I wish for one electron to disappear from every atom. The net result would be that all atoms would now have a positive charge.
True, it would not only end all life on earth, but also destroy the entire earth. But everything would be positive.
Mandatory XKCD, sort of.
TL;DR
It breaks the whole universe. That’s a lot of charge density over a very substantial area.
I’m trying to focus this answer on something that seems like a really small change:
I wish everyone is slightly more empathetic.
I feel like this could give us a lot of small nudges toward being better people and a better society. I wonder if a small nudge could end up having a profound effect.
It probably would, butterfly effect and all. That’s part of the reason why I’m trying to evaluate why I do the things I do, trying to see how they impact other people more versus in my youth. It might be small, but enough small things do add up, compound even.
Everyone religious wakes up tomorrow realizing that it’s just a social club and none of the god stuff is real.
So in this scenario where you have a magical Genie, you would use a supernatural being to stop others from believing in supernatural beings?
Whoa dude. I just woke up and was not prepared for philosophy!
Who said the genie was supernatural? If I can see the genie in front of me and sufficiently measure it’s existence, then it is real and natural. “Super natural” literally means “outside of nature”, i.e. stuff that doesn’t have any evidence of ever existing.
OP said so.
OP called it a magical genie. Magic is by definition outside of nature.
If presented by observable evidence the supernatural exists in one specific case (the genie) then it is reasonable to suppose there may be other supernatural beings.
If this were a highly advanced alien with probability manipulating technology, that would be a different question.
Magic is by definition outside of nature.
A magician would disagree with you :D
If this were a highly advanced alien with probability manipulating technology, that would be a different question.
“Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”
If presented by observable evidence the supernatural exists in one specific case (the genie) then it is reasonable to suppose there may be other supernatural beings.
Imagine I was a person who had never seen a narwhal, and thus didn’t believe they were real; suppose I believed them to be supernatural creatures. So to prove me wrong, you bring me to an aquarium and show me a narwhal and say, “look, a live narwhal. See? They are naturally occurring creatures”. I could respond with, “well no, that’s obviously a supernatural creature, and now it’s reasonable for me to also suppose that unicorns exist!” Do you see any flaws in my logic?
We’ve hypothesized of a situation where we have an observable creature in front of us. At that point, regardless of how “magical” we believe it to be, it is, by the definition of “supernatural”, not supernatural. However, when it comes to supernatural beings that we have not observed, this genie has not given us any more evidence for their existence.
Happy halloween!
They would still pretend. And, though it would solve a lot of problems, it would remove purpose for so many people.
Low back pain eliminated in all humans.
Eradicate all mosquitoes
Everyone is gifted with the ability to control their own fertility. You’re only fertile if you want to be. The only chance for pregnancy to occur is if both partners want it to.
I imagine that would cause a severe population decline, and I’m fine with that. There’s too many humans on this planet already.
This I like
No more cavities!
As in teeth cavities!
Thanks for clarifying!
Not bum cavities or wall cavities, I feel they have a purpose.
Make everyone’s interpretation of “small thing” slightly more similar.
Metacognition becomes routine for humans. We are able to better de-fuse from our thoughts, and recognize them not as reality but as thoughts about reality.
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whats that
We all have thoughts in our head. They are the lenses through which we see reality.
Sometimes, we are aware of that. For example, we may realize we’re being prejudiced or that we’re being cranky because of our mood.
However, this uses up a lot of energy; our frontal lobe is very energy-hungry. So we spend most of the time thinking habitual thoughts and following habitual behaviors. We don’t realize we’re looking at reality through a lens. We assume we are simply looking at reality.
What I am wishing for is for people to constantly be aware that the way they are looking at reality depends on the lenses they have learned and habitually use.
The invention of a small easily producible power source that never runs out and has enough power to power vehicles/planes/vessels of all kinds.
maybe not easily producible, but RTGs almost fit the bill
Make everyone understand basic propositional and predicate logic.
A ubi funded by a hefty carbon tax on big polluters.
Not a very small thing maybe, but: All people gain ability to instantly recognise bullshit (at work, in media, interpersonal relationships, etc)
I’m not sure this would be a positive. I think there are a lot of pleasantries we afford each other to deescalate a situation.
I mean, we kinda see it anyway when people are lying a bit just to be polite, and I wouldn’t be mad about it. But that’s not what I was talking about.
What I really meant is the ability to see malicious lies, the ones designed to take advantage of us. This would be really OP, i think xD. I apologize for the misunderstanding, english is not my 1st language.
Fair, you’ve got to be careful with those genies though, if your wish isn’t carefully crafted they’ll happily use it against you 😉
Oh heck i didn’t think about that… 😱 Thx for the reminder :D
People regain the ability to agree to disagree, and stop hating each other over political issues.
What would that look like? I’m a trans woman. When someone is standing there trying to take my rights away, and actively working to remove my access to care and support, what does “agree to disagree” look like?
“I accept your right to be what you want to be and don’t care about it anymore. I am sorry for all of the damage I caused by getting so invested in an issue that has nothing to do with me.”
That would be nice, but to be fair, it’s also a bit more than “agree to disagree”
I feel like that one could go wrong. There’s regions where slavery is still de-facto legal, isn’t it awful to just let that slide as their opinion?
Isn’t slavery universally panned, though?
Nope. Well, mostly, but there are a few regions where the tradition is still going. Mauritania only banned slavery in like 2003, and the law is basically a joke. Foreign journalists will tell stories about visiting and being served by rough people dressed in rags, until the host notices them staring and gets nervous.
The gulf states are also famous for having slaves, although in that case it has more to do with cost savings and a lack of scruples, and I don’t think they would call them slaves, just workers-who-have-to-work-and-can’t-leave. There’s various forms of forced labour in probably most places too, but it’s a matter of definition if prison labour or indentured labour count as slavery (which is usually what they’re counting when they put out figures with a giant number of modern slaves).
I wonder what it would take to completely erase the practice from the human condition.
A few more decades, assuming all goes well and there’s a crackdown on places like the gulf (that situation only exists because the US military umbrella protects the local royals). Mauritania is not a populous country, and in other poor countries you have to go seriously backwoods before people are able to even somewhat-openly keep slaves, so it’s not like the progress made is negligible.
And of course there’s cases where some guy (or guys) lock somebody in their basement, but if it’s ended and the offenders punished immediately upon it coming to light, I’d argue we should count that as a sort of background noise that can’t be avoided.
You could roll back the internet to pre 2.0, removing the ability for people to engage with each other outside of real life.
OP asks for small thing, most replies ask for huge things.
I guess the opposites of small thing and biggest positive impact on the world makes it hard to answer.
And the vagueness. How small is small? Most of the replies I’m seeing aren’t the biggest thing you could ask for, at least.
