Eplosions just… don’t.
Guns cannot fire, bombs no longer boom, backfiring cars and fireworks don’t make that noise.
People have to resort to hand-killing their enemies, not strafing children and saying their parents deserved it or something.
It won’t solve world problems, but it is a start.
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 don’t think the world would be better off without the giant explosion we call the sun.
Bye bye rockets and space exploration!
Also internal combustion engines won’t.
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?
Sorry I offended you. What are monkey paws?
The original Monkey Paw is a story where people get wishes while holding a mummified hand. It counts down remaining wishes with its fingers. But every wish gives the result asked for, but doesn’t fulfil the spirit of the sish, just a literal truth and a nice large handful of bad luck to go with.
For example, you wish for millions if dollars. The finger folds… And a loved one dies, leaving you with a massive insurance policy payout. You get the money but are massively bereaved and you are the killer!
These days a monkey paw is often thought of as someone who gives whilst taking away, but any granting of a wish while ruining the spirit of the idea qualifies. Like deciding I wasn’t specific enough about my explosion damper, and taking out internal combustion cars, and even the sun, with the same hand as removing bombs…
A ubi funded by a hefty carbon tax on big polluters.
I’m always getting UBI and UTI mixed up.
Both are small things with huge positive impact.
Urinary Bract Infection
Three more genies.
A black hole about 2cm across filled entirely with protons.
Pretty sure they are not protons anymore once something is inside it.
The positive charge would remain though
Is that so? I assumed that a small black hole would rip apart a proton through spaghettification, therefore it won’t have two up quarks and one down quark. But even if the charge remains, such information can’t escape therefore its electric charge won’t influence the universe.
I might need to read up more on this.
Yup, there’s a theorem (“no-hair theorem”) that the only information about a black hole which does influence the universe is its mass, spin, and electric charge.
Oh, I stand corrected.
You may be right, but I have yet to have evidence to the contrary.
Why?
Well, a black hole 2cm in diameter is basically the mass of the Earth, and protons are positive. Gravity would attract the two, so the black hole would impact the earth. Criteria are fulfilled. It’s the biggest positive impact.
People regain the ability to agree to disagree, and stop hating each other over political issues.
I feel like that one could go wrong. There’s regions where slavery is still de-facto legal, isn’t it awful to just let that slide as their opinion?
You mean the United States of America, right? Because slavery is still legal here.
Sure, if you count prisoners. The US has a ridiculous prison population and a lot of them are made to work; sometimes even for private entities.
Point made, back to the topic.
Isn’t slavery universally panned, though?
Nope. Well, mostly, but there are a few regions where the tradition is still going. Mauritania only banned slavery in like 2003, and the law is basically a joke. Foreign journalists will tell stories about visiting and being served by rough people dressed in rags, until the host notices them staring and gets nervous.
The gulf states are also famous for having slaves, although in that case it has more to do with cost savings and a lack of scruples, and I don’t think they would call them slaves, just workers-who-have-to-work-and-can’t-leave. There’s various forms of forced labour in probably most places too, but it’s a matter of definition if prison labour or indentured labour count as slavery (which is usually what they’re counting when they put out figures with a giant number of modern slaves).
I wonder what it would take to completely erase the practice from the human condition.
A few more decades, assuming all goes well and there’s a crackdown on places like the gulf (that situation only exists because the US military umbrella protects the local royals). Mauritania is not a populous country, and in other poor countries you have to go seriously backwoods before people are able to even somewhat-openly keep slaves, so it’s not like the progress made is negligible.
And of course there’s cases where some guy (or guys) lock somebody in their basement, but if it’s ended and the offenders punished immediately upon it coming to light, I’d argue we should count that as a sort of background noise that can’t be avoided.
You could roll back the internet to pre 2.0, removing the ability for people to engage with each other outside of real life.
And religious beliefs
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.”
That would be nice, but to be fair, it’s also a bit more than “agree to disagree”
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.
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.
With a baseline minimum empathy. Cause damn, some people really bottom out that needle.
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.
Some ambiant temperature supraconductors
The invention of a small easily producible power source that never runs out and has enough power to power vehicles/planes/vessels of all kinds.
RTG enters the chat.
maybe not easily producible, but RTGs almost fit the bill
Elimination of the tribal parts of the brain that want to go to war.
End speciesism
To remove the desire for power over others.
Make everyone understand basic propositional and predicate logic.
One sophon we get to fly around the universe looking at stuff.
I’d say that’s the most benefit to mass ratio and therefore it’s a small thing that would really help the world out
People will just use it to perv on each other.
That’s what I’m talking about man. We can finally get some Washington DC nudes and make the world a better place.
Just think: Hillary Clinton, Mitch McConnell, even Nancy Pelosi and Ariel Sharon in the buff!
Kill all humans
Eliminate all monotheistic religions.
That’s not a small thing.
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.
I think that religion is the reason that’s often used to mask simpler motives; people want other people’s stuff–their land, their wealth, their resources–without having to expend work to get it themselves. Or perhaps they can’t get what they want/need without taking it from their neighbors. For instance, Japan is a very small country, and seriously lacks natural resources; in order to compete internationally, they needed to become an expansionist empire in the late 1800s/early 1900s, which led to them bombing Pearl Harbor in order to attempt to stop our imperial ambitions in the Pacific. Sure, Japan made claims about the emperor being divine, but it was fundamentally about resources.
Of course you can find examples of conflicts not motivated by religion. But do you think that for example Balkans would be such a shit show if all the nations involved had the same religion? They have the same ethnicity and similar language. What’s the divisive factor there? The rest of the Soviet Union managed to transition peacefully. Why is that? And what about the crusades? Was the motivation really the land? Or simply religion? What about missionaries and all the harm they have caused? Did any polytheistic religion had missionaries? I don’t think so.
And before you start listing other wars and crimes not motivated by religion I’m obviously not saying that without monotheism the world would be perfect. I’m just saying it would be better.
But I think that monotheistic religions throughout history were one of the most divisive factors among people that otherwise would get along just fine.
Yes, I believe this is the part that got you oh buddy’d. People make religions, they are a reflection in the mirror. Trying to solve the history of humanity by excising monotheism is like trying to convince your reflection to stop scowling at you
So you don’t think religion often drives a wedge between groups of people that otherwise would live together without issues? Well, I disagree. And of course there are other reasons for people to hate one another but ‘my made up guy in the sky is better than your made up guy in the sky’ is the dumbest one.
So you don’t think religion often drives a wedge between groups of people that otherwise would live together without issues?
Is that what I said? Don’t strawman me.
Let me put it this way instead: given any system of self-replicating information, be it DNA or gospel, you will observe convergent evolution. If the environment offers a productive niche, then it’s only a matter of time before that niche gets exploited. Monotheism isn’t a tragic freak accident – it’s an inevitable response to an unexploited niche. Wishing it away is pointless because then something nearly identical would spring up to replace it. If one wishes to alter the reflection (i.e.: culture), then they must direct their focus upon the subject therein (i.e.: human society)
