(Part of the 20minute blog challenge)
Yesterday a good friend of mine sent me the picture below with the following text message: “Hi Jur, I know you like thought experiments so that’s why I’m wondering which injection you would pick?”
Below is an overview of the answer I wrote back to my friend.
There are only two potential good answers to this question.
So which ones are just a waste of an injection?
Teleport to any Airport.
I can imagine for people that would love to travel the world, this might sound like an extremely amazing option, but you would be totally utterly wrong.
Think of it this way. What if you picked duplicate money. If you started at 1$, within 50 duplications of that amount you would have more than 100 billion dollars. So when we stick to traveling, what can you do with this money?
First of you could be less selfish than just going for a superpower which you wield only by yourself. Travel is fun because you do it with the ones you love. What is an experience when the only one to experience it with, is yourself? With the 100 billion dollars I would buy a Boeing 747 and fly my entire family out to all the beautiful places in the world. On the way there I would talk with doctors, scientist, innovators, and changemakers on how to spend the money on issues that would benefit the world as a whole.
So teleportation is a selfish choice.
Infinite stamina
This is probably the most useful shot of all of them. Unless you want to be the best at running Spartan Races or marathons… I do not see any use for this super power?
Breathing Underwater
Unless you are a marine biologist or a deep sea diver, I do not see any use for this skill. And again if you love the ocean or marine biology, the infinite money option would be a less selfish act since it would grant you the means of massively cleaning up the ocean and the ability the really preserve wildlife.
Also very useless.
Master any language
In a way, I can understand why people would want this. But for how long will this super power be cool? There are many start-ups right now tackling language barriers. There are companies out there that have the tachnology (special earphones) that can translate conversations of foreign languages in real-time. It will only be a matter of years for language not being a barrier anymore for people all over the world to communicate with each other. So now this is cool, but in ten years you will just be the only one guy on the block that isn’t wearing tiny earphones when listening to a tour-guide speak when in a foreign country. Wooptidoo for that!
So now this is cool, but in ten years you will just be the only one guy on the block that isn’t wearing tiny earphones when listening to a tour-guide when in a foreign country. Wooptidoo for that!
So that leaves me with the final two potential picks:
Instant healing & Duplicate money
But the rule is, you can only take one injection. So you must pick a winner.
Let’s take a look at instant health. What are the pro’s: Well, you’re basically immortal.
You would have the ability to heal yourself to a specific age, that is because age is just nothing more than your body wearing off and losing the ability for cells to heal themselves at the same rate. Being able to heal yourself means you could potentially live forever. You could live through thousands of years and get to have the most incredible life experience a human on this planet will ever have. You get to explore the entire years. You get to have 100’s of different career paths. You get to write all the books you’d like and you get to watch all the movies you wanted since you have unlimited time, that’s pretty cool.
But wait, there should be a drawback, right? And yes there is. When you have unlimited time, this does not mean the people around you have unlimited time too. The ones you love, the people around you, they will all be living a normal human life. Peoples life expectancy might go up, but still, the ones you’d love will die. And you will be left alone with only memories of the people you love. I would not want to have such a life. A life in which everyone around you disappears and you stay behind. I think you would go crazy.
He is so money hungry…
Oke oke, there we go. “Juriaan has tricked me into believing that duplicating money is the best choice.”
Please hear me out. Let me explain to you why. Having the ability to duplicate money will be the most selfless superpower of all. Unfortunately, we live in a world where money makes it go round. If you want to accomplish something, cold hard cash makes it happen. Unless you want to bend rules of doing illegal stuff of course.
Let me explain to you why. Having the ability to duplicate money will be the most selfless superpower of all. Unfortunately, we live in a world where money makes it go round. If you want to accomplish something, cold hard cash makes it happen. From the utmost good to the despicable evil. This means that this superpower comes with great responsibility.
If you wanted to end world hunger, you could save millions of children with money. If you wanted to increase education levels in certain areas of the world, you could build a school every 10 miles and fly out educated teachers and pay them a very good wage. And I can think of hundreds of other amazing deeds you can accomplish with unlimited money.
Money gives you the power to change the world for the better. It grants you the power to stop famine, to stop the disease, to explore space for more habitable planets, it would accelerate science and innovation. When wielded correctly, the money injection can do more good than all the others combined.
So I would pick duplicate money and spend it all to come up with solutions for global problems. The entire human race would benefit from one man taking this injection.
So in the end I asked my friend which one he would pick. He said teleportation and I don’t blame him.