Ask Lemmy

Super-hearing. Imagine if you really could hear conversations a block away, it can be hard enough discerning one conversation in a crowded room, imagine it being like that everywhere. All the rats and insects you will be hearing, the sound of people’s clothes rubbing together. Even if normally loud things aren’t deafening just focusing on one thing will be taxing.

Super hearing would essentially be tinnitus with some variety in the inescapable noise.

I think the superhearing power is going to be different than you think. You can already hear your clothes rubbing against skin, the air conditioning blowing, etc. Your brain is pretty good at filtering those out. Now, the conversations will be more difficult, but think about your experiences at a party. Most of the time you can hear another group's conversation if you listened and focused on them, but you can tune them out (most of the time, ignoring the cocktail party effect stuff for now). Unless you have focus issues already, it wouldn't be a big deal. The issue would be the initial period where your brain has to learn what exactly to filter out. Right now, a rustle to my right would be a bad sign, and hearing a rat crawling through the wall would freak me out. After a few weeks though, I bet I'd have adjusted.

This is the kind of gritty reality I'd like to see in a movie. Stuff is constantly breaking when the hero tries to pick it up, he has to go through a montage of classes on structure and how to choose the best place to grab onto things.

Also leverage. Unless the super strength comes with stability, lifing a boulder from the edge would just make the hero's feet slip out from under them. He has to lift one side straight up until he can fit underneath to balance the thing. Then he has to hope that the ground below can withstand all the weight of the boulder pressing on the soles of his feet.

Additionally, see the essay Man of Steel, Woman of Kleenex by Larry Niven

Overthinking? Yes, intentionally. Gross and funny? Also yes!

Also, forget picking up buildings or planes. Most things would break or crumble under their own weight as soon as you tried to pick them up.

Forever War delved into the problems with super strength. The power armor took a humongous amount of training to be used finely enough in everyday tasks and not break something or someone. A simple handshake between someone in power armor and someone without could result in crushed bones or a ripped off arm. A great show of skill in using the power armor was the main character sitting down in office and writing a letter with pen and paper while wearing the armor!

Another great example of how dangerous superstrength is when dealing with non-superstrength people was in anime Beastars where one big carnivore accidentally ripped off the arm of his smaller non-carnivore friend. In-lore was said to be a very common thing to the extent that limb reattachment is a common medical procedure.

My Hero Academia deals with this

And isn't the solar system moving at like 500000 miles an hour around the milkyway too?

Teleportation and timetravel both have this issue where you have to take a fuckload of moving parts we don't even completely understand yet, into account.

Inertial systems are all equal in a certain relevant here sense, if there is no need for account for your movement relative to Sun, Galaxy, CMB, or anything else. Yes, in this sense, Sun also rotates around Earth.

On top of that you need to account for the fact that the earth's surface is moving at different speeds depending on latitude and elevation. Even if you can do the calculations to hit your mark, there is most likely to be some energy mismatch that needs to be accounted for.

This doesn't make sense. The earth moves at very different speeds depending on what you compare it to. The only thing that makes sense is for the teleportation to be relative to the teleporter. Maybe it would still require taking into account rotation, instead of linear momentum. idk, still seems complicated.

Also, the ability to stop time doesn’t guarantee the ability to start it again.

That's some Monkey's Paw shit right here

Lack of light is something that does come up with the History Monks in Discworld. Although they only slow down time, so they can see things, just very dimly lit.

I remember one of the tidbits I picked up from a psychology textbook was that people who were worse at knowing if their partner was lying were in happier relationships. Turns out that white lies are important.

I mean, my dog thinks garbage and shit are the greatest smells possible and he's the most trustworthy person I know, so I have to assume it all circles back on itself somehow.

Fun fact! There's a theory that the reason humans can't run faster than ~25 mph is because at that speed the injuries from an impact become much more life threatening. So everyone who was capable of running that fast would generally die by running into something or tripping

Can you imagine what it's like when they ask him to search the entire city for a bomb? To him he's spending months or even years just walking around looking in every room, every trash can, under every car, etc.

They actually address this with the super speed character in I'm a Virgo. Flora's superpower is that she's always bored x_x

Not sure why it has to be. Being a superpower, it already defies logic. Why is it necessarily painful? I don't see why the brain can't temporarily shut off pain receptors if it's already doing something fantastical.

I'm reminded of the Animorphs books, where they describe the process as grotesque and the odd sensations they feel.

I find this amusingly humorous.

and not so much a superpower. More like a disability. Wouldn't be able to walk anywhere and would have to resort to living in a wheelchair.

The Venture Brothers played on this.

Mr. Impossible kept him alive in a vacuum to prevent Cody the human torch from bursting into flames.... until he became evil and trapped him in an oxygen rich chamber to power his skyscraper.

EVERY superpower is a curse if you can't turn it off.