[Rain Man]

In recognition of the butterfly effect, I think an interesting alternative to the 'regrets' question is this: if you could see a magical YouTube video that documents your life in an alternate reality where you made a pivotal decision, what fork in the road would you choose as your starting point?

I don't know if it's a good idea to even watch such a magical video, but it would be really interesting. A lot of us, or likely all of us, have made decisions that put our lives on a fundamentally different course compared to making a different choice. It would be weird to see myself with perhaps a different wife (though we've already confirmed that the universe set me on an irreversible course to my current wife) and a different job and maybe kids and living in a different place.

I would be interested in seeing the results of three different forks in the road.

Fork 1. When I was eighteen, I was going to be an architect. No question about it. That was the plan. Then my high school had a career day. I went to the architect's talk, and heard how it was not a great job and it paid low, and all the cool stuff you see about being an architect is fiction. I then went down the hall where an engineer told us how fantastic engineering was and how it paid great, so my plan changed on that day. I'd like to see how my life would have turned out if I had stayed home sick that day in high school.

Fork 2. When I was eighteen, I won a full-ride four-year scholarship to my dream college. I was stoked. I was all in. Then a couple of really bad things happened, and I couldn't go. Both were out of my control, so it really hurt to give that up. I'd be interested in watching the video of my life in a scenario where I was able to do that.

Fork 3. This one is more of a lark because I didn't really consider it seriously. But it would be a great video to watch to see how far off my life path I could have wandered. When I was graduating college, the Navy was hiring engineers to run nuclear reactors on submarines and aircraft carriers, and I found it really intriguing. I didn't have the gumption to do it, but I wonder how my life would have progressed if I had jumped out of my normalcy to do it.

I wouldn't trade any of these alternate lives for my current life, but it would be fun to see how they would have turned out.