What would you do if you knew you couldn't fail? | Hacker News Reader

What would you do if you knew you couldn't fail?

7 pointswave14 comments

This is a bit broad as stated. Time travel, etc. It might be more interesting if you phrased it as "What would you do if you knew you'd do it as well as anyone else?"

As well as anyone else might be a median performance, which isn't too encouraging.

The choices should probably be within the set of things that have been done - and good sportsmanship would make us avoid answers that are all about money.

I meant as well as anyone you chose. So you could e.g. choose to run the 100 meters in world record time, but not in half a second.

Median performance still beats half the sample. I'm encouraged by that.

Median performance in shark wrestling isn't that appealing.

Become a professional baseball player. I'm terrible at baseball, I don't even really like baseball. But if the top 5 players are pulling in 20+ million a year for playing a game (that doesn't even damage your body like football/hockey), hell I'll do it. Seems like 5 years in baseball at 20 million dollars a year beats working your ass off for a decade to build a company that you can hopefully sell and make $20 million one time.

Ask out each hot girl I saw. After a while I may get tired of that and ask out all the other girls.

Really.

What type of answer were you looking for? :D

I should have rephrased the question but it is too late now. I was looking for startup answers. What would you start if you knew you couldn’t fail?

Figure out how to live forever.

Please donate generously to the Methuselah Foundation, and check out the book Ending Aging by biogerontologist Aubrey de Grey:

http://www.methuselahfoundation.org/

Who in their right mind would want to live forever (at least physically)?

Lots of people. There's nothing wrong with loving life. In my opinion, a stance against trying to extend life-span perhaps make sense if such efforts are doomed to failure, and are therefore a waste of time. But it seems that extending life span has become more of a mainstream scientific and technical problem, that might be solved relatively soon. I think the vast majority of people would at least choose to live a longer and healthier life if given the chance.

Take over the world

skydive

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