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?
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.
Pi = 3.
You son of a bitch
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.
CEO [...] balls explode
Now this is the kind of justice we need
I mean, we've already got Elon musk we don't really need any more eunichs with nothing left to lose
Everyone knowing they could live healthily vegan but don't: <chuckle> I am in danger.
Greed is removed from the list of possible emotions/personality traits.
Great. Now everyone's horny.
You say that like it wasn't intended.
Welcome to my world.
That was gonna be my change
Everyone horny all the time
So bonobos become the dominant species?
I'm already in that universe; it's pretty good
Nobody is horny and humanity dies hornyness = greed for sex.
Native Americans are immune to European diseases.
Boom! /thread right here. This is a goooood one.
Oh shit I really like this one.
My question is, do we get native American diseases that Europeans are immune to?
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.
What if two English speakers are listening to a cat speak French, when suddenly they are joined by a third companion who speaks native French?
The cat stops talking.
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.
Basically Assassin’s Creed
is born
immediate ptsd from the memory of my parents plowing passionately which ended with my creation
crawls to the roof and jumps
It wouldn't be weird if you just always knew
You don't want to know others memories; including those of your ancestors. Not photographically at least.
Sounding like Richard Rahl and The Sword of Truth now. (Please don't hate me the first 3-4 books were good...)
Or they upload to the resurrection ship
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
Humans do generally have proper functioning empathy
dogs, too. such a strange take
a moral impetus, informed directly by empathy, that is so overwhelming that the feelings of others are tantamount to one’s own
I’m guessing this is their meaning. Sounds interesting. Maybe that version of humanity would have far fewer nukes and a lot more good sex.
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
I feel like we would still have many of the same billionaires if not all
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.
How is "being bad" decided?
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.
Mother Teresa looks like a supermodel
Mother Theresa was a monster who got off on the suffering of others.
Why do you think she looked like that?
A disease that kills everyone a bad person knows, even if they don't do anything wrong, is a Bible level of justice.
Disney rules.
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 π is 3.33 repeating, just for the lols.
Karma now has a maximum of one hour turnaround time.
Base 36 counting becomes predominant.
0 1 2 3 4 5
6 7 8 9 A B
C D E F G H
I J K L M N
O P Q R S T
U V W X Y Z
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."
Found the nerd
Okay but now you only have 3 fingers on each hand
No religion.
Nice try God, I'm not getting you out of this one.
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.
Silphium was recently rediscovered so it's no longer considered extinct just highly endangered.
I must eat it now!!!
Maybe instead of schizophrenics talking to the dead they would just fit into the class of spiritualists and diviners, oracles and the like.
I'm open to interpretation.
After a little more thinking on this:
Gender dysphoria? Nope! Shapeshifter. Furry? Nope Werebeing
Basically, anything that is a deviation from bog standard human would have a magical reasoning behind it.
I'd increase the speed of light.
What difference would that make
This kind of gets at that (I think? I'm dumb, someone smarter than me may have something better/more relevant):
I prefer my causality dilated.
CO2 doesn't cause extra global warming above 300ppm
That might cause humans never to evolve
Oh no what a shame…
Same here
Humans are neutrally buoyant in Earth's atmosphere
Stupid thoughts become painful.
"It's not painful bro you just need to feel it for longer you'll get used to it. Ow.
Unfortunately, you didn't get rid of masochism, so now they're stupid and cumming.
One free wish for any and every person who achieves something truly outstanding for mankind as whole (only positive achievements).
Maybe also for a free "weaker" wish for personal achievements, like completing one's dream hobby project.
Life isn't possible
The angles in a triangle now add up to 179°.
You're a monster
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).
Would be nice for the nervous dogs in the world.
Positions of power are filled by people who are not interested in holding power.
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.
let's get rid of the inverse square law. falloff is now linear.
Absolute mad lad
Earth disappears in a puff of smoke.
No sentient beings this time plz
Photons now have mass.
Wonder what would be the advantages if it has mass?
The universe would have collapsed back into itself shortly after the big bang, which would avoid a lot of suffering.
laughs and giggles?
being an asshole should be painful
Every time you’re unreasonably rude to someone, you feel a pinprick inside your nostril. If you’re a right jerk it’s 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
As a dedicated asshole, I agree
No I'm not a masochist, just that most assholes are more asshole than I am and they fucking deserve it.
Water freezes from the bottom up instead of top down.
I... Uh... Hm... 🤔
What does this do?
Ice fishing is now just called fishing.
It also becomes much easier to make perfectly clear ice at home: you pour the unfrozen, cloudy water right off the top of any partially frozen thing.
Corporations are not people.
Oxygen now stably bonds with three hydrogen atoms, not two. The new formula for water is H3O.
Good luck with any kind of life form that we would recognize as being alive evolving.
All physical constants are exact powers of ten; everything should be neat and organised.
There is a normal integer between 4 and 5 but sapient beings are completely incapable of percieving it.
Bro. Wtf.
That's next level evil
Humans are peacefully with each other and only wage war against aliens or animals threatening to kill them.
Granted. Now there's no class war, and the rich fully exploit the poor knowing they are not in danger
(Sorry, some monkey's paw vibes)
I'd eliminate the Joestar bloodline.
Would you also reject your humanity?
No, I'd try to achieve heaven
But without a Joestar to do it for you, could you handle the Pillar Men yourself? 🤔
Yeah, they wont see what hit them (literally)
Religion is not "invented", does not exist
People have no imagination, or have literally all the answers and thus no free will in this world then?
Can't imagine a world where people don't create incorrect answers associated with a higher power
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.
planck length = 0
sounds a bit boring. how about -1, or pi, or i, or 42?
- Platinum is now as plentiful as nickel. I'll let astrophysicists figure out the side effects
- 2cm of solid wood completely blocks any sort of radiation.
- Complete eradication of STDs
Complete eradication of STDs
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....
+-------+
Also wood would be dense as fuck. Damn.
"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.
No gravity, sorry not sorry.
Maybe this means no time? I don’t really know anything
Definitely no planets/life I would imagine.
God is real, but dead
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 can make your own god, it's not that hard.
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.
I personally think meaning is simply about cooperation. Pop-sci video explaining basically what I mean better than I probably could.
Everyone has 50% more empathy, with a minimum equal to the previous median amount.
What about going after the law of conservation of energy?😈
What if energy can be created, destroyed and conserved now? :)
Oh no the big bang deatroyed all energy.
Nothingness.
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.
People can't hurt each other.
What if it is an accident? Do both parties just get erased from the universe? Or is all malice just gone from the human will?
No, it's more like
"teamplay": 1; "coop": 1;and then you punt your buddies into lava with the rocketlauncher.
No humans, just dinosaurs
Sentient dinosaurs that destroy their planet in a ecological catastrophe like in downer finale of the eponymous series?
The theme of the whole story of the universe changes with my mood. God is real, I'm him, so is magic and karma. Some days it's hentai.
Making the speed of light
infiniteone 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.
OK, I edited my comment. I hope you don't find any more scientific proof against that too!
Karma is real.
No life can exist.
You both have to solve a new (to you) calculus problem to make a baby.
OP said the universe does a hard reset. Life would never evolve if that was a new rule
Any and all personal gain becomes mutual gain.
- 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
So kind of enforcing karma as like a universal truth? I like it!
Our solar system would have a greatly reduced speed of light so as to avoid being attacked by other sentient life.
Explain to me please but also wouldn't that have to mean there was a black hole really nearby
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 will rmov thy lttr
No more Pauli exclusion principle. I'm not smart enough to describe what that world would look like... which is exactly why I would do it.
I'm pretty sure that would result in all matter compacting down to a single point again...
The sky is teal, rather than blue.
Set the electron g factor to exactly 2
NO FUCKING AGRICULTURE
It would solve a ton of our issues .
You now have a hyper-technological hunter society like the star trek Hirogen (or the predator they are a ripoff of)
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.
Then all life would have likely gone extinct long before they even developed spinal columns.
Remember, pain is a fantasy your brain creates to keep you from injuring yourself.
Getting rid of that will mean zero survival instinct.
What happens if I light my head on fire
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.
Instead of leap days time just runs backwards to keep the calendar in sync.
Fell asleep thinking of a question similar last night. No colonialism. Colonizing other lands outside of your own established borders would be forbidden.
How different the world would be.
In that scenario, how do you get established borders in the first place?
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.
Every living creature is entitled to an equal portion of useful surface area of the earth proportional to their size and space requirements.
Not like that has anything to do with us possibly living out of a car next year if rent rises 30% again for the 3rd year running.
Fuck landlords hoarding property.
That whatever species ends up dominating the earth with tools and technology branches out from bonobos instead.
I will hard reset the universe. The new rule is that any sapient lifeform has the power to reset the universe.
Welcome to the crabbiest of crab bucket universes.
New rule is that everyone has to be nice to me.
Real
All shows from our current universe that " ended too soon" instead go 1+ season too long, all long running series end with fans craving more.
Jenkins never existed.
What do you have against code deployment
Which Jenkins? Leroy or Kevin?
Humans don't evolve, we bring noting to the table of life and dont want to share.
The asteroid doesn't hit Earth in the late Cretaceous causing the extinction of the non-avian dinosaurs.
Coulomb's Law doesn't apply.
Gravity doesn’t exist. All matter interactions are by electromagnetism and Ver Der Waals forces only.
Granted. Matter never collects in a way that would allow for life to be created.
Objective accomplished.
I was going to say this but for the weak nuclear force.
Less power/increased liability for corporations.
Is hard to pick one.
Altruism is the default instead of selfishness
Cancer doesn't exist
No harm could come to children. No one would have wicked thoughts towards them. They'd fully recover from any non-lethal injury. They could get sick.
The strong nuclear force doesn't exist.
bam!
I'd just leave the off button in place.
No more questions about “What would you do if you were suddenly given power over everybody else?”
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 “freedom” as an inherently good thing, there will be more and more opportunities to control other people.
Indulging in this kind of question — what would you force all people to do if you could? — 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.
Karma is real.
no gravity.
no friction, even better!
hows about there is still air but no air resistance
So no universe
ssshhhhh
Everything the same, but healing fantasies improve your mental health.
... Too meta?
Space is now a clean vacuum.
Magic existing
Impossible; magic, by definition, is something not possible in this world. If we had what we consider magic, it would just be science.
Already does. It's called electromagnetism.
Without currency there had be no civilization
Are you saying this is what you would change?
Because there were definitely civilizations without currency.
Carbon is no longer an element and doesn't exist.
So no us and perhaps some really weird disruptions to the fusion chain in stars.
Cant lie
Ah the ol the invention of lying
I'd just leave the off button in place.
Mother Teresa would be out here looking like a zombie.
My rule is: "greed causes incurable ear loss"
Clarification: I didn't say 'hearing'; I said 'ear'.
George Lucas does‘t mess with his movies
Colonization never occurs
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.
Remove every soul that would ever become a parasite 1%, or a Wiccan. Both rotten to the core.
What's wrong with Wiccans? I know a few, they're fine people.
A lot of them are assholes in one way or another, at about the same distribution of every other social group