The ten pills
hey everyone! found this interesting post on /r/6perks, and i wanted to share it here and see what ideas get shared.
You wake up in a chemist's lab. In front of you is a table with 10 different-coloured pills. You may only choose 3. A warning label notifies you that taking more than 3 will cause instant combustion.
Which do you choose, and why?
🔵 Future Pill 🔵
You can see 10 years into the future or any time sooner, whenever you want. You can see any part of the world.
🔴 Xray Pill 🔴
You gain the ability to see through anything as far as you can normally see. Works at any layer.
🔸 Fly Pill 🔸
You can fly. You start at a slow speed and require time to speed up to a maximum of 100mph (161kph). You are not immune to low oxygen or harsh temperatures.
🌿 Drug Pill 🌿
You gain the ability to automatically be affected by any drug that exists as much as you want, no bad side effects.
❤ Sex Appeal Pill ❤
Anyone you want is instantly attracted to you, you are cured of and immune to STD's. Anyone who you "do" also becomes immune, and son on. Cure the world?
💠 Disease Immune Pill 💠
Gives you the ability to become immune to all harmful diseases.
💰 Money Pill 💰
You don't become rich, nor have infinite money, but it's like you do. Every time you want to do or have something, your bank account/wallet has exactly as much money as you need.
💮 Wish Pill 💮
Gives you the ability to wish for one of two things: any existing object to be teleported in front of you, or for you to be teleported wherever you want. Can only be used once a week. You get a free return ticket if you teleported somewhere. You cannot wish for other pills.
♠️ Death Pill ♠️
Gives you the ability to have any person of your choice killed, with no risk of consequence. Can only be used once every 5 weeks.
🌟 Painproof Pill 🌟
You are tougher than Wolverine after drinking green tea or eating spinach. You can still get hurt but you have Olympian-like physique, the skills of the greatest martial artists in the world, you are twice as fast, and your wounds regenerate very quickly.
I'd definitely go for the Future Pill. A few judicious investments made with that knowledge takes care of money, forever. The money takes care of just about everything else.
It'd be a bit boring if it's a static future that you cannot change. If you could change it, though, and see that change represented in the visions day to day so you can study the effects of your actions unfolding as the single element changing those visions, it'd be very interesting. With that kind of knowledge you could achieve any goals you wanted.
After that... I'd go for disease immunity and stop worrying about smoking. Then painproof/wolverine. The life you'd be living knowing the future could get pretty dangerous, makes it seem prudent... and I love green tea, already drink it all the time.
The combo of Future/Death/Wish seems pretty effective as well, if you wanted to silently kill off psychopaths fucking up the world. You'd be able to kill people before they go on a shooting spree, or wreck a country, etc. That also depends on how exactly the Future Pill works.
Well the last bit seems a bit reminiscent of Death Note, but everything else I'd agree with. I'd skip the future pill if the future's static though; The knowledge would be nice but knowing what was coming and that I couldn't change it would probably drive me nuts. (side note: Is there something bad about green tea? I drink it all the time and never heard anything bad about it)
I think this is a rather... stunted version of this game. There's a clear 'solution' here with the Future pill being OP as fuck. We need more pills with more power to make this more interesting. How about...
Polyglot pill: You can understand and speak and read and write all languages, past or present, in a manner that is indecipherable from native speakers of that language. This ability also extends to cryptography and symbology. Those puzzles simply disappear for you. You can also learn new languages immediately should you encounter them, and even design/develop new languages for fun. Note: This also extends to programming languages and to mathematics which is a language.
Virtuoso pill: You gain deep understanding of music, and the ability to play every musical instrument without training at a level comparable to the people who dedicate eight hours a day for their entire lives to this task. You can also summon the inspiration to compose one masterpiece every year.
Diplomancer pill: You gain an unfailing understanding of what people mean when they speak, and know the right words to explain to them any concepts or ideas in a way that gets past their own biases and ignorance. You are the most persuasive, emphatic, charismatic, and well spoken orator the world has ever seen.
Savant pill: You learn as if by osmosis - everything you've ever seen even in passing is mentally at your fingertips. You can learn fields of study that require decades of commitment in mere days and at a level most people fail to achieve simply because you internalize it all instantly. You remember everything and your mind is a bubbling cocktail of useful information. See Limitless. You need to sleep a minimum of ten hours a day, though, and have a high calorie intake.
Genius pill: You are gifted with insight beyond human understanding. There isn't an IQ test created by man that can even judge your ability - you are permanently off of all of the charts. If something can be figured out, you can figure it out, and fairly quickly. Aha! moments are available to you once a month, showing you the way forward on tough problems. You have some difficulty relating to normal people, though, because you no longer see the world as they do.
Temporal pill: Your body no longer ages, and in fact you can choose what 'age' you wish to be. You are not immortal, having a bus dropped on you would still kill you - but time has no hold over you. This pill also grants you the ability to travel in time, but you can only make one jump a week, a maximum of ten years and ten miles for each jump (with no risk of death/trouble when jumping). You can't alter the past - everything you'd go back to 'do' already has its outcome in the history books. Try to kill Hitler, and you'll fail, or another time traveler will simply take his place and play out his role in history.
Horizon pill: You have the ability to move anywhere you wish on the same planet as easily and safely as walking through a door from one room to another. There are no limits on this ability - you can simply disappear from one place and appear elsewhere in the blink of an eye. You can only bring yourself and what you are wearing along on this trip, though - no taking others with you, and no more than an extra ten pounds of material.
Let's see what others can come up with.
I suspect I would quickly drive myself insane trying to avert various consequences for my loved ones.
etc. etc.
Knowing exactly where I'll be in life 10 years in advance also strikes me as something with the potential to be overwhelmingly depressing. Sure, I could become wealthy, but that could be effectively achieved through the 'money pill.' Now I know that in 10 years I still won't [get into grad school / finish that novel / learn Spanish / and so forth.
It would be undeniably useful, but I don't think I would be able to handle so much knowledge.
I'd avoid looking myself up, and people I care about, for exactly that reason. I'd be using it more for the 'big picture' than personal knowledge.
There's another angle to this that's rather powerful as well. You could develop your own coded language for communicating with yourself, and share it with no one else. You could then write notes for the you in the past to read that no one else could intercept. This would, effectively, allow you to use your 'future' sight to read your own notes, which would contain detailed information you wanted to send back to yourself from each version of the future you were able to see. That'd confer a rather terrifying level of insight - having a future version of you investigating every possible future, providing detailed cliff notes on every timeline.
You could use this to send back the results of research, investigations, interactions and effectively treat every version you saw of the future as a flawless 10-year long simulation. The notes would detail the results. Then you'd have the knowledge without the need to actually live out that timeline to get it. It's a feedback effect.
As a thought experiment... I imagine we'd adapt, right? I mean, humans adapt to some pretty crazy stuff.
Reminds me of the wraith in Stargate Atlantis (and every bad variation of that trope in other series/movies, eg the Purge etc). In a world where humans are hunted for food on a semi-regular basis, it kinda becomes part of your life, even if it's still sad.
Think about how much we've adapted to death as is. This concept that people who take decades to "build up", create relationships on the way, etc... just stop existing. That it happens to absolutely everyone, yourself included. We don't think about it too much. We like to replace that thought with "Maybe it's all a dream and when I die I wake up". Or "Maybe I'll go to heaven". "I'll become someone else". Etc.
So you start seeing future deaths, ills and accidents. You frantically try to stop everything until you realize that you can't, and at some point you develop an intuition for when it's worth even trying. You can't be everyone's helicopter parent, right?
I love Amarok's new pills, though. The Fly Pill is tempting but the Future Pill was the only choice. Polyglot, Savant and Genius are kind of variations of the same theme, though, right? Polyglot feels like it's all three.
Maybe I'll take a Genius Pill and figure out a way to game the system and take the other ones as well ...
The Savant Pill and Genius Pill seem a little too similar. In fact The Polyglot Pill, Virtuoso Pill, and Diplomancer Pill all seem like the Savant Pill or Genius Pill but specialized.
That being said I still feel that the Temporal Pill is the most powerful. I can possibly travel to the future and transfer my consciousness to a cybernetic or bioengineered body that is far superior to a normal human body.
That's the point. By choosing certain pills, you're sharing something about yourself: what you desire most. It's just presented in a more fun format than a psychological test with multiple choice questions.
I can quickly eliminate a few pills: death, painproof, drugs. These have no interest to me. I don't want to kill people (that's against my ethics), I don't live the sort of life which requires a super physique, and I don't do drugs.
It's not like I live in a place with rampant epidemics, and modern medicine can cure most things anyway, so I don't really need an immunity pill. I'm not sure what I would use X-ray vision for. The flying pill is intriguing, but there are other ways to travel.
So that leaves me with: future pill, sex appeal pill, wish pill, money pill.
The money pill can buy me anything I might wish for, so that makes the final choice easy:
Future pill
Sex appeal pill
Money pill
Even the future pill is kind of optional. Give me money and sex, and I'll be content. :)
EDIT: I just realised something about the future pill. The description says "You can see 10 years into the future or any time sooner, whenever you want".
In a short story called 'The Dead Past', Isaac Asimov pointed out that a machine for viewing the past can be set to view the past only one second ago, so it can basically be used as a spying machine in real time. The same would apply to the future machine: if I can see whenever I want, then I can choose to see one second (or one microsecond or one nanosecond) in the future, and see anything happening in the world basically in real time. That's so much better than X-ray vision where I can see the inside of only what's in front of me! I can see anything anywhere in the world, practically as it's happening.
I've changed my mind: the future pill is not just kind of optional. It's a must-have!
Why do you feel that killing people is a less moral option than overwriting someone’s brain to make them attracted to you?
I hadn't thought about it like that. However, now that you ask...
Death is a more severe and permanent change, and deprives a person of a lot more benefits, than imposing a sexual attraction to me. It's not like the pill prevents them being attracted to other people, so they can have sex with other people, and even get married. Also, the description doesn't say that the victims will have sex with me, so it doesn't seem to remove consent. Basically, I'd become the Brad Pitt of the world: everyone would want me, but not everyone would be having sex with me. They'd just desire me from afar, unless we talked and agreed to have sex.
So, even if the sex appeal pill is immoral, it's a lot less immoral than killing someone - which deprives the person of all attraction to anyone, and removes all future pleasure, and totally removes consent.
That pill also comes with the positive side effects of reducing HIV, syphilis, the human papilloma virus, and antibiotic-resistant gonorrhea.
Also... I used to live a life where many people were sexually attracted to me, so that doesn't feel like a significant ethical change in the world. ;)
I think it depends on how much people care about the sanctity of their "self". I'm personally pretty flexible about my beliefs about who I am and what I'm really about, but I could see people who would rather die than be forced to suddenly be a (slightly) different person.
I think we've all had moments of intense emotion where we were a slightly different person. We lost ourselves in a fit of anger; we lost ourselves in our lust for a beautiful person; we lost ourselves in our depression; etc.
I don't see why it can't really be any different. Emotions have the ability to override cognitive thought (for some people more so than others). The sex appeal pill might work this way, and the person might just end up with a "walk of shame" or whatever afterwards.
Absolutely, and from the victim's perspective it wouldn't be any different, right? Same thing with the death pill. People drop dead regularly for reasons we can't really tell, so it's fine killing them.
Or maybe not? Maybe it's the fact that the person with the pill is enforcing their will on another sentient being that's the problematic thing?
Oh by no means am I arguing it's ethical or moral, that's an entirely different question altogether.
I'm just saying it's possible that the mechanism of action leaves the person feeling like they were overcome by emotion, not necessarily that they were "possessed" or acting out of their own will.
Depending on how naturally attractive the person happens to be, it might be rather confusing for the victim but I think it might be easier to process or make amends with if you feel that it was a bout of intense emotion that caused you to act the way you did.
Ok, yeah, I can see that. Ideally it wouldn't be distressing, though the original description doesn't say anything other than "attracted" which leaves a lot of room for conflicting feelings.
I think that brings up an interesting question - what if you aren't presented with the facts. What if there's the possibility that it would be distressing and there's no way to know. Would that change whether you'd take the pill or not?
I'm not sure how I feel about it, with that premise.
That's valid. I would still point out that being dead is a much bigger change to the sanctity of one's self than being attracted to someone, but... it's valid that someone would want to die rather than be forced to be sexually attracted to a person.
Yeah, and to some degree a lot of people have a view that some part of "themselves" will survive even death. Especially if you believe in any portion of your self surviving death for any reason then destruction of the self becomes a much more significant violation.
I'm personally a "You're dead, you're gone, nothing of "you" remains." person myself, but a big portion of the world might view violation of self as worse within their framework even outside of the perspective of forced sexual attraction.
Ooh, interesting thought. Does the pill just make you so attractive that no one would feel like denying? If so, would that still be like a "mind control"? How different is that from being naturally super attractive?
Besides, would it get boring to have no challenge or courtship to get with someone?
Well it says anyone, so theoretically someone who doesn't feel sexual attraction because they are asexual or not into your sex would also be overwhelmingly attracted to you. In that respect it's different from just being "naturally super attractive".
I would choose:
Future Pill: Being able to see how decisions work out ahead of time is just all around brilliant. It also would take care of money. Also being able to see sooner(say, now or very soon) and anywhere in the world is enough to justify its choice.
Disease Immune Pill: Being able to see the future won't prevent illness and illness is unpleasant. Honestly, just not getting colds would be enough for me to choose this pill. Just an all around quality of life improvement that comes with no major diseases.
Painproof Pill: The disease pill covers illness, only natural to cover the remaining weakness of injury. Plus, the "Olympian" physique would come with being more attractive. Probably wouldn't get into many fights, but If I'm strong and can see the future, I would be able to win fights even if they are stacked against me.
The ones I don't choose
XRay Pill: Interesting, but I would probably see things I don't want to and is quite unethical. Also the future pill can more or less equal it.
Fly Pill: Pretty useful, but draws a lot of attention to yourself. No one knows you can see the future, people can tell you're flying.
Drug Pill: Not interested, I don't do drugs (unless you count sugar). Being immune to disease also takes care of prescription needs. I figured that using it to get the other pills would be to much of a cheat, even by my standards
Sex Appeal: Not super interested, and I don't think I would need anything not covered by the painproof pill.
Money Pill: Covered by future pill after a little bit, and less versatile.
Wish Pill: Great option, nothing against it, but not worth giving one up
Death Pill: Super unethical, I would probably be drowned in guilt in all but a few use cases. Maybe using it to kill dictators would be a good route. hmmm.
I guess a nice alternative if you want to really change the world, rather than your life would be Future/Death/Wish. See what happens and what is, kill bad actors. move important things. This would improve your life, but not by much compared to other options. Future could still get you rich, especially if you don't mind ethics and steal with Wish. It would be very easy to become the villain though, and your life could be bad anyways.
EDIT: This also reminds a bit of this comic
Heh. Your thinking mirrors my own to an uncanny degree.
Never ask people who grew up min-maxing games these kinds of questions. :)
Death — Alright, I'll be the first to go for this one outright. A 10(.4) person per year limit would probably help avoiding going insane with power, and there's a lot of potential to alter things in a positive way.
Money — I've said before that if I were incredibly wealthy, I'd mostly just fund research and projects. I'm interpreting "every time you want to do something" to enable me to do such. There are so many research proposals that need funding, and things like SpaceX (and similar) or Neuralink (and similar) could always use more dollars thrown at them. By funding things I think are important, this would also benefit the world in (what I think would be) a positive way.
Disease — I'm interpreting "immune to all harmful diseases" to include aging. I'm not afraid to die, but I'd rather not have to leave to world until I'm ready and it's on my own terms. A healthy, lengthy life would enable me to continue to shape the world as best I can with the prior two pills for a very long time. A guiding hand of sorts.
I strongly considered Future. That's a very powerful ability and would work well in conjunction with Money or Death to help enable the changes I might make. But I would leave myself blind to the quasi-omniscience it would grant in exchange for a longer timescale on which to do things.
A lot of people seem to be disregarding the drug pill, but being able to use ANY drug that exists without side effects would be amazing. You could use experimental medicine that has huge adverse effects (but without the adverse effects). You could 'overdose' on multiple drugs at a time with no lasting issues. The main problem with this power is the illegality of certain drugs, so it'd probably be good to pair this with some sort of legalization of drugs.
The future pill could break physics. You could use it to bring future tech to the present, essentially creating a feedback loop of technological progression that never actually happened. Essentially:
Other than that, the death pill seems like a watered down version of death note, which could be fun.
Combining it with the Wish ability would give you an infinite supply of all of them quite safely.
The creators of this exercise already spotted that loophole! :P
The chief problem with illegal drugs is obtaining them without risk. If you double up the Drug pill with the Wish pill, you can materialize as much as you want with the snap of your fingers.
Yes, but the rules of the Wish pill specifically say "You cannot wish for other pills." You can not use the Wish pill to obtain more Drug pills.
But you can pick three pills.
Yes.
We seem to be confused.
I came in at this point:
You seemed to be saying you could use the Wish pill to magic up more of the other pills. However, as I see it, the rules of the Wish pill specifically prohibit that: "You cannot wish for other pills."
What am I misunderstanding?
My meaning was using the wish pill to get access to supplies of drugs for use with the drug pill. Getting those drugs to use would be a rather gigantic pain in the ass without it.
But the Drug pill doesn't supply you with actual drugs. It gives you "the ability to automatically be affected by any drug that exists". So, it makes you feel high or stoned or trippy without smoking, inhaling, ingesting, or injecting anything.
I took it to mean indulge as you like without worrying about dose/consequences. Turns out it's more like drug glands from the culture novels, which is infinitely better. :)
Amarok's just saying they could use the Wish Pill to get around the restrictions on drugs which tesseractcat mentioned would be a barrier to fully taking advantage of the Drug Pill:
This interpretation reminds me of Banks' Culture works. In his universe, everyone's got 'drug glands' that operate exactly like this. You make a conscious decision to activate effects from a gigantic library of them at your disposal, and this new organ in your brain manufactures the proper dosages and manifests the effects almost immediately. Some of the examples from his books include a drug that sobers you up instantly, another that speeds up mental processing so much that reality itself operates in slow-motion, another for waking up in the morning, a slew for pleasant creativity-enhancing psychedelic effects, and a total pain-killer.
This interpretation would change my answer - I'd definitely pick this as my number two pill after Future if it operates like this.
I think I'm gonna go for a superhero config (I have a generally positive outlook, and I'd want to pick a selfless-ish config that I think could make the world a better place):
The Drug pill, that gives you access to all of the other ones the way I read it.
💰 Money Pill 💰
Because we all need money, right? It removes a lot of pressure from one's shoulders.
🌟 Painproof Pill 🌟
It may not be the 💠 Disease Immune Pill 💠 but I think it will be better in the long run. Plus, you're looking good!
🔸 Fly Pill 🔸 or ♠️ Death Pill ♠️
I'm torn. Flying is cool, but there are setbacks. The ♠️ Death Pill ♠️ would be cathartic but frustrating. Hmm.
Future, death, and drug. Future lets me make money, it also lets me execute perfect plans (because I can find the optimal branch path). So I would start off by picking a future where I've made a bunch of really good investments. The money would go towards immortality research, of course.
Death plus future lets me take over the world and reorder it to my liking, that's pretty obvious.
Drug is basically pseudo super intelligence and more importantly, can be amplified in the future (as more drugs are invented). Most drugs are restricted by not having side effects, imagine being able to permanently stay on Adderal or whatever without it killing you or wrecking your brain. If you've ever read the Culture books, you have a good idea of why I chose this.