Time Has Been Reset

[Simon_Jester]

I suspect this will be a good deal for most people under, oh, about thirty or thirty-five... while being a bad deal for a lot of older people who have less to look forward to and aren't in a good position to 're-do' their lives. My father, for example, would be hurt by this because his career of the past ten years would be adversely affected- and he'd wake up physically and mentally in his forties, so it's not like he could just go back to college and start all over again the way some people could.

Thinking about it, this is going to body-slam education. Aside from the people who died in real life, and the people who want to major in or study something different from what they did originally, there's going to be a huge shortage of actual students. Research will be hurt institutionally by a severe shortage of graduate students, universities by a lack of undergraduates, and the normal public school systems by the fact that everyone who would be going to high school can probably get their GED easily with, at most, a year or so of refresher courses.

And just as the education system finishes contracting to deal with decreased demand, the kids who actually need high school and college educations they didn't get or didn't finish before 2011 start showing up... oh boy.

[hongi]

Making everyone on their masters or even PhDs sit back through undergrad or revoking PhDs due to publications and records vanishing or whatnot would make the academic world implode

It would also be cruel and unusual punishment.

[Todeswind]

Oh good god.... I hadn't considered the nightmare that suddenly having sexually active people regress in age would bring. Good god... how many strippers and porn stars are suddenly 7-12 year olds with all the emotional and psychological baggage that their chosen profession brings?

Ugh... southeast asia is already a nightmare.... this would make Thailand an unlivable hellscape of child prostitutes

Ugh....I just threw up in my mouth a little bit... this is Nightmarish...

[Col. Crackpot]

Children (including my own) born after 2001 would not exist. Hundreds of millions of former parents would mourn the loss of an entire generation....

bad RAR.

[Simon_Jester]

Yeah.

Certain people might actually dream of being able to go back and do the last ten years of their life over, with that side-order of "If only I knew then what I know now..." But to have it happen on a society-wide basis... well, it reminds me of Vonnegut's Timequake, which is not reassuring.

[18-Till-I-Die]

Well, my grandmother will be alive and, fingers crossed, we can catch the cancer in time and kill the shit out of it. Just keep her under constant doctor's observation so when, hell IF, it develops we can kill it before it goes beyond the early stages. So that's a plus right off the bat for me. But on a more...global note...

Question: what about people in prison who were released or proven innocent by DNA technology that didn't exist ten years ago? What about people who were convicted but are at that time walking the street--for example, a well known case, Conrad Murray. In our future he is a convicted murderer, so would he be arrested and summarily imprisoned for a crime he has yet to actually commit? Would it count? What about say Troy Davis who was executed but in our future was widely considered innocent, would he be released or would he still be executed? Or hypothetically, I'm in jail for rape in 2001 but I am released due to DNA evidence proving me innocent in 2009, so what now? Do I rot in jail, is that evidence admissable when it doesn't technically exist, how would I even prove it?

What I'm saying is, wouldn't the judicial system just collapse overnight?

[Simon_Jester]

Question: what about people in prison who were released or proven innocent by DNA technology that didn't exist ten years ago? What about people who were convicted but are at that time walking the street--for example, a well known case, Conrad Murray. In our future he is a convicted murderer, so would he be arrested and summarily imprisoned for a crime he has yet to actually commit?

If there's no dead body, then the murder case becomes a little tricky. There's a good defense "Your Honor, my client has learned his lesson and would never again harm another human being, and I challenge the prosecution to prove otherwise."

Or hypothetically, I'm in jail for rape in 2001 but I am released due to DNA evidence proving me innocent in 2009, so what now? Do I rot in jail, is that evidence admissable when it doesn't technically exist, how would I even prove it?

If the rape was already committed, the DNA evidence must already be in someone's evidence locker. Enough people will remember that hopefully the process would be kick-started.

What I'm saying is, wouldn't the judicial system just collapse overnight?

I doubt it. They could easily just go on with trials as if nothing much had happened, trying people for crimes they just now committed.

The really awkward case is people on trial for crimes committed in 2000: "Your Honor, my client has already served his five-year sentence once; can he justly be told to serve it again?"

[KrauserKrauser]

It would suck to be anyone that retired in the last ten years. Especially those that retired in 2011. Another ten years of work in some jobs that will be the exact same.

Gold and other inflation hedges would rise as there is a good chance that the new Fed with Greenspan back at the helm may avoid the conditions that prompted the housing bubble but will likely deal with the 2001 recession in a different manner. Either way is going to be inflationary and gold and oil has proven to be one of the best inflation hedges available.

Gold was still viewed relatively negatively in 2001, silver much more so. While conditions would not be the same, we would still be in a debt financed bubble that is in the process of popping. Many will be clamoring to let the bubble fully pop which they failed to do in OTL due to fear of extended recession.

The most likely way they would go about doing that is outright monetization of the debt as ZIRP was already nearly achieved in 2001 as the world was coming to the realization that the internet was not the savior of mankind. Risk would still need to be repriced and gold would come into the forefront.

The debt situation in the US and the rest of the world would be much better but I would be hesitant to think that people would be able to resist the urge to continue down the debt rabbit hole.

With the lessons learned from 2008 we would hopefully be able to right the ship a bit and steer clear of the iceberg field we had been sailing into in 2001 but that would require Volcker to be put in place ahead of time to deal with the debt hangover we have been avoiding for the last 30 years.

It would be absolute chaos in the markets. A lot of people would still lose alot of money through Madoff but the damage would be greatly reduced. Enron was up to their shenanigans at this time so their stock would likely be halted and the 401ks of the employees would still likely get decimated as no one would want to hold stock in a company they know to be breaking the law. To say that any stock would be spared or benefit from their 2001-2011 OTL future would be a crap shoot. Volatility would go through the roof. Just Apple alone would be seen one way or the other. The patent fight would be huge for all of the iPhone and iPad technologies. Savvy people would try to register domain names ahead of the competition. Existing products in OTL would likely require renaiming to avoid costly copyright lawsuits.

Bush would likely not win in 2004 though I doubt that Obama would win the presidency again.

Iraq had not yet been invaded but it would be chaos there as well. Egypt, Libya, Syria, the entire middle east would be a basket case. Oddly enough the powers that be would likely be better able to maintain control as Twitter, Facebook, etc are in their infancy or non-existent in 2001. There would be large amount of crackdowns but it would be darkly humorous that they would be cracking down on now teenagers.

Alot of death and devastation would be prevented. Katrina would be damaging but they would have years to prepare for it. The Indonesian tsunami would likely kill far fewer people. Haiti would be more ready for the Earthquake. Japan would be ready for the earthquake/tsunami combo. Global disasters would be much less damaging in the new timeline. So that is one positive development.

[White Haven]

This would be the next best thing to ideal for me on a personal level. I've done almost all of my real growing up post high-school, and it's been a long, not terribly pleasant road to doing so. I'd get to carry all that growth and life experience back to my seventeen-year-old self, while not really losing anything of consequence. On a less rosy note, however, consider the consequences of importing the last ten years of radicalized, polarized politics to 2001? The trend was already starting then, of course, but dropping the Tea Party and Occupy movements into 2001 changes the landscape pretty dramatically. Never mind Dean v. Kerry in 2004, roll on another couple years of 2011-12 politics after the regression and we may very well see a totally different playing field.

On a related tangent, the political battles regarding the voting age would be truly epic. I forsee the Republican party attempting to keep the voting age tied to biological age, as a smaller percentage of their base would be cut off given recent election statistics. If they decide to pursue that strategy, though, they run the risk of seriously alienating the now-sub-18 former members of their voting base.

Underage drinking and smoking explode to epidemic proportions as individuals who have psychological addictions attempt to feed them. The flip side of that is that those with physiological addictions who've been trying to quit whatever substance they've been hooked on have a free pass.

How long until someone tries to throw someone else under the bus by claiming that Person A remembers Person B dying, so Person B isn't a recursion and doesn't deserve (whatever is being fought over)? How does society react to that sort of...identity sabotage, I guess you'd call it.

[Simon_Jester]

How long until someone tries to throw someone else under the bus by claiming that Person A remembers Person B dying, so Person B isn't a recursion and doesn't deserve (whatever is being fought over)? How does society react to that sort of...identity sabotage, I guess you'd call it.

That won't work too well, because you won't find overlapping testimony. If I had died in 2008, many people would remember, and no people would remember meeting me in 2009. So if one person claims I died in 2008, they are easily proven to be a liar.

[White Haven]

It's not going to stop people from trying, and the mere fact that people are making the attempt will spawn identity sabotage law and legal specialists. And then you have people who suffered a low-profile death trying to pretend they lived to reap the benefits of ten years' life and learning and work experience they're not entitled to. Identity...editing, I guess you'd call it?

[Singular Intellect]

On a personal level, this would be an amazing opportunity to fix a lot of shit that went down in my personal life. Things like quickly enabling financial stability and security, knowing my father would fuck me over for tens of thousands of dollars if I let him, moving away from the parents in record time, getting my drivers licence in record time, maybe investing in some things that have a good chance of turning out even with the world being in a huge turmoil.

The last one sounds iffy though, as the world is going to have some very interesting shit happening. With any luck the first couple of years would inflict enough changes that anything aside from very large predictions humanity cannot directly affect (natural disasters, etc) would become unpredictable again.

[sirocco]

I wonder what will happen when we get (again) to the date of the event after 10 years. I expect people to freak out thinking we are in some kind of giant Groundhog Day and that it will happen again and again.

Maybe even higher suicide rate (for those craving for the bliss of ignorance) or just the plain murder/targetted assassination/terrorrism.

Bad RAR!

[charlemagne]

This is interesting to think about.

Things with the girl I was with in 2001 ended horribly in 2002, so remembering that we'd probably just end it right there. I don't think we'd be tempted to try and avoid the horrible breakup, she's married with a kid in 2012 and I'm happily married, too. So I'd probably just look up my wife who I originally met in 2006.

I'd know better than to drag out finishing university, find the company I'm working for right now which was in it's very early start-up phase in 2001 and try to get in earlier. About 150 other people might have the same idea though, this might get interesting


Oh, and Fox hopefully will know better than to cancel Firefly now!

[edaw1982]

The whole scenario both intrigues....and scares the crap out of me.
On the plus side, there's being able to do stuff I didn't do the first time around but then there's the whole fucked-up-timeline schtick and stuff that effectively 'didn't' happen.

Still, my Mum could stop smoking ten years sooner, wouldn't have emphasima which would be a bonus.

[Molyneux]

This manages to be both intriguing, and terrifying.
Short answer? I don't remember whether either of my grandparents were still alive then. My old dog was certainly still alive then, and the first thing I would probably do would be to hug him.

Ten years ago, I think I was in...junior year of high school? A good number of my current friends come from then, so the only really urgent thing for me to do would be to get in touch with my boyfriend, who I didn't meet until college.

As far as globally...that's far beyond my ability to predict. I'd wager that a hell of a lot of people invest heavily in the companies they remember doing well from the original timeline.

[PainRack]

Going back ten years ago would be very.... traumatic for me.....

Despite all the knowledge and change in perspective I will have now in being able to handle life situations then....... no.......


Beside, I don't think I could go through that again and have my mom schizophrenia pop up again.. Or worse, have her be as she is now back during that period of my life.

but then again, ten years ago, outside of my mum, the shit that already went down has already went down, and that will effectively mean instead of having to muddle through to pick up the pieces of my mental fortress, I could attack life as I am now......