The Genderbender Reset Hypothetical

[Chan Island]

Seeing these hypotheticals knocking about, I reckoned it was high time I contributed one too.


Say you are given a small device with a single button. One long, hard, intentional press of this button will see you reset the world to the point of your birth. You will be reborn as the opposite sex of what you currently are now.

What you do with this new life is up to you. How the world will change in response to you being the opposite sex will be exactly as chaos theory as you think. Your parents are the same- and even give you whatever appropriate name is closest to your current (Gerald becomes Geraldine etc) You'll keep the memories- but I won't bet on your newborn baby mind to be able to hold onto much at all going forward. If you're non-binary, you'll be born to the sex that is further from what you present.

What will happen to the world you leave behind? No idea. Afterlife? Again, no information given. Will it be a better life? 404, answer not found. Just your birth will be the same, just you are the opposite sex.

Do you press it?

No. I quite like life, for all of its flaws, and would wish to see mine to the end rather than just restart, the end.

2 more extra scenarios can be added though:

1) You are allowed to keep this button for the rest of your life. At any time, for any reason, you could potentially decide to go ahead with the reset. Unless you lose the device, I guess (it won't work for anyone else). Do you press in this scenario, and why?

2) You are informed that you have pressed this button before. That you are already living in a reset timeline, where you have swapped sex. Does this make you press it?

1) Yes- but I'd wait until I was either very old or have irrevocably screwed up via injury, crime etc... As I said, I'm fond of life, and after one full life why not experience another free of charge?

2) At that point, I don't believe I would. There's something extremely uncomfortable about knowing that I am not the original iteration of this consciousness, and I'd be inclined to "break the cycle" and at least die with a life I am more certain about. Not exactly a rational choice, I know, but there it is.

[Aggicificicerous]

2) You are informed that you have pressed this button before. That you are already living in a reset timeline, where you have swapped sex. Does this make you press it?

If I keep my memories, then surely I'd remember pressing the button, no? Or at least some of my previous life as the opposite sex.

[Valentine Z]

I am a bit tempted to press it, but to be honest, I don't think I want to repeat my past. It's not so much of it being bad and hey, it's actually something that I remembered fondly.

It's just something that I don't want to re-live, if that makes sense. Decent childhood and past, but... eh, better in memory.

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EDIT: If I can keep it, then yes, I will keep it and press it just before I die, a la some dead man's switch. Then bam, reincarnation for the same life, but as a girl! I'm not very sure about the second scenario yet, sorry.

[Chan Island]

2) You are informed that you have pressed this button before. That you are already living in a reset timeline, where you have swapped sex. Does this make you press it?

If I keep my memories, then surely I'd remember pressing the button, no? Or at least some of my previous life as the opposite sex.

Maybe but newborn babies are not known for their memory. There really wouldn't be much left at all at by your age.

[Adamede]

Nah, if its the same parents I doubt I'll turn out any different, for better or worse. Would just be a socially inept girl instead of a socially inept dude.

[Zolamnia]

You are allowed to keep this button for the rest of your life. At any time, for any reason, you could potentially decide to go ahead with the reset. Unless you lose the device, I guess (it won't work for anyone else). Do you press in this scenario, and why?

In this scenario I would use the button as a fail safe option. To postpone my death for an additional lifetime and perhaps make better decisions throughout my life in the reset mode.

Because dying sucks and nobody has lived a life having made all the right decisions.

Even if the memory of life experiences is erased, it still presents the opportunity to get it right this time around.

[Malphe II]

Hell fucking yeah

[Ethel mermania]

Nah, I like being a boy

[The Nihilistic view]

So basically condensing everything down, it's a game of chicken to see how long you wait until you press the button in case you die n a scenario without being able to press it but as long as you keep pressing it you keep getting extra lives but switch back and forth between sexes.

Urm.... Where's the actual downside?

[Stellar Colonies]

I'll probably get around to pressing it for both curiosity and the guarantee of a second life, but not the moment I get it, so automatic no to the first scenario and yes to the second I guess. In the case of there having already been a reset, it would just make me curious about the previous loop but not affect my decision too much.

Trying to predict how my life would go if I had been born female is an interesting puzzle though which would be interested to see resolved, even if my memories aren't preserved through the reset.

[Stellar Colonies]

So basically condensing everything down, it's a game of chicken to see how long you wait until you press the button in case you die n a scenario without being able to press it but as long as you keep pressing it you keep getting extra lives but switch back and forth between sexes.

Urm.... Where's the actual downside?

You may just squirt condiments on a plate and go wacko.

[The Alma Mater]

Is it an actual world reset ?

As in - if Putin drops the bomb tomorrow - I can just rewind time for everyone, preventing them from living in a fallout world?
Well, until he drops the bombs again ofc.

[Sordhau]

Oh God yes, please. I honest to God wish I could have that button. I don't even care about keeping the memories just let me have been a woman from the start.

[Necroghastia]

Literally my dream scenario.

[Chan Island]

So basically condensing everything down, it's a game of chicken to see how long you wait until you press the button in case you die n a scenario without being able to press it but as long as you keep pressing it you keep getting extra lives but switch back and forth between sexes.

Urm.... Where's the actual downside?

Well, not having any lasting memories of previous lives might influence things- if you believe in an afterlife you'd be going there eventually but as an unrecognisable person. If you had a bad start in life there may not be a hurry to go back. And not to mention there's no guarantee every life will turn out the same- there's every possibility of going through a life without the button offer again.

But it's not so much about downsides versus upsides but more thought experiment.

Is it an actual world reset ?

As in - if Putin drops the bomb tomorrow - I can just rewind time for everyone, preventing them from living in a fallout world?
Well, until he drops the bombs again ofc.

You would experience a world reset and be reborn again. For everyone else, you don't know. They might reset with you- or they might be branched off as another timeline in the multiverse. You don't get this information.

You are allowed to keep this button for the rest of your life. At any time, for any reason, you could potentially decide to go ahead with the reset. Unless you lose the device, I guess (it won't work for anyone else). Do you press in this scenario, and why?

In this scenario I would use the button as a fail safe option. To postpone my death for an additional lifetime and perhaps make better decisions throughout my life in the reset mode.

Because dying sucks and nobody has lived a life having made all the right decisions.

Even if the memory of life experiences is erased, it still presents the opportunity to get it right this time around.

Of course, there's also the chance to royally screw it up- or even die young. Chaos theory fully in effect, after all.

But I definitely get that. It's a similar answer to my own.

Nah, if its the same parents I doubt I'll turn out any different, for better or worse. Would just be a socially inept girl instead of a socially inept dude.

A socially inept girl might experience life very differently to a socially inept dude though- anything is possible. But I understand this sentiment too. Same parents, same birthplace, same older relatives- not like you'll be turning out that radically different.

Oh God yes, please. I honest to God wish I could have that button. I don't even care about keeping the memories just let me have been a woman from the start.

Meanwhile, in a different scenario, where Miss Sordhau desperately dreams of being a man:

I'm messing. And yup, this button could be very mighty tempting for transgender individuals.

[Adamede]

Nah, if its the same parents I doubt I'll turn out any different, for better or worse. Would just be a socially inept girl instead of a socially inept dude.

A socially inept girl might experience life very differently to a socially inept dude though- anything is possible. But I understand this sentiment too. Same parents, same birthplace, same older relatives- not like you'll be turning out that radically different.

Oh I'm sure but would that difference be an actual improvement? I doubt it. And I doubt it would change the main events that shaped the person who I am today.

And lets be honest the only real people who would benefit from this are trans individuals. I am comfortable with my sex/gender/whatever.

[Dumb Ideologies]

In the scenario where I can save it to use to get out of decrepitude or terminal illness, yes. Otherwise, no.

[Czardas]

2) You are informed that you have pressed this button before. That you are already living in a reset timeline, where you have swapped sex. Does this make you press it?

This is an interesting scenario for me to think about because for a couple of years I actually believed on some level that this had happened (around 2009-2010). There was part of me that thought I had genuinely been born as the opposite sex and the real life I was living through was in fact some kind of dream or alternate reality that I had chosen as a punishment for doing something bad, presumably as a substitute for an even worse punishment. If I did enough of the correct things, part of me was therefore convinced that eventually I'd wake up in my "real" body and in whatever "real" environment existed, since the whole world was, of course, fake. It was a complicated form of solipsism. (I didn't know anything about the Matrix series back then; I guess I still don't beyond the basic conceit. The idea came into my head independently as part of what was, at the time, an untreated/undiagnosed set of mental health problems.)

In any case, even if I was actually living in a reset timeline, no life could realistically be worse than the one I already actually have, so I'd take any possible chance to live a different one.

(I'm also interested to think about a scenario where you change the past, but not the present (apart from your body): you will have grown up as the opposite sex, had different experiences, etc, but things worked out in such a way as to retain your present-day life and circumstances, and you do not get to experience an entire new life. I would still press the button there too, but I imagine a lot of people wouldn't.)

[Thermodolia]

No I wouldn’t. Though interestingly if I was born a girl my parents would have named me the name they used for my sister who was born right after me

[The Blaatschapen]

Seeing these hypotheticals knocking about, I reckoned it was high time I contributed one too.


Say you are given a small device with a single button. One long, hard, intentional press of this button will see you reset the world to the point of your birth. You will be reborn as the opposite sex of what you currently are now.

What you do with this new life is up to you. How the world will change in response to you being the opposite sex will be exactly as chaos theory as you think. Your parents are the same- and even give you whatever appropriate name is closest to your current (Gerald becomes Geraldine etc) You'll keep the memories- but I won't bet on your newborn baby mind to be able to hold onto much at all going forward. If you're non-binary, you'll be born to the sex that is further from what you present.

What if my parents already had a name thought of for me that's not my opposite's gender equivalent? Do I get that instead?

[The Blaatschapen]

Omg!

I just had a flashback, I was called blaatina and saw this exact same hypothetical play out!

[Ethel mermania]

Seeing these hypotheticals knocking about, I reckoned it was high time I contributed one too.


Say you are given a small device with a single button. One long, hard, intentional press of this button will see you reset the world to the point of your birth. You will be reborn as the opposite sex of what you currently are now.

What you do with this new life is up to you. How the world will change in response to you being the opposite sex will be exactly as chaos theory as you think. Your parents are the same- and even give you whatever appropriate name is closest to your current (Gerald becomes Geraldine etc) You'll keep the memories- but I won't bet on your newborn baby mind to be able to hold onto much at all going forward. If you're non-binary, you'll be born to the sex that is further from what you present.

What if my parents already had a name thought of for me that's not my opposite's gender equivalent? Do I get that instead?

I think ewe get whatever name ewe want

[Nantoraka]

Can I press the button, and then press it a second time and revert back to male?

[Heloin]

Dad's bald and doesn't grow facial hair too well. Little Brother is already seeing hair loss at 23. No thanks.

[The Blaatschapen]

Plot twist, I press it twice so I am thinking same gender as I am now, but just reborn.