20 KiB
[D] You wake up one morning with telekinetic powers. What tests do you use to investigate your abilities?
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Author: u/None *
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URL: https://www.reddit.com/r/rational/comments/3coyid/d_you_wake_up_one_morning_with_telekinetic_powers/
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Score: 10
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Created: 2015-07-09T16:37:18
Post:
Comments:
u/eaglejarl [+11] (45 minutes later)
How do I realize that I have telekinetic powers?
- Do things start flying around spontaneously?
- Is the knowledge magically in my head?
- Is there some form of external notification? (eg, a note)
My next actions depend on the answer to the above:
- If 1, concentrate on making it stop. Do I need to be calm? Do I need to consciously focus on each moving object and release some sort of mental grip? Do I just say "telekinetic powers, deactivate!"?
- If 3 (it's a note or such) check that the apartment was empty, look for other evidence that someone was here.
- If 2, holy crap. How do I just have this magical knowledge? Am I dreaming? Did someone edit my brain? Is this the Matrix? Test this!
Testing for case #2 would involve trying to break reality by simple effort of will (dreaming), or trying various actions that would require a lot of effort to render graphically -- spin-toss a book so the pages flap, whirl around and watch how my hair moves in the mirror, etc. These are, of course, things I've done before, but I was never actively looking for flaws.
Assuming I can't determine an answer to the above, let's move on to the actual experimenting.
If I woke up with things moving, that suggests that my powers are at a level that can be experimented with indoors. That's good. If it was either of the other cases...well, the odds of the note or internal belief being true are pretty low, so I do a quick Uri Geller test and try to bend a spoon. (I have some junky spoons I'm not fond of.) If I can bend it smoothly and then completely restore it, that suggests that "there is no spoon" and this is the Matrix. If I can only bend it like a regular object (ie it gets creased) then that's reassuring. Presumably the test succeeds.
At this point, I know I have powers but I know nothing else, so let's stop and think about failure conditions. Here's the ones I get in 5 seconds; spend 5 minutes by the clock coming up with more.
- Lose control; things keep moving after I want them to stop.
- Clumsy; crush objects accidentally, slam them into walls, launch them into orbit, etc.
- Self-damaging (brain explodes) if moving a too-heavy or otherwise inappropriate object.
- Self-damaging on every use, like the dad in Firestarter. This would suck.
- Can't control the activation -- triggers automatically whenever I'm startled / frightened / etc.
I really want the always-self-damaging option to be false, because then I can actually play with my new powers. Still, it's a hell of a risk.
I do one more test to make sure the power is actually repeatable. Then I call my doctor and the Randi Institute. The plan is to get an MRI, then do Randi's test, then get another MRI. Since I'll need to use the power at least once more between MRI tests in order to judge the "self-damaging" option, I might as well make a million dollars from it. Obviously there are coordination issues here -- I need to convince my doctor to prescribe the tests and then schedule things appropriately. Explain the circumstances to Randi and say that it's possible I will fail, but I was able to do this at least twice.
For the next several weeks, resist the nigh-overpowering urge to experiment. This would be an absolutely horrible period of time.
Once I have a million dollars and the assurance that using my abilities won't automatically kill me, it's time to have some fun!
Get some camping gear, rent a car, go off into the boondocks away from breakable things like people. Time to start experimenting for real!
- How much can I move? Start with grains of sand, work up to large boulders. Move each one just a little bit and always straight up. If I accidentally lose control and fling them super-hard, the worst I'll need to do is duck for cover. Well, or hole the ISS, but that's unlikely.
- Is there a counter force applied to me, or is it reactionless?
- How fast can I move a thing, in terms of acceleration, velocity, and jerk?
- Where does the energy come from? Does using the power make me tired, or is it just magic?
- Can I compress things?
- Can I apply force to part of an object?
- Does it always do what I tell it, or does it sometimes run wild? If I'm tired, is my TK clumsy?
Startle testing: hook up a really loud alarm that will go off sometime during the night and wake me up. What happens? Note: do this one well away from my car and the rest of my gear. Also, spend 5 minutes coming up with more safety protocols.
Okay, now the scary part -- living things! Find an ant, repeat all previous tests. Work up to lizards, birds, etc. It is possible that I will accidentally harm some of these creatures: I'm okay with that. Better a sparrow accidentally during testing than a person accidentally while eating a bagel.
Try to find a way to test the effect of anger. Does it make me stronger? Less controlled? Make my powers activate without intent? I'm not sure how to safely test this.
u/quickpocket [+5] (57 minutes later)
Don't forget range
u/luminarium [+6] (7 hours later)
A year later at your yearly scheduled mammogram, you discover you now suddenly have stage 4 breast cancer.
You realize after some experimentation that whenever you levitate anything, you also cause the levitated object to emit radiation. The longer it's levitated, the faster it's moved and the larger it is, the greater the radioactive energies generated.
And you had spent almost the entire year showing off your telekinetic powers to audience after audience...
All of which are doomed.
u/eaglejarl [+2] (7 hours later)
Fair enough. That's something that would very likely be detected though -- probably by Randi and certainly during the immense amount of testing I did over the course of the year.
u/luminarium [+2] (7 hours later)
That's fair :)
u/Calsem [+3] (57 minutes later)
Darn it that's way longer than my answer. Better, too. I would just recommend that you take a video of your abilities before you call your doctor. That way if the telekinesis stops working you something to fall back on instead of looking like an idiot. Also there's a few more things you could test
how small the telekinetic field can be (can you manipulate a cell when looking through a microscope?)
whether you have to know about or see an object to lift it
whether field has any identifiable properties (light outside visible spectrum, electric field, radiation, etc.)
u/eaglejarl [+2] (2 hours later)
Ooh, good ideas. Thanks.
Have to say, I am really hoping to wake up tomorrow with things floating telekinetically -- and safely! -- around the room.
u/TimeLoopedPowerGamer [+4] Utopian Smut Peddler (50 minutes later)
Reddit has long been a hot spot for conversation on the internet. About 57 million people visit the site every day to chat about topics as varied as makeup, video games and pointers for power washing driveways.
In recent years, Reddit’s array of chats also have been a free teaching aid for companies like Google, OpenAI and Microsoft. Those companies are using Reddit’s conversations in the development of giant artificial intelligence systems that many in Silicon Valley think are on their way to becoming the tech industry’s next big thing.
Now Reddit wants to be paid for it. The company said on Tuesday that it planned to begin charging companies for access to its application programming interface, or A.P.I., the method through which outside entities can download and process the social network’s vast selection of person-to-person conversations.
“The Reddit corpus of data is really valuable,” Steve Huffman, founder and chief executive of Reddit, said in an interview. “But we don’t need to give all of that value to some of the largest companies in the world for free.”
The move is one of the first significant examples of a social network’s charging for access to the conversations it hosts for the purpose of developing A.I. systems like ChatGPT, OpenAI’s popular program. Those new A.I. systems could one day lead to big businesses, but they aren’t likely to help companies like Reddit very much. In fact, they could be used to create competitors — automated duplicates to Reddit’s conversations.
Reddit is also acting as it prepares for a possible initial public offering on Wall Street this year. The company, which was founded in 2005, makes most of its money through advertising and e-commerce transactions on its platform. Reddit said it was still ironing out the details of what it would charge for A.P.I. access and would announce prices in the coming weeks.
Reddit’s conversation forums have become valuable commodities as large language models, or L.L.M.s, have become an essential part of creating new A.I. technology.
L.L.M.s are essentially sophisticated algorithms developed by companies like Google and OpenAI, which is a close partner of Microsoft. To the algorithms, the Reddit conversations are data, and they are among the vast pool of material being fed into the L.L.M.s. to develop them.
u/Calsem [+2] (59 minutes later)
I don't think the mental health professional is needed - just any random person could verify that you're not imagining things.
u/None [+4] (an hour later)
You could even do something like going up to strangers and pretending to perform magic tricks that are only possible with telekinesis. If they just look at you blankly, you know you have a problem.
u/TimeLoopedPowerGamer [+3] Utopian Smut Peddler (2 hours later)
Reddit has long been a hot spot for conversation on the internet. About 57 million people visit the site every day to chat about topics as varied as makeup, video games and pointers for power washing driveways.
In recent years, Reddit’s array of chats also have been a free teaching aid for companies like Google, OpenAI and Microsoft. Those companies are using Reddit’s conversations in the development of giant artificial intelligence systems that many in Silicon Valley think are on their way to becoming the tech industry’s next big thing.
Now Reddit wants to be paid for it. The company said on Tuesday that it planned to begin charging companies for access to its application programming interface, or A.P.I., the method through which outside entities can download and process the social network’s vast selection of person-to-person conversations.
“The Reddit corpus of data is really valuable,” Steve Huffman, founder and chief executive of Reddit, said in an interview. “But we don’t need to give all of that value to some of the largest companies in the world for free.”
The move is one of the first significant examples of a social network’s charging for access to the conversations it hosts for the purpose of developing A.I. systems like ChatGPT, OpenAI’s popular program. Those new A.I. systems could one day lead to big businesses, but they aren’t likely to help companies like Reddit very much. In fact, they could be used to create competitors — automated duplicates to Reddit’s conversations.
Reddit is also acting as it prepares for a possible initial public offering on Wall Street this year. The company, which was founded in 2005, makes most of its money through advertising and e-commerce transactions on its platform. Reddit said it was still ironing out the details of what it would charge for A.P.I. access and would announce prices in the coming weeks.
Reddit’s conversation forums have become valuable commodities as large language models, or L.L.M.s, have become an essential part of creating new A.I. technology.
L.L.M.s are essentially sophisticated algorithms developed by companies like Google and OpenAI, which is a close partner of Microsoft. To the algorithms, the Reddit conversations are data, and they are among the vast pool of material being fed into the L.L.M.s. to develop them.
u/None [+5] (8 hours later)
And if that video recording appears to have evidence of what you thought was happening, maybe you do have weird powers that warp minds that see it happening live.
Uhhhhhh... isn't that actually even more implausible than telekinesis? Human minds may be error-prone, but they're also much more complicated than Newtonian dynamics. A superpower that "works at the level of" exerting fairly plain blunt forces is much more likely to be real than one that has the highly specific, customized, fine-detail-affecting effect of warping minds to produce customized delusions at a distance.
u/TimeLoopedPowerGamer [+2] Utopian Smut Peddler (9 hours later)
Reddit has long been a hot spot for conversation on the internet. About 57 million people visit the site every day to chat about topics as varied as makeup, video games and pointers for power washing driveways.
In recent years, Reddit’s array of chats also have been a free teaching aid for companies like Google, OpenAI and Microsoft. Those companies are using Reddit’s conversations in the development of giant artificial intelligence systems that many in Silicon Valley think are on their way to becoming the tech industry’s next big thing.
Now Reddit wants to be paid for it. The company said on Tuesday that it planned to begin charging companies for access to its application programming interface, or A.P.I., the method through which outside entities can download and process the social network’s vast selection of person-to-person conversations.
“The Reddit corpus of data is really valuable,” Steve Huffman, founder and chief executive of Reddit, said in an interview. “But we don’t need to give all of that value to some of the largest companies in the world for free.”
The move is one of the first significant examples of a social network’s charging for access to the conversations it hosts for the purpose of developing A.I. systems like ChatGPT, OpenAI’s popular program. Those new A.I. systems could one day lead to big businesses, but they aren’t likely to help companies like Reddit very much. In fact, they could be used to create competitors — automated duplicates to Reddit’s conversations.
Reddit is also acting as it prepares for a possible initial public offering on Wall Street this year. The company, which was founded in 2005, makes most of its money through advertising and e-commerce transactions on its platform. Reddit said it was still ironing out the details of what it would charge for A.P.I. access and would announce prices in the coming weeks.
Reddit’s conversation forums have become valuable commodities as large language models, or L.L.M.s, have become an essential part of creating new A.I. technology.
L.L.M.s are essentially sophisticated algorithms developed by companies like Google and OpenAI, which is a close partner of Microsoft. To the algorithms, the Reddit conversations are data, and they are among the vast pool of material being fed into the L.L.M.s. to develop them.
u/Calsem [+1] (2 hours later)
A mental health professional would be your best option, if you are okay with him/her knowing. You do bring up a good point about the dangers of walking around deluded in public, but you could just check with a trusted friend / family member in private. It would be very simple: float an pencil. If they go ''holy shit! You're floating a pencil!' and you can start having a rational conversation about it, then it's likely that you're sane. (though I suppose it wouldn't hurt to go to a mental health professional anyways, just to be sure)
That being said, if you have a family history of mental health problems, or feel irrational / paranoid, then I would agree with you 100%
u/TimeLoopedPowerGamer [+3] Utopian Smut Peddler (3 hours later)
Reddit has long been a hot spot for conversation on the internet. About 57 million people visit the site every day to chat about topics as varied as makeup, video games and pointers for power washing driveways.
In recent years, Reddit’s array of chats also have been a free teaching aid for companies like Google, OpenAI and Microsoft. Those companies are using Reddit’s conversations in the development of giant artificial intelligence systems that many in Silicon Valley think are on their way to becoming the tech industry’s next big thing.
Now Reddit wants to be paid for it. The company said on Tuesday that it planned to begin charging companies for access to its application programming interface, or A.P.I., the method through which outside entities can download and process the social network’s vast selection of person-to-person conversations.
“The Reddit corpus of data is really valuable,” Steve Huffman, founder and chief executive of Reddit, said in an interview. “But we don’t need to give all of that value to some of the largest companies in the world for free.”
The move is one of the first significant examples of a social network’s charging for access to the conversations it hosts for the purpose of developing A.I. systems like ChatGPT, OpenAI’s popular program. Those new A.I. systems could one day lead to big businesses, but they aren’t likely to help companies like Reddit very much. In fact, they could be used to create competitors — automated duplicates to Reddit’s conversations.
Reddit is also acting as it prepares for a possible initial public offering on Wall Street this year. The company, which was founded in 2005, makes most of its money through advertising and e-commerce transactions on its platform. Reddit said it was still ironing out the details of what it would charge for A.P.I. access and would announce prices in the coming weeks.
Reddit’s conversation forums have become valuable commodities as large language models, or L.L.M.s, have become an essential part of creating new A.I. technology.
L.L.M.s are essentially sophisticated algorithms developed by companies like Google and OpenAI, which is a close partner of Microsoft. To the algorithms, the Reddit conversations are data, and they are among the vast pool of material being fed into the L.L.M.s. to develop them.
u/Calsem [+3] (47 minutes later)
Does the power work on objects out of my line of sight?
- Do I have to know about an object in order to lift it?
What level of control do I have over the telekinetic field?
- Is it even a field? Is it just focusing on specific objects or can I apply the affect to an area?
- How many objects can I lift at a time?
- If it is a field, how large can I make it? Can it be different shapes?
- How small of an object can I manipulate?
How powerful is my telekinesis?
- Do I get tired?
- Is power linked to anything? practice, time of day, concentration, emotion, etc...
Does the field have any identifiable properties?
- Test for radiation, electricity, light outside visible spectrum
u/krashnburn200 [+2] (an hour later)
First test. Ask for independent verification of previous results.
If no one else can be convinced that I have psychic powers than actually I am just insane.