I love that he never even touched proton earth, which would really release some energy. Not sure how bad the collapse of the strong force in that nucleus would be, but I can't imagine that a proton mass 6x more massive than the electron moon would have any less spectacular of a result.
Unfortunately, this is not the case. There are plenty of atoms/molecules that have greater negative ionization states than -1. This wouldn't even make everything neutral.
OTOH, if you shifted the ionization state of every single atom, then pretty much every molecule would end up flying apart. You can't form H2O if hydrogen has no electrons at all; hydrogen becomes a single proton.
This is interesting cause I wonder if relatively it'd be like shifting every element in the periodic table one to the left, cause who's to say neutral isn't our current measurement -1, but the orbitals will remain the same hence the shift
So every time someone stubs their toe, every other human would feel the pain? Everyone would be completely overwhelmed by all kinds of feelings all the time.
Apparently, the word empathy isn't as well understood as I thought.
Under typical usage, it refers to emotions, not full sensory input. Think Deanna Troi from star trek.
I've never actually heard/seen it used to refer to sensory input.
And, yes, even if it's "only" emotions that are picked up, it would be distracting. This would radically change human society. That's the entire point of the question in the post. It would be even more of a change with full sensory input though.
Imagine a world where that guy that's creeping along on the highway isn't just making people angry, because everyone that gets close knows that he's grieving so hard he can barely function. You feel that grief yourself. Or, if you prefer your interpretation of empathy, you can feel his bowels cramping and realize that he's going slow because he's looking for an exit.
Now, this doesn't automatically mean that everyone is going to act with kindness. But it does mean that none of us could ever again just dismiss someone else's state of being. We would know that the other person is a feeling being and that makes being cruel an entirely different proposition. Whe we would feel, just like it were our own pain, what our actions cause, it's gong to make people slow down and think before acting.
I’m trying to focus this answer on something that seems like a really small change:
I wish everyone is slightly more empathetic.
I feel like this could give us a lot of small nudges toward being better people and a better society. I wonder if a small nudge could end up having a profound effect.
Yes. But i was trying to make my change small… which is, of course, subjective. For me setting an empathy baseline feels like more than a small change.
It probably would, butterfly effect and all. That's part of the reason why I'm trying to evaluate why I do the things I do, trying to see how they impact other people more versus in my youth. It might be small, but enough small things do add up, compound even.
Who said the genie was supernatural? If I can see the genie in front of me and sufficiently measure it's existence, then it is real and natural. "Super natural" literally means "outside of nature", i.e. stuff that doesn't have any evidence of ever existing.
Well, when their purpose is to detonate themselves and kill as many people around them so they can get some heaven virgins, I think it's a sacrifice we are willing to make.
Everyone is gifted with the ability to control their own fertility. You're only fertile if you want to be. The only chance for pregnancy to occur is if both partners want it to.
I imagine that would cause a severe population decline, and I'm fine with that. There's too many humans on this planet already.
Every one gets a strong moral compass that they can't ignore.
Sure we won't all have the same morals but I believe that most bad things in the world happen because people ignore morals and act selfish and only a small part of our issues stem from actual moral differences.
Edit: Seems I am much more optimistic than I thought.
Rates of religiously based terrorism would go through the roof. The problem is that people that, e.g., bomb abortion clinics believe that they are doing the morally correct thing, because it's better to murder a few people than to allow those people to "murder" thousands of innocent "babies". Likewise, you'd suddenly have people that are casually racist now immediately turn to full-on race war shit, because if you believe that nonwhite people are causing harm to the "white race" simply by existing, and you have a moral compass that you can't ignore, then the moral thing to do is to prevent that harm by killing the people committing the harm, esp. when you believe that they're irredeemable by virtue of genetics.
You could argue that "moral compass" means more than just a strong sense of right/wrong. Presumably, most people have that, even if we don't describe it as such. I think OP intended something more like a "strong sense of harmony" wherein everyone has a shared common understanding of some greater good and therefore work towards it with common cause.
It's still a fairly naive notion, but for an entirely different reason. Rather than self-righteous chaos, such a wish would lead to a sort of moral tyranny imposed by one single person's preconceptions of what constitutes a moral life.
Depends what you mean by moral compass. I don't think anyone's conscious tells them "man, we really shouldn't be mixing these textiles". They might feel guilty for breaking rules they want to follow, but that's it.
Pull a gazilion tons of carbon out of the atmosphere, crystallise it into gigantic diamond shards, and drop them from the stratosphere onto the 95th percentile by wealth in each country.
Why not have it drop as graphite. Could be compressed as diamonds or used as base stock for carbon fibers or carbon nanotubes or carbon future-space-filaments. More useful, more stable, and could be a more versatile export.
Per kilo, sure. But in terms of overall impact, I'll lay odds that reducing the CO2 level down to preindustrial levels would be more effective than reducing any other pollutant.
Metacognition becomes routine for humans. We are able to better de-fuse from our thoughts, and recognize them not as reality but as thoughts about reality.
We all have thoughts in our head. They are the lenses through which we see reality.
Sometimes, we are aware of that. For example, we may realize we're being prejudiced or that we're being cranky because of our mood.
However, this uses up a lot of energy; our frontal lobe is very energy-hungry. So we spend most of the time thinking habitual thoughts and following habitual behaviors. We don't realize we're looking at reality through a lens. We assume we are simply looking at reality.
What I am wishing for is for people to constantly be aware that the way they are looking at reality depends on the lenses they have learned and habitually use.
I mean, we kinda see it anyway when people are lying a bit just to be polite, and I wouldn't be mad about it. But that's not what I was talking about.
What I really meant is the ability to see malicious lies, the ones designed to take advantage of us. This would be really OP, i think xD. I apologize for the misunderstanding, english is not my 1st language.
Not sure if it's a small thing but I think I would change it so good deeds make a bigger impression on people than the bad.
It's a bit of a rainbow sunshine kind of wish but it's human nature to remember bad things easier than the good, it's a survival instinct to protect ourselves. But with all these conflicts and discrimination, big or small, if people don't let fear dominate, everyone would cut each other more slack.
Of course this requires everyone to have the same mindset to work, that's why I think making that small change in human nature at its core is the only way, and only a genie could pull that off.
Every figure leading every cult of personality is now seen as an imposter pretending to be themselves. For example, people think some orange-faced lunatic keeps trying to get on stage at a Trump rally, but Trump himself just disappeared.
Unless we're still getting free access to all the services which use advertising to offset the costs, this is a terrible idea as people rely on some of those services
Abolish share based profits instead, if not capitalism, might be a better solution towards that goal
What would that look like? I'm a trans woman. When someone is standing there trying to take my rights away, and actively working to remove my access to care and support, what does "agree to disagree" look like?
"I accept your right to be what you want to be and don't care about it anymore. I am sorry for all of the damage I caused by getting so invested in an issue that has nothing to do with me."
The conservative ideology to include a prevalence of rational discourse and a functional sense of cognitive dissonance. Am I allowed to wish for that? Let's make it permentant.
That's such a myopic view, it's given everyone the chance to speak and learn from each other which has resulted in a lot of shared understanding and growth.
You just want to sweep all the social problems back under the rug simply because you don't like seeing them.
I wonder if you'd carve out an exception for yourself, like you're using social media now - are you banning this conversation too?
Psychologically that would be a desaster. People would wear themselves out in an instant, and in 6 months top we'd have a world population suffering from clinical depression.
@Weirdbeardgame That hated should not be exiting if the grounds are because of someone's Disability, Sex, Sexuality, Gender Identity, Religion or Skin. It should only exist for how nice the person is.
Oh, buddy... The only reason that Hindu nationalism isn't a bigger problem is because they're mostly in India. And it's not like the Romans weren't expansionist and quite efficient at murdering their neighbors without having a single god. Or, for that matter, the Vikings.
Who said it would eliminate all wars? Of course it would not. But I think that monotheistic religions throughout history were one of the most divisive factors among people that otherwise would get along just fine.
As an American, one of the most positive things that could happen to the world is the abolishment of the United States as a government. We're directly or indirectly responsible for most of the ethnic cleansing that has gone on the last several decades.
Could this backfire? Like, sure, no combustion engines, but that would be solved in the long run with electricity. But are there things I'm forgetting that would be critical? Like a chemical process for critical chemicals that requires explosions or something like that.
Resource mining, large structure demolitions, SFX pyrotechnics for film, television, and stage. Exploratory and scientific rocketry, rescue flares, backup generators, trains, industrial diamonds like the ones on diamond-tipped tools.
Essentially what this guy wished for was a full arrest on rapid exothermic reactions which are used in many manufacturing processes, scientific experiments, and life. Hell, I just checked and technically the process that causes things to explode is roughly the same one used by our cells to process ATP into energy for the persistence of our life (and most other non-fungal and non-plant life).
I actually never said that. I said backfiring cars. You are changing my words to fit physics, instead of looking at a genie wish being magical. But okay, if we change my request to fit that all, not just loud and explosive dangerous explosions, but all explosions including the internal combustion cars don't work, then I guess we go electric engines.
But I figure I just meant what I said, I guess you are in charge of monkey paws?
The minds of all living things on Earth are connected as one giant hivemind. The thoughts aren't an overwhelming barrage, but rather a collective experience.
All cars are now have a perfect implementation of self driving.
All traffic is now gone. Road rage, gone. People everywhere are happier. Commutes suck less. People take more road trips to see more outside their comfort zone. Lyft and Uber really explode, no more driver needed, just summon a car and go.
I would not teleport even if I could. I don't want to die only to be replaced by a clone that thinks its the original me. Give me a portal I can step though, and I'll step through it, but outright teleportation is a no from me :)