So . . . today is the 25th anniversary of "Back To the Future Day," the day that Marty McFly went back in time from 1985 to 1955. In honour of the day, BTTF is being released on Blu-Ray, there were screenings of the film yesterday evening, and half of Toronto is wishing they had a time machine so they could go back to yesterday and vote strategically. I had my own time travel experience recently, and it's gotten me thinking about counterfactuals (basically an extended "what if" - alternatives to one's own reality). Time jumps after the jump.
Last week I met up with some friends that I more or less had not seen in a decade (thank you, Facebook!). We had a blast both reminiscing and just chatting, and it really was just like old times. Well, I had a blast, and they seemed to enjoy themselves too, so I'll just assume we all did. In a way it was like time travel, going back to a different time in all of our lives when we were, you know, still friends that saw each other.
Naturally this got me to thinking about what my life might be like had I remained friends with them back in the early days of the oughts. The primary reason I lost touch with a lot of my friends from that time is that I moved from Toronto to London to pursue graduate studies. So it would be unfair to assume that I could have still done that and remained close with my friends; already to produce this counterfactual I would need to change my decision to move. And I can quickly see that my life would be very, very different if that were the case.
The conclusion that I came to that was most surprising to me was that had I remained friends with them ten years ago, the likelihood still remains that I wouldn't be close with them today. People drift apart all the time, friendships and relationships take work, etc. Nothing to do with the specific people I'm referencing, but as we all know even when we try to remain friends with people it often doesn't work out that way. I think I have a better chance of being good friends with them now than had we stayed in touch back then.
When we think "what if" we tend to narrow down our thinking to a particular decision or time, and consider what might have been had we behaved or chosen differently. But doing so ignores the big picture, and oftentimes we ignore what we would have to give up to make this alternative path happen. For example, had I not gone to London when I did I can guarantee that a) I would be in a different career; b) I would not be married to my wife; c) I would not have the children I do. I might be married, I might have kids, and I might be in a job I enjoy, but there is no way of really knowing, and it would be a different life than I have now.
In the end what it comes down to, I think, is that if your life is above the average of all possible lives you could have left (and I hope it's clear from my writing that I am very happy with my life), to go back in time (figuratively) holds a greater risk of a negative outcome than a positive one. I am not saying my life is perfect; no one's is. Not even Will Smith - just think how many times he has to hear his daughter Willow's crappy "Whip My Hair" song. But my life is, in my estimation, well above the average of all possible lives I could probabilistically be living.
And there's the (other) rub: how are we really supposed to know what our lives could have been like? We could, I suppose, have any possible life from the most wretched to the most privileged, but there has to be a confidence interval in there somewhere, one that constantly changes with each new decision we make. Each time we act (or fail to) we open new possibilities and close off others. And I would think that over time we close more doors than we open, which taken to its extreme, would mean that by our later years we are living the only life we possibly could (without going back and changing a multitude of decisions).
So even if you did have a flux capacitor and changed something in your past, you would probably be mostly the same person you are. Which is somewhat distressing, but mostly comforting, because none of us have Marty's DeLorean anyway.
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