A person comes up to you and says, "I can reverse time for just $1 per day." Do you take their offer? How far back do you go?

$1/day is pretty cheap. I've been alive around 12k days. For less than the price of a car, I can erase my own existence. Sounds like a bargain to me!

I think I snorted laughing so hard. 🤣

Rough question for a guy who just lost his wife at 35. I'd empty my account to be able to have the time over.

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- Thanks buddy. Right back at you.

2 days. I'll memorize the Powerball winning numbers to win something like $500M, since I know there were no other winners.

And then spend the $500M to go back 500.000.000 days
- That's how they get you.
- Time travel is a one time offer
That's pretty smart. Even jumping to the one before the billion dollar win isn't that far back, and even if time changes the chance of splitting the winnings is low.
Surely they'll butterfly effect into different numbers after you buy the ticket?

They’re offering $1 per day? That’s $1 for every 24 hours you go back, which is around $0.04 per hour, which can be broken down even further to around $0.0007 per minute.

I’d give them 1 penny to go back 15 minutes in time, find a penny on the ground, then find them again to go back the same 15 minutes in time over and over until I can figure out how to kidnap them in 15 minutes.

After I successfully kidnap them, I will go on a bank heist and keep the time person near me so I can keep trying to rob a bank until I do so successfully. Then because they’re an accessory to the crime, I can blackmail them to let me rewind time for free at any time I wish so I can become a crime lord, otherwise I’ll give them to the police and let them know he can time-travel.

EDIT: Just saw OP’s one-time offer clause, so I am assuming this means the time person retains their memory.

I won’t immediately take them up on their offer - instead, I would take them out on a date or five first. Get to know them a bit better; where they lived growing up, how they grew up, how old they are - that kind of stuff.

Then I would figure out how much money I can use to go back in time to my youngest point of life that also meets their youngest point in my same lifetime, and I’ll track them down from all the details they gave me while they were pegging me. I’ll become best friends with them, and convince them that we could be using their powers to become the dopest crime lords in history.

This is the worst way to use time travel to get rich i have entry l ever heard
- It’s not about the money here man - it’s about the power. The main squeeze here is becoming a crime lord, not getting rich.
do they still get to peg you after becoming best friends?
- Yes - but there’s a non-zero chance one or both of us would be underage, so we’ll be chaste until 18. Then we enter the bone zone.
Keep giving them 1 penny and then tracking them down. Do this for most of your life until you are pretty young, and kidnap them. Then you can just relive your life over and over as many times as you want. I mean, sure, it's not the ethical way to use their power...
- Oooo, that’s even better - all you have to do is find them within 14 minutes at most.

A person comes up to you and says, "I can reverse time for just $1 per day." Do you take their offer?

Obviously not, I'd have to be an idiot to fall for this con.

The one time offer is clearly a ploy to extract as much money as possible in the first transaction, as a second transaction wouldn't happen anyway

Yeah I wound back your time, but you ended up here again
https://images.app.goo.gl/HBiSxFHifye6gU5K8

No way, that dude is definitely a Time Cop and this is a sting.

That's entrapment.
- Entrapment is tricky to prove once you start unwinding cause from effect.
But if you ask him, he has to like tell you he’s a TimeCop, right?

Go back four days and save my cat from getting run over by a car.

It's always tempting to say things like, "Go back to being 20 and relive young adulthood again, avoiding all the stupid mistakes I made the first time around." But I know I would make a whole new set of different stupid mistakes the second time.

Knowing that, I would do what others have said: only go back enough days to play a winning lottery number or make some ridiculous stock options bet and become filthy rich.

I would need to pay this dude $6205 to go back to when I was 18.

Then I'd tell my dad to invest in Apple. Put everything in it. Take out a mortgage and invest in Apple. Then I'd get a job and do the same.

Our relationship wouldn't be ruined, and then he probably won't die 6 years later because we'll be able to afford the healthcare.

Yeah, I'm taking that offer.

Depends on how this works. Do I wake up in my younger body, in my previous situation? Do I still remember everything I know and remember now?

Or do I just appear as I am right now, in the past?

Because we've gone back, the money is kinda irrelevant in some cases. I would whoop out $3,650 or more out of my savings to go back a decade or more. I would give the rest to my family in case that timeline carries on, whatever is left is irrelevant to me since in the past I had $0. I'll have to make it again.

yea for sure, so long as I get to take my knowledge with me.

hell, i'd go back to childhood

This is a pretty common wish, I'd wager. Know everything you know now with no responsibility. Ace school cause it'd be like a review. Friends and romance would be much, much easier with your experience. You would be SO free simply be knowing it's such a waste of time and energy worrying about certain things (am I normal, does she like me, am I ugly, etc.)

Oh to just sit back and relax with nothing hanging over my head and no responsibilities (compared to an adult). Oh, to have that very strong feeling of wonder and know your while life ahead of you and the possibilities are endless!

What a beautiful and splendid fantasy. If only.
- Also, pretty much free get-rich schemes. Betting, crypto, pharma stocks around 2019…

Go back 15 years and buy milions of Bitcoin for a lunch money....

If you bought too much you'd impact it's utility, Bitcoin exploded because people paid what would be millions for pizza, pot and presumably porn
- I would buy like 1000, and if I sold it at around 100k, I wouldn't have to work a day in life.

I just killed Hitler in 1936 with a grenade on a drone. You should have seen his face when he saw it coming close.

Now you're stuck in 1936.

Another person is getting cheered on because of his hate of the foreigners, the French, the Jews, ...

Oh yeah, and you're in post WW1 Germany, good luck!

Edit: I'd watch that movie though 🍿
What? You mean Hitler should have stayed in power and drones were not invented by Führer Himmler but are future tech?

Damn, maybe Germany would have lost the war, I wonder what kind of world would that be...
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I'd say this is incredibly cheap. That's $3,650 per decade. So if you're say 70 and you want to go back to your first day of high school (15yo for the sake of argument), that's a hair over $20k to basically live your entire life over.

Of course the question is, do you de-age as you go back? Or does the 70yo stay a 70yo just 55 years ago? If you don't de-age, then the whole thing is much less useful- it's basically an opportunity to undo one or two mistakes.

Take a loan, pay the guy to reverse time. Now the loan is reversed and you don't have to pay it back.

I'd go back to around the time my daughter started sleeping through the night. Don't want to risk a reality where my kids don't exist. I'd tell my friend the cancer is coming back, when it's still early enough to do something.

Don't really know what else I'd do. Don't really care. Be nice to live through those years again without changing much else to be totally honest

You should watch the movie About Time, the guy goes back and when he gets to his present again he has a different kid because the sperm is basically random and you can't choose which one makes it. Harrowing stuff.
That's definitely a hard line in this thought experiment for me: the furthest I could possibly go back would be to the day my youngest was born.

I can't intentionally will one of my kids out of existence. And I don't have any enjoyment fantasizing about if I could at any rate.

January 2015. I would do my best to put paychecks away for a few months coupled with what I already had, and invest it all in Bitcoin in August/September when it was $200. Even if I just let it ride until November 2021 rather than playing the ups and downs I'm looking at a 340x return. If I emptied out my savings and 401k, even if I couldn't convince family members, I'd have tens of millions of dollars.

If I stay mentally the same I would start over from age 8 I think, just old enough to skip the awkward part of having your parents helping you bath or wipe etc but still young enough were all of my life is ahead of me.

With good investments I can never worry about money and I would have all the time in the world to educate myself further and develop a career in a field that I love and not worry about money.

The only issue would be hunting down my best friend and befriending her again.

If someone actually said that, I would assume they are crazy and ignore them. However, in the scenario that I know they are telling the truth, I would go back to the age of 4 and change a lot of things. Even though a 4 year old doesn't have a lot of agency over their lives, they can still influence things for the better.

I would tell my parents that I travelled from the future, and prove it by telling them of some future events that aren't that bad, waiting for it to happen. I would tell my parents what stocks to buy to get rich.

I would be sure to become a good sibling, because as a kid I was completely self absorbed in my own misery and ignored everyone else.

Also, I would spend more time with my grandmother. I never appreciated visiting her, because we lived in different cities and I always hated car travel, but she was such a wonderful human being, so I really wish to have had the chance to spend more time with her before her passing.

Back to that day I bought the pizza with Bitcoin.

I'm getting a loan, won't be paying it back when I'm a baby

742 days. I hate this new job way more than my old one. :-(

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- I don’t know what to do. I’m in my 40s, making good money, but I can’t stay here. Worried that I’ll leave for another hellscape. Don’t trust my own judgement anymore.
  
  Kind of want to start my own thing but that’s a whole other level of scary.

considering i earn more than 1$ a day this is essentially free

Do I de-age, or am I just moving to a previous point in my timeline as I am today? If I do de-age, do I at least keep all my knowledge and experience intact?

If so, I would love to go back to my pre-schooling childhood, power through the "child genius" phase at record speed, and get some good investments started early (Microsoft, Google, Apple, etc.) so I can speed-run my retirement and live better than I currently am. Heck, since my young spongy brain absorbs knowledge much easier than my current adult brain, I could work to earn a few doctorates in STEM fields while I'm young and then try to improve the world once I reach adulthood.

I retired last year at only 38 years old (military pension, plus disability pay), but it's basically kept me in the same place I started out. I moved back into my childhood house and I have enough passive income to just relax and enjoy my life. So I'm essentially back to my childhood life, where I'm just doing whatever I want every day without worrying about monetary cost.

But it'd be nice to have the money to build my childhood dream home (Modern castle/fortress with hidden rooms and passages, completely self-sustaining and off the grid, on 100+ acres of private land). And I would like to pay off all debts of my closest friends and family. (REAL friends - the ones who were good to me before they knew I was wealthy)

I'd also like to be rich enough to be a philanthropist who can just throw millions at fixing major injustices in the world. Like, Elon Musk could literally end world hunger if he wanted and he'd hardly notice the impact to his finances. But he doesn't give a shit, so the world continues to suffer under megalomaniacs like him.

Yea I was thinking late/end of highschool would be most ideal. Do some AP exams to power through credits and then go into university with my better current work habits.

Any earlier and I wouldn't have much of an effect. I also would start to lose it having all those restrictions again.

buy Bitcoin

"What? Go do your social studies homework"

I don't really want to be seen as a prodigy, just to boost where I am today. I'd also get a chance to help some of my friends before they go through various problems in life

Easy question. I'll just go back to 2010 and invest all my money in bitcoin, I won't have to work a day in my life.

You would erase 13 years of your life for money?
- Honestly it would suck but I wouldn't mind reliving the last 13 years while being rich.
- Not him, but hell yeah I would.
- Who wouldn't? That's thirteen years you could spend living a lot better, spending more time with friends and loved ones, fixing regrets, and actually living life without spending half of your waking hours on the job.
  
  I'd probably go further back than that, to be honest.
- You're not erasing 13 years you're just living the 2010s a second time instead of living 2070 to 2083
  
  You're losing the chance to witness 13 years of human history but you get your 9 to 5pm back from 2010 to 2070 which is insanely more valuable than whatever events they'll come up with when you're 80
but the re-emergence of you at that point in time disrupts everything and events don't play out as they did the 'first' time. you lose everything and are now stuck re-living the last 13 years with a head full of useless fiction that gets mixed up with the 'new' reality. eventually you get involuntarily committed and spend the rest of your days in a white padded room.
- That’s actually an interesting point. You affecting the system will change the situation and therefore might have effects on the outcome. Might be minor like the value of bitcoin only varying by a small amount but it could also somehow cause Bitcoin to crash and never recover.
  
  Same with the idea of investing all your money into a company like Apple. This could affect the development and decision process of the company and therefore cause them to fail.
  
  So there is no guarantee for your actions to turn out successful.
- I'd watch this movie.
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- what other reasons are for going back in time? Relationship? That doesn't depend on one critical point. Same with personal development.
You wouldn't have to go back that far to make $$$$. Just go back a week and buy the right stock options.

I'd go back 1 year, and put ALL my money in nvidia stock.

I know I could make more going further back and picking other stocks, but I wouldn't want to go back too far to unmade some of the decisions I've made

Did Nvidia do something exciting this past year? What did I miss?
- Their stocks went up 230%
- AI profiteering

For $13,000 I can be 16 again? SOLD!!!

I’m not sure if I would want to. Too many nice things have happened to me by chance, and I’m not sure if I could make them happen again.

Of course it’s tempting to start over and do a second play-through. Maybe I’ll save up and reconsider on my deathbed.

edit:
Also, move to Venezuela by then. A single dollar should get you enough bolivars to travel as far back as you want :)

Pretty difficult to imagine doing this honestly. Do I retain the memories of what I'm reversing? Or is it just a rewind? Because if I don't retain the memories then it's a bit pointless, but if I do I think I'd have a hard time reliving things. For instance I would never go back far enough to erase my children, but my youngest was born 2 weeks before COVID. Regardless of any get rich quick scheme I could think of, I am really not certain I'd want to knowingly live through that again.

1 day. Go back to where he approached me. Kill him before he can make the offer.

Goodbye space-time.

I'd go back a bit over a decade and make a lot better decisions.

Do I get to choose which day gets reversed? Can I make October 14, 1066 go backwards and see what happens?

10 years back. Back to high-school when I would hang out with my friends at the bus stop and at lunch and after school.

Ten years spent watching what already happened, and then you're a 35 yr old freshman.

Nah thanks, I'm good.

Does time reverse for me too? Do I remember? Do I get younger?

Less than a month ago when I hadn't yet accidentally deleted several days of vacation photos. Other than that, my life tended to get better over time, no way am I travelling back to a time when it was worse.

No cloud back up? If you deleted them from a computer, they are still there if you haven’t installed anything else. There is recovery software to help you get them back
- Low level formatted SD card before I copied them to a computer. No chance.

immediately thinks of the alternate ending to The Butterfly Effect 🤔

I wouldn't go further back than the birth of my daughter, because there's no way I'd take the chance to not have her in my life, no matter what I might wish to change from before that. That said, I'd like to change a few things since, so I'd probably do that.

I have more than enough to get to 2010, which is as far back as I can go (so I don't erase my son). I have a LOT of things to do differently in that time...

If I murder my child self, do I just stop existing? I'd take up that offer in a second.

Given the question, you reverse time so yoy come back your child self

March 2010 - bitcoin was way, way less than a penny.

1 day. Win lotto. Then I get to see dinosaurs, baby.

I'd go back to the beginning of 2019. I don't want to backtrack too far, but this would give me enough time to sell the house, move, and get situated before covid and the price of everything going crazy.

But it's not just about that, it's about repairing a relationship with a loved one while I still can.

Take out loan.

Pay with loan money.

Go back to desired point in time.

Loan no longer exists.

All these people spending years living in reverse time. I don't know.

There is a lot that I don't think I'd enjoy backwards. But maybe if it's a whole perspective shift I wouldn't notice the difference. Just watching my life events with an "oh yeah, that happened too"

Maybe give the person like a dime after I break a few things just to wig out on reverse entropy, if I can.

As a millennial American I have about $40 to my name. I might have $100 at the end of the day. That’s 100 days further from my demise. Sooooo no deal.