[…] movie Groundhog Day, Bill Murray is trapped in some sort of a temporal time loop forcing him to relieve the same day over and over again. As a result, nothing he says or does during the day has any lasting consequences, since the […]

@Luke: You know the security guard will live again tomorrow. His kids will see him going to work as usual. Why worry so much about people dying, when everything is repeated anyway?

But ok, pain is still real. So maybe I see the point that it will be hard to detach if I discover someone subjected to horrible torture, unless saved by me. On the other hand, if this has happened on just one of the iterations, I could possibly distance myself from it by reasoning “it is just the same thing happening again”. Just like re-watching batman doesn’t make the crimes of the joker any worse; they are just the same crimes, like this is the same torture, re-imagined over and over.

Taking over the world: everyone has a price. Be it the right threat (kidnapped children) or the right carrot (promise of a night with a special girl). Just figure out everyones price by trial-and-error and make sure to efficiently delegate the extortion and bribing. Maybe see if you can get a world-wide nuclear war started, just for the fun of it. But then it would be a bit of a shame if that happens to coincide with your exit condition, I guess :)

@Tino: Yeah, but Joker was AWESOME with capital A and capital WSOME. Heath Ledger made that movie. Also he is no longer around so there probably won’t be any Joker in the next Batman movie anyway. :(

I guess if you did the superhero thing just for shits and giggles and you didn’t really care whether or not they go free it could be less frustrating. Then again, it probably would be hard to keep yourself so detached.

What if, for example you are trying to stop a bank robber who usually shoots a security guard as he is making his escape. Throughout you iterations you get to know this guard and find out he is a really nice guy. He has a wife and little 3 kids. You even get to know them too. It is easy to imagine how you could get obsessed with saving that guy each day to spare his family the pain.

On another crime scene you meet another innocent person who dies, you get to know them and etc.. Sooner or later you realize you can’t possibly save everyone and you must make choices. It could drive you crazy!

Oh, and the Supervilain idea is interesting. :P How would you take over the world in a day though?

@Matt: I think you have to see playing superhero as a game and have fun doing it, rather than define it as a useful activity that puts criminals away. In the latter sense it sure is meaningless.

When I watch the batman movie, I do not feel that the enjoyment is somehow deprived by the fact that the joker will be free the next time I watch it. In the same sense, there is no reason to feel bad about criminal A roaming free the day you take on criminal B.

Also, why not try out being a supervillain? I wonder how far one could come taking over the world in one day, if one got to try and re-try over and over again.

@Ian Clifton: Yeah, if the loop did not end at some point, it could become quite tiresome. Especially since you would have no way of ending your suffering. I’m pretty sure it would drive you crazy in the literal sense of the word. As in certifiable crazy.

At that point I guess you could try to dull the pain by switching the brain off via drugs/alcohol and etc. I seriously don’t know how would I deal with something like that though. That’s why I was talking about repeatable activities that are about you, and give you satisfaction. Learning to play different musical instruments can be very rewarding – it gives you something to do, and something to strive for. Same with learning new languages. It also opens up new un-explored parts of the web to you, and gives you more new books to read (since not everything gets translated into english).

Helping people and making the world a better place would be ultimately disappointing. The best you can hope for is to find a way to make your personal life as pleasant and frictionless as possible.

If you are stuck in that loop long enough you will learn how to avoid arguments with friends and family (or that one argument that they were planning to have with you that particular day) and diffuse them with a word or two. You will know all the right things to say and do to make it a perfect day – as perfect as it can be for you and hopefully for others. At some point this becomes a rote – a reflex, so you go though your days without any social friction with everyone being super-nice to you, and helping you out with whatever you need them to do that day.

You will also eventually master a method of wooing that un-attainable dream girl you were so hopelessly in love with. You know all the things she likes, you know all her turn-off’s and turn-ons. You know the exact hot buttons you need to hit, and you can do the whole routine in 30 minutes flat and then she is yours. But it would be like dating that guy from Memento – only she doesn’t keep any notes. Every day, this is a first date for her – which probably means she would be on her best behavior and wouldn’t do all the annoying things that a girlfriend could to. But I’m pretty sure this kind of relationship would get a bit frustrating and draining after a while.

But I think the key to stay sane is to do constructive things that do have permanence – and that means investing in yourself. Learning new skills. Reading a lot. Practicing skills you already posses and improving them. I the temporary loop-world you inhabit those are the only things that can give you a sense of permanence and forward momentum.

@Tino: Heh, the superhero idea sounds fun but I agree with @Matt` in that it would likely get old after a while.

It doesn’t really make a lot of sense for memory to be retained but not your physical condition – memories are a part of the brain’s structure, so if your body is reset then your mind should be as well (unless you’re a dualist, I am not)

But that makes for a really boring film – same starting point to same end point every single iteration (that could be happening already and we’d never know).

So that’s the other “interesting thing” about the scenario – as the one person who is aware of the loop and some how (illogically) retaining your memory, you are the sole agent of change in the world for that day. You’ve seen it turn out one way, so how much difference can you make in one day?

@Tino: You would of course be limited in your crimefighting by the fact that they won’t stay beaten any longer than the time until the end of the day – you could get super awesome at beating down one guy, but to practice on the next guy you’d have to let bad guy #1 carry on with his misdeeds.

About the physical body: In the movie, there is a scene showing Bill Murray eating breakfast as a pig, and insinuating that there will be no consequences, so if we discuss the Groundhog universe, I think the body resets.

I also think that Bill has no idea the loop will ever end, so it may be a bit unfair arguing from the point of view that we know that there is an exit condition.

I just had an awesome idea; screw programming: over many iterations, track down criminals living within accessible distance. Learn all about their routes etc. You can then spend your days as a superhero, using premonition as your superability! Since you know exactly what is going to happen and when, you should be able to pull off some really cool superhero-like tricks. I could probably entertain myself forever trying to perfect the coolness factor for a specific capture.

That’s true about the money. Most of what I would want for the day I could pay for, knowing that things would be reset. And I’m not sure it would be worth the hassle of trying to win a lot of money to get a Ferrari or something when you could just rent (or steal?) one.

I guess I always saw the mind retaining the day but the body being reset. If the body were not reset, then this starts to sound like less of an advantage than otherwise (What do you mean I need to get sleep? If I am run over by a semi in one loop, will I be in pain the next?), but you could work on fitness or some other physical aspect… now that I think about it, Bill Murray learns the piano and his fingers retain the dexterity from one day to the next, so hmm…

Another thing to think about: What if you knew that time would not go back to normal, that you were permanently stuck in the loop? I think that would start to become a nightmare after X iterations. We can come up with any number of reasons for living (saving people’s lives, making the world a better place, etc.), but they cease to be so meaningful when things are continuously reset with no hope of continuing linearly.

@Tino: True. Which is why I probably wouldn’t want to tackle complex programming projects like that. I’d stick to coding marathons and treat the time limit as a challenge. Can I write a compiler for language X in a single day? Can I produce working code of this project before I loop.

It would be frustrating to keep loosing your stuff, so I guess you need a right mindset. View the lack of permanent storage as a challenge for your creativity and speed.

@Ian Clifton: Hmm, interesting idea with the betting/stocks. The downside is that it will vanish at the end of the day and you can only win/earn so much in a day. For example, there might be nothing interesting going on at the stock market, and betting on horse races or other stuff like that may only yield a modest payoff because the odds are not that great and there is no major upset that day.

And if you go to a casino, you can only win so much before they kick you out for cheating.

I’m not sure how big of an advantage it would be considering that you can cash in all your savings and max out all your credit cards if you need to. Depending on the size of your account and your credit this may or may not be enough to pay for most of the crazy stuff you can think off.

Not to mention that a you can’t always cash in your prize on the same day as you win it.

Re: bad consequences. That is a really interesting idea. Imagine a spoof on the Groundhog Day theme where the main character does something horrible (eg kills a person, etc..) for the kicks thinking he will just loop around at the end of the day. Then he wakes up, and he is still in jail – or there is still a body on his couch. Ooops!

Another interesting thing to ponder. We know that while you are within the loop your memories are preserved. What about your general physical condition? For example, can you lose weight by exercising each day? Can you build muscle by hitting the gym a lot while in the loop? Or will you body be reset to the default each morning?

And conversely, can you eat like a pig every day, do nothing and suffer any consequences?

If you get drunk every day, would you become an alcoholic? If you did hard core drugs every day, would you get addicted? Interesting stuff.

I think you’re messing with us by posting this topic after discussing something similar not too long ago. Maybe you’re starting the time loop…

I wouldn’t be able to take advantage of the idea of no consequences if I did not know what would end the time loop. Maybe that swearing at someone you dislike is what makes things go again… Instead, I would focus on things like playing the guitar and learning other languages (I’d start with Spanish, since I have a tiny bit of background there, but I’d love to learn a variety–Imagine being able to communicate in 50 different languages!). I’d be too frustrated to do much painting, since I’d always lose what I did (and I enjoy having the creation there to look back on), but I’d experiment with all kinds of art.

There’s always the option of making money on betting or stocks, but money isn’t a big deal to me now and would be even less so in the case of a time loop.

The only things that would be useful to do all involve learning of some form or improving a skill. It’d be a good chance to learn the times tables into triple digits, but I suspect I’d be having fun trying out all kinds of random things. Hmm…