The advantage of limitations. Imagine if humans had had paranormal powers?

I great cat lay, poised upon the rock. Still except for a tiny twitch at the end of the tail, silent except for the slight sound of its breath, it watched the human walk down the trail below the bolder. Beneath its silky skin the muscles tensed as at prepared for the pounce, then, in a fluid motion it launched itself towards its prey.As the great cat leaped the man looked up, and disappeared. The great cat landed where the human had been to find nothing but dust. It snarled in frustration, looked around to see where dinner had gone. Then wandered off in frustration, snarling at branches along the way.********************************************************************If humans had been born with paranormal capabilities, telekinisis, telepathy, teleportation, would we have developed beyond the basic animal stage?

Thread moved here from the Proposed New Topics forum.

You don't watch star trek very much do you?

When I saw X2, the second X-Men movie, I was struck by the similarity of the government's response to mutants and our own real government's response to terror, and it made me think about how a realistic movie would portray a response to a populace suddenly gifted with paranormal powers.I mean if someone possessed a small arsenal of power at their very fingertips, would it matter how often the pledged to uphold the public good or how many good deeds they did? Wouldn't a paranoid government like the one we have demand they be shipped off to Super-Gitmo just in case?

Maybe not; but maybe then the cats would have.

There is no question that we would be the best of the animals, but as to whether we progressed beyond that definition, the answer would be our individual and collective sense of morality, IMHO. Be more specific as to what types of capabilities that we would have, in your scenario. This message has been edited by Phatboy, 01-17-2005 00:30 AM

It's a common thing in the X-men comics. Indeed, they have the mutants (term for someone with "superpowers") as the next stage in human evolution with their numbers increasing rapidly. Many of the storylines deal with the human race and it's response to being "replaced".This message has been edited by Charles Knight, 01-17-2005 03:27 AM

If humans had the capability to teleport themselves to any other location, what effects would that have had?For one thing humans would most likely have remained at the gatherer stage of social development. Agriculture would never have developed, or cities, or most likely even housing.If all that was needed to get food was to teleport to the location where it was available, why would the extra effort be expended to bring food to the person, to grow food?If it was easier to simply travel to a location where it was dark, or light, warmer or colder, why try to change the environment locally?There are some other less obvious yet significant outcomes from a race that posessed teleportation.They would probably never have a calendar. Almost every calendar is based on the observation of sun and moon from a relatively fixed position over an extended period. If the people were globally mobile, they would likely see the heavens as constantly changing based on their position and not something that was regular.They would probably not have a concept of between. Limited humans see travel based on the duration of what theysee between point a & b. But in teleportation you leave a and arive at b with nothing in between.They would probably not have a concept of territory or home. Since they are globally mobile, almost anyplace is but a thought away, nothing is closer or further away. Everywhere is were they happen to be.

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Aslan is not a Tame Lion

But how are the humans getting all of the knowledge that needs to go along with their teleportation skills? How do they know where the food, warmth, etc. is?I'm interested in your line of thought.. looking forward to your answer.

That will come in as we examine other capabilities (specifically telepathy). Too soon to bring that up yet, but it will be a significant part of the development.Please keep posting other questions as we go along.

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Aslan is not a Tame Lion

There are examples of animals having extraordinary skills, to our standard, through instinct. After all, the spiders never had to go to school to learn how to make spider webs.

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Here is something to relieve stress.

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a + b = t
(a + b)(a - b) = t(a - b)
a - b = at - bt
a - at = b - bt
a - at + t/4 = b - bt + t/4
(a - t/2) = (b - t/2)
a - t/2 = b - t/2
a = b
Since all numbers are the same, math is useless.

Maybe you can only telport as far as you can see? or to places that you have actually been?

Charles. You and Ben have hit on the biggest limitation to teleportation. I can't see a way that you could teleport to an unknown place. There would be too much chance of coming out inside something and ending up spectacular if not memorable.The best solution I've come up with is another paranormal power, telepathy.Universal telepathy would lead to a common conciousness, what any one individual knew would be available to all others. So as long as one individual knew where there was food right then, or light, or dark, or warth or cooler climate or wetter or dryer, all of the individuals would know.But universal telepathy also has a few subtle and less obvious side-effects.It is unlikely that a telepathic species would develop language. They would not need the approximations we call language to communicate. There would be no word GREEN, rather there would be the image of the exact object, the color of new grass, the color of pine needles, the color of oak leaves, the color of new growth leaves, the color of mature leaves, the color of a green apple.There would be no words for other animals or objects, rather the image of the unique item.Another attribute is that there would be nothing like poetry, no symbolism, everything would be exact. There would be precision, but no groupings, everything would be unique.So, to summarize so far, given telportation and telepathy, we have a people with no language, that will never develop agriculature, cities or housing, no fire and most likely gatherers living off of vegetarian and small easily eaten bugs.What else could we say about such people?What effects, obvious or subtle, whould result from them posessing telekinisis?

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Aslan is not a Tame Lion

I think that if humans had paranormal capabilities, then they would have been quickly exploited for warfare. It seems that most of the other technological discoveries throughout history had a military application.The ability to perform paranormal functions would imidiately target everyone's brain as the focus point in warfare instead of the heart or limps as in early modes. The battlefields would have been in the cerebral hemispheres instead of open meadows. It would have resulted in a "last man standing" senerio or one individual would have emerged as supreme. This individual would have been able to excert enough force on the other's minds that they would be subserviant to that individual.You would have had a dictator excersising mind control over the rest of the group which would have impeded human developement. The paranormal being would have terminated any upcoming being who showed paranormal powers that could rival his. What would remain is one powerful paranormal being and many lesers with little or no ability.The powerful paranormal being might have even been able to wipe that capability from all other's minds. Thus when this being died, so did the ability of paranormal excersise and then the population would be free to re-deploy it's development in a lateral dirrection.

quote:

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Consider the effect of teleportaion.
If humans had the capability to teleport themselves to any other location, what effects would that have had?

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they would likely be dead unless they knew to keep their altitude level, which they would not. Teleporting to the tops of mountains must appear logical, but would be fatal. So likely we would have wiped ourselves out if we had this.But assuming that unsolvable problem were solved, and also assuming a creature that already has our intellect, then the break would come when they tried to figure out what was going oin in the sky and teleport to it. So they wouild probably have still dveeloepd astronomy, and this kicked off science.