## Munchkin This Magic System: Object Oriented Telekinesis

* Author: u/GaBeRockKing  *Horizon Breach: http://archiveofourown.org/works/6785857**
* URL: https://www.reddit.com/r/rational/comments/3ce62a/munchkin_this_magic_system_object_oriented/
* Score: 3

* Created: 2015-07-07T05:22:49

### Post:

General Description: you can telepathically impart force on objects for no energy cost, but momentum is conserved in a system between you and the option.

The specifics:

An "object" is something *you* perceive as an object. Additionally, objects must be specific; if there are multiple things that could be the object you're thinking of, you don't due anything.

You don't need to directly perceive an object to affect it. However, you need to know enough about that object to uniquely identify it as that object.

Momentum is conserved in a system between you and the object in question. If you try to, for example, lift your shirt up, if it moves up you move down.

You have 100 watts of telekinetic power you may apply to an object. You may apply any amount of power up to that point. However, the further an object is away, the less power you can use on that object. Your maximum power decreases by a function of 1 watt per meter, measuring from that object's center of mass.

Telekinetic power is applied on both you and the object uniformly across your entire mass.

You cannot target more than one object.

(alternate rules, if they're more interesting:

You may target as many objects as you can concentrate on and uniquely identify, although your telekinetic power must be spread so that each object receives the same amount of power.

OR

You have a power of 1000 watts

OR

You don't lose power at distance.)

1st edit: telekinesis happens instantaneously across both you and the object. You're not transferring power, per se, but instantaneously applying in on an object over a vector of your choice.

2nd edit: power may only be applied in terms of kinetic energy.

3rd edit: you only receive changes in momentum attributable to your usage of the telekinesis; if you push something up, then let if fall back down, even if you're still "targeting" it, you only suffer changes of momentum attributable to the ascent phase.

### Comments:

> **u/Gurkenglas** [+9]  (an hour later)
> 
> * Obviously, heat death is busted.
> * Divination: Attempt to move an object - measure force on yourself to determine the distance of that object to yourself if it's within 100 metres.
> * Spaceflight: Propel microscopic grains of sand to relativistic speeds to provide a constant 100 watts of kinetic energy to your rocket with minimal fuel requirements.
> * Combat: I haven't done the math, but dancing a grain of sand or a piece of string through someone's body should be pretty devastating.
> * Science: Tell those guys at CERN to pack up, you're a better particle accelerator than the rest of them combined. I think.

>> **u/ulyssessword** [+4]  (23 hours later)
>> 
>> Why bother with a grain of sand for combat?  Just push against a valve in their heart, or a piece of their brain or something.

>> **u/Aabcehmu112358** [+2]  *Utter Fallacy* (2 hours later)
>> 
>> Heat death is not necessarily busted. Unless, unbeknownst to us, there are other people with TK in any of the scenarios, then you're the only with it. No guarantee your children will have TK, or that it will otherwise survive beyond you. If you live a very safe life for a while, I suppose you could potentially survive until uploading, but still assumes that the TK sticks with your upload rather than your meatmind, which is not specified. And, to me at least, I get the feeling that people with TK might have a shorter life expectancy than the average, purely out of risk of sudden death.

>> **u/Pluvialis** [+2]  *Second Age Sauron* (12 hours later)
>> 
>> Will 100 watts of power push a grain of sand through someone's body?

>>> **u/Gurkenglas** [+1]  (13 hours later)
>>> 
>>> If not, take something smaller, maybe sharper. A shred of diamond dust?

> **u/Anakiri** [+3]  (2 hours later)
> 
> Say I have an enormously long cable. I wind most of it into a ball, enough to get its center of mass right next to me, and I leave a long tail stretched out away from me, one lightsecond long. I move the cable.
> 
> If my telekinetic force is uniform in my any reference frame, I can push the far end instantly, so I have FTL communication and a time machine. Even if the telekinetic push propagates at the speed of light (not uniform), if my recoil is simultaneous with the push on any atom (conserving momentum), then I still have FTL in my own reference frame, and every other reference frame sees energy and momentum come from nowhere. If my recoil is instant and there's a light-speed lag before the object moves, I've violated conservation, but at least I don't have FTL.
> 
> My limit is measured in energy per unit time. Can I apply infinite energy for an infinitesimal time? I certainly wouldn't survive, but I could do lots of fun things with that.
> 
> I assume that the energy I'm applying is kinetic energy, yes? Otherwise I could do anything, not just telekinesis. But different reference frames measure kinetic energy differently; in what reference frame is my limit defined? I'd guess mine. So if I and a 1 kg object are going at 0.6c, I see the object at rest with 0 joules kinetic energy, and you see it at 0.6c with 22.5 petajoules. If I give it what I think is 100 joules, I now see the object moving at 14 m/s (and myself moving at some speed the other way). You see the object going 0.6c + 9 m/s. That's an extra 3 gigajoules! My seconds are longer, so it takes 1.25 you-seconds for me to do that, but that's still well above the nominal limit. Is this an intented effect?
> 
> I put my back against a wall and push an object away lightly. I can't gain any momentum without going through the wall. What happens?

>> **u/Gurkenglas** [+3]  (3 hours later)
>> 
>> I'm not OP, just making my predictions:
>> 
>> On the lightsecond-long cable, you only push the part at most a hundred metres away from you. The rest of it behaves as if you had simply physically shoved the adjacent part.
>> 
>> On your last question, your body pushes against the wall, as if you held a rocket thruster out forward from your body.

>>> **u/Anakiri** [+2]  (5 hours later)
>>> 
>>> Those would make sense, but that's not what OP said. The telekinesis affects the entire object uniformly, and I get to define the object. The distance limit is just related to how hard I can push, and it is explicitly said to be based on the object's center of mass. Having a hard cutoff makes some sense, but it is an explicit change to the stated mechanics.
>>> 
>>> As for pushing me against the wall, again, that makes sense, but doesn't follow from the stated mechanics. That's what ought to happen if you sensibly think of telekinesis as imparting *force*, but OP specifies *power*. Pushing me into a wall without me moving is zero work, and it takes zero power to do it, and zero energy is used. Maybe I'm given some kind of instantaneous virtual momentum that is discharged into the wall immediately, without me actually moving...  But that's being pretty loose with the definition of velocity. Obviously I "should" be squished, but I can't see how to get that result when starting with power instead of force.

>>>> **u/Gurkenglas** [+2]  (8 hours later)
>>>> 
>>>> It isn't zero work - you pushing on the wall accelerates you, the wall, and the supporting planet a tiny bit, just as if you were holding a rocket thruster. I did miss OP mentioning the center of mass.

>>>>> **u/Anakiri** [+1]  (10 hours later)
>>>>> 
>>>>> Imagine that I'm a 1 kg perfectly rigid body, braced against a second 1 kg perfectly rigid body, and I'm telekinetically giving a third 1 kg object 1 J of kinetic energy, starting from rest. The object goes flying off at 1.4 m/s, and I go flying off in the opposite direction at that same speed. Except that I don't. I instantly have a perfectly inelastic collision with the wall, and now both me and the wall are going at -0.7 m/s. My personal kinetic energy is just 0.5 J, and the wall also has a kinetic energy of 0.5 J.
>>>>> 
>>>>> My problem is, I was already colliding with the wall when I started. Me and the wall were functionally a single object. My personal kinetic energy was never 1 J, not for an instant, and it never could have been. Without going through the wall, my speed will always be lower than the pushed object at every instant in time, so my own body can't ever be equal and opposite. The system as a whole may be balanced, but the me-object system never is, and that's what is stated in the prompt.
>>>>> 
>>>>> The real world has enough quantum fuzziness that it might work anyway, but I just can't see it in the simple little Newtonian toy model, and that's usually a bad sign.

>>>>>> **u/Gurkenglas** [+1]  (10 hours later)
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> The effects of the rigid bodies being infinitesimally far apart and touching each other are indistinguishable, [therefore](http://lesswrong.com/lw/qo/relative_configuration_space/) they should be one and the same state in our model. There is an element of that set of indistinguishable states where your personal kinetic energy was 1 J for an instant, and that is enough to refute your example.

>>>> **u/GaBeRockKing** [+1]  *Horizon Breach: http://archiveofourown.org/works/6785857* (9 hours later)
>>>> 
>>>> If the object's center of mass is more than 100m away, you don't have any power with with to push.
>>>> 
>>>> And the system doesn't consider "work" per se. IF you speed something up and slow it down, both are considered applications of imparting kinetic energy over time, just in different directions. Pushing on yourself doesn't work, as at an instantaneous timescale you'll posses equal momentum in two opposite directions simultaneously, so you won't accelerate.

> **u/Aabcehmu112358** [+1]  *Utter Fallacy* (2 hours later)
> 
> I'm inside, before someone's tries to munchkin what they perceive as objects.
> 
> Only having to be able to uniquely identify the target out of all possible targets in range is useful. I won't take that to mean that the power is an oracle for things like "move the piece of paper within 100 meters of me with the first letter of a plan to create a FAI written on it" or any of that, since there's been plenty of thought on the uses of oracles. Certainly still useful, though.
> 
> Flight is possible, if you've got handy targets within 100 meters that you don't mind driving into the ground.
> 
> A perpetual 100 watts for as long as you're alive. That's a solid 230 MJ, assuming a roughly 75 year lifespan with TK. What can you do with at most 230 GJ, seems like a decent over-estimate on the amount damage that can be done in the primary scenario. If (somehow, despite the fact that you're accelerating yourself in the opposite direction the whole time) you're accelerating the same 1 kg object for the whole time, it'll be just shy of 680 km/s by the end. Pretty fast
> 
> 1000 Watts. 2.3 TJ at ten times the speed. Seems like quite a lot. If you're accelerating that same 1 kj object, it'll be just past half a percent of c. Very fast.
> 
> Infinite range. Mm. This could get tricky, and may or may not involve FTL communication? How long does it take for the thought "I want this object to be given 100 joules of kinetic energy in this particular direction for 1 second" to reach the object? For now I'll assume it's light speed at most, since FTL is too big. Infinite range is still pretty interesting. It definitely unlocks and locks some of the power of 'unique, not line-of-sight.' If I consider a person a single object (which I personally usually do, unless I'm in a particularly clinical mood), I can physically influence anyone that I can ID. Useful for mucking about with politics and such. And I can definitely pull off the 'accelerate 1 kj of stuff that's currently in a vacuum and not resting on a surface with friction to 680 km/s' trick if I'm willing to blow myself away in the opposite direction. Could be useful for manipulating small asteroids, if I can access a database with truly uniquely identifying information. I might not even have to accelerate them for 75 years, if I can find a way to fiddle with the orbital mechancis and just have the little asteroid show up when and where it's convenient on its own.

> **u/Chronophilia** [+1]  *sci-fi ≠ futurology* (3 hours later)
> 
> Did you know that holding something aloft uses no energy? It seems counterintuitive - the human body can't hold a heavy object forever - but that's specifically a weakness of the human body. Tables don't drop things when their batteries run out.
> 
> If the only things limiting you are range and power, then you should be able to effortlessly hold thousands of tons of rock up in the air. Lifting the rock off the ground requires energy, but holding it in place does not. That being said, you could lift a thousand-ton weight over your head, just very slowly - with 100W at your disposal, you could raise it by 1 metre every 24 hours.

>> **u/Gurkenglas** [+3]  (4 hours later)
>> 
>> I'm not OP, just making my predictions:
>> 
>> This should by conservation of momentum effectively transfer all the gravitational force the rock should experience onto you. Have fun with 10k G squishing you.

>>> **u/Chronophilia** [+1]  *sci-fi ≠ futurology* (4 hours later)
>>> 
>>> Ah, *that*'s the weakness I missed. OK.
>>> 
>>> It still works in the "multi-target TK" case, since you can impart the force onto an area of ground to balance it out.

>>>> **u/Gurkenglas** [+2]  (4 hours later)
>>>> 
>>>> I think that case should have you have to point each object in the same direction, and each object receiving an impact proportional to its mass, effectively being almost equivalent to any set of objects counting as a targetable object.

>>> **u/GaBeRockKing** [+1]  *Horizon Breach: http://archiveofourown.org/works/6785857* (11 hours later)
>>> 
>>> The intention was to make you only take changes in momentum attributable to your use of the power; if you push something up, then let if fall back down, even if you're still "targeting" it, you only suffer changes of momentum attributable to the ascent phase.
>>> 
>>> I need to edit that in.

>>>> **u/Gurkenglas** [+2]  (11 hours later)
>>>> 
>>>> You misunderstand: His plan is to, each millisecond, cancel out the minuscule amount of kinetic energy gravity imparts upon a giant rock. (E = m/2\*v^2, v after a millisecond is small, v^2 is very small) The flaw in his plan is that by conservation of momentum, he gets an equal and opposite *momentum* imparted, and since momentum is m*v, the ratio of velocity imparted upon the caster and cancelled velocity are equal to the ratio of masses, which is large. In effect, the velocity the caster accrues is proportional to the velocity cancelled (the factor of proportion being the mass ratio) and since what is cancelled out is a velocity each millisecond, also called gravitational acceleration, he gets a proportional amount of that gravitational acceleration on himself.
>>>> 
>>>> A way around that would be to grow a gigantic tumor or get a humongous piercing if that counts as part of your body, so the returned momentum (acceleration) is distributed through all of your mass. A few Gs should be handleable.

> **u/frodo_skywalker** [+1]  (7 hours later)
> 
> Apply 100W of power to an object? That gives it a velocity (assuming we're both initially at rest) of sqrt(2 x 100W/m1), with a momentum change of sqrt(2 x 100W x m1), which also applies to me, giving me a kinetic energy of 100W x m1/m2. I can apply enormous accelerations to myself by pushing nearby large objects. Fly over forests, cities, anything with discrete large objects. 
> 
> This should be devastating in combat; apply force to the left eyeball of that person...
> 
> If we're considering the unlimited range variant, I am the space programme. Give me something to carry, I'll push against the earth, get it in orbit. Rinse. Repeat.

> **u/booljayj** [+1]  (11 hours later)
> 
> This really reminds me of the Mistborn novels. They had a magic system based on various metals, called Allomancy. An allomancer could use iron to push against other metals, and steel to pull against them. The pushing and pulling was defined by a force line between caster and object, with a maximum potential force that could be applied. If you tried to push something heavier than you, you would be pushed back instead of it, likewise with pulling. It was exploited in various ways in the novels, including flight, disarming opponents, using coins as bullets, and other really cool things.

>> **u/GaBeRockKing** [+1]  *Horizon Breach: http://archiveofourown.org/works/6785857* (11 hours later)
>> 
>> I've been trying to find these books in my library to read, but the first one is always checked out.

>>> **u/booljayj** [+1]  (15 hours later)
>>> 
>>> I listened to the audiobook on Audible. The narrator does a really stellar job with the character's voices, so you can always tell who's speaking. And the story itself is brilliant, I'm not surprised it's always checked out. It's something I recommend to people who are fans of epic fantasy with well-thought-out magic systems.

> **u/FuguofAnotherWorld** [+1]  *Roll the Dice on Fate* (2 days later)
> 
> If I'm reading this right 1 Watt is a joule per second which is a newton through one meter and since a newton is one kilogram through an acceleration of one, then I should be perfectly capable of flying unaided so long as I weigh less than 100 kg by just pushing sufficiently large objects into the ground in such a vector that I move in the intended direction. My maximum steady height should be equal to 100-my weight. More if I use a glider or wingsuit. Glider seems least likely to go horribly wrong. 
> 
> Furthermore, superpowered kung-fu. Four possible styles of combat: the deadly, the deadly and messy, the non-leathal and the awesome but less practical. In order, we have [razor sharp darts](http://media.midwayusa.com/productimages/880x660/Primary/968/968025.jpg) being fired, then very small, very hard projectiles being fired at extreme velocities, then using ropes and zip ties to tie people up and finally the superpowered kung-fu. There are few martial styles that would not benefit from the ability to add 100 joules of extra force to a kick, or the ability to suddenly move your whole body in a given direction (by pressing on a section of the floor in the opposite direction).

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