this post was submitted on 10 Oct 2025
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You wake up as a random 10-year-old in 2002 with your memories intact. In your hand is a USB drive with a backup of Wikipedia as of Jan 1 2025. You must keep your identity secret. What do you do? (lemmy.world)
submitted 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) by vateso5074@lemmy.world to c/asklemmy@lemmy.world
97 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

If anyone wants a specific goal, have it be either

  • Earn a Nobel Prize by age 18

or

  • Become a billionaire by age 18

For the sake of the scenario, assume the following:

  • If anyone learns that you are mentally from the future, you immediately have an aneurysm and die. You somehow just know this and therefore must keep your true identity secret.

  • You wake up as a random 10-year-old specifically in 2002, not your 10-year-old self, and not the age you actually were in 2002.

  • You live in the same country, speak the same language(s), and are the same ethnicity as your old self. Your biological sex matches your gender identity (flip a coin if you are enby).

  • You have 2 parents and 1.5 siblings. Your family earns exactly the median income for your country.

  • The person whose identity you now inhabit left a diary. You have no other knowledge of your new identity beyond this.

  • If you try to look for your old family, you learn they had a different child in this timeline who is the same age as you but is not you. They will not believe any attempt to convince them you are related.

  • The USB drive is compatible with any standard USB Type A connector. It is just large enough to fit all of Wikipedia, including hosted media and files, and the drive is read-only. The drive cannot be reformatted.

  • Stock market trends remain generally consistent for 5 years. After that, assume the butterfly effect will start to skew the results, so you cannot predict what will happen after 2007. Sports become too unreliable to bet on with 100% accuracy after 1 year.

  • I feel like I shouldn't need to clarify this one, but no grooming kids. Assume there is a magical force that prevents you from dating anyone until both you and they are at least 18, and no one is attracted to you unless they would also feel okay dating someone who is your mental age.

EDIT - Additional clarifiers, if this helps:

  • The USB drive is not based on 2002 technology but is fully compatible with it. Assume it uses a novel architecture that can repurpose itself to be compatible with whatever system it is plugged into, as long as it fits the correct type of USB port.
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[–] dual_sport_dork@lemmy.world 14 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (2 children)

Or Apple, or nVidia. Or all of the above.

Edit: Actually, nVidia would be a bad call. Apple I think would result in around a 6000% return on investment by our deadline, which isn't exactly a rocket ride to the moon, but you could probably use Wikipedia's articles on pump and dumps and other financial scams to know in advance what's going to happen, and be one of those at the top of the pyramid rather than the bottom in order to raise yourself more short term capital.

As for all the comments about everyone going for the Get Rich path and not the Nobel Prize... Well, yeah. Even if you do have a literally encyclopedic knowledge of current and future geopolitical events, it's unlikely anyone important is going to listen to a 10 year old. Especially so if you're not allowed to give the game away. You could readily trade stocks online in 2002, though, even if you were a minor as long as you could employ some creativity (or get permission from your parents). How convenient that by the time you're ready to cash out, you've just turned into a legal adult.

[–] phonics@lemmy.world 3 points 1 day ago

Oh damn, greta thunburg is an adult from the future going through this same scenario. (Different years)