Pretty much the title. I’ve been watching more realistic super hero shows like The Boys and Invincible. The reoccurring themes is that with great power comes great immorality.
I think it’s easy for us normies to respect other people and their property because there are clear consequences for violating social norms. But what would the average person do if they had super powers?
Time is a measurement of change, and is inextricably linked to space, so stopping time stops change of any kind. You wouldn’t be able to move even so little as a falling speck of dust from its (now) absolute position in space. You wouldn’t be able to move, and consequently even breathe, since your diaphragm has to change position for respiration to happen (nevermind the fact that matter can no longer be moved anyway, so air is now fixed in place.) Stopping time stops you, completely.
But since we’re talking about imaginary powers, if I could stop time, I wouldn’t even bother with anything in this multiverse, I’d just walk over to explore a different one a few trillion multiverses away. After all, I’d get there in no time.
I’m sorry, but you’re not taking this idea quite far enough. If all time stopped except for you, and you posit that everything else is rigidly fixed in place with no exceptions, you would instantly be turned into a fine mist as your body slams into the suddenly stationary earth or atmospheric molecules while your body is still traveling a couple million kilometers per hour relative to the rest of the universe.
If your scenario posits that you are excepted from the effects of time throughout the universe halting, then what you posit would seem to be true, relative to that scenario. And it is interesting. In mine, the time stopper is part of the universe they’re in, and the instant they stop time, they too are frozen along with the rest of the 10^80 particles.
I’m just going all in for the scenario of “I’m gonna stop time and do all kinds of shit, or maybe just take a nap. Here… we… go—“
This is an awful lot like the idea that the only thing keeping people from raping and murdering is belief in god. It says a lot more about the person claiming it than anyone else.
Wups, I meant to reply to a comment about the Mongol/Huns on another post (hence the mention of nomadic tribes). I was wondering why my comment got downvoted lol
Honestly I’d love the power of being able to see any point in space and time. To witness the birth and death of stars and look around alien shores. To peek at the absurdity of the diversity of life eons before human history.
I’d probably go mad pretty fast but hey, it’d be pretty neat.
This is actually one of the things I would wish for if I had a magic lamp.
The ability to grant or take away perfect immortality to any living thing.
To be the most intelligent human to ever exist (so far)
The ability to see any point in space and time.
You’re right that it would likely have psychological ramifications (probably end up like Brandon Stark from GOT). But it would be fun for a couple thousand years.
Can you imagine how it would be like to see Theia about to hit proto-Earth just above you? Then “pause” the scene and look at it a few hundred kilometres away…
Or just peek inside the clouds of the gas giants…
Or the depths of frozen moon oceans…
Or stars being slingshot’ed near supermassive black holes …
Dang, it almost feels like a curse to know how big and vast the universe is while being confined inside a single body for a few decades…
In classic philosophy, this is the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ring_of_Gyges, in which Plato suggests that we’d be tempted to wrongdoing if we had the capacity to evade harmful consequences.
In 21st century moral philosophy, it’s more complicated than that. What we do with super-powers depends largely on our need. Normally, someone doesn’t steal resources when they have the means to attain them legitimately, but it’s our precarity or even poverty and hunger that drives us to steal, largely due to a society that recognizes property rights without assuring the safety and provisions of those who, well, don’t have any property. Precarity leads to renegade behavior, or as our states like to call it crime.^†^
So what happens when our ring-wearer finds themselves no longer in desperate need for stuff. This is the point of opportunity, where they can choose to use their power to rescue others from their misfortune, or they can isolate themselves from the squalor and bask in their own luxury.
One of the terrible secrets of moral philosophy is that no code of ethics, no religious commandment really matters. Most of us do what we feel like anyway, whether right and well meaning or wrongful and malicious. It just happens that we’re generally affable. That is, eons of evolution have instilled us with social values and the drive to engage peaceably when we’re not starving, and as such we allow total strangers to merge into our lane in traffic and try to telegraph our actions to keep other drivers at ease. When we’re well fed, healthy, warm, well rested and getting laid once in a while, we’re pretty easy to get along with. Keep a whole society in precarity, however, and it turns into social unrest and eventually civil war.
But then, when we’re driven by fear, we tend to think of others in antagonistic terms. Our billionaires have the capacity to improve society on a global scale. Musk or Bloomberg could adopt Haiti and drive the nation into industrial development, and have his statue in bronze adorn every state park countrywide. Not big on that opportunity? $30 Billion will feed the world (That is, all the humans in it) including processing and freight. Less than that could create a free high-speed WiFi internet infrastructure that covers all populated parts of the world (Including Mt. Everest, but not much of the Himalayas).
But none of them do. Not one billionaire is thinking about their legacy on this scale. Rather, they’re all very miserly with their charitable works, and then engage in them only for marketing and tax-haven purposes. Considering how consistent billionaires are about this, the Ring of Gyges may be that corrupting an influence after all.
Superhero narratives are typically about a desperate need and someone with the means to fulfill it in daring fashion. OSP noted The Scarlett Pimpernel who rescued aristocrats from the guillotine during the Reign of Terror during the French Revolution. (Superheroes are not always on the side of aging well). When someone has super-powers and acts in a more immoral fashion, we regard them instead as monsters. Case in point, Count Dracula or The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde
SPIRIT: This boy is Ignorance. This girl is Want. Beware them both, and all of their degree, but most of all beware this boy, for on his brow I see that written which is Doom
SCROOGE: Have they no refuge or resource?
SPIRIT:〈mocking Scrooge〉Are there no prisons? Are there no workhouses?
† I generally avoid using the word crime unless talking specifically about things that are illegal as decided by regional law. Many acts of wrongdoing are not criminal. Many crimes are not immoral. Same with sin which are proscriptions according to religious institutions.
“Let me tell you something about Hu-mons, nephew. They’re a wonderful, warm, sociable people. But take away their creature comforts, take away their food, their holosuites, and put their lives in jeopardy over an extended period of time and those same warm, wonderful people…will become as nasty and vicious as the most bloodthirsty Klingon.”
You would think so, but once you get used to it, you’d be like, ‘What’s the hurry? I can be there immediately’ and start traveling at the nick of the moment, and then eventually start showing up late, even with the superpower. If you were late to begin with, you’d be late all the way through. I know I would be.
There is so much that I would want to do that requires time to be “flowing” that the only things I could probably get done would be some cleaning, reading, and some rest.
Food doesn’t cook without time. Computers and other electronics need time to process inputs. If I want to get anywhere I’m walking.
The only immoral stuff might be some shoplifting, maybe. But even then I wouldn’t really be motivated if I could afford whatever it was otherwise.
There is so much that I would want to do that requires time to be “flowing”…
If we’re talking about physics-accurate superpowers, please add partial blindness - photons are frozen in place, they can’t reach your eyelids, unless you walk into them. And suffocation due to completely still air.
Photons move at the speed of light relative to the observer, regardless of the observer’s speed.
If we’re going physics-accurate, you wouldn’t be blind, though you’d probably be a black hole (for a very brief time, before you evaporated due to Hawking radiation).
I’d definitely fuck with people who were being shitty, not straight up evil, just mischievous:
Park in a bike lane? Oh no, all your valve stems have disappeared!
Attack someone? Your shoelaces are now tied to your belt, which is also now fastened around your arms.
Steal from a person? Your shoes are now hanging from a lamp post and the stuff you stole got unstolen.
Be a shady company that screws everyone over? Your infrastructure keeps breaking and funds keep disappearing, how weird!
Invade Ukraine and commit hundreds of war crimes? Oh no, you fell out of a window and also I have now been “recruited” by the CIA because they found out about my ability to pause time. Now I’m forced to do morally ambiguous things under the guise of national interests.
Oh shit, OP was right!
Also, hey Netflix: Hit me up if you wanna do a series, I know you’ll literally hire anyone. I do comedy too.
I mean, it probably depends on how happy you are with your life.
Depending on how it works i'd probably just use time stop to lose less time from sleeping. There's a lot of ways to improve your life with time stop before ever delving into morals.
What most people fail to realize, though, is that if you used time stop to sleep you would certainly have more productive hours “awake” – but at the cost of reducing your remaining life span in the time-wise world by one third. You’d still be aging while you sleep.
Though I don't think that's too big a loss when you're using it to sleep. If you used time stop for something that was both exhausting and wasting your time, that'd probably be worse honestly.
It would certainly become noticeable after awhile since as you said, it's one third of your life.
I can totally agree with the whole with great power comes great immorality way of thinking.
But I view it in the adaptation angle. Like, how many “average” people can adapt to such a huge shift in power? Pro athletes tend to have bad spending habits because of sudden shifts of wealth. Country laws and legislations stay for generations because the lawmakers are stuck to their own bubbles of how things are progressing.
Being able to adapt is a general trait for people, but not everybody can do it as quickly. I think that part causes conflicts that may or may not lead to immorality.
Rob a bank? Thanks to serial numbers they can tell it's you who is using the money.
Steal from your neighbor? Same deal. Someone will notice.
It's all risks and consequences. Most big acts of "evil" still have those risks and consequences even if you can stop time or whatever else. And your ability is going to be worth so much fuck you money to scientific and other use cases that you really won't have reason to steal or whatever.
You’re thinking too small. Why steal money when you could just steal the thing you’d be buying with the money? Why steal from your neighbor when you could steal from a megacorporation that won’t know it’s you?
Yeah money gets around, which means once you exchange it, it loses all connection to you. Merchants don't track serial numbers, and there's no guarantee those bills will be picked up in the next deposit to the bank.
That's why banks use dye packs, because once it's gone there's no actual way to track it. If there were, they wouldn't use dye packs...
For some I’m sure that’s the case and would behave pretty remorselessly.
Others have a conscience.
Others still would engage in shitty behavior but probably destroy themselves pretty quickly dealing with the mental problems of doing what they know is shitty.
Be honest? Yeah, I’d do stuff I shouldn’t. But nothing I couldn’t sleep at night over. But one thing I know I’d do is find some way to bring down everyone fucking over regular people. Even if it’s as simple as stopping time, placing a recording device in a boardroom, and letting it record them plotting to fuck over whoever, and then retrieving it for public display.
Or robin hooding it to weath transfer from the ultra rich as a form of wealth redistribution. I’d definitely pass my own pocket a little thicker, to your point, but the main thrust of power focusing on personal benefit would be very narrow and short lived in scope.
This is an idea that has been around for very long time. Plato used the Ring of Gyges to talk about it - which went on to inspire Wells’ The Invisible Man - and influenced Tolkien among others.
The Ring of Gyges is a hypothetical magic ring mentioned by the philosopher Plato in Book 2 of his Republic (~375 BC). It grants its owner the power to become invisible at will. Through the device of the ring, this section of the Republic considers whether a rational, intelligent person who has no need to fear negative consequences for committing an injustice would nevertheless act justly.
So many ideas trace their roots back to ancient Greece/China. I guess there’s nothing new under the sun.
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