8 ms·
Ask YC: What would you attempt if you knew you couldn’t fail?
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- davidw 19y agoFly?
- marcus 19y agoWhat does the word "fail" mean?
- imgabe 19y agoThe lottery.
- thorax 19y agoBecome ruler of the world? Ground me somewhere on this one.
- wallflower 19y agoStart a profitable business and be successful in mentoring others how to start their profitable business (not network marketing by any means)
- philh 19y agoFaster-than-light travel.
- kirubakaran 19y agoSleep with supermodels, starting with Jessica Alba.
- anaphoric 19y agoJust open your eyes to the many beautiful women around you right now. 'Supermodels' are just an illusion -- cartoon characters which distract you from what is real.
- kirubakaran 19y ago"beautiful women around you right now" I don't fail with them :-p
- jsmcgd 19y agoI would try to deliberately fail on purpose just to see what happened. Could be dangerous though.
- kirubakaran 19y agoIt is safe. Since you "can't fail", you won't fail at trying to fail and will simply fail - a win-win situation for you and the universe!
- brlewis 19y agoI bet you wouldn't try.
- jsmcgd 19y agoYou're right, I would be way too scared.
- DarrenStuart 19y agotake on world poverty.
- grammer 19y agotime travel!
- speric 19y agoBegin a career as a trader.
- curi 19y agoPersuade parents to act much more rationally, invent enough life extension and backup-and-restore-of-people for immortality, win the war on terror (with a single heartfelt speech), make dirt cheap self-replicating, easily programmable nano-bots that understand English.
- edw519 19y agoSex
- kirubakaran 19y agoJust curious... How can one 'fail' at sex? :)
- falsestprophet 19y agoObviously you've never been to high school.
- kirubakaran 19y agoOh I didn't realize that only "involving at least one additional person" type sex counted.
- edw519 19y agoActually, my reptilian brain caused my fingers to prematurely type "Sex" before I finished reading the original question.
- anaphoric 19y agoDive the blue hole in Dahab
- whacked_new 19y agoToE. Which makes this a very funny question: you could also attempt to calculate the instantaneous position of an electron within an atom. And not fail. And when you don't fail, you failed.
- marvin 19y agoI'd make everybody happy, without compromising the long-term prospects of the human race. And then I'd do something even more awesome, but I'd have to begin somewhere.
- mburns 19y ago* Sneak onto the space shuttle and go into space. Optionally jumping out the door at any time (going up, in orbit or one the way down). * Kidnap myself and demand a ridiculously high ransom from the state. * Restart the Free Love movement. * Put my name is as Democratic candidate, sweep the rest of the election and 100% of the super delegates, and then become the most unexpected and powerful man in the world by winning the general election * The most epic, cross-country, high speed police chase ever. * My favorite parts of GTA, in real life. This includes pilot lessons after breaking into an airport by jumping a 15 foot fence with a BMX bicycle I stole from a gangster on the sidewalk down the block. * Flip a quarter heads up, repeatedly, on national TV under scientific scrutiny. Sound boring? Wait until I do it 1000 times in a row, all heads up. The astronomical odds would make me more likely to be a demigod than just a really "lucky" guy. Not enough? Flip it 10,000 more times. If you do the near-impossible enough times, people will think you are the third coming. And then life gets fun. :)
- sspencer 19y agoI'd attempt (and succeed, apparently) at creating pervasive and reliable life-extension technology. Either that or some kind of upload technology. Charles Stross' "Vile Offspring," here I come!
- mbup 19y agoI would set 1 = 2, and the universe would implode!
- lvecsey 19y agoSome kind of space propulsion company like John Carmack And also autonomous control of some other things.
- ralphb 19y agoStrong AI, obviously.
- koolmoe 19y agoI think the possibility of failure is a great motivator, so I wonder if I would have the motivation to attempt to succeed if I knew I wouldn't fail. The most interesting things I've ever done started with questions that began "I wonder if..."
- pg 19y agoEnvisioning what things will be like 10,000 years from now.
- kirubakaran 19y agoWon't it make life unbearably painful for you now?
- rmason 19y agoCure hunger. Challenging problem where you would need the wind at your back.
- nkohari 19y agoSolve the halting problem. One minor detriment: because it would effectively create an infinite solution in a finite space, the resulting impact on space-time would probably be cataclysmic.
- wallflower 19y agoI've changed my mind. After reading some of these answers. I remember reading (some possibly apocryphal) stories about Tibetan monks able to run for days on end and sit on mountaintops in freezing weather without getting cold. I would attempt to learn how to unlock the true power of the mind and teach others to do so (to eliminate fear and the self-talk stuff that stops us) http://www.presscluboftibet.org/china-tibet-17/lung-gom-pa.htm http://www.presscluboftibet.org/china-tibet-17/lung-gom-pa.h...