What superpowers would you choose?

[micromass]

You get access to superpowers. You can choose three superpowers from the following list:

• You will know and understand the knowledge of any book you touch.
• Your mind will be upgraded with a powerful computer. This implies you gain the processing speed and the memory of a supercomputer. But this does not necessarily make you any "smarter".
• Your eyes and brain will be able to visualize more than 3 dimensions.
• You will be able to read anybody's thoughts within a 100m radius.
• You will be able to insert any thoughts you have inside a person within a 100m radius.
• You will be able to master any sport of your choice.
• You will be able to travel back in time (travelling back in time puts you in a new alternate universe)
• You will be able to see the future (everything you see in the future will definitely happen given you do not look into the future)
• You will be able to heal anybody with a single touch (this does not include healing yourself, or bringing people back from the death)
• You will be able to shapeshift into any animal (including humans). This will give you the perfect appearance and physical abilities of the animal/human. Your mental capacities will remain the same.
• You will be able to move at any speed you like and is physically possible (physics still applies, especially the theory of relativity)
• You will have a superhuman strength.
• You are immortal (meaning you will never die, no matter what). You will also never get sick and never age.
• Your body will regenerate very rapidly. This includes not feeling substantial pain. This does not make you immortal.
• You will be able to make anybody love you.
• You will be able to punch anybody you meet online.
• You will be able to lift objects with your mind.
• You will be able to control water. This includes breathing underwater.
• You will be able to control fire. This includes never feeling too hot or too cold.
• You will be able to control air. This includes flying.
• You will be able to control earth.
• You will be able to talk to animals.
• You will be able to turn invisible. This includes the clothes you wear.
• You will be able to see in the dark.
• You will be able to teleport anywhere in the universe instantly. You are able to additionally teleport 100kg of other items.
• You are able to see all wavelenghts of light and hear all frequencies of sounds. This does not harm you in any way.
• You get access to a wallet. Every time you open the wallet, you will get a $100 bill.
• You get access to a suitcase. Every time you open the suitcase, you find any food you wish. (perfectly cooked and prepared if necessary)
• You get SIX random superpowers from this list (excluding this one), but they'll be random, you have no choice. If you pick this, then you do not get to choose ANY other power than the 6 you get.

Assume every power will work exactly the way you think it does - no tricks or caveats.

Make your choice!

 

[Greg Bernhardt]

They sound fun but many of these will destroy the human experience and end up making me severely depressed. So I choose not to mess with reality too much.

I would pick

• You will be able to talk to animals
• You get access to a wallet. Every time you open the wallet, you will get a $100 bill.
  
• You will be able to heal anybody with a single touch

 

[micromass]

They sound fun but many of these will destroy the human experience and end up making me severely depressed.

Understandable. But you can always choose not to use the power you gain except in emergencies.

 

[Psinter]

The first one is all that I need . Just open it 4 times and I can survive for the month. But since I can choose three I might as well take them. I hope it is not counterfeit, otherwise it will be a pointless super power.

• You get access to a wallet. Every time you open the wallet, you will get a $100 bill.
• You will be able to read anybody's thoughts within a 100m radius.
• You will be able to teleport anywhere in the universe instantly. You are able to additionally teleport 100kg of other items.

Because I cannot choose anything else, I choose Greg to be my friend so he can heal me when I get sick.

 

[Hornbein]

I want the power of taxation.

 

[micromass]

I hope it is not counterfeit, otherwise it will be a pointless super power.

Let's just say you'll never lose at monopoly again!

 

[Psinter]

Let's just say you'll never lose at monopoly again!

Noooooo! I made the wrong choice. Now I have no friends because of this:

Spoiler: Monopoly: Destroying friendships

 

[micromass]

Noooooo! I made the wrong choice. Now I have no friends because of this:

Spoiler: Monopoly: Destroying friendships

So you can forget about Greg healing you...

 

[Psinter]

So you can forget about Greg healing you...

Yeah. Super power rebound.

 

[Choppy]

Don't I have to select a character class and roll base attributes first?

 

[zoobyshoe]

You will be able to see the future (everything you see in the future will definitely happen given you do not look into the future)

This is kind of a non-superpower, isn't it? You're saying that looking into the future will change what happens so that what you see ends up not happening?

 

[micromass]

This is kind of a non-superpower, isn't it? You're saying that looking into the future will change what happens so that what you see ends up not happening?

Think about it

 

[zoobyshoe]

Think about it

Did I misread it?

 

[Borg]

Immortality, regeneration and the 6 random powers to keep things interesting. I could live with that.

 

[micromass]

Immortality, regeneration and the 6 random powers to keep things interesting. I could live with that.

Oh, nono. If you choose the 6 random powers, you don't get to choose anything else. Sorry, I'll add that

 

[Borg]

Oh, nono. If you choose the 6 random powers, you don't get to choose anything else. Sorry, I'll add that

Too late, I already have them.

 

[Sophia]

Healing, talk to animals and make anyone love me. I know that wouldn't be true love, but yeah :-)

 

[ShayanJ]

• You will know and understand the knowledge of any book you touch.

What about ebooks I click on?

 

[micromass]

What about ebooks I click on?

That counts.

 

[ShayanJ]

So I'll have:

• You will know and understand the knowledge of any book you touch.
• Your eyes and brain will be able to visualize more than 3 dimensions.
• You will be able to talk to animals.

 

[ShayanJ]

Don't I have to select a character class and roll base attributes first?

I guess we're supposed to be ourselves with the adventure being our own life. Actually it seems to be a good idea, a combination of role-playing games with games like Heavy Rain and Beyond:Two Souls.

 

[zoobyshoe]

You will be able to see the future (everything you see in the future will definitely happen given you do not look into the future)

Are you going to clarify what this means?

 

[Ryan_m_b]

I like these sort of questions, I think the best choice is to choose things that can stack/combine. To that end:

- Book absorbance
- Supermind
- Precognition

I could use the third to foresee problems/opportunities in the future. Then use the first power to wander sections of a library relevant to the vision. Second power kicks into process and use that knowledge to prepare for the future.

 

[micromass]

Are you going to clarify what this means?

It's an attempt to remove contradictions. Let's take this very easy scenario. I am talking to a person and I tell him I can see the future. He then asks me what he will say next. I look into the future and I tell him. Obviously, he can just not say this. This is a contradiction. It is a bit the same as the time travel contradictions.

So if I go back in time and kill my parents, I will have changed the future. In the same way, if I look into the future, then I can make sure this future doesn't happen. Both are contradictions.

The time travel contradiction is solved in two different ways, the way I choose here is that a new world line is started. The future-seeing contradiction is solved by me by saying that the act of looking in the future opens a new worldline. I then look into a future where I didn't look into the future. Clearly, both worldlines are not identical.

Is it then a useless power. I don't think so. Clearly, my example of "talking to a person and telling him what he will say next" will not work. But given that I'm very discrete about what I saw in the future, I can assume that the worldline where I looked into the future and where I didn't look into the future are similar enough for many practical purposes. For example, I could potentially stop terrorist attacks or warn for earthquakes.

The question is how similar both worldlines are and from what moment they begin to be so dissimilar that it's useless. This is the subject of Chaos theory.

 

[zoobyshoe]

It's an attempt to remove contradictions. Let's take this very easy scenario. I am talking to a person and I tell him I can see the future. He then asks me what he will say next. I look into the future and I tell him. Obviously, he can just not say this.

It's possible that he can't, though, that the future is written in stone, and that telling him what he is about to say grants him no freedom not to say it. He finds himself uttering the very words you said he would despite his every desire not to.

By this logic, your ability to see the future and tell him what was about to happen, was all actually predestined and an integral part of a fixed, non-branching timeline. You are not actually stepping outside any restrictions in seeing the future, your experience of seeing the future was actually part of the whole fabric of time from the big bang, and you can't, therefore, alter anything you see is going to happen.

It seems to me that seeing the future ought to be the ultimate superpower, one that could be leveraged into the greatest possible advantage, but that really depends on whether you can authentically step outside some essential inevitability and change the future, authentically manipulate what would otherwise be inevitable.

I think about this, seeing the future, a lot because of the years I spent having deja vus, always accompanied by the profound (but usually erroneous) certainty I knew what was about to happen next due to the mysterious feeling I had lived through it before.

 

[micromass]

It's possible that he can't, though, that the future is written in stone, and that telling him what he is about to say grants him no freedom not to say it. He finds himself uttering the very words you said he would despite his every desire not to.

By this logic, your ability to see the future and tell him what was about to happen, was all actually predestined and an integral part of a fixed, non-branching timeline. You are not actually stepping outside any restrictions in seeing the future, your experience of seeing the future was actually part of the whole fabric of time from the big bang, and you can't, therefore, alter anything you see is going to happen.

Correct. As with time travel, there are two main solutions to the paradox. I have taken the multiple timeline resolution as I find the other one somewhat unrealistic (not that seeing the future is realistic). This together with what you bring up that if there is only one timeline, we can't change the future anyway and so seeing the future is not such a useful power except of course for stuff like winning the lottery.

 

[Ryan_m_b]

In terms of entertainment and storytelling potential I quite like the classic "see possible futures" power. Someone with that ability trying to predict what a person is about to say will see a variety of possible options and will be able to 'feel' which ones are more likely. The further into the future one tries to predict the more options they have to sift through and the less likely each one becomes.

 

[zoobyshoe]

Correct. As with time travel, there are two main solutions to the paradox. I have taken the multiple timeline resolution as I find the other one somewhat unrealistic (not that seeing the future is realistic). This together with what you bring up that if there is only one timeline, we can't change the future anyway and so seeing the future is not such a useful power except of course for stuff like winning the lottery.

O.K. My original take on your superpower was something different than either of those, though. More of a Heisenberg measurement problem: I thought you were suggesting that seeing the future, in and of itself, interferes with the future and changes it. Observing the phenomenon changes the phenomenon. Therefore, nothing you see will come to pass because you changed it by looking at it.

 

[zoobyshoe]

In terms of entertainment and storytelling potential I quite like the classic "see possible futures" power. Someone with that ability trying to predict what a person is about to say will see a variety of possible options and will be able to 'feel' which ones are more likely. The further into the future one tries to predict the more options they have to sift through and the less likely each one becomes.

Did you see Men In Black III?

 

[Borg]

Did you see Men In Black III?

How about Nicolas Cage in 'Next' where he can see 2 minutes into the future?

 

[zoobyshoe]

How about Nicolas Cage in 'Next' where he can see 2 minutes into the future?

Not quite the same thing Ryan is talking about. Men in Black III has a character who does exactly what Ryan is talking about, though; always aware of several possible futures that might be about to happen.

 

[zoobyshoe]

I would like to pick some superpowers but it is extremely important to choose carefully.

Immortality seems like a sure bet, but I've run into stories where immortal characters get burried by volcanos and such and are doomed to spend eternity like that. You always have to consider what could go wrong.

 

[Borg]

Not quite the same thing Ryan is talking about. Men in Black III has a character who does exactly what Ryan is talking about, though; always aware of several possible futures that might be about to happen.

Ah. I remember him now - Griffin.

 

[zoobyshoe]

Ah. I remember him now - Griffin.

Yup.

I actually thought it would be quite a curse to be him. He seemed to deal with it by being kind of nutty and flaky. I, myself, would just be driven stark, raving mad I think.

 

[Ryan_m_b]

Did you see Men In Black III?

Can't say that I did. The most prominent example to my mind is from the Dune saga. Several characters posess the ability to sense possible futures, and plan accordingly.

 

[zoobyshoe]

This thread also reminds me of the children's book, "The Five Chinese Brothers." They were a set of quintuplets, all identical to each other, but each had a unique superpower. One was condemned (wrongfully) to die, but by serial substitution of another brother who had the power of evading the next successive method of execution, they exhausted the system and the accused was finally set free.

 

[zoobyshoe]

Can't say that I did. The most prominent example to my mind is from the Dune saga. Several characters posess the ability to sense possible futures, and plan accordingly.

It could be Men in Black lifted the idea from Dune, then. At any rate, it featured prominently in that movie.

 

[Ryan_m_b]

It could be Men in Black lifted the idea from Dune, then. At any rate, it featured prominently in that movie.

Maybe, it's a bit of a trope now I think. I can't remember the name but I read a fantasy book at some point with a character that had this gift. The problem was that exploring possible futures was addictive and he spent more and more of his time completely zoned out as his mind sought through more distant and branching futures.

On the topic of limitations it occurs to me that the book absorbing power specifically says any book you touch. A big downside to that would be the unavoidable info dump from every book, magazine and pamphlet you brush past. Bookshops would become a hellish environment where you absorb every celebrity biography, pseudoscience fad and paranormal romance novel they litter them with :(

 

[zoobyshoe]

On the topic of limitations it occurs to me that the book absorbing power specifically says any book you touch. A big downside to that would be the unavoidable info dump from every book, magazine and pamphlet you brush past. Bookshops would become a hellish environment where you absorb every celebrity biography, pseudoscience fad and paranormal romance novel they litter them with :(

I didn't take it that way.

"You will know and understand the knowledge of any book you touch."

I took this to mean that, in addition to knowing the content of any book you touched, you would also gain a deep, in fact empathetic, understanding of the mind of the author. So, by touching, say, some apparently vapid magazine you would be infused with a complete grasp of the motivations and emotions of the authors such that it all suddenly made sense. It would, in this case, not be a matter of entering into a higher mind but, to be blunt, a lower one that you've never been able to grasp.

I thought, in fact, of the Oliver Sacks story, The Dog Beneath The Skin, in which a medical student's artificially heightened sense of smell gave him the apparent experience of understanding what it would be like to live in a dog's world:

The story in question is called “The Dog Beneath the Skin.” In it, Sacks describes meeting a 22-year-old medical student who, after an amphetamine binge, dreamed he was a dog and experienced, in his dream, all the unimaginable smells that dogs smell every day. Upon waking, however, he found that the smells were still there. For the next three weeks, his world was greatly enhanced: he could recognize people he knew by smell, he found that there was “a whole aesthetic, a whole judgment, a whole new significance, which surrounded him,” Sacks writes. “It was a world overwhelmingly concrete, of particulars, a world overwhelming in immediacy, in immediate significance,” the student says. After three weeks, it was gone, but for that brief time, it seems to me, the student had accessed that part of the brain that we share with dogs and other animals—that part capable of unbelievably rich olfactory perception—but that is somehow inaccessible to most of us in our daily lives.

http://serendip.brynmawr.edu/exchange/node/7380

 

[Colaspidea]

May I dumb this down? I would like the ability to shrink so I can swim in a glass of expensive champagne.

 

[Enigman]

You will be able to see the future (everything you see in the future will definitely happen given you do not look into the future)

This.
No other power comes even close to it. Because this is an instant global victory condition. Creatively used one could get plans for any technology developed in the future, pre-empt any disaster, win any war, cure any disease cured in the future, etc. etc. Basically, the easiest way to total world domination and optimization. But since I also get two more powers on top of godhood to help me take over the world, I will have to choose:

• You will know and understand the knowledge of any book you touch.

• Your mind will be upgraded with a powerful computer. This implies you gain the processing speed and the memory of a supercomputer. But this does not necessarily make you any "smarter".

 

[Vanadium 50]

Can I travel back in time and then re-pick? That sounds like the best choice.

 

[zoobyshoe]

This.
No other power comes even close to it. Because this is an instant global victory condition.

O.K. You're assuming there is one and only one timeline, which I think is a reasonable assumption.

Consider that bring some technology from the future back to the present will necessarily change the future.

So, it's conceivable that by, say, bringing the ultimate cure for all cancers back to 2016 from 2116 will shift things around in unforeseen ways by butterfly effect such that it causes global destruction by nuclear war in 2050. You will know that, of course, and can take some action to stop it, but it might require the rest of your life to make that effort.

In other words: this superpower may only put you in the position of being the old lady who swallowed a fly.

 

[zoobyshoe]

I want, also, to point out that the ability to see "the future" translates into "remote viewing" of the present. If "the future" includes one second into the future, then it also includes one millisecond into the future, and so on, until "the future" is indistinguishable from the present.

 

[micromass]

O.K. You're assuming there is one and only one timeline, which I think is a reasonable assumption.

I don't think you need to assume this at all. Even under my description, it's still an "instant victory condition".

 

[zoobyshoe]

I don't think you need to assume this at all. Even under my description, it's still an "instant victory condition".

I suppose you're right. Assuming the alternate future you look at is extremely similar to the non-alternate you don't look at.

 

[Scott C.]

There is the question regarding your ability to effect any change of a major nature. Your limited lifespan is short compared to your "vision." Removing various key folks, acquiring wealth, doing small, but significant, things, sort of trimming the tree as in Asimov's "End of Eternity" is fairly limited.

Even if you are able access the time and place of your choosing, this power sounds more like a more efficient method to get ulcers.

 

[zoobyshoe]

There is the question regarding your ability to effect any change of a major nature.

Define "major."

Consider that Rasputin gained near total sway over the Czarina by his apparent ability to relieve the suffering of her son, who had hemophilia. How much more influence could a person exert politically if they could demonstrate at will the authentic ability to see the future?

 

[Astronuc]

teleport anywhere in the universe instantly. You are able to additionally teleport 100kg of other items.

This one appeals the most. It would be nice to go to the furthest point. Ostensibly, one can teleport back to the point of origin, i.e., round trip, otherwise, getting lost in the universe and running out of oxygen or water would not be appealing.

 

[Scott C.]

My point is outside of strategic trimming there is little a single person can accomplish, unless they become extraordinary.

Greg Rasputin represents history written by the victors. Okay, he invested time and effort with Tzarina (joke) but he was not out achieving total victory. He enjoyed a limited success until he was multiple murdered (talk about stamina, whoa).

To exercise such influence you need access. Even the future, how would an ordinary citizen influence the POTUS? No way, until that person built themselves to extraordinary heights while changing and rechanging the world about them.

T'would be interesting though, wouldn't it?