Tomorrow is Groundhog Day


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From Stack Exchange member MBurke:

 

You wake up tomorrow and it's Wednesday again. Everybody remembers it, but whatever was physically done today is undone. Your favorite mug, which the dog knocked over is un-broken. The kid down the street who got hit by a car -- his leg is just fine and the bike is okay, but he remembers the pain.

People are pretty freaked out, but no one does anything rash. (Mrs. Kendall keeps Johnny home though, and he doesn't get hit.) Mostly we look for news on the subject, but nobody knows anything, or if they do, no one is talking. But then the next day, the same thing happens. Lilly has gone into work for the past three days as a dental assistant, but every single day she has had to work on the same emergency root canal. The next day the patient doesn't show. Who wants to go in for dental surgery everyday for the rest of their life?

With no reason to suspect tomorrow will be any different, her roommate buys a gun to commit suicide, just to see what it is like. The next day, he's alive again, but with the horrifying memory. But now there's proof that there are no consequences, so he robs a bank. The next day, he wakes up with no gun and no money, but the cops remember what happened and they arrest him.

 

QUESTION: I could go on, but the local is easy. My question is about the global. What do societies do? What does the government do? Anything that anyone does that takes more than 24 hours to complete is a waste of time, unless the intended result is mental. Nothing can be stored on computer or chalkboard or anywhere, but everyone can memorize what they can, and agree to collaborate again the next today.

How it happened is irrelevant. If it was caused by mankind, it isn't something they can just undo. But it just as easily may have happened somewhere across the galaxy and there is no way for humanity to stop it.

This takes place today, in our world, with no technology we don't have today. (Of course, if 100 years of research and 12 hours of production can make an advance, we could build it every day.) How do we deal if this goes on for years, centuries, millennia?

 

http://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/18051/tomorrow-is-groundhog-day-for-everyone-how-does-society-respond

 

I thought this was an excellent philosophical question and wanted to see Neowin's take on it.

 

If you go to the link there are already quite a few good answers.

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People would still spend their time playing Xbox.

 

They'd get bored, no new games could really ever be made. Any that were made would need to be made very quickly and the next day they'd need to be remade again.

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Wow - I never thought about it in those terms - pretty interesting indeed.  If you were arrested, on a memory, although no proof exists of a crime - that would fail in a court date that will never take place....

And the person who commited the robbery, in memory, would have to be arrested over and over and over.

Dang - gets more confusing the more you think about it -

So many people would, "I always wondered what it would be like if I [insert any crazy notion, idea,action, dangerous though]   and now I will know!

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They'd get bored, no new games could really ever be made. Any that were made would need to be made very quickly and the next day they'd need to be remade again.

 

Well there's plenty of games to play already. Plus Super Nintendo.

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Well there's plenty of games to play already. Plus Super Nintendo.

 

Would you still want to play them in 5,000,000 years?

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I think that, for the most part, people would be fine for many years, but obviously society would change drastically. People who have the most access to fast travel and people with the best memories would become universally known and very important.  Eventually people would run out of things to do (since they have eternal life now) and would probably go insane.

 

I would feel really bad for the people who die right as the day starts with no way to stop it, that would truly be hell. I would also feel bad for everyone giving birth that day, as well as everyone who had some kind of unavoidable medical condition.

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If this truly happened, there would only be one eventual outcome.  Mass insanity.

 

Unfortunately, i've got to agree with you on this one. Society as a whole, just wouldn't be able to hack it. This would lead to an eventual break down in sanity and society wouldn't just crumble, it would explode.

 

Personally i'd take up all sorts of adrenaline sports, hey, if i can go sky diving with no parachute, why wouldn't i? Money wouldn't be an option any way, it'd be defunct, so you'd just have to go back to doing things yourself.

It's basically be living in GTAV! 

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They'd get bored, no new games could really ever be made. Any that were made would need to be made very quickly and the next day they'd need to be remade again.

 

I've been playing Minecraft for a long time now, and Destiny I have nearly 400 hours in.... I'd be happy to try!

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I've been playing Minecraft for a long time now, and Destiny I have nearly 400 hours in.... I'd be happy to try!

 

Except you'd never be able to progress... That nifty castle you built would be gone, that XP you earned would be gone, those levels you gained would be gone...

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Except you'd never be able to progress... That nifty castle you built would be gone, that XP you earned would be gone, those levels you gained would be gone...

 

Clearly you've never played Destiny... you only ever achieved something for about the first 10 hours, the rest is repeating stuff for no real reason what so ever :p

 

Minecraft, most of what I build gets re-done countless times too!

 

I am joking of course, I guess the real answer is not a lot. Scientists would only be able to progress by memorising everything they have learnt on why it was happening which I would imagine would slow things down quite a bit. Assuming that whatever caused it could be stopped of course. 

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What happens if you don't go to sleep? Do you just phase into the same day without realizing?

 

Well, according to the movie, one second you're awake, the next, you're waking up to some ###### local radio show!

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Well, according to the movie, one second you're awake, the next, you're waking up to some ###### local radio show!

Oh... this is based on a movie?

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