Superpowers - and their Downsides

[DataNinja]

OK, don't think about neon green earthworms. Does that bypass your thought process?

All that makes me think of are Gummi worms.

[golentan]

OK, don't think about neon green earthworms. Does that bypass your thought process?

In what way is that relevant to the fact your brain does have filters to prevent breakdown.

As an example: Ever have a beloved pet die? If so, I bet you just thought about them, and it was probably mildly painful if you're like me at all. I bet you have years of memories, which you can call up if you think about it. Probably reams of technical information on the care and maintenance of your pet, if you think about it in that way. The stories probably spin off and encompass your friends, and your family, and other tales from your social network, if you choose to frame it like that. The technical data spins off into your knowledge of how to eat right, how to structure your day around meals, what medicines you gave your pet when they got sick, what medicines you take for when you're sick, high school biology stuff (organs, cells, hormones). Times you may have been hospitalized, other stories, maybe involving friends and family, which lead back into other technical information (the book your father recommended, the class you took where you met your best friend, the training video for the job where you met your significant other). Whatever it is, I don't know your story, you've got whole worlds up in your head, and you can spin off down constantly spiraling paths through your memory if you want, but I bet you can pull up something. Maybe the first time you heard that stupid, stupid cliche "don't think about pink elephants?"

Has your head exploded? Has the total technical knowledge you have accumulated brought you to your knees? Has the remembered pain of lost loved things crippled you?

No? You're still here, with us and at least capable of a mask of sanity?

Let me guess, your brain picked through things one at a time, chose whether to pick up an individual thread or not, and when you had too many memories going at once you found some of them dropping off your consciousness, and the pain of knowing was not as severe as the moment you were in the moment?

Congratulations, you have confirmed the existence of the human working memory buffer, which can hold roughly 5 to 9 concepts. Even those exceedingly rare, one in a billion souls with a true "photographic memory" think about things 5-to-9 concepts at a time, and don't find their consciousness broken by the existence of 5 to 90 years of brushing their teeth or the complete text of every book they've read lodged in their memory.

[Xanyo]

Ways knowing too much can be bad: 1)If you're a germaphobe. 2)If you had some delusions you liked having(e.g. you thought Y was going well, but it's actually falling to pieces) 3)If you're a germaphobe. 4)If you like knowing everything(I don't want to know the future, or even all of the present. It's not very fun) 5)If you're a germaphobe

Sidenote: Of the 5-9 memory slots in my head, at any given time, at least 3 of them are occupied by D&D.

[Razade]

If you knew everything you wouldn't be a germaphobe because you'd know how to cure yourself of that phobia.

[Bohandas]

Stopping Time
You have all of the problems of superspeed and more. For instance: the light is not moving. In order to see properly you would have to be able to move at the speed of light(effectively) straight ahead, and even then it'll probably be blurry. So you're blind. And deaf. And you can't breath in the same place twice or you'll get a lungful of carbon dioxide. This can still be useful though, if only to get a moment to rest.
I'd still want this if we can evade the matters of acceleration and air friction

This was actually covered in the Discworld novel The Thief of Time. The time monks could manipulate time to make time stand still for them (or nearly so) but only a few could do much with it as they were hemmed in by air resistance, their surroundings were effectively much colder, and the fact that they were moving faster than most objects can deform meant that walking on a field of grass was like walking on metal spikes

[Flickerdart]

If you knew everything you wouldn't be a germaphobe because you'd know how to cure yourself of that phobia.

You'd also know that there are germs inside you and all over your skin and even eyeballs but it hasn't exactly impacted you in any negative way.

[S@tanicoaldo]

Weather Manipulation.

Stop the rain and make a nice sunny day for your picnic.

Cause a tsunami the other side of the globe.

[Flickerdart]

Weather Manipulation.

Stop the rain and make a nice sunny day for your picnic.

Cause a tsunami the other side of the globe.

I'm reasonably certain that's not really how it works, and if it did, then your power would be making tsunamis and the weather part would be a small perk for the antipode of your wrath.

[Celestia]

Wolverine Speed Healing
Super healing! Too bad it doesn't come with pain resistance!
And remember, you can't heal from dying, so if your head gets obliterated, tough luck. Probably.

Point taken, but I've got another thing. If we assume that all areas of the body heal at the same speed, an object that is embedded in you(e.g. a bullet) will not be pushed out, and surgeons probably won't be able to get it out. Also, the point of fast healing is to recover from any injury, correct? Too bad you won't recover from a very poisonous bite. Repairing your body doesn't help much when, say, your veins are clotted up.

I'm calling serious shenanigans here. You're implying that super healing is awful because it doesn't heal certain things? Newsflash: normal healing doesn't heal those things, either. You're not losing anything by acquiring super healing. It's not like you suddenly become vulnerable to that venom. It would have killed you, anyways. That's not a downside. You're literally saying that super healing is bad because it doesn't do enough. You're turning down a $2 million a year job because it doesn't pay $2.5 million a year.

Also, that whole bullet thing? That's not an issue. In virtually all cases of gun related injury, the bullet is not removed from the body because it is rarely ever necessary. In fact, trying to remove the bullet will almost certainly cause unnecessary damage and will only make things worse. That's how President Garfield died.

[Xanyo]

The point of this thread isn't to say why you would be worse off with some power. The point is that there are downsides to powers, and I want to point them out. Some powers would still be awesome.
I would love to stop time, even if it made me blind and deaf.

[Frozen_Feet]

Lacking required secondary superpowers isn't the same as a superpower having downsides. For example, your healing factor not coming with pain resistance is not a downside, it's just normal. An actual downside would be logical follow-up, such as inability to get lasting tattoos or other body modifications.

However, in addition to downsides, some people plain don't get that some things they expect a superpower to grant them are complete non-sequiturs. In effect, people mistake the superpower for a completely different one.

Omniscience is frequent victim of this. People mistake it for "bullsh*tting your way to victory", which it is not. Razade was guilty of this when he assumed omniscience would allow a person to cure their phobia.

Not so. Omniscience follows from omnipotence, but the reverse is not true. Knowing all there is to know does not in itself entail any ability to do something about it. To use an analogy, imagine having full knowledge of Free Cell. You always know if a game is winnable and the fastest way to win it. However, this does not mean you can win each and every game, because some Free Cell games are literally unwinnable.

Similarly, the germaphobe could be so badly crippled by the knowledge of the germs all around that their insanity makes them too dysfunctional to utilize their great knowledge for anything. Or they might be stuck with the absolute knowledge that there is no cure save a bullet to the head.

The same, of course, applies to all knowledge-based and sense-based superpowers. Just because you see something coming doesn't always mean you can move out of the way.

Immortality is another big victim. People frequently assume it grants you a lot of secondary superpowers which have nill to do with being hard to kill or eternally young. For example, a lot of people assume that they would, without fail, master every skill there is to learn. They have the time, right? But just having time does not give you the motivation and other traits required to effectively learn. Living long in itself does not make you wiser, it doesn't make you smarter, it doesn't give you infinite memory. It doesn't prevent older skills from rusting or being forgotten as you try for new ones. If you were a nitwit when you became immortal, chances are you will remain a nitwit for all eternity.

Another assumption wannabe immortals make is that no matter how horrible a situation they land in, they will always get out. This is pure wishful thinking. It is entirely possible to get buried so deep underground that human race will go extinct before anyone thinks to dig you out. You will only be freed when a natural catastrophe destroys the Earth... at which point you will be floating in vacuum or trapped inside a sun, still without any agency to control your fate. "Immortality" is not "I will win eventually". It's possible to be immortal and still be trapped in an unwinnable scenario.

Related to above, neither does immortality logically entail great mental fortitude. So if you end up in such scenario, chances are you will be wishing you could die.

Wishes granted by supernatural beings suffers too, but in a slightly different way. Namely, people mistake wishing for "fix society" button or "create infinite material good" button due to failure to consider what the existence of the supernatural being means. For example, if an angel stops to give you a wish, you might want to reconsider your cheap materialist ways before wishing for ten billion dollars. Just sayin'.

Other spiritual powers, notably Necromancy, fall victim to this too. Question: do your awesome magick powers involve doing irreparable damage to someone's soul, or taint the world with metaphysical essence of evil? Then no, you cannot use your undead servants to replace electricity, or whatever other silly crap you thought of. And don't give me that "for the greater good" or "maximizing human happiness" crap. Utilitarianism and other naive consequentalist ethics were defenestrated the moment genuine spirits made an appearance.

[S@tanicoaldo]

Necromancy is actually just talking to dead people.

[Bohandas]

Omniscience follows from omnipotence

Not necessarily. They could be technically omnipotent but too incompetent to use it effectively, including usage to increase intelligence.

[Bohandas]

Immortality is another big victim. People frequently assume it grants you a lot of secondary superpowers which have nill to do with being hard to kill or eternally young. For example, a lot of people assume that they would, without fail, master every skill there is to learn. They have the time, right? But just having time does not give you the motivation and other traits required to effectively learn. Living long in itself does not make you wiser, it doesn't make you smarter, it doesn't give you infinite memory. It doesn't prevent older skills from rusting or being forgotten as you try for new ones. If you were a nitwit when you became immortal, chances are you will remain a nitwit for all eternity.

Another assumption wannabe immortals make is that no matter how horrible a situation they land in, they will always get out. This is pure wishful thinking. It is entirely possible to get buried so deep underground that human race will go extinct before anyone thinks to dig you out. You will only be freed when a natural catastrophe destroys the Earth... at which point you will be floating in vacuum or trapped inside a sun, still without any agency to control your fate. "Immortality" is not "I will win eventually". It's possible to be immortal and still be trapped in an unwinnable scenario.

Related to above, neither does immortality logically entail great mental fortitude. So if you end up in such scenario, chances are you will be wishing you could die.

Gulliver's Travels had the "struldbrugs", who were immortal but were still subject to aging and thus spent the greater part of eternity enfeebled, senile, and in a semi-vegetative state

[Frozen_Feet]

Necromancy is actually just talking to dead people.

... no.

Even discounting all the additional baggage the word has accumulated in later years, the point of necromancy is not talking to dead people, it's that they can talk to you. And this immediately raises a heap of questions: if they're dead, how are they doing this? If their body is destroyed or absent, what are you even communicating with? Is it their soul? If so, where was that soul before you began the talk and how did it get here? What did you do to create this situation where a person normally incapable of communication is now communicating with you?

So on and so forth. It doesn't take a whole lot for the implications to become very ugly. "Just" has no place in this discussion.

Not necessarily. They could be technically omnipotent but too incompetent to use it effectively, including usage to increase intelligence.

The ability to do everything possible necessarily entails knowledge of how to do everything possible. For an omnipotent being, the level of incompetence you describe here would require willfull stupidity.

It'd be like a pyrokinetic who only shoots fire at things that won't burn. "Can set things on fire" still logically follows from "can control flame", even if the pyrokinetic never demonstrates such use.

[Orcus The Vile]

... no.

Even discounting all the additional baggage the word has accumulated in later years, the point of necromancy is not talking to dead people, it's that they can talk to you. And this immediately raises a heap of questions: if they're dead, how are they doing this? If their body is destroyed or absent, what are you even communicating with? Is it their soul? If so, where was that soul before you began the talk and how did it get here? What did you do to create this situation where a person normally incapable of communication is now communicating with you?

So on and so forth. It doesn't take a whole lot for the implications to become very ugly. "Just" has no place in this discussion.


The ability to do everything possible necessarily entails knowledge of how to do everything possible. For an omnipotent being, the level of incompetence you describe here would require willfull stupidity.

It'd be like a pyrokinetic who only shoots fire at things that won't burn. "Can set things on fire" still logically follows from "can control flame", even if the pyrokinetic never demonstrates such use.

Well, if you want to be technical, necromancy is the practice of talking to the spirits of dead people, and that is not necessary evil, in many cultures is part of their faith.

A necromancer can serve as a very important member of the community.

Spoiler

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Although that power may have some bad side effects.

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And a pyrokinetic if you want to be technical, they just set fire on fire with their mind, they have "the ability to excite the molecules within an object until they generate enough energy to burst into flame" the control flames part was only added much later.

[Bohandas]

It'd be like a pyrokinetic who only shoots fire at things that won't burn. "Can set things on fire" still logically follows from "can control flame", even if the pyrokinetic never demonstrates such use.

No, it'd be more like the pyrokinetic girl from Hellboy, who could set things on fire with her mind but had only limited control of which things and when.

Or a bit like Cyclops from the X-men just with lasers swapped out for fire.

[Bohandas]

Necromancy is actually just talking to dead people.

I thought it was any type of fortune telling involving death or dead people

[cildan]

Also with Super Healing or Regeneration, means you can't have lasting tattoos as someone mentioned, also impossible to get drunk, or have operations with anesthetic.

[Chen]

Also with Super Healing or Regeneration, means you can't have lasting tattoos as someone mentioned, also impossible to get drunk, or have operations with anesthetic.

I'm not sure about tattoos. Part of the mechanism that keeps the ink at the spot you put it is the body's own reaction to the foreign substance. One would imagine the tattoo would just heal up and be in its final condition much quicker with someone who had an advanced healing factor. I suppose if its the type that would expel foreign substances it wouldn't work of course. Drunkenness or anesthetic wouldn't work if the healing factor was just metabolism based, but any type of mystical super healing would still work. It's also possible that super healing would be of the type where only the wounds or direct area that needed healing would have the increased metabolism and thus wouldn't necessarily disallow getting drunk or having an anesthetic.

[S@tanicoaldo]

... no.

Even discounting all the additional baggage the word has accumulated in later years, the point of necromancy is not talking to dead people, it's that they can talk to you. And this immediately raises a heap of questions: if they're dead, how are they doing this? If their body is destroyed or absent, what are you even communicating with? Is it their soul? If so, where was that soul before you began the talk and how did it get here? What did you do to create this situation where a person normally incapable of communication is now communicating with you?

These are the best links for you: [LINK] and [LINK]

[Frozen_Feet]

Considering those trope pages don't meaningfully address any of the questions I posed, I must conclude you completely missed the point.

[Bohandas]

OK, don't think about neon green earthworms. Does that bypass your thought process?

That works even worse. It has to be something the person already has a stock image of in their head

[JobsforFun]

With the speed healing is that also taking into account how Wolverine regenerated from a single drop of blood/cell at one point in time?

[Strigon]

Also with Super Healing or Regeneration, means you can't have lasting tattoos as someone mentioned, also impossible to get drunk, or have operations with anesthetic.

That's only if you're also immune to poisons. Which would in many cases make you immune to illnesses as well. And once you're immune to disease, and you heal almost instantly, how many operations do you expect to have?

[Xanyo]

That's only if you're also immune to poisons. Which would in many cases make you immune to illnesses as well. And once you're immune to disease, and you heal almost instantly, how many operations do you expect to have?

Some things can't be healed naturally. Brain death, DNA mutations, various things that change how the body does stuff, etc. You won't heal from cancer, for example. In fact, the healing may aggravate the cancer, accelerating its growth. Better stick to a vegan diet. And hope that's enough.

[Strigon]

Some things can't be healed naturally. Brain death, DNA mutations, various things that change how the body does stuff, etc. You won't heal from cancer, for example. In fact, the healing may aggravate the cancer, accelerating its growth. Better stick to a vegan diet. And hope that's enough.

It depends largely on what you mean by "healing". If you just meant "everything your body does to repair itself is now done more effectively", then that would include your body's natural defences against cancer, making it less likely.

But I was saying that, if you're immune to poison, and the healing factor includes regenerating dead cells (it would be a shoddy healing factor if it didn't), then most illnesses aren't a concern. Bacteria mostly kill, as I understand it, because they produce toxins. Viruses destroy cells in an attempt to replicate themselves. The only thing you'd still feel would be your own autoimmune response - things like a fever.
Which leads to the brain death portion; you're right, of course, but every infection is a race against time. Either the infection kills you, or your own immune system kills the infection. But an infection would have a hard time shutting down organs, or causing brain death, when it's being constantly regenerated. Your antibodies would finish them off before it got to that stage.

The only thing that leaves is cancer - which sucks, admittedly, especially if you're immune to poison (chemo is right out). But as for how it would interact - making it more or less likely, or even impossible/certain - depends on the mechanism your healing factor is using.

[Flickerdart]

If you have super-healing and get the flu, will you also have a super-fever?

[HandofShadows]

If you have super-healing and get the flu, will you also have a super-fever?

I think there are two possibilities with super healing and the flu. Either you get sick as a normal person would as the super healing does not work with an infectiouse disease (It's super healing, not super immunse system). Or you don't get sick at all since the flu bug can't infect the person's cells to replicate itself.

[SaintRidley]

For a more down to earth and realistic super power and its downside:

Looking 40 from age 20 to age 70
Hey, you're a living fountain of not-quite-youth! You won't get carded for beer, and you look quite young for your age for quite a long time.

But you spend your 20s looking 40. Not fun.