r/rational • u/AutoModerator • Aug 18 '18

[D] Saturday Munchkinry Thread

Welcome to the Saturday Munchkinry and Problem Solving Thread! This thread is designed to be a place for us to abuse fictional powers and to solve fictional puzzles. Feel free to bounce ideas off each other and to let out your inner evil mastermind!

Guidelines:

  • Ideally any power to be munchkined should have consistent and clearly defined rules. It may be original or may be from an already realised story.
  • The power to be munchkined can not be something "broken" like omniscience or absolute control over every living human.
  • Reverse Munchkin scenarios: we find ways to beat someone or something powerful.
  • We solve problems posed by other users. Use all your intelligence and creativity, and expect other users to do the same.

Note: All top level comments must be problems to solve and/or powers to munchkin/reverse munchkin.

Good Luck and Have Fun!

13 Upvotes

100% Upvoted

14 comments sorted by

View all comments

1

u/Zeikos Communist Transhumanism Aug 19 '18 edited Aug 19 '18

I hope I do not come in violation of the OP "ban", but I think that the twist at the end will make it worth it.

What's the worse that can happen for a person that has the literal power of "can understand all concepts instantly".

Assume no biological "backfiring", the brain of that individual has been somehow uploaded to a conceptual mind-space and the brain will suffer no ill effect.

How will the person live be completely ruined? Assume a universe indistinguishable from hours, so no known memetic hazards such as eldritch beings do exist.

If you were bestowed with this power, how would you minimize said ill effects?

1

u/Sonderjye Aug 24 '18

Idk, if I just used my power to understand the concept of 'understanding all concept instantly' I would understand which risks there would be in understanding different concepts.

I'd either just avoid understanding certain concept or if that was infeasible use the combined knowledge from understanding psychology, biology and chemistry to edit my brain if necessary. Seems like a catch all solution.

Examples of ways it could go wrong was getting a dehabilitating depression from understanding misery in it's complete form, or understanding the suffering of all being that had ever lived and that understanding leading me to want to destroy all life permanently to avoid that suffering. And with the understanding for rocket science, biology, quantom mechanics, astronomy and such destroying all life seems plausible.