Imagine real life was like a video game and you, the player, got to pick a set of bonuses. Only you get these bonuses, no one else in the world has them. Here's how it works: on your birthday at ages 5, 15, 25, and 35 you get to unlock one "bonus group". Each group of bonuses is centred around a theme.

Obviously as you only get to unlock 4 groups, there are some difficult decisions ahead. But also deciding the right order is tricky.

Here are the bonuses:

Health
- Eliminates all chronic diseases
- Complete resistance to all serious illnesses and conditions
- Does not prevent ageing and frailty - your life expectancy is the same
- Basically, you'll live to ~80 in perfect health.

Longevity
- Slows your rate of ageing by 33% (does not activate until age 18)
- Basically, you'll live to ~100 but there's the normal risk of dying early.

Intellect
- Increases IQ by 25 points
- Increases self-discipline so that you never procrastinate
- Resistance to all illnesses directly affecting the brain

Memory
- Perfect semantic memory (i.e. memory for facts and concepts but not of experiences)
- Resistance to all illnesses directly affecting the brain

Athleticism
- Gives speed to run 100m in 10 seconds (men) or 11 seconds (women)
- Gives stamina to run a marathon in 2:30:00 (men) or 2:40:00 (women)
- Strength to clean and jerk 200kg (men) or 100kg (women)
- Gives muscular-athletic body type

Appearance
- Gives you extremely attractive facial features (no one will question the change)
- Gives perfect complexion (no spots etc) and your ideal skin tone
- Gives you perfect hair which always just so happens to end up looking great
- Gives a toned body of a healthy body weight but no special strength or fitness
- Gives you your ideal penis size (men) or breast/butt size (women)

Art
- Gives you very high ability to play four musical instruments (can include voice), sufficient to get you a place (but not #1 spot) in any orchestra or equivalent
- Gives you a high level of ability in drawing, painting, and use of digital art tools

Culture
- Gives you complete and perpetual fluency in 4 foreign languages of your choice, in addition to your first language
- Gives you the ability to cook French, Italian, Spanish, Indian, Japanese and Thai food at a 2 Michelin star level
- Gives you the ability to waltz, salsa, and tango

Finance
- Pays off all debts you may have
- Grants a lump sum, tax-free lottery win of $25,000,000

 

Memory
Athleticism
Longevity
Health

Ezpz.

 

Appearance
Art
Culture
Health

 

Intellect
Appearance
Longevity
Health.

If I was less vain I'd put memory in for appearance.

 

For me it'd be Health -> Appearance -> Intellect -> Art.


Health is important to get early for maximum potential, Appearance has powerful psychological benefits, Intellect is really good no matter when you get it, but is probably most optimal here, and for the final slot it was between Art and Culture to satisfy later life wants after the hard working late twenties and early thirties. I ultimately picked Art due to it's strong combo with Intellect for engineering which helps the transition from late thirties into a hopefully early-mid forties retirement.

As for the other perks...

Longevity feels like a trap: it looks good, but it doesn't stack well with Health since it could allow you to live past 100 at which point you lose that benefit, also it shouldn't be chosen before 25 otherwise you're wasting 3 years you could have had a different second perk and by that point you've already lost 2.66 years of it's benefits. In order to make this one work you'd need a full endurance build like Health -> Memory -> Longevity -> Athleticism to maximize final age.

Memory is weird and I can't particularly think of any great uses for it since notebooks exist and there are better perks for preventing Alzheimer's. Probably best in utility builds like above or specialist builds where being able to recall facts immediately and without reference is particularly useful. Otherwise, Intellect outshines it by a huge margin.

Athleticism is another one outshone by Intellect. This should probably also come with the self-discipline benefit if it's going to be considered the physical Intellect. Probably only useful in super niche builds like "Olympic Athlete" and "Maximum Lifespan".

Culture is a good utility perk as well as final perk for any build. It could even be the main one on some builds. The languages are really the key here, they help with business as well as recreation. It combos well with Intellect, once you know multiple languages learning more becomes somewhat easier. The cooking and dancing are also really solid benefits at all stages of life.

Finance looks like it's best in either a lap of luxury build which would probably go something like: Art -> Appearance -> Finance -> Culture where you spend the decade between 15 and 25 racking up as large a debt as possible to wipe clean; or a mogul build which would probably be Intellect -> Finance -> Memory -> Culture to maximize your big businessman potential.

 

Sure, that's why.

I bet you only read Playboy for the articles, too.

^_^

Here's how I'd do it:

Intellect at age 5. Study hard, build a good foundation of knowledge, etc. Your basic "Harry training in a magical trunk after 5th year" deal.

At 15 I'd take Appearance. I'd proceed to party my way through my late teens / early twenties; a booze, sex, and cocaine fueled but ultimately classy romp through at least 3 different universities. Think Jay Gatsby but without all the angst and regret. I'd probably rack up a significant amount of debt doing this, so...

At 25 I'd take Finance and start my career as an itinerant writer who had a few small, cozy, but very elegant and minimalist houses in a few different countries.

At 35 it would be a toss-up between Culture and Art. Music is incredibly important to me, but I'm assuming I'm still me and have the natural talent and ear I already have, so I'd probably lean Art because I'm fairly pants at languages, and living in a few different countries this would be incredibly useful. Also, being able to dance and cook well is definitely a part of the Renaissance Man package I'm envisioning here.

And, uh. Being attractive, being able to dance well, being able to cook well, and speaking multiple languages would be a fairly winning combination in the "putting yourself in the best position to find your Ideal Partner" arena, which is moderately-to-extremely important to me.

Then it's just, you know, find an amazing woman and marry her, write bestselling novels, fuck around in countries I like, repeat. A life well-lived.

 

The basic idea with health vs longevity is health = you don't die of natural causes before your life expectancy, longevity = you have a longer life expectancy. If you pick health, you're probably going to die around age 80 after tripping and breaking a hip. If you pick longevity, you could live to 100 but the only way to guarantee it would be combining it with health. Will edit the OP to make this clear.

I think you might need to reconsider this. For a start, getting memory before age 15 means you're going to ace every exam, which intellect doesn't guarantee. Exams test memory far more than they test intelligence. Secondly, memory is going to really help you in learning languages, where the challenge is far more remembering everything than it is understanding things. If I picked memory I would be reluctant to go for culture due to redundancy. Thirdly, there are a vast array of activities/careers where recall is more helpful than intellect - basically any career where you're dealing with a large amount of information, each item of which is easy to understand, but taken together is a real challenge. Easy example: law.

To clarify, the benefits of athleticism do not need to be maintained by continued exercise. You can be a complete couch potato and still be able to run 100m in 10 seconds. But they do decrease with age.

 

At first I was thinking about branching out into Appearance or Athletics, a long life versus an awesome one sort of thing.

And then I remembered that $25 million is pretty much just as good.

Longevity
Finance
Health
Memory

 

Oh no, I actually did get all that. I didn't go into more detail because I didn't want to write a huge amount, but I did kind of mention all of that except the athleticism one which I just left out. I did think about it being particularly useful for law enforcement and crime since those are mostly sedentary professions that could require you to become active at a moment's notice.



As for the appearance thing, oddly enough that is actually why. I'm fairly confident in my ability to get laid, but to this day I'm still embarrassed by my jank ass teeth and having that shit fixed in high school would have done wonders for my self-confidence. Besides, Playboy is getting rid of full nudity.

 

So, given my aforementioned death phobia, both health and longevity are must-haves. Together they guarantee an usually long, healthy life, and health is a prerequisite to enjoying anything else in life.

So that leaves me with just two bonuses to play with.

I think one of them has to be either appearance or athleticism, for the "getting laid" factor as well as the confidence boost. They'll both achieve that fairly well, and athleticism has the added bonus of making you awesome at sports... however, I think I'm going to have to go for appearance, because you still get a toned body, you're just not stacked. Fitness will be something I'll just have to do the normal way, but of course with my health perk, I don't have to worry about fitness too much. It's more for utility than for health.

The final bonus, then, is one of the "special talents": memory, intellect, culture or art. This is the most difficult decision. Memory and intellect are kind of "base values" in that you still need to put the work in to develop talents, whereas culture and art are neat cheats that give instant benefits. Intellect and memory have more broad potential though, because of that general applicability.

I think I can eliminate art because, between it and culture, I would pick culture - though I love the idea of playing instruments, the culture bonuses would have more day to day usefulness. Memory is extremely tempting because it allows you to coast, but actually, it doesn't necessarily give you any new achievements, it just means you don't have to work as hard to achieve the things you can already achieve. Plus, since I have health, I'm already immune to mental illnesses.

So that means it's culture vs intellect. If intellect were just the IQ boost then I would go for culture, but the discipline boost is really tempting, because it could potentially allow you to replicate the culture group and more besides. That said, there's not much point in going for intellect and spending a lot of time replicating an achievement you could have granted yourself instantly. I think I'm going to have to be satisfied with my current drive and intelligence, and augment them with the special talents of the culture group.

Now I just have to pick order. Longevity is best early, but 5 and 15 are redundant as it doesn't start until 18, so longevity should be 25. Health can be put off for later, as when you're young you don't have so many health problems, so that's the 35 option. That leaves appearance and culture. No point in going for culture early, so appearance can be first, then culture just in time to take exams in the languages in question.

In conclusion:

Age 5: appearance
Age 15: culture
Age 25: longevity
Age 35: health

 

I'd pick intellect. Not for the IQ, simply for the elimination of procrastination.
Next, appearance. Life is easier if you are beautyful, people will like you more.
Then finance, then health.

 

Like Apoc, I'd go

Health - Get rid of any potential health complications early. Many people are dying pretty early to cancer. I had allergies and dry skin a lot as a kid too, hopefully this gets rid of them.
Memory - Start the factual memory recall early.
Finance - By Age 25, I feel like I was responsible enough to not splurge, and 35 is too long to wait.
Longevity - Don't need this much earlier. Live to 95 rather than 100


Live long and prosper.

Edit: Had to change order

 

Memory => Intellect => Appearance => Health

Memory first at 5 years old. Having the ability to retain all facts and concepts at that age will accelerate learning and, in and of itself, would have made me actually enjoy doing a lot of the things I hated as a child. I'm fairly certain (though not entirely) that this would also help boost general intellect in the long term.

Intellect at 15. It's when discipline becomes an issue, when smarts/memory alone aren't enough to get you straight A's, and it's around when mental development starts to slow down, so the boost to IQ doesn't get hit by as significantly diminishing returns.

Appearance at 25. Need to get a job, appearance helps. Saves time and effort at the most stressful period of most young adults' lives, and it'll probably help secure my general living and happiness, along with self-confidence and so on. Also, if I hadn't found a partner in University, it'd help a lot in that regard.

Health at 35. I don't particularly care for longevity, and my family has a pretty solid history (on both sides) to making it to at least 80, even in the people who lived through WW2 (in South-East Asia). On the other hand, lots of family history of cancer and some heart problems, occasional chronic issues pop up (though I'm unsure of how much of this is lifestyle driven). Since these issues tend to pop up around the age of 40, I don't see the point in getting Health at an earlier age.

I considered Culture and Athleticism, but honestly, I don't see sports and fitness as anything more than a means to an end (Health and Appearance fill those ends with other benefits included). Culture was a bigger issue, since I'm linguistically challenged, can't cook, and have two left feet, but those are issues I can live with.

I already addressed Longevity, and Art is just... Well, it's nice to have. Nice to have, and that's about it.

Finance is a waste unless you're already deep in debt.

 

I'm going to give a really boring answer.

My choices:
1. Intellect
2. Health
3. Finance
4. Culture

First, I would get Intellect. Having good self-discipline and study habits early on in would benefit me the most in the long run. A resistance of mind-altering diseases is a great bonus as well. Then, I would get health, since that would prevent any chronic/life-threatening diseases (This also means safety from AIDS, which would be timely appropriate - teen years and all ). With my intellect, hopefully, I’d get into a good university (maybe even early) and then go to law school (or some grad school) afterwards.

Now, the trick is getting student loans for undergraduate and graduate studies, and then, at the age twenty-five, canceling the debt off with Finances. I don’t want to have finances early on (or I might grow up to be spoiled). So, age 25 seems to be the most appropriate for getting money. Hopefully, by this time, I would have good money-managing skills and not waste everything.

Finally, I would choose Culture since it’s a global age and all. In addition to Korean (my first language), I would choose English, Arabic, German, and French. I’ll probably also learn Spanish as well. Also, getting culture would give me good dancing skills, which I always wanted (most horrible dancer, I am). Of course, being able to cook would be incredible.



Appearance: Never gave a damn about my appearance in the first place.

Athleticism: It seems pretty cool, but not very useful compared to other ones. While I do like sports, I’m gonna reject this one.

Longevity: Personally, I don't really want to live until 100. Living until 80 seems pretty good to me. As for aging, again, I don't give a damn.

Memory: Memory seems like a pretty attractive choice, but imo, intellect is better. Intellect (Self-discipline, Knowing how to use knowledge) > Knowledge (facts/concepts) in the long run.

Art: Really attractive choice for me. If culture wasn't there, I would probably pick this one.

 

Intellect, for early development and elimination of procrastination.
Art, to broaden range of talent and provide potential revenue.
Culture, to expand upon areas of interest and/or aforementioned art investment.
At that point it becomes tempting to seek out Health, to be reassured that I'd live long enough to indulge in my talents; Finance, to be reassured that I am fairly secure for the remainder of my life; or Memory, to be fully certain that I won't ever forget some aspect of the previous talents. I'm not certain which would be best.

 

Well I'm not really into trying to extend my life but still

5 - Health - Life without illnesses sounds great

15 - Intellect - I suppose why at 15 why not at 5? Then I realised the inability to procrastinate, that constant self-focus, that's not really applicable to a childhood, at 15/16 it's not too late to pick up new ideas and at a societal level education ramps up its importance in the following years so I still get that lazy as fuck childhood but can set myself up for future success

25 - Culture - Travelling etc; primarily done near this age, being able to have full experiences abroad instead of ambling about in broken english would probably be much more fulfilling.

35 - Toss up between Money and Art - I'm not really artistic, but would love to play the piano, and seeing as Art isn't so much related to writing but rather drawing/painting and music I can see this as unnecessary. On the other hand, I always say money isn't the be all and end all for me, but the ability to set my family up for life would be great. Which is why I'll take it. Always envisioned a house in Lisbon or on a beach in Spain, isolated and completely dedicated to my writing/goals.

 

Age 5: Health. Might as well nip all these problems in the bud.

Age 15: Intellect. Mostly for procrastination and depression, which started setting in within a few years of this age.

Age 25: Finance. Goes without saying.

Age 35: Longevity. This seems like a good age to slow aging at.

All this is doing is making me hate my actual life more, lol.

 

Age 5: Memory - Good age for this, as I'll be soaking in information really fast.

Age 15: Intellect - This augments everything that a good memory will grant me and the increased discipline will mean that it'll be easier for me to learn a lot of new things(I can get a bit of some culture bonus). Plus this will most probably mean a financially successful future.

Age 25: Athleticism - This is what I'm working for right now at the age of 23 so it fits with my current life goal. Plus having this will mean that I don't really need appearance, the level of self-confidence I can get from this will be enough to cover anything that appearance might give me.

Age 35: Health - Once I get this, I can just kickback and enjoy life without stressing over anything else. All my other perks will have covered any potential problems at this age. Heck with intellect and memory, I could even retire at this age. Athleticism will allow me to spend my retirement doing physically stimulating things. Like climbing mountains all the way to the peak.

 

5: Health.

15: Intellect.

25: Memory.

The rest is pretty much useless.