So let me play with the concept a bit....

If I could go back (in sort of an "out of body" expedition) and by my arrival create a new time stream in which the original time stream continues on with me in it and my family intact while the new one is seperate from and parallel to...as if my awareness simply changes boats as it were...Am I making sense?

If I could do that, I absolutely would.

I've never had children, or a wife; but I would definitely not have pushed away a few people I loved, or stuck with the wrong people for friends, or hesitated.

There are many a stain on my past, foolish mistakes I made in the name of fear, or loneliness, or laziness.

In my old body, trapped in school and shit again? Hell no.

BUT, I'd gladly alter the time stream by sending myself back a notebook of stuff I've learned, and stuff that's going to happen.

One of the really big things, I could've stopped 9/11.
The terrorists came right through Portland.
If I'd've kicked up enough of a fuss, it would've delayed, and spooked 'em, and scuppered the whole plan methinks.
Probably a couple nights in jail, but what the hell?

Why not? It'd be worth it just to settle the whole free will/destiny thing once and for all. Plus I could test the butterfly effect, I'd imagine the whole idea would turn out to be only so much self-important exaggeration of the impact one actually wields upon the world.

Plus picking winning lotto numbers would be a hoot.

Where would the disaster part come into play? Plenty of folk turn a decent buck passing themselves off as psychics, fortune tellers, alien abductees, or having the ability to speak to the dead.

Somebody claiming to be from the future wouldn't draw much attention.

9/11 changed everything.

Now here's a fascinating concept.

If you could go back in time, there are things you would be able to do because you know what's going to happen, without any "proof" that anyone else would ever listen to. Which means you would have to take matters into your own hands.

You could stop a lot of things, but very often, in order to do it, you would have to do things that would be seen as illegal. And you wouldn't have any way of proving in a court of law that your actions were justified. You would go to jail for it, or worse.

Now here's the question: Would it be worth it, knowing that you saved a bunch of lives, but knowing also that everyone else would think you were a delusional nut-case who deserves to be locked up? Instead of appreciating your act of heroism, they would all judge you as a wrong-doer yourself. (Like in "The Army of the Twelve Monkeys.") Would you do it?

In a theoretical way, I would love to say, "Of course I'd do it, and who cares what everyone else thinks?" But in practice, I'm not so sure.

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Considering how crappy the job market is now and how grads aren't finding jobs as it is, and I don't see it to get better. Why would I want that to look forward to.

And puberty was bad enough the first time around, it's not something I want to experience again.

Could you even say that you'd know you've saved a lot of lives? After all, in this scenario all you really know is that it is mid-2001, you think you remember being a time-travelling mind from the future with knowledge of an impending catastrophe, but nobody sane believes you.

Frankly, if you're currently in mid-2009, believe that you are a mental trime traveller, and are about to commit dangerous crimes corresponding to your unique insight into the future, I might prefer you'd have yourself hospitalized than go through with your plans.

However, in the case of 9/11 you'd hope that properly prepared, you could take specific information with you back in time that would help law enforcement to legally prevent the attacks, once you give them anonymous but highly detailed tips on where to look.

I would like to go back about dozen years or so, and change some things. Most would be small things, but I would change them. Would they change me too much? Probably not. They would change some things about me, sure; but not to the point that I would be a totally different person.

Well, there sure as hell are things I wish I hadn't done. And things I wish I had done. Wish I'd never met the psycho bitch that took a year of my life and ruined the way I reacted to women for years after. Wish I had gone out with Jean, Corinne, or Sue instead.

But like Shep, I think I ended up with the right woman and wouldn't want that to change.

World events to change: If I could have stopped Hinckly from shooting Reagan, the whole Brady/Handgun Control/Violence Policy Center ( ) anti-gun campaign would not exist.

Yes, but all my models show that any alternative history has Brannon Braga taking control of Star Trek.

I'd have to think about it, but probably, yeah.

Hell yeah

Great thread Volly

If that happened, think of all you could do based on all you knew

Ooh! I don't wanna derail the original subject, but let's throw in a second option: the nuTrek situation. NuSpock was all set to be captain of the USS Enterprise but then Old Spock cockblocked him and got nuKirk put in command. If you wouldn't go back into your old (young) body, would you go back and be Uncle/Aunt Pat and try and change anything?

Frankly there is no way I'd do that. But I might very well do the first scenario. The reason is thus:

1) I think my influence on young me would be fairly weak. I might be able to influence one or two things, but ultimately I'd just wind up frustrated. Plus I'd be stuck in the past with no computer, cell phone, etc.

2) My mistakes and experience have made me the person I am. If I tried to change that, I'd just wind up making myself a completely different person. (I'm not worried about the "grandfather paradox", just that I value the person I've become.)

Really, what the going back to your younger body would do is allow you to have learned from the various dead ends in life without actually wasting the time with them. I'd have fought harder, dirtier, and sneakier in my effort to open a paintball business. I'd have not pushed myself so hard in my first shot at the Marine Corps. Oh, maybe I still wouldn't have gotten my zoning. Or I still would've gotten a stress fracture. But if either of those things had been handled differently I could've saved myself years on getting to where I want to be in life. Or I could've been more persistent in my attempt to become an illustrator. Or focused on writing at an earlier point in life. Heck, I just could've eaten better/more during puberty to get bigger and stronger faster. I could've spent more time with my Dad and my Aunt because I didn't realize how cool either of them were until far too late. I could've gotten through college in four years. I could've moved to Oregon much earlier.

Of course, as I said, the downside would've been stuck in the sticks with very little control over my destiny for 5-6 years, but I think it would be a tradeoff I'd be willing to make.

I think this may be the central problem with any attempt to change the past - nobody will beleieve me, or listen to me, or even care. Especially a 12-year-old me! What 12-year-old listens to advice?!

I've often wondered if I could save my father from cancer by going back to 1940, when he started smoking, and convincing him he was gonna die from cancer at the age of 80. I always picture him saying "80? I'm gonna make it to 80? Wow! Great!"

I think I could have a huge, and very positive influence on my past self. I know what he thinks, what bothers him, what he needs, and what makes him tick. I think I could have molded him almost as much by being a "big brother" (or "kindly uncle" or whatever you want to call it) as by becoming him.

Which means I wouldn't do it, for the same reasons. I could have avoided a huge number of problems for myself, and gotten a lot of my personal problems straightened out years earlier. But then, I would have been ready to get married a lot younger. And even the thought of being happily married to another girl just doesn't satisfy me. Even the thought of being married to the exact same girl doesn't satisfy me, because I have a hard time believing that if too many things changed, we would have the same kids. It would take a very minor change in your life to have entirely different kids. (Conceiving them an hour earlier or later, for example, is likely to make for an entirely different mix of sperms, which would mean a different kid. Chaos theory clearly predicts that the chances of the exact same sperm fertilizing the egg is almost null, even if you did manage to conceive a child at the same time.)

So even though I could have made my life so much better, I wouldn't want to do it. I prefer all the hard knocks, all the years of wondering whether I was worth anything and whether life had any meaning, and all the rest, because it led to something so wonderful I wouldn't want to take any chance on losing it.

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Jobs?

I'd be a professional gambler.

Quite apart from the question of lottery numbers - I'd know the outcome of every major sporting event in the last 30 years.

Income would NOT be a problem.

To say nothing of a certain stock purchase or three.

And THAT is precisely the reason I WOULD do it - but I'd have to be assured i could convince me that I knew for a certain fact.

But then, this too is qualified by the "alternate timeline caveat. The problem is "he" would be living the new timeline and I wouldn't even ever know how it turned out.

So I much prefer the first question.

Now, too, the thing is - if you are talking about changing things in the world around you and not just in your own personal choices it becomes a much broader question.

And it depends on your age. For instance, if you presume no one will take a kid seriously (nor would a kid have the chance to really do something like buy stock or place a bet) then you really have to look at the period since your 18th birthday, at the most. (and really, I'd just as soon go back to 18 as to 12 if possible)

For me, that's in late 1981. Others might have more or less possible alternatives to meddle with. Maybe I'm just being selfish in my thinking but there are not a huge number of "events" in the last 27+ years that I think I'd try to change. For instance - can you practically convince die-hards to leave New Orleans before Katrina?

With a lot of dedication you might be able to save a few lives in any given situation, and maybe a few laces - OKC and 9/11 being the obvious examples - you could provide anonymous tips to change the outcome. but a lot of history flows right on along in a current too strong for one voice to change.

It would be nice though, if I could have convinced Ronald Reagan in the summer of 1980 to take Jack Kemp with him instead of GHWB.....

Would a 12-year-old benefit from having the wisdom of an adult? Certainly.

But would a 12-year-old be able to handle the knowledge of the future that an older avatar could bring back? Probably not. Even knowing what crises you personally would face in the coming years would be too frightening, and as for preventing future catastrophes, who would listen?

"Hi, I know I'm just a kid and what I'm about to tell you will sound crazy, but hear me out..."

Even after 9/11 or whatever happened, they'd chalk it up to coincidence and still wouldn't let you out of the loony bin, IMO.

Would I go back?

Nah. My life isn't perfect but it is slowly getting there.

There isn't a whole lot I would change anyway. A few different choices here and there but the end result would still be almost the same. I might be a little younger, and I might be living in a different city or something.

Besides, I'd worry that going back I could actually make my life worse. I just barely made it through some of the worst years of my life and I really just want to move on from that.

I don't want to revisit it again, ever. The memories would still be there anyway. Even if I could make it all more pleasant the next go 'round.

So am I the only one who KNOWS that for good or ill the new life would be radically different from the old one?