13 KiB
[BST] If you could have any "mundane" superpower - what would it be?
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Author: u/lumenwrites *
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URL: https://www.reddit.com/r/rational/comments/3lfviz/bst_if_you_could_have_any_mundane_superpower_what/
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Score: 4
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Created: 2015-09-18T15:08:59
Post:
What are some seemingly silly/useless/restricted, yet awesome powers that would be fun to exploit?
If you could have any - which one would you pick?
Comments:
u/LeonCross [+17] (4 hours later)
Trying to figure out how to word this, but: The ability to instantly know any "Mundane" piece of information so long as it's something available or easily derivable from online, but no actual practical skills. Basically uber mental google search with a little generalized computation power.
Things like:
"How many air molecules are within 20 feet of me?" "How many lines of code would it take to splice in a quick save function for this damned game?"
But not:
"What is the code for creating a quick save function for this damned game."
Point of the power is being able to grab any of those little odd and end curiosities that pop in your head that would otherwise take research time disproportionate to the value of knowing their answer.
u/oaktreedude [+1] (3 days later)
How many lines of code would it take to splice in a quick save function for this damned game?
is extremely exploitable if you're a software dev manager and you would actually like to get an estimate on the time it takes to complete given tasks.
u/SvalbardCaretaker [+17] Mouse Army (2 hours later)
How about being high energy (instead of low energy)? You know, being one of those lucky people who are on their second phd, repair bycycles for the poor, hold a judoka-national champion title, and then start their own lemonade buisness because they feel they are not fully busy yet. And they probably also just came back from running an ultra-iron man on hawaii.
u/thequizzicaleyebrow [+15] (4 hours later)
Infinite willpower
u/None [+2] (9 hours later)
Or just bulletproof Stoicism.
u/nerdguy1138 [+4] GNU Terry Pratchett (a day later)
so basically Gamer's Mind?
u/None [+2] (a day later)
I was thinking of the hero from a certain fantasy series (A Prince of Nothing) who is basically /r/rational 's god, but, from what I've seen in fanfiction GM seems to work too.
u/InvisibleRegrets [+1] (7 days later)
That's the one where an antagonist decapitated a woman and fucked her in the neck hole?
u/None [+1] (7 days later)
Um...I don't think so. Some really horrible and sad shit happened in that book but I don't think that's one of them.
u/trifith [+12] Man plans, god laughs. Like the ant and the grasshopper. (20 minutes later)
Finding pocket lint.
There's always between 1 and 5 grams of pocket lint when you put your hands in your pockets.
Doesn't seem useful, but that's matter generation. Even better, it's flammable matter. You'd need a really efficient heat engine to exploit that. I'm sure that a physicist could do more with a matter generation engine that produces 1-5 grams of matter every few seconds.
u/Chronophilia [+8] sci-fi ≠ futurology (5 hours later)
It's really useful when the universe runs out of stars and we need a way to continue life into the Degenerate Era in a hundred terayears or so. Nowadays? Not so much.
u/EliezerYudkowsky [+5] Godric Gryffindor (4 days later)
Eh, you've got to take the long view. Otherwise why not just spend all your money on cookies?
u/Jiro_T [+2] (2 days later)
You don't use an engine, you start doing it in front of scientists who start analyzing it. It would revolutionize science.
u/None [+9] (6 hours later)
I dunno how well it qualifies, but I'd love the ability to set "save points" in my life that I can time travel back to at will. Ideally with one freebie in my early childhood.
Even limited to just 3 slots, that would be extremely useful.
u/notmy2ndopinion [+3] Concent of Saunt Edhar (a day later)
Ooo, this is a great one!
Zorian in Mother of Learning munchkins the HELL out of just 1 save point.
u/FuguofAnotherWorld [+3] Roll the Dice on Fate (3 days later)
That said he is in a world with persistent magic he can take back with him through each restart, so he's god a slightly easier time munchkining things than we would in our world. On the other hand, we have the stock market and lottery, so it's not like you'd be doing badly.
u/notmy2ndopinion [+7] Concent of Saunt Edhar (a day later)
The ability to cast Prestidigitation, as per the 0th level cantrip from D&D.
http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/prestidigitation.htm
I'd use the telekinesis for fine point manipulation under a microscope (or if I became specialized enough, under an electron microscope). I'd find out which particulates are defined as "soiling" or "cleaning" and if I self-define it intuitively, then I'd be able to oxidize or reduce chemicals if that makes them look more rusty or spoiled or dirtier.
I could purify water at a rate of 1 ft^3 every 6 seconds... which after an 8-hour shift is... 135,920.9 liters (whoa, really?). Hell, I could step up any sort of chemical purification process at a similar rate by "cleaning it" and leaving only specific enantiomers as my desired product.
The hour-long duration of 1 lb of brittle material creation, heating/chilling/coloring/flavoring don't defy entropy heat death on an exceptional scale (although I'd experiment to see if the energy is transferred to another object when the duration expires, how close is the bookkeeping?)
u/None [+2] (7 days later)
[deleted]
u/notmy2ndopinion [+1] Concent of Saunt Edhar (7 days later)
Ugh. I knew I shouldn't have listened to GLaDOS.
u/ArgentStonecutter [+5] Emergency Mustelid Hologram (2 hours later)
Common sense is too a superpower.
u/None [+3] (2 hours later)
Ability to never say "you too" to the waiter.
On a more serious note ... Anything with plant manipulation would be pretty much awesome. From always having food ready, to being able to access pretty much everyone's house, to being able to get rid of the annoying plants to maximize the produce of food plants, ...
u/None [+1] (4 days later)
But that won't be organic :P
I think you could do interesting things with medicines too with that power.
u/RandomDamage [+4] (4 hours later)
The ability to convert garbage to clean raw materials or mulch as appropriate to the type of waste.
Anything up to the size of, say, a large car, but only once a week.
u/IllusoryIntelligence [+4] (5 hours later)
Perfect kinaesthetic memory, I just want to make my gym time more efficient.
u/ulyssessword [+3] (17 hours later)
Retroactive preparation.
If you spend a few minutes in the morning, you will have prepared for the first few problems you run into during the day. Unexpected rain? Good thing you brought your coat along. Get into a debate with a friend? You just looked up the references you need. Running out of gas in your car? Good thing you grabbed a jerry can from your garage.
u/LiteralHeadCannon [+5] (a day later)
Immunity to starvation, dehydration, and/or asphyxiation.
u/TennisMaster2 [+1] (a day later)
Worded properly, this would be awesome - though I don't know how you'd word it such that no subcellular mechanisms fail and cause death.
u/None [+2] (a day later)
Such quantities of food, water, and air are teleported into the oral cavity as necessary.
u/TennisMaster2 [+1] (a day later)
Well done. What follows is nitpicky.
I'm assuming the power is granted as worded rather than as intended. Your solution works, but to me sounds like a different power entirely. Individually, both are certainly mundane powers; taken together, you have both many immunities and matter generation, which surpasses mundanity.
u/None [+3] (a day later)
Any power is going to be breaking some laws of physics, and if it's truly restricted to necessity, then you can only create water at the rate at which you are thirsty and need it. Ditto for food and air.
u/TennisMaster2 [+1] (2 days later)
I like that. Just restrictive enough to stay mundane, yet able to be munchkinned by corrupting one's brain's ability to turn off thirst. Harder for hunger, but possible - I forget the all the mechanisms.
u/Transfuturist [+3] Carthago delenda est. (a day later)
ITT: 80% non-mundane superpowers.
u/Jiro_T [+4] (2 days later)
Define "mundane".
If it means "things most people can do", it's inherently unexploitable as a power, although if you have any shortcomings you can overcome one.
If it means "things some people can do", what you pick depends on how rare the thing can be. You can probably pick healthy lifespan, or wealth, or intelligence, and the lower the threshhold for how few people can do it and still have it count as "mundane", the better the healthy lifespan/wealth/intelligence you can pick.
If it means "things that non-geeks would think of", plenty of non-geeks would think of bring rich, smart, healthy, etc.
If it means "things that non-geeks would consider minimally useful", you need to pick something which has very good uses that most people wouldn't think of. Seeing a day into the past might be interesting, but almost any superpower would do it because almost any superpower can be muhcnkined in ways that non-geeks wouldn't think of. Also, almost anything in this category would win the Randi prize.
u/Geminii27 [+3] (2 hours later)
Retroversion. Activate it on a target person, and if a third party does anything to that person that they don't like, it rebounds onto the third party.
Technically restricted to whatever the third party might choose to do, and you're not directly affecting them with the power - although there's nothing stopping you provoking them in other ways.
Could be a fun way to get a lot of violent and intolerant people to beat themselves up, bad-mouth themselves, sabotage their own careers, fine themselves etc.
u/xamueljones [+3] My arch-enemy is entropy (12 hours later)
Ability to look 'inside' such as being able to look inside locked safes, inside a person's body, inside a notebook, seeing the other side of the card, and the inner workings of delicate machinery.
It would be so awesome to just be able to 'see' directly how different things work and I could fairly easily make use of the power in so many 'mundane' ways.
It sounds really minor, but anything which affects your senses (especially vision) will open up fascinating new insights into the world around us.
Other cool modifications I'd love to make to my vision would be being able to see in ultraviolet, infrared, or any other part of the light spectrum. Another one is seeing in 4-dimensions. Topology classes would be a lot easier!
u/TBestIG [+3] Every second of quibbling is another dead baby (2 days later)
Line of sight teleportation. I have fantasizes about this for so long. I'd probably get fat, but who cares? Teleportation!
u/EliezerYudkowsky [+6] Godric Gryffindor (4 days later)
Ability to build powerful, goal-aligned Artificial Intelligences. If that wasn't literally the optimal mundane superpower, I'd be doing something else, wouldn't I?
u/Jon_Freebird [+2] (43 minutes later)
Oh I have a few of these, let's see...
The ability to: make trash go back to whoever dropped it, change traffic lights at will, manifest paintballs at will, make the perfect sandwich and create a small gift that will cheer sad people.
u/None [+2] (4 hours later)
Being Maxwell's Demon. Breaking entropy is just too damned useful.
u/Solonarv [+2] Chaos Legion (a day later)
I'll just leave these here.
u/None [+2] (2 days later)
I am a power source for any device I use - cars don't run out of gas, flashlights don't run out of batteries, phones don't die. I can't power anything that uses more energy than a pickup truck at highway speeds for this.
u/None [+1] (a day later)
Ability to consume food, water, and air within line-of-sight.
u/None [+1] (a day later)
The ability to aquire virtually any knowledge about the world, but it requires you to use an unbelievably inefficient mutual information machine that is implemented in buggy software, which runs on defective hardware, that was originally designed for a completely different purpose. Oh, and it starts actively resisting any attempts to alter it's behavior after the first few years.
I claim this is an insanely overpowered superpower, but I leave it as an exercise for the reader to figure out how to munchkin.
u/Jiro_T [+1] (2 days later)
There are plenty of superpowers which are harder to munchkin if everyone has them. You're either referring to children, the Internet, or the human brain, but in either case the fact that lots of people have access to that destroys your ability to munchkin it.