Would You Fast Forward Time?
Thinking About the Upsides and Downsides of Skipping Sections of a Life
As I sat waiting to board my flight home from Germany, and the dread of the miserable 8+ hours that awaited me began to sink in a thought occurred to me. What if I were offered the opportunity to skip through this segment of my life directly? In other words, what if I were given the option to fast forward through time such that I would not experience this upcoming particular 8 hours in any meaningful or memorable fashion? To simplify the argument some I will say that no actual events transpire during the time that I skip. To the universe and everything in it but me it would be like that skipped time never existed. How I could make it through to my desired endpoint in time and space when no events transpire in the universe as a whole is a question I will ignore. In my theoretical time skip scenario the only impact on me would be a reduction in my overall life span equivalent to the amount of time skipped, and the theoretical possibilities of events that might have transpired during that time. The upside of all this being that for events that I truly dread I could skip right over them and move on with my life as if they never actually happened.
Essentially I must weight the theoretical loss of any of an infinite number of amazing things that could happen/have happened while I skipped through time, against the expected/actual/known gains from not experiencing that time. In this case those gains being eight less hours of misery sitting on an overcrowded airplane home. I can imagine a lot of theoretically amazing things that could happen. I might sit/have sat next to my soul mate and fallen in love. I could be/have been a hero when the plane crashed into the atlantic and I alone, against overwhelming odds, save(d) the lives of half of the passengers. All of these amazing scenarios are only theoretical however, and events with vanishingly small probabilities of actually happening. On the other hand my 8 hours of misery is virtually guaranteed.
I gotta go, I am on the plane now, and we are about to take off. What choice would you make? Right now I very much wish I had the option to take that deal.
