A weird poll: which “superpower” would you take?

In My Humble Opinion
1

Another weird question that’s been bugging me for so long that I just had to ask.

Some explication:

  • Option 1: You can eat, but you don’t need to. You’ll never feel hungry, and if you do eat, some other instinctual signal will replace satiation to tell you that you’ve had enough.
  • Option 5: Your body’s waste just magically disappears, also replacing all function that getting rid of waste would have had (so, for example, food poisoning isn’t eternal). Diseases and conditions with gastrointestinal issues will just not manifest those issues.
  • Option 6 doesn’t increase your lifespan over not taking that option. You die when you’re “supposed” to.

Otherwise, assume you have no further information about details or extent of consequences (although you do know there are no evil twists involved).

  • You don’t need to eat to survive
  • You don’t need to be hydrated to survive
  • You don’t need to breathe to survive
  • Sleep is optional and at will
  • Your body does not produce urine or feces
  • Physical aging stops at age 50
  • Mental aging stops at age 50
  • A sedentary lifestyle does not have negative health effects
  • All current physical conditions are permanently cured
  • All current mental conditions are permanently cured
0 voters
2

Time Travel (option coming soon!)

3

Tough one, but I’m going with all mental conditions permanently cured. It would fix about 90% of what’s wrong with my life.

4

It would be cool to be free of the need to acquire food, as long as I can still totally enjoy it when I get to. Most of the rest is either irrelevant or somewhat redundant to my current situation.

5

A total physical cure. I can deal with the rest

6

Oh yes, that!

7

Since there are so many physical conditions (and I’m just shy of 50 anyway) fix that, and with better habits going forward, I should do as well as can be expected in this day and age.

8

I went with mental aging stops at 50. In reality a lot of these options overlap, and some have tricky wording. Take the leading option, that all current physical conditions are permanently cured. Taken literally that means that as soon as the wish is made, that person can get sick again, since that new illness would not have been current as of the time of the wish. Same for current mental illness. Then there’s also the fact that a lot, though by no means all, of human mental illnesses are either caused by or exacerbated by underlying physical conditions, or can fit into both categories. What about the “sedentary lifestyle”? Is that limited to lack of exercise or does it include the eating of junk food? If it includes the latter, that also partially overlaps with a lot of the other options, since an unhealthy diet is a major contributor to both physical and mental illness in many people, much more so than a lack of exercise.

9

I chose curing my mental conditions. All the others are not impediments to my enjoying life (at least currently - ageing may eventually bring on a few of them, but that’s an inevitability we are all warned about). But the mental health issues I have had all my life, which went undiagnosed or mislabelled as harmless, have interfered with my ability to fulfil my potential. Anxiety prevents me from being proactive when I need to, in seeking out help, in finding a good job, in establishing and maintaining relationships; and depression has put me in funks that spiral into deep introspective misery. I would like both of those to be gone, please.

10

I chose sleep not being required. I read a SF book/story once about some scientist coming up with a genetic alteration that would have that effect, and he did it with his own children, who became sort of super-people. I don’t want to be super, but even at my age I can imagine new things I could learn and accomplish if I didn’t have to sleep (and spend another hour or two every evening getting progressively more sleepy).

11

If I choose “physical aging stops at age 50”, do I go back to the physical shape I was in at age 50? Because that would also permanently cure most of my physical problems, which either didn’t appear or didn’t show significant symptoms until I was well into my 60’s.

12

I’m pretty healthy so no cures are needed. From there, I had to decide between stopping mental deterioration, not sleeping, or not needing to breath.

From a financial standpoint, the latter two seem the best. I could double my work hours or have a talent that allows me to become the ultimate underwater and space explorer. Not sleeping, though, might be annoying for my wife and double the work doesn’t really seem like the quick and easy route to financial comfort that being a necessary human for certain research tasks might be.

Now against financial comfort, having a young and vibrant mind until death is certainly desirable but that only really helps me. For my family, the money is better.

I chose not needing to breath.

13

Interesting. No option immediately seemed like the obvious choice so let’s break it down.

“You don’t need to eat to survive”
There is obviously some money to be saved here. I’d still want to eat for enjoyment, especially if I’m out on a date or with family or something, though, so the money I’d save is largely the cheaper parts of the grocery bill. This isn’t really a big advantaghe, so no.

“You don’t need to be hydrated to survive”
Water is cheap and plentiful. I don’t spend a lot of time in space or in a desert.

“You don’t need to breathe to survive”
Air is free. This could help me, I guess, if I might drown.

“Sleep is optional and at will”
This intrigues me and is an early candidate for my choice.

If sleep is optional, not only am I gaining an enormous amount of time, but presumably I now have all the health benefits of a good night’s sleep without having to waste time on it. This effectively increases the amount of time I have remaining in my life by 25-30 percent while solving a minor health issue (I have minor sleep issues.) This is a LOT of additional time and productivity and I work for myself so that’s bigger deal to me than if I was a regular employee of someone. I could work more or work a lot for 3 days and then have long weekends all the time and I’m always well rested. Awesome.

“Your body does not produce urine or feces”
Convenient, I suppose.

“Physical aging stops at age 50”
I turn 52 next week, so I guess I stop now?

This is interesting; does it make me immune from dying of old age? Does this imply I become extremely unlikely to develop age-related illnesses like cancer, heart disease, or other forms of organ failure? If so this may be in the running.

“Mental aging stops at age 50”
Not quite as appealing as physical aging because people in my family seem to retain their wits until they are very old/die - if dementia ran in my family, well, this would be a better value proposition. But it’s the opposite; dementia is unknown in my family, but my male line doesn’t physically last especially long.

“A sedentary lifestyle does not have negative health effects”
This would be nice, but if I didn’t have to sleep I’d have time to be lazy.

“All current physical conditions are permanently cured”
I have none of any significance.

“All current mental conditions are permanently cured”

See above.

I’ll go with not having to sleep.

14

I’m an inveterate insomniac, so I picked the sleep one. Never feel tired? doesn’t matter if I’m awake for long periods? but most of all…I can will myself to sleep whenever I want? It doesn’t say anything about staying asleep, but I assume there’s some clause about staying asleep until either your brain chemicals are replenished, or it’s necessary for you to be awake, no matter whether it’s “VILLAIN APPROACHING!” or “7am dentist appointment.”

That’s in my top 5 fantasies of all time.

15

Just mentioning, that the OP stated:

Which answers the first part of the question you asked, but not so much the later pieces. I do wonder if it means that your death date as it would have been prior to the wish is still fixed, which could take into account all sorts of other age-related issues that you correctly mention you could now be avoiding - from cancers due to failed cell replication or just ye olde wear and tear on heart and body.

16

It was an easy choice for me to go with “all mental conditions permanently cured”.

17

It’s a no-brainer for me. The ability to forgo sleep would be so much more life-changing than any of the others (assuming that you don’t feel perpetually in a state of sleep-deprived).

You’re giving yourself 50% more time every day to exercise more, eat better, earn more money, relax more, spend more time with loved ones, etc.

18

I voted for “all physical conditions permanently cured.” While I’m reasonably healthy, it would be nice to not have to wear glasses or hearing aids, not have to sleep with a CPAP machine, etc. Also I’m keeping my fingers crossed that this option includes “baldness” as a physical condition. :slightly_smiling_face:

19

I voted for not having to sleep. I have been sleeping way, way too much, especially lately.

Curing my mental health conditions is an awfully tempting option, though.

20

I’m another no sleeper. I like sleeping. I’m getting ready to do it.

But if I had all of those hours to do other stuff, I’d be so far ahead of everybody else on anything I chose to do.