You have a magic pill, which de-ages you by 20 years. You can take it once in your life only, so long as you are at least 20. What age — past, current or future — do you reckon is best to take it?
I’ll go for another angle, since the ‘about 40’ has been done to death.
If this is a pill that de-ages but does not de-mature you, go for it at 20. On the way to 20 you are maturing, but also aging. Who knows what mature, but with newborn level ‘age’ health might look like. Imagine the boost from a 40 year old to a 20 year old, but starting from a baseline of a 20 year old.
In that case I sell it some billionaire for a 100 million. It is quality not quantity of life. It isn’t like I am losing twenty years of life I am gaining a 100 million dollars.
I find it funny that no one else (including me) even considered selling it!
Now feel free to answer if you can’t :)
Edit: although I bet you could fetch WAY more than 100 mil for it. The oldest and richest people in the world would probably give up the majority of their fortune, especially if they were close to death. Auction it off!
A lot of variables in the magic to consider, but if you retain your knowledge, than 35 back to 15. You’ve essentially matured as far as you will at that point, started a family or married if you will do so, found stabilization in your career or at least moved far down that path, you hit the major milestones.
So back to 15 and then you live out the bulk of your high school with knowledge to help you actually enjoy learning, slow pace of high school, form lasting lifelong friendships, properly pursue education beyond high school, then live your 20s with a full appreciation for what they are, start saving money the right way, date the right way and invest in all of the tech companies before they get big so that you’re obscenely wealthy through your late 20s and beyond.
Use the money to line a small island completely with underground dynamite charges. Invite trump, tell him you’re offering him an unlimited budget to make the island into the first trump island and resort, hand him a golden shovel and say, “I’m going to get in this helicopter to get higher up to take a nice cinematic shot of you breaking ground for the press release” when you’re out of the blast radius, press the button. You’ve done one of the greater services to humanity by any living human in history. Enjoy your earned retirement.
Probably 65, as 45 was my vampire age, and I have enjoyed the time since that age. I am not sure I’d like to go back to fertility though. Think about it, say you take it at 40, menarche around 15 and menopause around 55, that’s periods for 60 years instead of 40 years, and twenty extra years you might get pregnant.
I’ve had some time to think on this, I still say probably 65. I waffled for awhile because I would like to have the build I had before the last 2 children, but keep the kids, the ten pound wonder blew out my abs and skin which happily bounced completely back several times did not make a complete recovery with the last. But the 3 additional years I spent nursing them provides additional protection vs. breast cancer, don’t think I’d want to give up their half of that. And I have literally felt better and healthier in the years after 40, so rather have more of those.
Same. I would take it now, so I could go back to being 20, but this time I would not fuck up all my joints because I know I’m not actually invulnerable.
I don’t understand the premise. Do I keep my older memories and experience? So if I take it at age 21, I become a 1yo with the knowledge of a college student? Do I also get to repeat having the memory and learning speed that little kids have? It might be worth considering.
40, I want to go back to when my body was in great condition. At 20, I didn’t feel any of the aches and pains I had in my early 30s. It would give me 10 years to do a better job taking care of it and hopefully avoid the current state it’s in now.
I’d take it today. I’m in my 50s, I’m an endurance athlete (I race bikes) and the calculus looks like: if I wait 20 years I get to experience body-age 50-70 twice, but if I take it now I experience 30-50 twice. Living my prime twice is better than enduring my decline twice, thanks
Getting 20 years back means I can correct a lot of mistakes and I’ll have way more energy and focus to be the me I want to be. My 20s were so stressful I started getting white hair.
I added some words to clear it up. I often write how I talk, which is to say extremely informal. Around my area it all makes sense. It was meant to imply that I don’t have those things so I’m not abandoning anybody or leaving anybody. If you were able to magically de-age yourself it would be viewed as somewhat selfish.
So I take this pill, and I become physically younger. I don’t move back in time, I’m still legally a 36 year old, but I look and feel like I’m 16.
It depends on how this works. Is the pill a magic spell where there’s a poof and I’m in my previous body as it was 20 years ago, or is it just “damage and wear and tear are undone?” Because I’ve had a few surgeries I don’t want to redo in the last 20 years; I don’t want my wisdom teeth or appendix back. I’ve had a dental implant since then, does that reverse itself…is a bicuspid going to try to grow out of my skull through the titanium socket bone grafted into my face?
For practicality’s sake I think no earlier than 43, simply because…at that point your younger self is a fully developed adult; if someone cards you and says “You’re telling me you’re 43 years old?” You can say “Yeah I’ve had some work done.”
Much younger than 40 years old and you have to repeat portions of adolescence and/or childhood, which would be inconvenient at best.
Counterpoint: I didn’t discover I was trans until after the wrong puberty made being trans a lot harder. Going back to before that would let me right a pretty grand sense of wrongness.
The day your health becomes a problem requiring more than regular effort to maintain.
That’ll rewind the clock to a lot of good years that maybe you can push back the decline a little further. Your clock will run out eventually, it’s inevitable. You just want to maximize the good years, not just youth or keeping yourself from death.
Going with the just de-age interpretation and not time travel, it has to be late enough I could still pass for an adult but I’d want it before any of my chronic health conditions emerge so I can mitigate them. I don’t want to look younger, I just want the health benefits.
I can’t go back to being a kid because where the hell would new identity documents come from? I still have to be able to live my current life more or less. I suppose 35 is the absolute minimum for me to take it, at 15 I wasn’t getting carded buying alcohol. I reckon at that age with the right presentation I could pass for 20 at least, and a 35 year old seeming that young isn’t completely unheard of.
I can’t go too much older because issues start compounding in my 20s. I’d love to have picked a post development age - aside from my health, I didn’t really get comfortable in my own skin until then - but it’d be too late. Maybe 40 so the worst of puberty is over, but that’s probably my limit.
Add comment