You know, the new Adam Sandler movie; try this site for the trailer. The guy has a universal remote control device which he can use to Pause, Fast Forward, or Rewind reality, rather than TV. How much would you pay for such an item? And what would you do with it?
Of course you would use it to prevent accidents, such as car crashes. You would likely die of old age. I wouldn’t use fast forward much. If you want more money, Pause could help you shuffle through confidential papers and garner inside information for trading (or are the papers glued to the desk and thus unreadable?).
Voyeurism is another possibility, as explored by Nicholson Baker’s much-underrated The Fermata. Here is one good excerpt from the book. Here is a summary of the basic plot.
I will predict the movie argues that this device is more dangerous than useful and that Adam Sandler must give it up to find happiness with the ever-so-cute woman of his dreams. Given self-constraint issues, I have yet to find a value-maximizing scenario for the device, can you? Somewhere in here is a lesson about strong temporal complements and perhaps business cycles as well.
Here is my previous post The Macroeconomics of Superman.
You could probably make yourself a lot better off by changing obviously bad policy in your lifetime, which others could benefit from too. Obviously this is more likely to work if you’re current self is older (what’s the point of being a kid in the past- you wouldn’t have much power) Become a lobbyist and entice the former selves that wrote obtrusive regulations out to lunch when they wrote the bad regs, or join an interventionist legislators elimentary school class and do everything you can to nurture alternative interests. Or use current evidence about what caused candidates who made especially bad politicians to win and go back with a strategy that would appeal more to the past median voter. If you could take things with you, perhaps you could influence decision makers by going back to the past with current news articles (a copy of WSJ articles on the tobacco master settlement to the judge who let the first anti-tobacco lawsuit go forward, for instance).
Much depends on the effect of the remote control on the aging process. If a remote control holder’s body ages at normal time, notwithstanding the various permutations around him, then using the remote control to achieve academic success quickly will shorten one’s life span by thirty years or so, which suggests that that wouldn’t be an optimal use, especially if one believes in the Kurzweil singularity.
One possibility for fast-forward. Put one’s life savings in a sturdy bank, sit down in a safe place, fast-forward a hundred years, and be a millionaire that can take advantage of the singularity. I was impressed when Futurama ran the first half of this scenario, and even took the trouble to accurately calculate the compound interest.
Was there a button on this remote to turn Jim Carrey into Adam Sandler and the title screen from “Bruce Almighty” to “Click”?
If the remote holds you steady in time while running backwards or forwards, you could have a lot of fun studying history.
If you’re allowed to iteratively change history, you can come up with a reasonable algorithm for making history turn out better on almost any scale you choose–figure out how to evaluate how well history has turned out, sample a few hundred possible outcomes by randomly messing with things in history, and then choose the outcome that looks about as good as any you’ve seen so far. (There’s some formula for working out the optimal strategy here, but I’m too lazy to go look it up just now.) You could do this iteratively, so that the world gets better and better by your own estimation.
Step 1. Observe prices of some financial assets.
Step 2. Rewind.
Step 3. Invest.
Step 4. Wait or fast forward.
Step 5. Repeat.
That, and stopping time so you can move the kid’s hand and
make the ball hit him in the face.
Actually, here are a few decent reviews of the film: Ty Burr, Robert Ebert, and James Rocchi.
Oh my gosh, thank you so much for posting the link to The Fermata– when I was a young teen, I read a book review for it but was unable to find the book, and as the years went on, I forgot the title but always wanted to read it. Now, 10+ years later, I will finally be able to do so.
I would probably just use this to be the most successful debater/wiseass in history. We all know jerks who constantly try to prove their self imagined superiority in every subject by denegrating normal people who are just minding their own business. One of these jokers starts pontificating, I pause the world until I come up with unbelievable mountains of data to contradict or just some terribly vicious putdown. This would never get old.
Rewind is by far the most powerful.
Prevent the fall of the Roman Empire. Make trillions on equity trades. Give researchers in the past information about future developments.
Repeat that last one to get life extension technologies to live long enough to use the device efficiently. Alternatively, fast forward, then rewind with the new research.
My guess is he’ll use it to spend time with his kids, because he’s a farking pea-brained baffoon.
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