3 and 4 by a mile, are you kidding? Everyone picking 2 doesn’t lay awake at night cringing at past memories.
Agreed. And 3 allows you to gain 1 too.
I was wavering between 1-3 and 1-4 but
Languages are a SKILL THAT CAN BE PRACTICED!
2 and 6, so I can still get a good night’s sleep after 8 straight hours of cringing.
6 basically increases your lifespan by a 1/3. So if you would have normally lived to 75 you get to 100.
Sounds like it would make things like surgery with general anesthesia impossible though.
Edit: Now that I think about it, wouldn’t 4 be better since it makes you functionally immortal? Dying from old age just means dying due to some of those health conditions (heart disease, cancer etc.) that get more and more likely the older you get. If you can’t get those, you don’t die of old age.
Perfect health means you’ll be immortal. Combined with being talented you can do anything you want
Felt like perfect health was just like you’re never sick, never get a cavity, yada yada as these are all kind of lowkey powers
Yeah I agree that immortal probably isn’t accurate in my opinion. It depends on how liberal you interpret the term “healthy”. Is a stab wound bad health? Is decapitation bad health? I’d argue no, but there is a (weak imo) argument that it is.
A stab wound on good health heals better than a stab wound on bad health. Any injuries short of death is still better in a healthy body. I would not want a scratch on a diabetic body. And even if immortality is not on the table, severe chronic illness makes aging disgraceful.
I don’t disagree, but my point was a stab wound on a “healthy” versus “unhealthy” body is still a stab wound. If you’re able to be injured, the only way you’d be immortal is if you can regenerate from anything. That wasn’t part of the “perfect health”, so I’m assuming “perfect health” is not immortality like some of the others suggested.
Agree too. Perfect health isn’t immortality.
More than that. If time stops around you, you can sleep in every day. You’ll probably get more than 8 hours each night. Plus your stress will go down, and your health will go up. Both leading to a longer life. If you even used a small portion of your normal sleeping time toward physical activity, you could get very healthy.
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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.
I feel like those two are absolutely great for life, right? I’d take those over telekinesis any day. It’s the same genre as being happy to get socks for Christmas as an adult somehow.
Everyone skipping 4 is either young, or never had to deal with health problems.
- I assure all of you, that is the most OP of all the options.
Never get sick, no cancer, no aches, no heart disease, no Alzheimer’s, etc…
picks 4 and 6
gets hit by a train
the universe stops
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.
I think you’re overselling Perfect Memory a fair bit here. Just because you can perfectly recall something you’ve seen, doesn’t necessarily mean you know how to use it. E.g. just because you’ve memorised a manual on working a forklift, doesn’t mean you’re suddenly qualified to work as a forklift operator.
Languages, especially non-Latin based languages, require a whole different way of thinking about things that you won’t get from pure memory.
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.
#4 is enough. Taking #3 is an extra treat.
Perfect health seems kinda suss. That pill looking like a cigarette
I choose 4 and 7.
- 1: This is genuinely a blurse; you really don’t want to understand everything everyone ever says.
- 2: This is genuinely a curse; You will remember every little thing that happens to you and it will haunt you forevermore.
- 3: This is mostly useless and will lead to you being exploited.
- 4: This is very good.
- 5: This is worthless; unless this acts like an infinite money glitch.
- 6: This is highly dangerous. You’d better not fall into a coma; nobody would be able to help you.
- 7: This is good; and it would be mostly useful; even if you were required to keep it a secret from everyone.
- 8: This is absolutely the most useless one yet. Eh, at least it’s probably harmless.
If you take 4, is 6 still dangerous?
How is 3 useless? If you want to do a profession or skillful activity you just need to warm up a bit and you’ll excel. You can write amazing stories, be a 5 star chef, learn any language and make option 1 redundant, you can do anything a single person can accomplish.
I’d say 3&4 are the prime combo. Succeed at whatever you want to do and be in perfect health the whole time
2: This is genuinely a curse; You will remember every little thing that happens to you and it will haunt you forevermore.
Wouldn’t perfect memory recall just let you recall memories, not necessarily be forced to recall them? Whether or not you chose to do it or it haunts you seems more like a matter of mental health…
You can’t always control memory recall; even in perfect health.
Similarly you can’t always control events around you, nor can you control things that you may do and later come to regret. All of these small things will add up cumulatively over time. Perfect recall is a shortcut to mental health problems.
Totally agree, I have a good memory for some things and sometimes it already feels like a curse, I would never wish a perfect memory on anyone.
Perhaps you are right, but wouldn’t the perfect health pill help with that?
- When you die, you remain unconscious indefinitely. The outside universe remains paused as your protons decay. Unfathomable amounts of time pass only for your body. Eventually, a Boltzmann brain that matches you arises. Time unpauses and the energy this microcosm contained is released into your neighborhood.
6 very much depends on interpretation. I think yours is overly negative - the net benefits are considerable! So much so that I picked 4&6 even before I noticed that 4 averts 6’s issue.
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.
2 and 4 are the most OP. Easy decision.
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.
My first thought was, #6 sounds great, but without perfect health, it could be a death sentence, since if you pass out from a health problem, noone will ever come to save you.
Now I have bigger questions. Does time resume when you die? Or is picking that one dooming the rest of the world to be paused forever?
Since death isn’t the same as sleep, I’d assume so.
1 and 4! I can visit any country, heck, any world and never get sick
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.
2 is a medical condition, there is people that remembers everything they did in their life.
You can ask them what they did in September 25th 2006 and they will tell you exactly what they ate for breakfast, what was the weather like, what they did, what day of the week it was …
From what I remember it was more a curse then a blessing. One because it’s really hard for them to categorize information and then they ever vividly everything including the bad stuff.
I’ll add an anecdote from a guy I know.
For one thing, he said the way his worked was that he’d take a mental picture and be able to recall that thing perfectly. So, you could flash (a couple of seconds) him a random page from War and Peace, and he could read it out to you.
However: he didn’t automatically know everything on the page. If he wanted to know what out said, he’d still have to take the time to read the page (in his memory).
And there was a downside: if he learned something incorrectly, he couldn’t unlearn it. It made things really difficult for him when his friends started getting married and changing their last names… or when people changed their phone numbers, or email addresses. In the latter cases, people he’d known for years who’d had 7 or 8 phone numbers, when he wanted to call them he’d have to mentally work through each number until he got to the last one before he could dial.
He never gave me a strong opinion about whether he was glad to have perfect recall, but he seemed to complain about it more than being grateful for it.
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!
It’s not “identical” memory, it’s eidetic memory.
Clearly I don’t have it, but thanks for the edification
i would say 4 and 7. 6 seems useful at first but what if you need surgery?
Local anasthetic?
Assuming 5 means that I would always have money in my pocket. I would combine 1 and 5 and just be a drifter around the world
Two and 4, or 4 and 7. Preferably the telekinesis one though cuz that’d be sick
