Which of these two powers would you rather have?

In My Humble Opinion
1

Power the first;
The ability to read anyone’s mind. The person has to be alive (no going back in time here) and you might not be able to understand the persons thoughts if you don’t speak their language. You will be able to turn this off and on at will, iow, it wouldn’t be a burden unless you chose to use it. You would need a current photo (online pics work) of the person to be able to turn the power on.

Power the second;
The ability to transport yourself to anywhere or anyplace that has been photographed. The photo could also be available online, but you must have access to the photo in some way. Also, the place you visit must be suitable for life since you will only be able to wear one layer of clothing in your transporter. No going to Mars or the down to the Trench for 20 minutes. Also, the place you choose to go to must currently and mostly resemble the photo you have access to, iow, the transporter would get confused and misdirect you if the photo didn’t match the actual place for some reason (dated photo, building was torn down, there’s now a mall there, etc.). Your trip may be as long or as short as you wish.

Please just pick the one you prefer along with an explanation and maybe a link to the photo if you chose.

2

Are you saying, I can choose to read the thoughts of any one person, anywhere on the planet, and only that person ever, or to teleport to one place, anywhere, and only that one place? Or, that if I choose telepathy, I can read the mind of anybody I can find a picture of, or if I choose teleportation, I can go anywhere I have a picture of?

3

Yes to that.

Infinite useage for both.

4

Telepathy. Seven consecutive World Series of Poker championships. Retire.

5

Teleportation. My commute savings alone would be worth it. Plus, free weekends anywhere Google Maps can zoom in on.

6

Teleport. It’s useful in all sorts of practical ways, and I have privacy issues with mind reading.

7

Teleportation. [Can I bring my crutches or wheelchair?]

Even if I can’t, teleportation. I can make arrangements for a buddy to bring me a chair and crutches.

Think of the transportation savings!

8

Mind reading – I could be a great detective.

9

How complete is the mind reading? Can I go through all their memories, thoughts, and plans as accurately as they can, or am I restricted to what they’re thinking at the moment?

On the pictures, do I need to see the picture once, or do I always need to have the picture available when I’m using the power? Can I just memorize the location/person well enough to use the power without a picture (even if this takes concentrated study to sufficiently memorize all the details)?

If I’m teleporting, and can take one layer of clothing, does that count what’s in my pockets and accessories and the like, so I can take, say, my phone and my ipad by sticking them in my pockets/backpack, etc? Similarly, can I carry anything in my hands when I teleport? Can I carry a person, if I can lift them?

10

I’m in a long distance relationship, so … TELEPORTATION! Man, that would be awesome. I could see her whenever I wanted without the hassle of visas and plane tickets and organising time off work. Bliss. Plus, as others have said, the transport savings in day-to-day life would be very useful.

11

I bet you couldn’t do this even with perfect information–people would suck out on you from time to time.

12

If the mindreading is too efficient and you aren’t very careful about it, you’ll be in for a fairly short life. As soon as the CIA and the President work out that you can reveal what they actually are thinking behind what they are saying, I don’t think they will be big fans of yours. Accidents will happen.

13

Mindreading has the potential for money. The tricky part would be to build up a stake in which to really take advantage of your ability without getting your legs broken or a bullet in your head. Pretty sure that once you got some good money, you could circulate parties with rich folks & CEO’s and get some great investment info. Your accountant could never skim from you. It could be ruinous to personal relationships though. Think of all the white lies you tell, think about the not-so-white lies you might tell on occasion. No one could do that to you. Either you catching them in lies, or them being under pressure because you are a walking-talking lie detector, would be rough on relationships.
The teleportation thing COULD also be used to get money, if you’re not squeamish about stealing something then teleporting away. Could be difficult though. The OP says only one layer of clothing, but didn’t say what you could have in your pockets, could you carry a bag, purse or briefcase, etc.

I’d go witht he mindreading, though the teleportation thing is really tempting

14

From a strictly selfish perspective, the mind reading. I can already travel (just have to put up with a bit of inconvenience), but I haven’t the faintest idea what people are thinking. Always seemed like life would be a lot easier if I could.

I do recognize how invasive it would be. I reserve the right to at least have privacy in my own head; other people would probably like that, too.

15

Maybe I couldn’t win 7 in a row, but I could damn sure make enough money to retire on.

16

You have access to only what people are currently thinking.

No memorising.

No other things can be brought with you, except that one layer of clothes. No cameras, phones, purses, etc. Too taxing on the transmorgrifyer thingy. Shoes are even difficult.

Also, fyi, you can read the minds of people standing in front of you without having their photo in hand.

And, you can teleport to a place you can visually see from where you are standing (that hill over there) but you must go back to the place you started from. No leapfrog teleporting.

17

Define ‘current’ in terms of pix of people. Thirty days? Six months? Two years? Five years?

Back when I was single, both of these powers would have been quite useful. Now, not so much. During my single days, knowing what a woman was actually thinking about me would have made life a hell of a lot easier. But after 20+ years of marriage, my wife and I usually know what the other is thinking.

I suppose I could utilize this talent in high-stakes poker, but even knowing what everyone at the table has, there’s a real art to translating that into money: even when you’ve got the best hand and you know it, you’ve got to have a sense of how to get the guy with the second-best hand to back it up with high bets.

Teleportation is of limited use if I can’t bring my wife and son along, and by and large, we’re talking about places I could get to by conventional means anyway, and bring gear along to boot.

OK, the occasional thrill: I could teleport myself to the peak of Mt. Everest, spend 20-30 seconds taking a quick look around from the top of the world before cold, wind, and thin air made my presence there untenable, then teleport myself back.

Speaking of which, why not Mars? It’s colder than Everest, and the air is thinner, but it’s “suitable for life” for brief periods of time, in the same way Everest is. That layer of clothing would have to have the highest insulating values of any clothing that modern science can produce, but I’m sure I could construct a single layer of clothing that could keep me from getting frostbitten during 30 seconds on Mars, and I can hold my breath for a lot longer than that, so just like Everest, the thinness of the atmosphere is no problem.

I’d be sure to teleport myself to a spot close enough to Curiosity that it could take my picture. That way I wouldn’t need to bring my own camera to prove I’d been on Mars. :slight_smile:

18

Given the limits, I think that mind reading would be the better choice here. Teleporting is neat, but without being able to take anything with me, even a phone or purse, I think I’d be better off with the mind reading. I’m sure there are uses to teleporting without being able to bring anything significant with you, but I’m honestly not thinking of any of them off-hand right now. And getting back would be a problem; you’d pretty much have to have a shirt with a whole bunch of photos printed on it, so you could look down at yourself so you could select where to go.

So, yeah. Mind reading. And while poker is a nice idea, I could make it work for me in a lot of other ways, even if I can’t go delve into a person’s memories. ‘Don’t think about elephants’ usually works if I want to know something specific, but simply using it to gauge what people think whenever I’m talking to them could be incredibly useful in all sorts of situations.

19

Can I carry something light - say, some sort of powder - in my pockets when teleporting? Because then I can see potential moneymaking avenues :slight_smile:

Having said that, I don’t actually care about the moneymaking aspect myself - I’d still choose teleportation, I have no desire to mindrape anyone and there are lots of remote places in the world I’d love to visit.

20

Teleportation. I don’t like to drive, and think of all the savings on gas.