this post was submitted on 15 Jul 2023
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[–] treadful@lemmy.zip 90 points 1 year ago (12 children)

3 and 4 by a mile, are you kidding? Everyone picking 2 doesn't lay awake at night cringing at past memories.

[–] oyenyaaow@lemmy.zip 11 points 1 year ago

I was wavering between 1-3 and 1-4 but

Languages are a SKILL THAT CAN BE PRACTICED!

[–] Fester@lemm.ee 10 points 1 year ago

2 and 6, so I can still get a good night’s sleep after 8 straight hours of cringing.

[–] fox2263@lemmy.world 7 points 1 year ago

Agreed. And 3 allows you to gain 1 too.

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[–] PrometheusG@lemmy.one 62 points 1 year ago (2 children)

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...

[–] pazukaza@lemmy.ml 46 points 1 year ago

picks 4 and 6

gets hit by a train

the universe stops

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[–] LemmyRefugee@lemmy.world 26 points 1 year ago

#4 is enough. Taking #3 is an extra treat.

[–] JackbyDev@programming.dev 23 points 1 year ago (4 children)

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:

  1. Omnilingual: if you specifically want to know dead languages no one knows (an extremely niche situation that might fascinate some anthropologists)
  2. Perfect memory: Effectively being able to learn to do anything new (including physical tasks) super quick while also memorizing anything instantly.
  3. Natural talent: you specifically want to gain muscles quick but don't care as much about perfect memory.
  4. Perfect health: Better than free sleep for most people. Ensures you live aong and high quality life.
  5. Exact change: It's just infinite money.
  6. 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.
  7. 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,

  1. Do you want to be really good at things?
  2. Do you want to have a higher quality of life for longer?
  3. 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.

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[–] kayaven@lemmy.world 22 points 1 year ago

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.

[–] FireRetardant@lemmy.world 15 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Perfect health seems kinda suss. That pill looking like a cigarette

[–] exterstellar@lemmy.world 15 points 1 year ago (5 children)

Wait so 5. gives me effectively infinite money?

[–] Deadeyegai@lemmy.world 6 points 1 year ago

I know right? You show up and be like "One mansion, please" and the realtor says something like "sure, our cheapest one is $2M".

So you reach into your pocket and out comes the exact change of $2m! Bust is it

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[–] Melody@lemmy.one 14 points 1 year ago (5 children)

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.
[–] DinosaurSr@programming.dev 9 points 1 year ago

If you take 4, is 6 still dangerous?

[–] TheDankHold@kbin.social 7 points 1 year ago

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

[–] Zyansheep@lemmy.fmhy.ml 6 points 1 year ago (3 children)

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...

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[–] IronDonkey@lemmy.world 12 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (8 children)

I'd need a lawyer.

Does perfect health last forever? No brainer then. Definitely don't take the time pauses when you sleep /are unconscious without perfect health though, because then no one could perform surgery on you that requires general anesthesia, which could cause problems.

And arguably, being sleep deprived is not being in perfect health, so if you take perfect health you might not ever need to sleep again anyway, depending on the fine print.

And how precise is the telekinesis? Does it work on things like liquids and gasses? Could you use it to separate liquids and gasses according to type, for instance? If so it'd be more than just fun, it could be quite valuable for sciencey stuff, and you could probably make bank separating out things that are quite hard to isolate. And even if not, you might have a good career in hazardous material handling, and or manipulation of things through clean room windows.

The infinite money trick is also incredibly tempting. Does it work on things like houses and boats? Is it legal? Would you have sufficient proof of its legitimacy that if you, say, pulled a couple hundred grand out of your pocket to buy a house that the sellers would trust that it's real and above board even if it were?

And so on. Temptation is health and telekinesis, but the various details might cause money to win out over telekinesis.

Maybe natural talent health, but I'd have to plan out what talents to acquire first, as well as information on degree. If with slight work you could become the optimal physicist etc, to the point where you could sit down and just write a perfect theory of everything that matched all our observations on paper, then that would of course be awesome. But if it doesn't come with essentially super skills - well, I'm pretty ok with what I can do/how well I can learn now, and telekinesis sounds fun.

[–] h4mi@lemmy.world 5 points 1 year ago

This is very well thought out.

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[–] CrypticFawn@lemmy.dbzer0.com 11 points 1 year ago

2 and 4 are the most OP. Easy decision.

[–] lasagna@programming.dev 10 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (3 children)

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.

[–] EmoDuck@sh.itjust.works 4 points 1 year ago (2 children)

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.

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[–] Yuki@kutsuya.dev 9 points 1 year ago

1 and 4! I can visit any country, heck, any world and never get sick

[–] beanz00_@lemmy.world 7 points 1 year ago (1 children)

i would say 4 and 7. 6 seems useful at first but what if you need surgery?

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[–] LordOfLocksley@lemmy.world 7 points 1 year ago

Considering 1 is a worse version of 2, which is a worse version of 3, I'd have to choose 3 and 4

[–] Skullz77@lemmy.world 7 points 1 year ago (5 children)

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.

[–] couscouscivil@sh.itjust.works 7 points 1 year ago

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.

[–] BastingChemina@slrpnk.net 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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.

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[–] KairuByte@lemmy.world 7 points 1 year ago

2 and 4.

  • 2 mostly covers 1 and partially covers 3.
  • 4 gives me a longer lifespan to do it, and ensures no health related interruptions.
  • 5 Is semi meh. Has the implication of infinite money but I doubt that’s the case.
  • 6 Is hard to pass up, as it kinda contends with 4 for time, but I could see it going terribly.
  • 7 is meh if it’s only as strong as I am.
  • Why would you need 8 if you have a partner? O.o
[–] ramius345@sh.itjust.works 6 points 1 year ago (2 children)
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[–] Hjulkula@lemmy.world 6 points 1 year ago

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

[–] OneSuspiciousBanana@lemm.ee 6 points 1 year ago

6 is really fun until you are stuck in a loop while trying to have life saving surgery.

[–] Zoldyck@lemmy.world 6 points 1 year ago

3 and 4. Easy.

Two and 4, or 4 and 7. Preferably the telekinesis one though cuz that'd be sick

[–] Thorned_Rose@kbin.social 6 points 1 year ago

As someone who has chronic health issues nd increasingly severe Memory Impairment (possibly early onset Alzheimers), I would give almost anything for the perfect health. Hell, I would be over the moon just for average health.

I can't even begin to explain how much it hurts to be surrounded by people who could choose to be healthy but are just apathetic, uncaring, lazy or ignorant of how much of a blessing it is to be able to exercise, get fit, run, swim or even jut walk round without feeling utterly exhausted after or to remember the things they love and enjoy.

[–] ch1nomachin3@lemmy.world 6 points 1 year ago

perfect health and natural talent. because right now I'm the opposite of both.

[–] craftyindividual@lemm.ee 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)
[–] Yondoza@sh.itjust.works 5 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Can't you achieve 1 easily if you have 2?

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[–] dukeGR4@monyet.cc 5 points 1 year ago

2 and 3 for sure.

Perfect memory, because why not. 3 is good for upskilling and learning a new trade which in turn could generate more money. combined with number 2 i can even start a course teaching people trades.

[–] InFerNo@lemmy.ml 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

6 adds a third to your life if you consider people sleep 8 of the 24 hours in a day.

I would go with 3 and 4 probably.

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[–] theory@lemm.ee 4 points 1 year ago

Probably 2 and 3. I’d like to be uber smart instead of the dumbass I am now.

[–] derpysmilingcat@lemmy.world 4 points 1 year ago

If #5 means I have a dollar in my pocket and go to buy this car and suddenly I have the entire rest of the money in my pocket, then I'll take #4 and #5.

If not I'll take #2 and #4

[–] Kerrigor@kbin.social 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

1 and 7

Could be a god in an isolated culture

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