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Yeah that was my thought too. For a second I was tempted with omnilingual, but then I realised that with natural skills I just learn whatever language I wanted with hardly any effort. Plus like, everything else.
My thoughts as well. Telekinesis seems cool but 3 & 4 are a perfect combo to a great life.
3 & 4 Gang! But seriously these two seems to heavily outweigh the others in combination. While not immediately OP the long term potential is pretty insane.
#4 is enough. Taking #3 is an extra treat.
3 and 4. Perfect health is a no brainer and lets you enjoy life for way longer. And the natural talent one would let you easily learn the skills to come close to perfect memory and to know every language, giving you the benefits of 1 and 2 as well.
I’d need a lawyer.
Does perfect health last forever? No brainer then. Definitely don’t take the time pauses when you sleep /are unconscious without perfect health though, because then no one could perform surgery on you that requires general anesthesia, which could cause problems.
And arguably, being sleep deprived is not being in perfect health, so if you take perfect health you might not ever need to sleep again anyway, depending on the fine print.
And how precise is the telekinesis? Does it work on things like liquids and gasses? Could you use it to separate liquids and gasses according to type, for instance? If so it’d be more than just fun, it could be quite valuable for sciencey stuff, and you could probably make bank separating out things that are quite hard to isolate. And even if not, you might have a good career in hazardous material handling, and or manipulation of things through clean room windows.
The infinite money trick is also incredibly tempting. Does it work on things like houses and boats? Is it legal? Would you have sufficient proof of its legitimacy that if you, say, pulled a couple hundred grand out of your pocket to buy a house that the sellers would trust that it’s real and above board even if it were?
And so on. Temptation is health and telekinesis, but the various details might cause money to win out over telekinesis.
Maybe natural talent health, but I’d have to plan out what talents to acquire first, as well as information on degree. If with slight work you could become the optimal physicist etc, to the point where you could sit down and just write a perfect theory of everything that matched all our observations on paper, then that would of course be awesome. But if it doesn’t come with essentially super skills - well, I’m pretty ok with what I can do/how well I can learn now, and telekinesis sounds fun.
This is very well thought out.
if you, say, pulled a couple hundred grand out of your pocket to buy a house that the sellers would trust that it’s real and above board even if it were?
Well it says exact “change” so I think yes if you dumped a few hundred thousand $1 coins out of your pocket when it’s time to pay they’ll think it’s sus lol
I suppose though if they refuse it you’ve already generated it and can scoop it up into a wheel barrow and see if a bank will take it. They may not care about the coins too much but they’ll definitely be reporting a guy bringing in a few hundred thousand dollars in coins every now and again to the IRS.
And how precise is the telekinesis?
Also what range. Could you remotely rear naked choke anyone in the world, or just apply a leg press of a couple hundred pounds to their brain stem or some shit? Punch world leaders in the nuts at will? Crash planes by fucking with flight controls? Deorbit satellites? Divert asteroids into earth’s path?
Also, could you double jump or straight fly with it?
Manipulate roulette balls for quick money or meddle in sporting events you bet on (just telekinetically stuffing basketball shots and putt attempts and shit would be hilarious). Seems like telekinesis would be amazing.
Wait so 5. gives me effectively infinite money?
I know right? You show up and be like “One mansion, please” and the realtor says something like “sure, our cheapest one is $2M”.
So you reach into your pocket and out comes the exact change of $2m! Bust is it
So, right off the bat let’s just assume there are no “monkey’s paw” style downsides to these for this discussion.
Perfect memory mostly encompasses omnilingual because you’d only need to learn every word and rule one time and know it forever. Perfect memory also encompasses natural talent because muscle memory is a form of memory as well so all mental and physical skills would be incredibly easy to learn. No monkey’s paw: You don’t get bad memories forever stuck in the front of your consciousness.
The only upside omnilingual has over perfect recall is knowing dead languages no one else does.
The only upside for natural talent is that it probably makes you get stronger quicker. Gaining muscles is not a matter of remembering.
Perfect health is tempting because you’d live a long life without concerns of problems. No monkey’s paw: You can still die of old age or decide to end our own life. Let’s also say you can’t just skip sleep or skip eating and be fine. You still have to do the bare minimum to take care of yourself, you’re basically not a zombie (how they seem to just live forever).
Always having exact change is essentially infinite money. It’s fair to assume that for purchases where enough physical money couldn’t fit in your pocket that you’d get something like a prepaid debit card with the money you’d need. Even for things that you don’t pay with from your pocket (like buying a house) you could still go to the bank and fill out a slip saying you’re depositing a million dollars and get the money in your pocket to do so. Then wire the money over once it clears.
For time pausing whole you’re asleep, I’m going to interpret this as the ability to get rest without wasting your time. So essentially you don’t need to sleep. You still need to but for whatever reason you get the time back. So you still would need to take some time to find a bed and fall asleep but that’s still about a full 7 extra hours every day. Assuming you sleep 8 hours and are awake 16 you’re missing a third of your life. Sure, there isn’t as much to do when everyone is asleep but that’s still a nice effective extension to your life. No monkey’s paw: you aren’t stuck in some frozen time world forever the first time you sleep lol.
An interesting conundrum is picking between the free sleep and perfect health pills. If you’re already pretty healthy and have a low risk factor for diseases that affect quality of life but not the length of your life you may want to consider the perfect sleep power because it is going to roughly double your time.
Telekinesis is a curve ball. Saying it is only as strong as you are I will interpret it as meaning it is basically just another muscle and you can wear yourself out doing it. It’s cool but given those limitations I personally don’t find it worth it.
The tasty love pill is basically the opt out choice. It doesn’t do anything other than give you a one-time unique experience. I’m treating it as a none of the above.
So really it comes down to these:
- Omnilingual: if you specifically want to know dead languages no one knows (an extremely niche situation that might fascinate some anthropologists)
- Perfect memory: Effectively being able to learn to do anything new (including physical tasks) super quick while also memorizing anything instantly.
- Natural talent: you specifically want to gain muscles quick but don’t care as much about perfect memory.
- Perfect health: Better than free sleep for most people. Ensures you live aong and high quality life.
- Exact change: It’s just infinite money.
- Free sleep: Better for folks who are already healthy and don’t have many risk factors since it will roughly double your time you get to spend doing things.
- Telekinesis: A cool little power for the folks who are otherwise satisfied with their current abilities, life, and money. 8: Yummy love: A meme answer.
A lot of this can be summarized to,
- Do you want to be really good at things?
- Do you want to have a higher quality of life for longer?
- Do you want to be hyper rich?
Personally I think I’d want to really good at things. Specifically number 3, natural talent. I think being able to easily get fit would outweigh the benefits of having a truly perfect memory. Also there’s a lot of skills that just require raw discipline and not any sort of memory. I think I could get a lot of the benefits of perfect health by becoming more disciplined. I think this a great well rounded choice.
Infinite money is very tempting but also an incredible burden. Suddenly every problem you see becomes one you could solve if you just gave the money. It would give me a lot of guilt.
I’d watse my time I could be sleeping just doing stupid stuff. Perfect health is tempting though.
I disagree about the natural talent one. From my perspective thats the obvious first pick. At work I’m currently training to be a Crane Operator and struggle busing hard with it. Like yeah I could use it to get muscles but thats not even where I first went just because imo the ability to quickly learn a new skill is invaluable. imagine being a natural at negotiating business dealings to get a favorable outcome for your side. once you figure out how to turn your natural talent into money a lot of the other things will be able to fall into place.
damn now i feel stupid for quickly weighing out the pros of each and deciding when you wrote this whole essay studying the exact pros and cons of each and how useful they would be in everyday life, then simplifying the list down
I disagree about the natural talent one. From my perspective thats the obvious first pick. At work I’m currently training to be a Crane Operator and struggle busing hard with it. Like yeah I could use it to get muscles but thats not even where I first went just because imo the ability to quickly learn a new skill is invaluable. imagine being a natural at negotiating business dealings to get a favorable outcome for your side. once you figure out how to turn your natural talent into money a lot of the other things will be able to fall into place.
Perfect health seems kinda suss. That pill looking like a cigarette
First off, anyone who doesn’t say 2 is wasting this gift. Perfect memory and recall makes most of these other things easy.
Secondly, I’d choose Telekinesis just to fuck with people and win bar bets. Perfect memory would make it easy to make money, which would make perfect health much more attainable.
Nah, 2 is a curse. Everybody else doesn’t remember. But they think they do. You have to either repeat everything (since you do remenber the 1st/2nd/…) or you have to argue someone that’s wrongly remembering.
I wouldn’t say that I have “perfect recall” or even an “identical memory”, but I have an uncannily sharp memory.
I forget a lot, like most people, but what I remember is burnt into my mind. A lot of it are things I don’t want to remember. But, oh boy, can I tell you facts about giraffes!
Considering 1 is a worse version of 2, which is a worse version of 3, I’d have to choose 3 and 4
3 and 4. Easy.
i would say 4 and 7. 6 seems useful at first but what if you need surgery?
Local anasthetic?
2 and 4 are the most OP. Easy decision.
2 and 4
Poo and double poo?
Probably the same but would like some detail on perfect health.
Immortal? Instant healing? Mental? Can I choose to vaporize myself at any time? Can others vaporize me?
Perfect memory and live healthy forever is both crazy powerful and eventually every flavor of maddening you can imagine. But if you’re saying the brain will stay perfectly regulated (depression, madness) forever, that’s really something to think about.
Either way I’d probably take it. But it’d be easier to accept with instant death 80 years out.
Perfect health is a no brainer. Not just the longer life but also live free from all the problems that come with health issues.
The second, not so much. Talent sounds good but can potentially make a very boring life. Telekinesis sounds good too but I think I’d still go with the time pause as that’s effectively a 50% life increase. Imagine a day where you can devote 12 hours to work and chores and another 12 to social and personal? You then have perfect health which means you can achieve peak performance in pretty much any sport.
All fun and games untill it’s the year 200000023, all of humanity is long dead, earth has been destroyed and you’re trapped in the white star that once was our sun. Unable to die, unable to move, unable to even lose your mind.
You are still in perfect health.
I didn’t interprete perfect health as immortality in this case. Just a long life until I died of a very old age.
Perfect mental health means you can handle the isolation and boredom, though. With natural talent you could become skilled at imagining yourself not being trapped in a gravity well.
Two and 4, or 4 and 7. Preferably the telekinesis one though cuz that’d be sick
