If You Can Always Undo, Do Your Choices Still Mean Anything?

The night I added an undo button, my hand froze

It happened the night I built an undo button into my own puzzle — that Z-key thing that walks a move back. The coding took five minutes, but I spent the better part of an hour nursing a whisky over whether to switch it on. If a move can be undone, doesn't the player's move become a draft rather than a choice? I wrote something close to this once, in "The Ethics of Undo," but tonight's question is plainer: in a world where you can redo, do choices mean anything? Come to think of it, when I play Baba Is You I just hammer the Z key. Push a rule block, take it back if it's wrong, push again. Is that thinking — or brute force left to luck?

Sartre — your choices make you

Sartre would probably frown. Reasoning from his argument: a human being first simply exists, and only afterward, by piling choice on choice, shapes what he is. That's the famous line, "existence precedes essence." And you can't escape choosing — even not choosing is a choice. He called this being "condemned to be free." From this stance, the weight of a choice is inseparable from its irreversibility. Once chosen, it is carved into the sculpture that is me, and it does not come off. So undo is dangerous. A move you can take back does not define me. A choice in a reversible world can always be demoted to a draft. Can a choice without commitment even be called a choice? That is where Sartre's question cuts.

Nietzsche — could you choose this again?

Nietzsche sees it from another angle. Reasoning from the thought experiment in The Gay Science — his "eternal recurrence" — the question is not whether you can undo. One night a demon whispers: your life will repeat, exactly the same, forever. This move, this whisky, this hesitation, endlessly. Even so, can you say "once more"? His concern is not irreversibility but affirmation. On this view, undo does not make a choice lighter. On the contrary, it is precisely in a world where you can always go back that the meaning of a choice is measured by whether you can finally lock it in and say, "this is it, I choose this move again." Love your fate, he wrote — amor fati. To be able to go back and yet deliberately choose this: that is the opposite of a draft.

Takeaway — undo freely, commit with pride

The takeaway as a maker fits in one line: design undo not as a "make it never happened" button but as a "is this really the move?" button. Let people take back moves without limit. Just make the commit button a touch heavier. The reason hammering Z in Baba Is You doesn't collapse into brute force is that the board keeps quietly asking: is this really the one you want to stake it on?

For myself, I lean a little toward Nietzsche. Being able to undo doesn't dilute a choice. What dilutes it is a design that treats the commit lightly. So I want to open undo freely, and let the committing move be pressed with pride.

I want to ask you. That puzzle you cleared by spamming undo — does it count as "I chose and solved it myself"? Is a move you can take back no longer a choice? Or is it enough that the final, committed move was yours? Tell me in the comments. The next fragment: "Is difficulty unkind? — the philosophy of fairness." Once again, two philosophers will show up with different answers.

References: Jean-Paul Sartre, Existentialism Is a Humanism (trans. Ibuki Takehiko et al., Jimbun Shoin) / Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science (trans. Shida Shozo, Chikuma Gakugei Bunko).

Jean-Paul Sartre, Existentialism Is a Humanism (Jimbun Shoin, Japanese ed.)Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science (Chikuma Gakugei Bunko, Japanese ed.)As an Amazon Associate, Puzzlebyrinth earns from qualifying purchases.