Can I regrow missing limbs? It would be useful to have an inarguably visible and immediate demonstration so I could always immediately convince people I wasn’t a charlatan (I’m sure there are other things I could do that would convince a doctor, but it would certainly be useful to have a sufficiently visceral immediate demonstration to get people past the skepticism).
Also: do I have to concentrate to do the healing? Or is mere physical contact with my hands adequate?
I hadn’t considered that, but I’m going to say yes.
Also: do I have to concentrate to do the healing? Or is mere physical contact with my hands adequate?
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Yes, you can regrow limbs, but it would be a case of starting the process and then the limb grows back gradually. Its not quite miraculous enough to create matter out of nothing. 
Edited to add, you do have to pay attention but only really need to concentrate until you determine the cause of the illness or what needs corrected (you aren’t a doctor but you have basically magical intuition), this is usually a much shorter period of time than the healing itself. I suppose that would also cut down on the amount of time you can spend healing, it would get pretty exhausting.
Mental illnesses can definitely be healed, but moral illnesses open up a whole grey area, outside the obvious things there are a lot of things where people of good faith can come to completely opposite conclusions. Who gets to decided what is or isn’t moral? Laying on of hands and re-orienting an individuals moral compass kind of seems a little too much like brainwashing to me.
Honestly, first thing I’d do is heal this damn abrasion on my knuckle that has been bugging me for a few days.
mmm
Interesting hypothetical. A few comments:
(a) There’s no way that I can just be a random guy who goes around healing people. Someone is going to figure out who I am, and then I’ll either be kidnapped by someone who wants to study me or profit from me, or killed by someone. And even if I tried to do it anonymously, someone would catch me on a security feed at some point.
(b) But I certainly feel like I have a duty to use my powers to ease human suffering
© And it also gives me potentially massive fame and influence, which I could then use to make the world a better place
So here’s what I’d do:
(1) I happen to know and trust someone who has the ear of a bunch of very rich and powerful people. I’d first approach this individual and conclusively demonstrate my powers
(2) We would then pick a rich and powerful person who we trust to be sufficiently sensible and benevolent to be our backer/funder
(3) Contact that person, conclusively demonstrate powers
(4) Using that person’s wealth and power, announce existence to world, demonstrate power conclusively to entire world by (say) regrowing limbs of Tammy Duckworth
(5) Set up a complicated organization to administrate healing. Basically, I want to spend n hours a day healing people, and while I want input on how the policies and procedures are set up in the first place to determine who gets healed, I don’t ever want to be the one telling a mother “sorry, I’m not going to cure your child’s blindness because 30 other children have worse afflictions”.
(6) Once things got rolling, I think the right way to do it would be to basically live on a fancy luxury jet. Each night the jet would fly to a new city and set up shop inside an airport (where there’s already a lot of security). All of the “who gets to be healed” decisions would be made ahead of time, so there would be a bunch of people there, I would heal them all, and then go back to the plane for the evening. Next day, same thing, different city. My schedule would be publicly known far ahead of time so the various patient lists and so forth could be worked out well in advance.
(7) Criteria for who I healed would include:
-Young people, and parents of young people, over old people
-Diseases/infirmities ranked by order of suffering caused (or by amount life lessened)
-Most slots are purely based on the above, but a limited number at each spot are set aside for rich people, who can pay money to move up the list, the more they want to move up the list, the more they are charged. This is what pays for the whole operation. Having a certain number of slots straight up “for sale” also presumably reduces corruption for the rest of the slots.
(8) Choice of destinations would be as fair as possible, trying to cover as much of the world as possible, but limited to places where security can be guaranteed.
I find it interesting that people believe they’d retain any personal freedom or autonomy. You’d be the most valuable “commodity” on the planet, there are people who would want to use you for their personal gain.
I couldn’t cure everybody. No matter what I do there will still be millions of people sick and suffering, the futility of it all will probably eat away at my brain for a long time.
Once I have accepted that, I will set up shop in a church somewhere and pretend that my powers are a gift from God and proof of his existence. That should really fuck with the world order for a bit, could be fun.
With a few minor personal changes I think this would probably be one of the best ways of utilising healing powers.
It’d also be easy to with-hold your abilities, you are literally the only person with powers in this scenario and you have to agree to heal. I guess this is why you’d try to get the backing and protection from powerful people who are benign, or at least not actively malevolent.
Its also why the ‘reserve slots for rich people willing to pay’ idea is probably a good one, if they know they can get your services they don’t need to go to extremes.
There are ways to encourage people to “agree”.
After making enough money to be financially independent, I’d become a local hospital volunteer. Just going around to different rooms and fluffing pillows or whatever. Heal as many as possible, let the doctors take the credit, and move on.
Right. It would be disastrously stupid for me to just randomly say “hey, world, here’s my name, here’s my home address, also I can heal all ills!”
But that’s why I proposed having a very serious amount of security surrounding me at all times. And once I have that, I think my fame will actually increase my security. I will presumably be the most beloved individual on earth, as I’m going around literally making hundreds of people’s lives immediately happier every day. If I’m killed or kidnapped, every single cancer patient in the world will want to save or avenge me.
Another thing I’d probably do is provide my service to everyone I work with and their families. So someone working on my security detail knows that as long as they keep their job and keep me alive, they never have to worry about sick kids or spouses or whatever. That’s a pretty strong incentive to do their job, on top of whatever professionalism they presumably already have.
This was my idea, too. Just as one example, we have some really effective anti-HIV drugs nowadays, both to prevent infection and to enable those already infected to maintain a nearly-normal life. Those drugs could do a heck of a lot of good in Africa.
I’m not sure of all of the details, though. Do I set a ludicrously-high fixed price so that few can afford it, and then spend the rest of my time healing for free? Set a fixed free-market price that maximizes total income (i.e., the highest price that would still leave my schedule full)? Charge everyone a percentage of net worth, like Mr. Dibble suggests?
and I’m sure they’d successfully be able to rescue you from the Mexican drug cartels, they’d be a pushover, I’m sure.
At the very least, the government would “take you over”. You would not be PERMITTED to swan around healing people and to decide what to do. There are consequences for any country. Overpopulation, resources to feed and to house the people who aren’t going to die any more. You’d be in
guantanamo, you wouldn’t be jetting wherever you like. Other people would make the decisions, not you.
I would take the opposite approach. I’d do a few televised miracles complete with representatives of the science community to assure my performance is valid. Then I’d challenge “organized religion” to a heal-a-thon.
My amputees would regrow limbs while the pope would be struggling to cure a tension headache.
It’s certainly possible to have security good enough to protect onesself from Mexican drug cartels. The fact that Mexican drug cartels have never kidnapped a sitting US president, for instance.
That’s why I would start with (a) an army of lawyers, (b) international publicity, and (c) a jet. If one country tries to seize me for itself they’re not going to be able to keep it secret, and the rest of the world would be sufficiently outraged. Not to mention that if I’m being kept in Guantanamo, then the citizens of the US would themselves know that I had been planning to frequently provide free miraculous hearing to Americans rich and poor, and that had been taken away from them.
Sure it’s good to be cynical, but… what would be the precise incentive for someone to actually lock me up in Guantanamo?
This. My first thought was that I’d hide, and hope the general public didn’t discover my “gift”. Because I think it would be awful to live in a cage and be forced to heal evil powerful people all the time, which is kinda how I think it would play if I went public.
Maybe move to Iceland or some other place with a reasonably benign government and put myself in their protection in exchange for doing a lot of healing for them.
Heh. Does Iceland have an army?
One comment : a true “healing power” would reverse age as well. It would turn a 100+ year old back into whatever is the healthiest biological age. (28 or 18 or 16 or whatever)
So the fairest thing to do would be to try to line up worth candidates in order of value, however you do it.
Wikipedia is being a butt-head (and I don’t have healing powers to correct that). Tell me about the final scene, please.
IMDb has a full synopsis including what happens at the end of the movie.