12 KiB
Non-instinctual super powers: Teleporting.
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Author: u/LeonCross *
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URL: https://www.reddit.com/r/rational/comments/3hvmnw/noninstinctual_super_powers_teleporting/
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Score: 9
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Created: 2015-08-21T18:22:56
Post:
Random thought that came up in discussion with a friend recently. Most super powers come with at least some instinctual understanding of how they work. From a writing perspective, likely because the alternative is suck.
So here we go.
You wake up and know you have a super power. You can teleport. There's a little on switch to make it happen. You'll never accidently do so, but can choose to do it at any time. Outside of that, you know nothing else about it. Is it relative to earth? Does it conserve momentum or orientation? Do you visualize a place or is it line of site or GPS coordinates? No idea.
Is there a rational way to proceed other than "Hahaha. Nooope. Not touching the big red mind button."
Comments:
u/None [+13] (37 minutes later)
Let's play a game. You are the GM. I am the player of the teleporting character.
Question 0: How exactly do I know this? Am I granted a powerful irrational conviction which I cannot dissuade despite my objective lack of evidence in favor of accepting it, or has some evidence been planted, or does it retroactively seem like it was always sufficiently evidenced to accept? How has my mind been altered from the previous state when I did not know I could teleport? You used the word know, not believe, and this suggests I already have the means to demonstrate to others that I can teleport, even before I actually try it. While dwelling on that, let's get to work.
Test 1: I need a vacuum chamber, a high speed camera, and a space suit. I will wear the suit with the intent of taking it with me. I attempt to teleport to the same position I am currently standing. This test is an attempt to determine null movement costs and baseline lag. I want to know if this causes me to be tired, I want to know if I am gone for any particular duration of time. I sincerely hope that I do not arrive before I depart, but if I'm going to retroactive telefrag into myself and die it's better to have that known and to die that way to start with rather than die the far more horrific way of telefragging into atmosphere and suffering partial thermonuclear embolisms. If I arrive after I depart, then it is instead important to reduce the risk of telefragging rather than trying to maximize it. That's what the vacuum chamber is for. I don't want air to suck into the place where I was and be waiting for me when I come back. That's why I'm also trying to take the suit with me. If I can't take the suit with me, and also I don't displace air, then this power is only useful for committing painful suicide, and I'm going to arrive again fused with the air and suffering, and being in a vacuum chamber allows me the quick self-kill escape again. But! Let's be a little optimistic for our very first test, and see if I give off any strange radiations, have any lag when teleporting to my own location, or what have you. So, I'm going to strongly imagine an intent to depart with the suit and its air, to arrive immediately, in the same position, orientation, location, and reference frame as I hold now, and... I push the button. GM, results?
u/eniteris [+2] (49 minutes later)
Question: would a human body appearing in a space filled with air result in dangerous thermonuclear fusion? The space between particles is fairly large, and I feel that it would be unlikely that any two nuclei will appear in the same location (or at least in appreciable quantities; you might be exposed to some internal radiation, but not enough to harm you)
Although I'm pretty sure that if you survive, you'll suffer from the bends pretty quickly. Survivable, but painful.
u/None [+3] (52 minutes later)
Question: would a human body appearing in a space filled with air result in dangerous thermonuclear fusion?
You are correct. I mis-spoke, and have edited my comment. It is fission that results, not fusion. When atoms of my body appear in locations too close to atoms of air for the position to be viable, the nuclei repel as if they were daughter products of a fission reaction. Air is mostly empty space - as is my body - but it's specific and important amounts of empty space. I do not want to be denser than my normal body mass by an amount of air that would fill my volume at STP. That would cause very bad things which would make me wish for death.
u/Norseman2 [+1] (20 hours later)
Question: How much teleports with you? You're assuming the suit comes with you, and that may or may not be the case.
Is it all matter within a certain distance from your skin? Careful you don't take chunks of the wall with you when you go.
All solid objects that contact your skin? Handy if you want to move enormous boulders. Kind of inconvenient that pockets don't work.
All objects that you expected would teleport with you? Handy if you can manipulate your expectations.
The closest solid objects to your skin, up to a maximum total weight, disregarding objects over that weight? You may end up leaving behind an overly heavy spacesuit, or unintentionally bringing along small objects near your feet.
u/None [+2] (23 hours later)
You're assuming the suit comes with you,
I didn't actually assume that. I planned for both outcomes, and strongly hoped it would come with me, and tried to will it so in case that's how the power works.
All solid objects that contact your skin? Handy if you want to move enormous boulders. Kind of inconvenient that pockets don't work.
Subject for future tests.
All objects that you expected would teleport with you? Handy if you can manipulate your expectations.
I can manipulate my expectations if I know the actual results are based on my expectations. Voluntary muscle movements are primarily a sufficiently strong expectation that your muscles will move a particular way.
The closest solid objects to your skin, up to a maximum total weight, disregarding objects over that weight? You may end up leaving behind an overly heavy spacesuit, or unintentionally bringing along small objects near your feet.
These are things my first test will hopefully tell me a little bit about. But my first test is a careful attempt to find out if my power is safe to use at all without telefragging myself into air. This is about as safe as I can make it since I can't survive vacuum without the suit.
u/MugaSofer [+4] (2 hours later)
Honestly? Either I'm wrong, and it does nothing, or I'm right, and this is risky but incredibly valuable.
I'd try to visualise a spot in the same room, keeping in mind the velocities involved just in case it uses one of those silly "the Earth is really going at a zillion miles per hour, sooo..." rules.
If it works, great. If something goes horribly wrong, well, I'll almost certainly die unless I can guess correctly in the next few seconds - but honestly, what kind of mysterious power-granting force does that? And if nothing happens, well ... I'll try a few obvious methods of providing "co-ordinates", then conclude I was just imagining things and never speak of it again.
TL;DR: the risk strikes me as more than worth it.
u/alexanderwales [+4] Time flies like an arrow (22 minutes later)
Is there a rational way to proceed other than "Hahaha. Nooope. Not touching the big red mind button."
I mean ... if this is just something you know then you're probably just insane. So first, don't touch it, second, go talk to a shrink (and if you can figure out a way to do it on a budget, go get an MRI to see whether there's anything suspect in your brain).
That aside, put it in terms of risk and reward. At what value of
xwould you risk anx% chance of death in order to have the ability to teleport? That I think you can figure out without having to know how the power works at all. Once you've figured it out, you have to start working out what you might pessimistically imagine the risk of death to actually be, in order to see whether it's greater or less thanx.
u/trifith [+2] Man plans, god laughs. Like the ant and the grasshopper. (29 minutes later)
I mean ... if this is just something you know then you're probably just insane. So first, don't touch it, second, go talk to a shrink (and if you can figure out a way to do it on a budget, go get an MRI to see whether there's anything suspect in your brain).
Yeah, this is true. You're probably insane.
u/Chronophilia [+3] sci-fi ≠ futurology (9 minutes later)
Is it relative to earth? Does it conserve momentum or orientation? Do you visualize a place or is it line of site or GPS coordinates?
Perhaps more importantly, do you displace the air when you teleport? What happens when you teleport into a space occupied by a solid object? What about water, or smoke?
u/trifith [+3] Man plans, god laughs. Like the ant and the grasshopper. (20 minutes later)
Contact James Randi. Explain the nature of the ability (What you posted here). Set up an experiment, with the stipulation that in the event of your death, the resulting million will go to your next of kin.
Learn the GPS coordinates for the area you will attempt to teleport to. Learn the information you will need to account for the earths rotation, movement through space, ect. Acquire a functional space suit. Make your first teleport to the Lagrange point of a large planetary body, not the Earth due to satellites, by considering every aspect of the location you can. Return to the earth, and back to space, eliminating aspects one at a time until you have the minimum amount of information you need to safely teleport.
Assuming this goes well, you have a teleport power, and know how to use it.
u/DCarrier [+1] (an hour later)
James Randi has refused to test someone's supposed ability to live without eating on the basis that it's dangerous. He might do the same here.
u/MugaSofer [+16] (an hour later)
I suspect he wouldn't object to a power that's dangerous if it works - just to one that's dangerous if it doesn't work. Just a guess, though.
u/Transfuturist [+2] Carthago delenda est. (11 hours later)
I don't see why one couldn't run that experiment with constant medical oversight.
u/DCarrier [+2] (12 hours later)
He did eventually change his mind, and then the other guy wouldn't agree on experimental procedures.
u/greatherobattlefight [+1] (18 hours later)
This video has a lot of good points about it.
Not necessarily answering your questions exactly though.
u/FuguofAnotherWorld [+1] Roll the Dice on Fate (a day later)
Test it, once, in the safest and most verifiable manner you can think up. Unapologist gives a decent enough example of that, though I'd be leery of showing up naked in vaccum. Then find some scientists and have them point every detector they have at you at the cost of small royalties on any tech derived from knowledge your abilities and some upfront moolah. The utility to humanity of discovering and figuring out teleportation cannot be overstated. Hell, even if that turns out to be infeasible, there's got to be something useful or applicable we can learn from it.
u/ArgentStonecutter [+1] Emergency Mustelid Hologram (2 days later)
You wake up and know you have a super power. You can teleport.
Google for information on mental deficiencies that would lead to this curious and specific a delusion. Seriously.