All posts by Professor Pneuma

Thing is, if you actualize toy soldiers, they may not technically be "toy soldiers" anymore, strictly speaking. By actualizing them (from toys into actual soldiers) you might lose the ability to manipulate them with the first ability- simply because the required identity no longer applies to them. For this reason, this is a somewhat unpredictable, possibly volatile combo.

@Necropolis00 I guess it just seems to fit a reality warper in an amusing way, ya know? Quantum Immortality in practice would probably look a lot like reality going out of its way to protect the user, since your always occupying the one in which you survive every event. It would basically be Deus Ex Machina after Deus Ex Machina. For example, I fall from a great height and live because in this universe there just happened to be something to catch me before I hit the ground or cushion my fall. Somebody tries to shoot me and in this universe the gun just happens to fall apart or jam at that exact moment. Something about that just seems to fit a reality warper, especially because it would lend itself to an even-keeled disposition. I’d always be calm and ready to crack a joke no matter how insane the circumstances, because I would know that things would kind of just work out for me no matter what I do. Not to mention, quantum immortality adds a little bit of unpredictability to the avoidance of death— I never know exactly how or why I’ll survive an otherwise deathly scenario until it all plays out. Little surprises like that probably go a long way for someone capable of controlling reality itself.

I would say Sherlock, because I think he’s the best detective here, but I think Batman’s access to various resources and tech more than closes the gap

I would say not quite. Let’s say an omnipotent being could override the control that the autopotent being exerts over itself. In this case, the second being in question wouldn’t really be autopotent, because they don’t have supreme and limitless power over themselves; after all, it can be overridden by someone or something else. Let’s instead say that the omnipotent being could NOT override the autopotent being’s control over itself. Well then in this case, the first being wouldn’t truly be omnipotent, because there is something it simply can’t do, a very real ability is just doesn’t have. Perhaps more importantly, there is a being in existence capable of denying its will and power, if only in ways which pertain to itself.

This demonstrates that you could theoretically have a nigh-omnipotent being and a truly autopotent being, or a truly omnipotent being and a nigh-autopotent being, but not the true and absolute versions of both simultaneously.

It’s like an undeniable force vs an immovable object; you can only really have one or the other, because something has to happen when they meet, and no conceivable outcome of that meeting preserves the authenticity of their supposed properties

To be honest, if I can already manipulate time, space, matter, energy, life and death, then magic seems a tad superfluous to me. Like, practically any ability afforded to me by magic is one that is almost certainly already afforded to me through one or more of the other six

@Mr.Interest that’s an interesting point. I’ll admit, that line of reasoning crossed my mind when I was writing my original comment, but it seemed to me at the time that in every real life example we could refer to, every exercise of the intellect is ultimately in service of emotion in some way. That is to say, at least in humans, that certain actions could certainly be sensible purely in light of logic and reason, but only if their outcomes serve more fundamental desires, or at the very least instinctual drives which themselves manifest as desires.

Of course, this relationship between emotion and desire may not hold in every conceivable case. For instance, we could imagine a robot piloted by an emotionless artificial intelligence that operates solely based on logical principles to maximize certain parameters determined by its base programming. In this case, we could say it might be “motivated” towards certain actions insofar as those actions are logically justified based on the likelihood that they will maximize those parameters. Here, it is at least conceivable that no emotion ever need enter the equation. If said actions included faking emotions, then we have exactly the scenario asked about in this post.

I suppose in my original comment I was overly restricting the spectrum of possible contexts within which motivation can exist. I was also operating under the misconception that motivation is itself necessarily an emotion, when in reality it is any driver of behavior in an agentive system. Thanks for correcting me!

The “if they wanted to” part is kind of the crux of the issue here. Want, or desire, is an emotional sort of thing. Yes, if they wanted to fake emotions there’s nothing to prevent them from doing so per se, but with an all-encompassing apathy they would never, could never, want to do so, because they are incapable of wanting anything whatsoever in the first place. They effectively can’t fake emotions simply because doing so would require a motivation towards that action, and emotional motivation of any kind is precisely that which they are completely incapable of (in my understanding).

Great thing about mystical or supernatural powersets is that the way they work can be ambiguous or unknown on purpose. That’s tends to be how supernatural things work: they just do, but few, if any, really understand how.

Oh for sure. I mean, Psionics is such a nebulous type of superpower that you can theoretically do just about anything and call it Psionics. That said, light and energy are perfectly on brand for Psionics. Often times Psionic powers are depicted as effectively being a form of energy manipulation, and in various media the use of psychic powers is frequently accompanied by an emanation of light.

This shouldn’t come as much of a surprise either. It’s worth considering is that the brain is basically an electrical circuit. While the precise nature of the brain’s relationship to the mind isn’t understood, it’s beyond clear that there is one. For this reason, it’s not in appropriate to theorize that the mind itself may be some sort of electromagnetic construct. I say all of this because light is, after all, just electromagnetic radiation, and may therefore naturally emanate from an especially powerful mind.

On the other hand, you could also go for a less scientific, more mystical/supernatural take on psionics, in which case light and energy are really no less out of place.