How much would you be willing to pay for it? Now, I realize that it’ll probably never be possible to put a clue in a pill, but let’s say that they developed a pill which created an intense curiosity about all things in people who took the pill. So, someone who had no interest in anything other than drinking beer and watching pro-wrestling, suddenly found that they had an insatiable urge to read anything they could get their hands on, they started watching documentaries, news shows, and educational programming, in addition to their usual fare of pro-wrestling. Add to that, that only a single or small number of doses would be enough to create the effect for life and the pill carried no health risks whatsoever. Would you be interested in buying the medication for yourself (or for someone else who desperately needs it)?
I’d blow damned near every penny I could scrape up on those pills and give them to everyone around me, and I wouldn’t care what the price per pill was.
Yep, that’s what I’d do. I don’t consider myself intellectually superior, to the people around me. But I do have more varied interest. Which leads to a lot of blank stares, when I try to start a conversation around something I find interesting.
Tuckerfan, I’d love to know what incedent or conversation, inspired this thread. I almost started a similar thread, after spending the hollidays with the in-laws.
Neither. It makes people want to read and learn more.
You’re confusing intelligence with education. Odds are, if people were better educated, they’d make better situations, but they’d still, some of them, be as dumb as a box of rocks.
A pill that gives people an insatiable urge to read everything is a pretty bad pill in my opinion. I realize I’ll probably be seen as a pariah for saying it, but reading books isn’t, itself, the be all and end all. The world needs doers also. Intellectual curiosity is great, but it only goes so far.
If everybody sat around reading we’d have a bunch of well-read slackers – though I imagine message board usage would explode. I prefer diversity among people.
Try reading John Brunner’s The Stone That Never Came Down. Although I’m more intrigued by “Clue In a Drum”-- just cram the fool in the drum and leave him there until he finds the clue.
