Time Machine or Fountain of Youth?

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Let us assume Zeus has presented you with two systems, a Time Machine and the Fountain of Youth. He suggests that you can potentially access either system, however access to one is contingent upon you not accessing the other. If he discovers that you have accessed both, he will destroy both systems.

With the Time Machine, you can transport to any place AND any time an infinite number of times, but you must wait at least 72 hours between jumps. You experience no time when jumping to another time and place, however you still age regularly and you will die eventually. If you die while using the Time Machine, you are dead forever. With the Fountain of Youth, you will be at 100% mental and physical health for as long as the system is on. You can live forever, however you still experience pain. If you die while the system is on, you will wake up in a predetermined location at 100% health, but this can only happen once every 72 hours. You can change the specific location at any time. If you die more than once in a 72 hour period, you are dead forever.

Which would you choose?
 
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Joined 2004
Not magic mushrooms needed. Actually, mankind has been fantasizing about Time machines and Fountains of Youth for a long time. We are just not happy with our limitations. :D There's another thread about living after death. Same story.
 
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The time machine is "interesting" but I think I know enough about the past, and the future is more interesting. I'd go for the "live forever" deal and see how the future plays out.

But then that setup isn't quite living forever - if you die twice within 72 hours you're dead for good, and that's eventually going to happen, even if it takes thousands of years.

I want to live forever, but I've had a really hard time sticking to a CRON diet. That's about the best bet for the present and the near future, and it only adds a few decades to life, but then Ray Kurzweil is making a lot of predictions about future technology...
 
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Joined 2007
I'd use the fountain for a couple thousand years, or until I'm bored with that. Then I'd use the time machine to got back to the present, before Zeus showed up.
Depending on the paradox, either live out the remainder of my natural life or, if Zeus appears again, do it all again.
:)
 
With no other choices I would choose the fountain of youth. I could always kill myself anytime I was ready and I am one of the few who think that we live in the best of times and the farther in time you go back the worse it was.

Couldn't agree more, the myth of simpler times & the Noble Savage are just that. Life then was brutal and short...today's poor (at least in US) have a superior standard of living compared to the good old days!
 
Of course if the time machine was really large it would be kind of fun to go back to say the American Revolution and bring some Barret M-82 .50 cal sniper rifles and a bunch of AK-47s and a few to9ns of ammunition. You could set up like 400 yards behind your own guys and just drop Ringos one after the other. They would never even know where it was coming from. We wouldn't need the French. Just start with the officers and work your way down the ranks until the rest gave up or better yet ran. Then you could shoot them in the back as they fled. A few "battles" like that and the war would be won rather than only driving the British away. They would be defeated and you would have prevented the war of 1812 too. If you did it right you could literally kill every single one of them so the commanders not present would not even know what happened. Just that nobody came back from the battle. It would probably take them about a hundred and fifty years to figure out what you did because until they had high power semi-automatic highly accurate long range sniper rifles they wouldn't even be able to imagine the concept.

Or some armored personal carriers. That would be pretty fun too. You would be almost invincible. Just roll up and open up on their lines with machine guns. The only thing you would have to avoid would be cannon balls so just don't sit still. Keep moving. Take out all their artillery and artillery men first. It would seem like a monster sent straight from hell to them.
 
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