Thought experiment: How far back would you go?

[nellikin]

Got to agree with randonmutant here. My life is far from perfect but to erase all that I have just fix fix one silly moment would be dreadful.

Can the time machine also take us forward? Maybe I could check out the future a bit?

[Trolldor]

Has anyone considered that they might be destroying this timeline, "killing" the people who live on it, particularly those who would not be born on the new worldline?

And for that matter, literally destroying the lives of the people of this timeline, whatever they've accomplished, whatever they've achieved.

We can extrapolate from the specified conditions that we may well lack the means to know whether the original timeline persists in any meaningful sense to it's participants after you push the button.

So let's presume that knowledge is intrinsically unknowable.

Now, would you push the button?

-- TWZ

Yes.
It would all be worth it if I could just manage to say this to her:
"Don't go to the fireworks with your uncle..."

[Horwood Beer-Master]

Birth.

Nothing in my life has been so profound as to having me want to keep it...

[Tigger]

9014.5 hours ago, please. Crack on with it, XC.

[devogue]

I would go back in time 5 minutes to eat that lovely sandwich again.

That would be it - I couldn't bear to live with the memory of my children and to eventually live through the empty days when they should be with me.

[Tigger]

I would go back in time 5 minutes to eat that lovely sandwich again.

That would be it - I couldn't bear to live with the memory of my children and to eventually live through the empty days when they should be with me.

What sort?
EDIT: Sandwich, not children.

[devogue]

I would go back in time 5 minutes to eat that lovely sandwich again.

That would be it - I couldn't bear to live with the memory of my children and to eventually live through the empty days when they should be with me.

What sort?
EDIT: Sandwich, not children.

Egg and bacon.

[Horwood Beer-Master]

I would go back in time 5 minutes to eat that lovely sandwich again.

That would be it - I couldn't bear to live with the memory of my children and to eventually live through the empty days when they should be with me.

You could have other children.

[owtth]

I'd be willing to take a gamble that the lottery results wouldn't be affected if I went back on the same day, butterflies can't fly that fast.

[Rum]

Given the condition set out that history might not play out the way it did in this universe, I would not got back earlier than the Cuban missile Crisis (1962) because it was almost the flip of a coin whether we had nuclear war.

So actually the following year would be good. I was 13 and learnt to be lazy in school. I was bright enough and always got goodish results but I know I could have done so much better with a bit of application. I would not have done Art College either, which I went to at 18. Probably Law and used it in a decent socially oriented way in retrospect.

[Animavore]

But how much can a timeline change just because you go back?
Sure if you made a big deal about being from the future and became a celeb then there could be drastic change. The day a girl should've met her future husband changes because she flocked to see you at an outdoor venue etc. But what if you come back in the middle of the Amazon with no one to see you and you get savaged by a jaguar? Will anything actually change? How frantically do the wings of the butterfly have to be beating in Central Park to cause a hurricane in Nevada?

[jamest]

Being negative...

I don't think that it's worth inhabiting the body of a teenager, unless one has the mind of a teenager. Not unless one is happy to feel isolated. The idea of taking one's mind back a few decades into the body of the child that was once oneself, doesn't really work. One cannot live as a teenager unless one thinks and feels like a teenager.
People 'wise up' and move on from the thoughts and attitudes held when they were younger. Indeed, most adults are amused and/or annoyed by younger generations. So, if we moved ourselves back in time, we would be moving ourselves alongside peers that we had nothing in common with. We'd be utterly miserable.

Also, to abandon this life for another would affect many people - not just oneself. All of those people that have been positively influenced/affected by your interaction with them, would lose the benefits of that interaction. You'd be robbing them of your wisdom; care; love; humour; security; etc..

There are positives, of course. Personally though, there would be no value in such an endeavour that wasn't entirely selfish. I would not do it, all things considered.

[Geoff]

1973, shortly before I met she who became my first wife.

[buschmaster]

...

[Feck]

I've made so many mistakes but I don't think a re-do would be a good idea , I probably don't realise all the words or actions in my life where I did something that made a change for the better ... for example I could go back and try a fuck of a lot harder to keep my "wife " sounds good but then I would always know that I had stolen my life with her from a friend and 2 beautiful kids wouldn't exist .
I could go back and play kiss-ass with the evil fucker that cut short my academic career , but then my life might not have been so 'interesting' and I could be some arrogant prick in an ivory tower or sad burned out and jaded cynically lecturing students I hate and struggling to publish enough papers keep my job .

so I think only one I would go back and save the Bestest dog in the world Evar .