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Comment by saalweachter | Hacker News Reader

Would you rather be 95 years old with a trillion dollars or 25 years old with a thousand?

If picking as a finishing poker position, I'd definitely to end up as the 95 year old with a trillion dollars. When you're 95, life is about reflecting and living more with the past - and I like reflecting about that outcome with its share of certainly many greats and bads it takes to accumulate that kind of fortune. 25 years old with a thousand dollar on the other hand, statistically speaking, is starting and will finish with mediocre chip stack. Just the laws of averages sorry.

If picking as a starting poker position, I'd definitely want to be the 25 year old with a thousand because you'll be able to play more hands and have more experiences and hopefully have more fun even if you'll most likely end up very average or lose your entire chip-stack. I guess what I'm saying is there's no virtue in poverty and no guarantee wealth will bring you ultimate satisfaction either. Your choice is a false mutual exclusivity imho (in that everyone is 25 AND 95 [assuming that that they in everyone lives to 95], someone wanting to be 25 again doesn't imply that their previous journey to 95 is somehow intrinsically worth less - like an adrenaline junkie wanting to ride again the rollercoaster he just got off from).

It's not a poker position. It is everything.

At 95 you're a lot closer to the end of everything than the start, your body is really giving up and it is exceedingly difficult to enjoy anything much.

The speculation is that buffet would likely give up his entire wealth and have his expertise wiped to wind back his biological clock 70 years. Would he? I don't know, ask him maybe.

What can you do with $100m at 95 you would actually enjoy? Again ask him. Or any elderly friend or relative. It is unlike to be a fun conversation, at least in my experience.

At 25 if you have a windfall of only $1000 you've likely got some ideas!

>What can you do with $100m at 95 you would actually enjoy?

At 95 with 100m, it's less about what I can do with that time left and more about how to make the world better off by the time I croak. I lived my life, as far as I'm concerned.

Putting it another way: I'm out the door in 2 weeks, some people would spend it relaxing. I'd make sure to document as much as I can and keep the transition as low friction as possible.

Note that Warren's personal wealth has been vastly more than he and three generations of his ancestors could ever possibly spend however frivolously for /decades/ now.

The only thin you can do with that money is give it away in charity or politics.

So what has he done with that time? He doesn't seem to be into frivolous spending much at all as far as is reported.

After a fulfilling and education-rich childhood, you awaken from a 70 year coma to discover that, as part of a complicated tax dodge, billionaires had been putting assets in your name, while maintaining control of them while you were in a coma.

You have a trillion dollars, but not the life experiences to look back upon, or any actual personal accomplishments.

Well, both, obviously.

But in all seriousness, if I had to choose, I think I'd rather be 25 with $1k.

I really don't need a trillion dollars, at any point in my life (and certainly not with too few years left to do anything with but the tiniest fraction of it). I don't need a billion dollars, even. I figure $20M would allow me to do anything I wanted to do, with a healthy cushion in case anything went wrong. (Well, with $20M, even if I were to triple my spending habits, I'd likely still die with more money than I started with.)

I'm not sure that I fear death, but I do recognize at middle age that time is finite, and there are so many things to do in this world. Even with close to nothing as a $1k-holding 25-year-old, I could strive to make things better for myself, and likely look forward to a lifetime of experiences. At 95 that would nearly all be behind me.

Put another way: if I was 95 and had a trillion dollars, and there was some highly advanced, crazy-expensive procedure I could undergo to reduce my biological age down to 25, even if I'd only have $1k left over afterward, I expect I'd do it.

> Well, both, obviously.

So, 95 with 1k?

that would imply you would live to 95 which is a gift by itself

Depends on who you ask. From my grandma (97), it apparently stops being as fun when you start losing autonomy and all your relatives your age are dead.

The thing is, when you're 95 years old with a trillion dollars, you have lived 70 years making a trillion dollars (which can be quite fun! Warren B certainly seems to have enjoyed it) and along the way you've - no doubt - spent a decent amount of time as a billionaire. Do not discount the part of life behind you... it's just as real as the part ahead.

This is actually a pretty hard question for me because you’re basically asking. Do you want the power to be able to change the world in radical ways by giving up your life? Suicidal Brewster’s millions..

I'm not sure I'm convinced a trillion dollars in one person's hand could radically change the world. Money is a big deal, to be sure, and money gives you a lot of power, but there's so much else when it comes to politics and power that I expect there would be many roadblocks in your way.

And on top of that, it's possible -- perhaps even easy -- to deploy vast sums of money in well-meaning ways that turn out to have disastrous unintended consequences. I don't think I'd want that kind of responsibility.

I mean, you could self fund any political candidate on the planet for the years you had left. That alone could radically change the world. I’m always impressed at the low cost of “lobbying” in politics. You could fund a moon base! A trillion dollars is bonkers money. It’s also different from “paper billionaires” who have resources tied up in stock.

The world, no. An 9industry, yes. That's more money than many industries make in years. Of course injecting that into any stage can impact the fate of the sector.

Or you can waste it on a year of AI development. It's not ironclad.

>it's possible -- perhaps even easy -- to deploy vast sums of money in well-meaning ways that turn out to have disastrous unintended consequences. I don't think I'd want that kind of responsibility.

Given my current life, I'd rather try something different than have decades more of statis quo.

This is the great tragedy of 21st century western life. When you are 25 with a thousand dollars in realized wealth it is so hard to understand the incredible value of the deep out of the money call option you hold on life.

While the 95 year old trillionaire is really just deeply in debt with the creditor about to collect any day now.

95. I'd spend what little time I have left un-screwimg the system I clearly helped break.

25 with a thousand is out on the streets unless you have good famili connections. I'll be long dead before that money starts making money for me anyway.

Depending on what you want to do in life, a trillion dollars will not help and it may even stop you from doing many things you would like to do otherwise.

I would rather be 25 with zero dollars than 95 with infinite dollars. At 95, you’re just waiting for it to be your turn.

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