You are given an opportunity to hard reset our universe (particularly, the Earth). You are also allowed to change one rule about the new universe. What rule would you change?
The rule could be anything, as funny or as serious as you want. The universe will progress in a similar way that it has up until this point, unless your changed rule prevented it from doing so.
Some examples might be:
The invention of currency is not allowed.
Iron is slightly less stable.
The Ancient Greeks are able to cultivate Silphium, which does not go extinct now.
Instant karma. Weighted based on intent.
E.g. If CEO cuts benefits to improve his stock value, then his balls explode. If a driver accidentally cuts someone off but feels bad about it, a full mosquito hits the windshield.
Cats speak french, except in any situation where they can be recorded or transcribed, or when a french speaker can hear them. They also aren't very good at speaking french, but it's impossible for anyone to know that.
All sentient beings have photographic memories and, through DNA, they can store and recall all of their previous ancestors' memories. All the way back to their oldest sentient ancestor.
A necessary requirement for higher intelligence is proper, functioning empathy. If you lack this, you're just... Incapable of intelligent thought beyond that of a particularly stupid dog
Have to say this wouldn't affect me, not because I don't have any empathy but only cold, logical political solidarity, but also because I wouldn't really class myself as particularly intelligent. I'm just walking here
Being bad or evil is literally bad for your health.
The better you act, the better your health - great teeth, good muscle, low fat, high fitness, good looks, and longevity (to a point), no addiction or mental health issues, selfless with no crazy ego. Ie Mother Teresa looks like a supermodel!
Health can fluctuate based on behavior but it always drops 3x faster than it improves. So if you fuck around on your wife, your teeth go bad, or you start balding etc. cheat on your taxes, or lie maliciously (excl. good lies like Santa) you start to get fat n ugly.
If you're a miserable prick who fires staff, scams people, bribes, hires children for sweatshops or harms people just to increase profit or boost share price you get cancer. But if you help those people then you may be cured provided you handle it really well and undo all the damage.
You attack someone, pedal harmful drugs or hoard unnecessary wealth, you go blind/deaf until you earn it back, more than once and it becomes permanent, each time after that you lose a limb for good.
You intentionally harm or kill someone via murder, drink driving, rape etc then it's game over via a slow, long, painful debilitating disease that's contagious to anyone you like or care about, ensuring you die alone.
To help identify the good/bad, your gut instincts are 10,000x more powerful and obvious to warn you of the dangers or benefits of each choice.
If it's decided internally ("bad" is what you believe is bad), then all the objectivists get a free pass for being assholes. Hitler is a supermodel, etc.
If it's decided externally (there's an universal definition of "bad"), how far into the future does it propagate? If I rescue from drowning someone who will genocide all the Dutch in the future, when do I go bald?
That said, beauty pageants would be much funnier, with trolley problems instead of talent competitions.
No quantum mechanics. Things have concrete properties even when no one's watching, and they can all be observed at the same time. The universe is complex but understandable.
Also, P=NP and Ď is 3.33 repeating, just for the lols.
Also the point at which hundred changes over to thousand gets pushed back by a power, so 6KL2 is Sixty Kay Hundred Elty Two, while 8,A59G is Eight Thousand Ayty Five Hundred Ninety G. Same with the changeover to Millions, Billions, Trillions, etc.
Probably wouldn't change that much practically, but it'd make "Ten" a square that's also the product of two prime squares, and it's divisible by a lot more ways than the current number base, and it makes "One Thousand" the square of "One Hundred" the same way "One Hundred" is the square of "Ten" and that "One Million" is the square of "One Thousand."
Silphium was recently rediscovered so it's no longer considered extinct just highly endangered.
Aside from that, I would make it so that instead of having mental illness you would have magical powers.
Schizophrenic? Nope you just talk to the Dead.
Adhd? Nope, you're an elemental wizard.
Bipolar? Nope, you're either a healer or a necromancer.
Depressed? Nope, you're just low on mana. (Major depression means that you're suffering from a curse)
Psychotic? Nope, you're suffering a mana storm
Narcissistic? Nope, you are an illusionist.
Autistic? Nope, you're an enchanter.
If you eat a piece of cheese, you get to levitate for 10 seconds no more, no less. Doesn't matter the size of the cheese or the type (this includes lactose free).
Granted, the vast majority of people are illiterate, as there are no longer competent teachers, we never make it out of the stone age, as there are no competent organizers.
I wouldn't classify "teacher" as a "position of power" in the sense that people who are mostly interested in holding power over others want the position for that reason.
There's a huge difference between "being interested in power" and "being interested in improving things for yourself and other people". The one is selfish in nature, the other isn't.
There is also a huge difference between wanting a position and being good at it.
Every time youâre unreasonably rude to someone, you feel a pinprick inside your nostril. If youâre a right jerk itâs more of a stab. When you assault someone the pin is a kitchen knife. Murder and rape make you feel a lance of fire in your sinuses. It could work, nothing else has
maybe it would look like a reverse snowfall underwater if the ice is buoyant? I imagine if the ice stayed at the bottom it would be interesting evolution wise since most things survive the cold by being at the bottom.
Around the time the pyramid of Giza is built, actual Aliens build a slightly smaller pyramid in modern day Tunisia. No one cares and all conspiracies still center on the ancient egyptian ones.
It's little ones like this that have such insidious implications.
Even without a evil genie rule... No stds.
Which means that sex has no touching
Or
Everything is super fucked up - bacteria/viruses/fungi can no longer transfer from creature to creature through touch... I don't have the knowledgebase to even imagine what the results of this would be but I think somewhat catastrophic....
"Let's see what scientists say about time if I remove entropy from the equation."
Also: Big Elden Ring vibes. This is basically what Marika does; alters reality and takes death out of it because she got access to the source code of the universe.
Is he just visibly floating around out there? Was he dead for all the bad shit, meaning maybe we try to resuscitate him? Mine him for minerals? What's the play?
Honestly, i may be the most hardcore atheist, but it would be sweet if there was a God. You could know good and evil for sure, everyone gets what they deserve even if it's only in the afterlife, everything has a purpose...
I think it is objectively true that nature is chaos, we emerge from nature, and everything we believe in (currency, nations, laws, good and evil) are just social convention; all of that is the truth, and adapting to the truth helps me live a better life and make better decisions. But it's hard. It takes mental effort to accept that you're not the center of the universe and it's a disappointing thing to learn. I'm tired and i want someone to hand me meaning and purpose on a silver platter.
You don't have to believe in it, it's just a stepping stone to greater understanding.
Buddhism is a noble religion and people who follow it are in general significantly more compassionate and thoughtful than average, does it really matter that its creator is bones in earth and not a being in the sky?
The reason i'm an atheist is not because i have rational evidence that religions are false, it's because i believe that the underlying mindset is false: objectivity, authority, absolutism, the idea that humans are at the center of the universe, a clear distinction between good and evil, the concept of good and evil itself, etc - none of that is true to me in the sense that it doesn't match reality as i see it. I crave the simplicity and ease of such a mindset, but i can't think my way into it, and i think i'd be further from truth if i did.
Yeah but in this place nothingness creates energy.. so like mini big bangs going off everywhere? Or we talking like zero point energy? Which opens up a bag of worms in our dimension where particles exist and don't so they're coming and going from somewhere, maybe this energy dimension lol.
Lol, I wanted to break this law so that we can have infinite energy sources (fun stuff) and to be able to destroy ~useless energy (like thermal energy which is a byproduct of probably all energy conversions), thus reducing entropy and other fun stuff.
Making the speed of light infinite one hundred times larger and the speed of sound the current speed of light. No more blue/redshifting! Faster communication!
Since the speed is infinite, the wavelength is always zero, no matter the frequency. But a wavelength of zero at infinite speed means an infinite number of waves hit the eye in any constant amount of time. Hence, and infinite amount of energy hits the eye at practically the same moment.
But assuming your eye (and all of the universe) does not incinerate instantly, you will not be able to see the difference between red and blue, since they are perceived to have the same wavelength (zero). So yeah, technically you no longer have blue/redshifting.
If you don't intend to cheat anyone, the party you're interacting with gains in a similar "amount" as you
If you achieve personal gain at the cost of someone else, their net gain will be even greater than yours
In case there's no direct party you're interacting with while gaining (such as you running a red light when no one's around to be inconvenienced), society as a whole gains
It's a reference to a book. But essentially yes you would manipulate the curvature of the universe to put something similar to a black hole around the solar system so that nothing could escape. A Black Domain, or a Light Tomb.
I was hoping we'd go for more of a wholistic biotech thing, like domesticating animals came with hunting, not agriculture. Agriculture just let us domesticate cattle and deer and goats.
Before then we had wolves and dogs and chickens and pigs, and I imagine 5k years of selective breeding coupled with modern degrees of research but in a different direction that by then we custom grow organisms from a caul for whatever our needs.
No suffering, no dis-pleasurable state, no undesirable reality exists. Everything that is, is deemed good by all beings that can judge it (if any). This has, as a consequence, no moral dilemmas, no conflict of wills and interests, no tragedies, etc.
I can think of two scenarios. The first one is you do that and everyone, including you, feels it and perceives it in a good way. Which I guess could end up in weird situations. Geeky example, but do you know Magic the Gathering? There's a faction there called "The Rakdos Cult" with a demon and a lot of deranged characters that simply enjoy the bad things. The Rakdos cards often portray a little gorey scenes with people enjoying it, so I guess we could become kind of that but without victims, only enjoyers.
But the other scenario is that we wouldn't have a need to prove or try such things because we often do it out of negative feelings such as emptiness, pride, competitiveness, etc. We wouldn't feel those things so we wouldn't behave as erratically as we do now.
That if we exist at all, though... Maybe existence as we know it is incompatible with my first comment.
Fell asleep thinking of a question similar last night.
No colonialism. Colonizing other lands outside of your own established borders would be forbidden.
I thought on this also, and I suppose in my "rule" to adhere by I would have to choose a time in human history. I'd likely choose a time from year 0-1000 but would need to research and get input from folks smarter than I before choosing the time that rule would be implemented.
Of course, it only bans colonization. This is specifically the act of taking over lands from those who are indigenous to said lands, usually by force. If the governments of two lands what to trade or sell their lands in agreement without force, this would not be illegal.
I'm certain humans would still find a way to be horrible in some other new fun way.
No more questions about âWhat would you do if you were suddenly given power over everybody else?â
All this what-if-you-were-god stuff is subconsciously programming us to lean in when given the opportunity to control others.
As AI, surveillance, and extended bureaucracy undermine the concept of âfreedomâ as an inherently good thing, there will be more and more opportunities to control other people.
Indulging in this kind of question â what would you force all people to do if you could? â is normalizing the actual usage of those systems as they come into existence.
AI is a good thing as long as it's open-source non-commercial used by normal people (not govcorp), nothing wrong with proompting some images in the same way there's nothing wrong with pirating some plugins and throwing a fun track in FL together or even a remix or forking a GitHub project and changing it etc etc. Corpos and/or closed source can fuck off though. Information wants to be free.
It's certainly not comparable to "extended bureaucracy" (read: regulations that protect people from predatory big tech corpos and far-right leaders of that industry like Musk) and surveillance, which you just kinda threw in there to fill out the buzzwords. Like that one is obviously a bad thing but has no rhyme or reason to be with the rest.
I'd create an actual god with morals of absolute good that rules over humans with an iron fist. Political debates? There's an objective answer and the god knows it. Do something wrong? Get warned. Do something very wrong? It's brainwash time.