Current Events > Which of these minor superpowers would you rather have?

(+) Yeah! (+)

Definitely reading.

Reading people's minds about me: Something tells me ignorance is bliss on this one.

Super smell: Definitely going to be a hindrance more than a boon.

Teleport one mile with line of sight: I actually can't see very far most of the time because of hills and trees and stuff. The oy places I really can, I would be walking multiple miles anyway so it wouldn't help that much.

Shirt-color-kinesis: Could make for some funny pranks I guess but other than that you'd have to have hilariously specific circumstances for it to matter.

Traveling 30 seconds into the future: Pretty much the same issue as the teleport one. I hardly ever need to kill 30 seconds.

Read animal's minds: Animals only have four things on the brain: Fight, flight, feed... reproduce.

Flight with sprint stamina: I'm a bad runner and ten feet won't even get me onto my own roof.

Excretory suppression: The first that could actually come in handy. I'd get minutes of every day back.

Invisibility: This one could also be useful in the right circumstances, but for the most part I actually find I get better info from just asking for it.

Reading? Man, I am a total bookworm. I just finished one this morning, I'm in the middle of three more and I have several on my bookshelf for someday. I could probably finish them all in like a month or two with this power.

...

Not gonna lie, I have an unhealthy obsession with The Count of Monte Cristo. That's the one I just finished, and it was for the second time, and two of its retellings are in my backlog.

RetuenOfDevsman posted...

Reading? Man, I am a total bookworm. I just finished one this morning, I'm in the middle of three more and I have several on my bookshelf for someday. I could probably finish them all in like a month or two with this power.

Ok, but like I put in my post, what if you read so quickly that you don't even comprehend or retain anything you read? What if it's just a blur of opening a book and then immediately closing it? Without an eidetic memory to complement the power it seems like it could be useless, maybe even a hindrance for times when you actually need to read something like an important or legal document.

Ability to read 50x faster than you are able to read now.

My job will be 10 times easier for that alone (assuming my brain can also catch up with my reading this fast as well).

Kradek posted...

Ok, but like I put in my post, what if you read so quickly that you don't even comprehend or retain anything you read? What if it's just a blur of opening a book and then immediately closing it? Without an eidetic memory to complement the power it seems like it could be useless, maybe even a hindrance for times when you actually need to read something like an important or legal document.

Reading implies comprehension. I can open a book and zip my eyes from the first word of the page to the last even without the superpower, but that doesn't count as reading.

Speed reading
https://youtu.be/yaKxRN2LdEI?si=G0gwHUVEtkV3rf6_

RetuenOfDevsman posted...

Reading implies comprehension. I can open a book and zip my eyes from the first word of the page to the last even without the superpower, but that doesn't count as reading.

Being able to read a combination of words super fast doesn't mean you actually comprehend what you just read.

I'm sure most of if not all of us have read a sentence too fast for our own good and had to go back to reread it to make sure we read it correctly or properly understood it. Now imagine that x50.

Kradek posted...

I'm sure most of if not all of us have read a sentence too fast for our own good and had to go back to reread it to make sure we read it correctly or properly understood it. Now imagine that x50.

I kinda assumed that reading it meant not misreading it and properly comprehending what was said. You can make an argument for not remembering it very well a while later but otherwise I don't think it's really "reading" at all. otherwise I already read like 1 page per second because that's how long it takes for me to see all the text

kirbymuncher posted...

I kinda assumed that reading it meant not misreading it and properly comprehending what was said. You can make an argument for not remembering it very well a while later but otherwise I don't think it's really "reading" at all. otherwise I already read like 1 page per second because that's how long it takes for me to see all the text

But once again, as the other person was saying, they assumed that "reading" comes with the implication of comprehension. As I pointed out, we've all read something too fast for our own good and didn't properly comprehend what we actually read, even though we still did read it, leading us to go back and reread a sentence or paragraph for better clarity. That seems like it would be exacerbated at x50. To me it seems like you'd need to reread the same thing quite a bit to get the full understanding of what you read.

Also, sometimes our eyes skip ahead in a sentence or reads further ahead in general, causing us to go back to an earlier point to correct ourselves, which seems like another issue that would be exacerbated, especially at x50. Imagine your eyes skipping ahead at x50 speed and trying to figure out where you need to go back.

As I mentioned, without an eidetic memory it seems to me more of a hindrance than a boon.

That's the only reason it works for Spencer Reid in Criminal Minds.

RetuenOfDevsman posted...

Reading implies comprehension. I can open a book and zip my eyes from the first word of the page to the last even without the superpower, but that doesn't count as reading.

Doesn't necessarily imply comprehension.

I can read an entire book on quantum physics. That doesn't mean I comprehend anything the book was trying to teach just because I can read it.

LightningThief posted...

Doesn't necessarily imply comprehension.

I can read an entire book on quantum physics. That doesn't mean I comprehend anything the book was trying to teach just because I can read it.

Yeah, I get what you're saying. There was an episode of Archie's Weird Mysteries like that. A character named Moose took a helmet that made him smarter (he was normally pretty dumb), but all it really did was help him memorize what he read.

Like he quoted a line from a book "Did you know that, according to Hegel, thought is a dialectical process of thesis, antithesis and synthesis?" When Archie asks him what's it mean, he's like "I don't know."

But I still think being able to read and remember what you read can help you comprehend it if you read up on the subject enough.

How often are you shitting that toilet paper actually constitutes a meaningful expense when compared with all the others you probably have? This was to Kradek, didn't realize this was a 2-ply I mean page topic

ANort posted...

How often are you shitting that toilet paper actually constitutes a meaningful expense when compared with all the others you probably have? This was to Kradek, didn't realize this was a 2-ply I mean page topic

Why does toilet paper have to be one of the most expensive things I buy in order for me to point out that never needing it will objectively save me money?

My post also outlined why there's issues/questions related to all the other potential powers.

Weird thing to get fixated on. I also gave other examples of why not needing to defecate/urinate benefits me.

The reading one, assuming that I retain the information as well as if I read it at normal speed.

LightningThief posted...

Doesn't necessarily imply comprehension.

I can read an entire book on quantum physics. That doesn't mean I comprehend anything the book was trying to teach just because I can read it.

I feel like a case like that doesn't change anything. If you read it over and over for fifty hours and still don't understand it, after the superpower it would just be one hour for the same level of comprehension.

RetuenOfDevsman posted...

I feel like a case like that doesn't change anything. If you read it over and over for fifty hours and still don't understand it, after the superpower it would just be one hour for the same level of comprehension.

The discussion at hand was, since you can read it really fast, the assumption that it automatically means you understand and comprehend what you read. Essentially fast learning. Which, not necessarily.

That was the quantum physics example. Being able to read a quantum physics book 50x faster doesn't mean you will understand and comprehend the quantum physics the book is attempting to teach.

Being able to retain what you read, or even understand what you read.... is a different matter from being able to understand the content of what you read.

LightningThief posted...

The discussion at hand was, since you can read it really fast, the assumption that it automatically means you understand and comprehend what you read. Essentially fast learning. Which, not necessarily.

That was the quantum physics example. Being able to read a quantum physics book 50x faster doesn't mean you will understand and comprehend the quantum physics the book is attempting to teach.

Being able to retain what you read, or even understand what you read.... is a different matter from being able to understand the content of what you read.

Sure. If you wanna assume TC is trying trick us with this one ability has a catch that wasn't specified, vote for something else.

Yea, Im not trying to trick anyone. So lets say your reading comprehension scales equally. Example- if you read a difficult passage, sometimes you have to read it slower or re-read it, then pause, and ponder. All of this scales with the 50x.

RetuenOfDevsman posted...

Sure. If you wanna assume TC is trying trick us with this one ability has a catch that wasn't specified, vote for something else.

.....that isn't what I said or implied.....

Printerscape posted...

Yea, Im not trying to trick anyone. So lets say your reading comprehension scales equally. Example- if you read a difficult passage, sometimes you have to read it slower or re-read it, then pause, and ponder. All of this scales with the 50x.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/forum/4/481f0f32.jpg

These powers all seem like Devil's deals: They're simple, so they must have an "unadvertised" catch. :|

Fast reading would be goated.

andri_g posted...

These powers all seem like Devil's deals: They're simple, so they must have an "unadvertised" catch. :|

This is actually one of my favorite party/drinking games. Corrupt- a-Wish

Mind reading about myself.