First thing we think about when we gain God-like powers is the amazing life we'd have. Create planets, create universes, bring back the dead and pretty much alter reality. But what we don't think about are the consequences. Do any of us here even have a frame of reference for an infinite lifespan? Can we even keep our minds functioning that far before whatever makes our minds work turn into scrambled eggs? What about the accountability of dealing with omnipotence? You make one minuscule change and you could end up throwing the entire universe into a catastrophic collapse, entire species could go extinct and you wouldn't even know it. It would be just like how we walk around outside and crush all the living bacteria underneath our feet without even realizing it. How what we do can completely mess up everything around us and change the dynamics forever. How can you go back and change something that you have no idea happened? You just wiped out an entire species through an action you didn't know existed, what if that species was crucial to the balance of an ecosystem which will now fail and kill millions of others? What if you keep bringing back your loved ones from the dead for so long that you get sick of seeing them die? What if you decide to make them immortal but they reject it and hate you for it? Can you imagine dealing with that? How can you deal with the insanity of living for so long that you begin to forget things? What if you don't forget things? That's even worse, you remember every single thing that has happened that you probably get sick of it all to the point where you want to commit suicide. That's the thing, an omnipotent cannot commit suicide. You "die" but you just technically don't exist anymore until you decide you want to exist again. Everything about an omnipotent is a paradox, including the concept of an omnipotent. There is nothing that cannot be done even if it goes balls to wall with logic and common sense because it is literally holding up a middle finger to every single scientific law known to man. So, your thoughts?
I don't know if omnipotence can cover emotions, can it? I mean, if you're sad then you're just going to be sad and there isn't much omnipotence can do to not make you sad. And what if your technique that you uncovered using your omnipotence just restricts you so much that you end up being extremely miserable? What if you actually just have to live like a regular human being in order for your omnipotence to not be a problem?
You will transcend to omnipotence, and be changed, or it will not happen. With the better part of 7billion chances every second, one of us should do it. I'm writing about this.
Just because you remember everything doesn't mean everything is constantly at the forefront of your mind. Even our finite brains handle this well. We keep memories and knowledge that our subconscious thinks will be useful closer to the surface and push other things back to be recalled later. Frankly, I don't see unlimited memory being a problem. Ignoring the part about accountability for a moment, this assumes that we won't have control of such powers and will wield them willy nilly at the slightest whim. If that's the situation, I would argue that we would be far from omnipotent as we don't even have control over ourselves. If that's the type of omnipotence we'd be forced with, then I'd certainly be more hesitant to say I'd want it. I'm sure there would be a way to use such power responsibly. Maybe make a universe (or universes) where everything is inherently protected from unintentional bursts of power and then confine yourself to that universe. Addressing the accountability now: Assuming we do have control over our own abilities, I think the best approach would be to set up a personal set of rules you'd just have to hold yourself to. Start with the absolute no-nos (no temper tantrums destroying entire worlds), then work your way down. You'd need to invent a system to hold yourself accountable (I just realized I switched from "we" to "you" but whatever). It sounds like the type of omnipotence we'd be possessing still allows us to suffer emotionally, so set up a system that punishes us automatically if we break our rules, with varying degrees of torment depending on how important we rank the rules to follow. Yes, we'd have the power to unmake the system at any point, but we're omnipotent, so ultimately good behavior relies on us holding ourselves accountable. I don't have a good answer for that. Personally I'd start with the "make them immortal" part and hope for the best. If they don't like it, I'd give them a way to make themselves mortal again so that the choice would be theirs, and then I'd try to honor that choice if they make it. Even if they do go that route though, I know people have loved ones take their own lives everyday, so while it would be painful, the fact that people endure these sorrows in this life tells me that its something that can be endured as an immortal. That said, this is one place where I could see a constant buildup of these events, even if they happen relatively rarely, eventually start to erode one's sanity. I personally think there would be ways to cope with it (confine yourself to worlds with only other immortal beings, for instance), and ultimately you'd have to find ways to cope with it (or just become a miserable/insane god), but I can certainly see how it would have the potential to break people. This I disagree with, in part. Yes, true omnipotence could violate every scientific law of physics, but it can't break logic. You can't make an immovable object and an unstoppable force, ram them together and have them to both work the way you want them to. If you tried this in a simulation then either: a) immovable object doesn't move b) unstoppable force moves the object c) the simulation crashes as soon as the two interact A simpler example. You can't say "this exact, one-in-existence rock is made of protons at all times, and only protons at all times" and then say "this same exact, one-in-existence rock is made of neutrons at all times, and only neutrons at all times" and have both laws of yours be true simultaneously. Either one rule will override the other, some compromise will happen that breaks the laws (such as them being both protons and neutrons at once, violating the "only protons/neutrons" part of the laws), or you'll break the whole dang system and nothing will happen at all. So while I agree you might be able to do things that might be impossible according to conventional theories (such as solve the halting problem, which would literally require infinite time, but as an omnipotent immortal you would have that), there are still some things that simply would not be possible.
I want to say I'd do something deep and altruistic, but 100% first thing I'd do is make my dick bigger. Which I guess in it's own way is both of those things.
You're omnipotent, you can just "turn off" the immortality switch and you can just make yourself omniscient without consequences. You're omnipotent, they don't have a choice, if you want them to like it they will like it. Says who??? You are omnipotent, by definition you can do everything you like, you can even decide you don't want to be omnipotent anymore and there is nothing you can do if you change your mind because you took away your own powers without a means to recover them. In concept, an omnipotent entity can do anything, from banal things like pop a pizza into existence to morally wrong things like mind manipulation to epic actions like creat a planet without much effort, and, of course, remove its own omnipotence. If the being can't remove its omnipotent status then it is not omnipotent.
You don't understand what omnipotent is, do you? If you can just "stop" being omnipotent then you were never omnipotent in the first place. If you suddenly turn yourself "omniscient" then that means you're no longer omnipotent and that you just know everything, that means you were never omnipotent in the first place. I've already explained with how you kill yourself, if you kill yourself as an omnipotent, you just cease to exist but you can decide at any time to start existing again. You never get off this train, you are on it for an eternity and there is nothing your omnipotence can do to stop it. I don't think you're quite getting it, you're just going to force your loved ones to "like" it? Has it gotten to the point where you don't even care what they truly think? Would you really just do that to your family and be okay with it? Never feel guilty knowing that you're making them do something they don't want, including screwing with their emotions? Let's not just throw out the emotional aspect and pretend that you wouldn't feel guilty at all about any of this. That's not how it works, that's not how any of this works. Again, this is not how any of this works. You cannot stop being omnipotent because if you could remove your own powers then you were never omnipotent to begin with. I'd suggest reading up on omnipotence and its paradoxes before you begin discussing what can or cannot be done with it.
What if you want to remember something but you can't even remember what you want to remember? What if it was important, like a loved one but you can't even make out their faces anymore? What if you literally forget what you want to remember after such a long time? You can't tell me you wouldn't go mad after a few thousand years. Same thing with remembering everything, you wouldn't be able to forget the most horrific of things. While we can just push it all to the back of the head, you're still forgetting how you'd be an omnipotent Human. You are still a slave to your emotions, to your instincts as a human being and that's one of the things I'd like to discuss here because that's a very big point in discussing omnipotence; are emotions exempt from omnipotent powers? Give someone the button to anonymously fire nukes all over a world, no system is put in place to stop that person from doing it even if they didn't want him to. What do you think happens when the guy has a tantrum? He just presses the button and all these people die. Honestly, you're assuming that with all these rules that we'd be able to maintain a moral high ground when morality doesn't even exist. An omnipotent won't be bound by something as simple as morals because of the simple fact that you would probably get nihilistic very quickly, you would realize that nothing is worth it anymore. A lot of the things you suggest here can immediately be undone if the user so wishes. You're thinking that one would suddenly become wise once they're omnipotent, what if it was a gang member that received that omnipotence? Could you say they wouldn't just use it to rule over the universe for themselves? Would you be able to resist the temptation to force your own rules, your own idea of how the world should be on everybody? Sure, you'd think "no, that's fucked up" but wait around for a few million years, seeing mortals do the same stupid things over and over again. You'll find yourself seriously reconsidering your stance on fucking with people and how they do things. You understand that you would have to resist the temptation to bring them back to life for the entire time you're omnipotent. Imagine that, you have a button that lets you see your favorite dog again or your favorite grandma again, don't tell me you wouldn't want to press it even if they didn't want you to. After a trillion years, you would still have to resist seeing your loved ones again because of the simple fact that they might hate you for cursing them or watch them die in just 80 years which is akin to watching something instantly die before their eyes as soon as they're born to an omnipotent. If anything, that would just make you want to kill yourself just so you wouldn't have to resist that temptation anymore. But I'm glad you see how this can destroy somebody, it's something I've thought about and it's a really tough dilemma. I would never want to alter my family's emotions so they're happy with their situation because then my family has stopped existing and that's not really them anymore. Hanging out with other immortals is interesting but I'd imagine they'd be nihilistic as well, they'd probably opt to sleep for most of their free time and might slumber for X amount of years before waking up to talk to you or anyone else. Maybe they all just don't care anymore. That's the thing, an omnipotent can do exactly what goes against logic. An omnipotent can make a square a circle but at the same time still be a square. An omnipotent can lift a rock that is too heavy for him, the immovable object. And an omnipotent can halt an unstoppable force, something he cannot stop. The simulation crashes? Well the omnipotent doesn't want it to crash and suddenly, it doesn't crash anymore. You want to kill yourself? You cease to exist but you can decide to exist again at any time you want. You want to make a box a sphere but it's still a box? It's done, even if you can't physically make a box a sphere while still being a box. According to our logic, our scientific laws, if a box is a sphere then it is most definitely a sphere now and not a box. But to an omnipotence, he can just skip logic and do exactly that. That is what omnipotence is and that's why the literal definition of an omnipotent is considered a paradox. Everything about it is a paradox and that's why it's such a difficult topic to talk about. All the things an omnipotent can do stretches our imagination to the point where we can't really imagine it anymore.
I don't follow this logic. That's like saying that if you have 20$ and give it away, that means you never had 20$ to begin with. To me it makes more sense that if you were omnipotent that you could get rid of your powers, because if you couldn't then that's something you can't do, which is the opposite of omnipotence.
It's like killing yourself as an omnipotent, you can technically "die" but you'll just cease to exist until you want to exist. How does that work? Beats me, it's a total paradox that can somehow happen because you're omnipotent. The same thing with taking away your powers, you can "take away" your own powers but you'll just "technically be not omnipotent" until you decide you want to be omnipotent again. So, you can and you can't, that's the paradox here. It can both happen and not happen and the universe somehow wouldn't just implode at the logical fallacy. There is no getting off this ride and that's why we see so many depictions of Gods being bored, depressed and insane. They would actually go insane after a while because they wouldn't be able to just get rid of their powers or immortality. That's why they would be jealous of mortals. Now don't get me wrong, I would love to be omnipotent. It would be the best thing to ever happen to me but I'm not going to pretend that there aren't consequences that I'll have to face later on.
It's only a paradox if you apply linear reasoning, which as a omnipresent, omniscient, omnipotent being, you wouldn't. Hypothetically, if I were a time traveler (which I am not) and I went forward in time to visit my grave then I would be dead and alive at the same time. Likewise, if I were an omnipotent being, being everywhere at once, then I could give up my powers and die at any point, but then being omnipotent, I could always bring myself back to life and give myself back those powers because the omnipotent version of me already did it some time in the future and or past. A paradox is if I'm broke, and I, a time traveler (though again, not in real life) show up from the future and give myself 20$. Knowing how much this money would mean to me from 30 seconds ago, I hop in my time machine and hand that money to myself and walk away feeling like a good Samaritan. Question is, where did that 20$ come from? Spoiler: Obvious answer From me, obviously. I gave it to me like 20 seconds ago, it only makes sense I had it to give it to me later.
Whatever it is, it can only work if you're omnipotent. Only thing I can think to describe it is a paradox, there was no time traveling involved when you decided to be "dead" and no longer exist. It just happened then when you decide you want to be alive, it just happened again. You can just decide to get all your powers back and bring yourself back to life just because you're omnipotent, logic doesn't apply anymore. That's the whole point, logic does not apply to any of this no matter how much quantum mechanics you try to apply to it, no matter how good your understanding of the fourth dimension is, omnipotence just does not give a shit about any of that. It will carry on like it always has and always will and there isn't anything that can be done about it. If you went back in time to when you were born and killed yourself, you wouldn't die and you wouldn't cease to exist. How the fuck do you figure that out? It's a paradox, technically, if you were killed all the way back then, you shouldn't exist at all but you do. Omnipotence is a paradox.
No, but being omnipresent means you already exist every point of space as well as every point in time. So omnipotent you is always around to help out non-omnipotent you. So you can give up that 20$, but you with 20$ will always be around to spot you if you need it. I didn't make any mention of quantum anything.
You're still not getting it, you were never not omnipotent, you were omnipotent all along and if you aren't omnipotent then you never were truly omnipotent and someone else was. There cannot be more than one omnipotent since if there was two then either one was never truly omnipotent but close to omnipotence. If you were just omnipresent then you never had omnipotence and you're still a mortal that obeys an universe with rules. Omnipotence has everything, it is omnipresent and omniscient as well. If you didn't have those then you were never truly omnipotent either. Try to understand that being omnipotent is beyond being a God, you cannot "lose" your powers. You just simply have them and not have them, fuck all logic involved. Just like how you can lift a rock that is too heavy for you, fuck all logic. I never said you mentioned any quantum mechanics but I was making a point that people still try to apply them to a being that is beyond anything that exists. Always remember when we talk about omnipotence -- fuck all logic. If you were given omnipotence then you suddenly have always been omnipotent, no matter what period in your life you weren't omnipotent, you were also omnipotent at that time now. Besides, the original topic was dealing with the emotional aspect of omnipotence, trying not to go insane after an infinity. Trying to deal with the accountability of dealing with an entire universe which already stretches our imagination and we still can't really picture it properly even with numerous diagrams.
I never said there were more than one omnipotent being, just omnipotent you and not omnipotent you. Like the like alive you and dead you from my time travel example they're you in two different states. But being that one of those states is omnipotent it's like the time traveling you is already literally everywhere in time. So you can give up your powers and not be able to do anything and die, because being omnipotent, you can do that, but omnipotent you will always be around to dance on your corpse and bring you back to life because you were at one time omnipotent. It's not a paradox if things that we generally perceive as binaries are not actually mutually exclusive from one another, like being dead and alive. Well, if you're omnipotent, you have the power to just not if you really don't want to.
Again, you're not making a whole lot of sense here. If you decide you're not omnipotent, you can decide to be omnipotent which means you were omnipotent all along. That is a paradox because you cannot be in two places at once, you cannot be dead and alive, you cannot be omnipotent and not omnipotent. Those things do not obey our scientific laws at all, therefore they are paradoxes, binary or not. I keep saying it but the very existence of an omnipotent is a paradox in itself. Whatever you say an omnipotent can or cannot do, they can do and at the same time they cannot. It is the existence of something so paradoxical that it's pointless to try and apply any shred of logic to it.
Why do you not understand that an omnipotent simply does not have to operate by your parameters. An omnipotent can do whatever the fuck it likes and be whatever it wants. Your Schrodinger's cat theory goes out of the window the second you have beings that can halt unstoppable forces and move immovable objects. It goes out of the window when you can be dead and not dead and at the same time be the manifestation of the universe or become a pineapple the size of a galaxy. Nothing makes sense anymore and to try and apply science to any of it is just delusional. And besides, the Schrodinger's cat theory was meant to prove how ridiculous the theory was in the first place. Guy was religious as well, which explains the theory. You want to humanize omnipotent beings? Then it wasn't truly omnipotent to begin with. Omnipotence is beyond human capability and comprehension. The only thing we can do is just apply what frame of logic or reference we know of to the infinity of an infinite being and hope we don't go insane.
I'm not saying they have to operate by my parameters, but if I'm going to write about them, then they do have to follow some sort of internal consistency. Without that everything they do and don't do is a plot hole and/or the shattering of the suspension of disbelief. So, whether or not real life omnipotent beings do or don't have to follow any logic, our readers do, and if you want your omnipotent, omnipresent super behemoth overlords to be completely free of logic, reason, and consistency, you'd be better off showing your readers why that is rather than just repeatedly telling them that and getting angry that that isn't satisfying instead of accusing them of being *gasp* religious.
I was talking about omnipotence if it actually existed as the real definition of omnipotence. I understand for writing purposes, you need a sandbox to make a clear distinction and that readers like logic in stories. But true omnipotence is terrifying and does not care about your logic. Writers may do well to read this thread and learn how to write an omnipotent character properly. The only problem is that writing a true omnipotent character is just simply going to be boring since there won't be any conflict that the character can't solve. But I suppose there is something in writing about the emotion aspect, the struggles of the character dealing with omnipotence and realizing they can't actually die or lose their powers.
I am not making this assumption. I am saying this is what you should do if you want to hold yourself accountable. You are also jumping to conclusions saying that you won't be bound with morals because you will become nihilistic because you realize nothing is worth it anymore. This is not a guarantee that you will come to the conclusion "nothing is worth it anymore". Maybe you will maybe you won't, but even if you do it doesn't mean you'll become nihilistic. You might just become apathetic and do nothing. Maybe put yourself to sleep for eternity. Yes, I acknowledged that in my previous post. You are omnipotent, so the only thing that can keep you in check is your own self-discipline. I'm not saying you'll be able to maintain discipline for eternity. In fact I'm pretty sure I'd change up my own rules of conduct just to experiment if I were in that position, but I would like to think I would hold myself to whatever system of conduct I set up for any specific world (the punishment system of conduct thing I mentioned, more specifically). If you want to experiment with different behaviors on the same world, make a copy of it. That way if you realize you f' up, you still at least have a world where people haven't been screwed over by you, so the impact won't be as devastating as "oh no I ruined literally everything" and instead just "oh no I'm a horrific monster". Again, no I'm not. I'm saying what I think would be one way to approach omnipotence that would lead to an eternal life you would be happy with. If some random thug gets put in the omnipotence position, then of course I wouldn't expect him to behave well. That would be sad and depressing, yes, but I expect you'll have new people you come to care about as long as you put in the effort to establish normal relationships with people. I will try to preempt the argument that it would be difficult or impossible to establish normal relationships with people by saying that I agree it might be difficult. Most likely you would have to either hide your abilities (at least your true abilities), be very discerning as to whom you wish to form a relationship with (someone mature enough to understand that knowing a god doesn't grant them insta-whatever they want and who can also see them as a person and not a deity), or you can go back to the "hanging out with immortals" thing. People remember horrible things all the time and still function. I think a big part to consider is the ratio of good memories to bad. Besides, if we are omnipotent, then shouldn't we be able to erase our own memories if we chose to? Yes, we should be able to bring them back, but you can bury them again, too and they won't bother you for as long as your buried. In this case it's your own fault if you insist on holding on to memories too painful to live happily. Yes, I understand that, but I also believe based on how desires work even in my own lifetime that such temptations would fade over time. When my dogs died, it was hard at the time, and would have liked for them to come back, but I've moved on. My life has moved on, too, and bringing them back into it now would upset what I've currently got going on due to the extra responsibilities they would impose, in addition to my desire to bring them back having diminished. This is certainly a valid concern, but I think there's a solution. You're omnipotent, so why don't you make a race (or races) of immortals who are hardwired not to become nihilistic? Maybe let a few do that for variety. I get that this will likely become boring after a time, but you've got an eternity to figure out how to spice it up. Ah, I think I see where we have issues with this. Yes, the literal definition of omnipotent is "able to do anything", which implies things that simply can't be done. I will admit that if one were omnipotent according to this definition, then you are absolutely correct, and my examples of inconsistencies are invalid. I don't believe this definition of omnipotence is a valid one, however, as to be omnipotent in this way would mean one transcends the fabric of any self-consistent reality, and thus everything would indeed be meaningless by definition. Without self-consistency, the only meaning would be what meaning one creates for oneself. I admit simply being in such a state would likely break me, at least for a while. I'd have to force meaning onto existence (by forcing the limitation of self-consistency) for my own sanity. For this reason, my arguments about omnipotence follow a more watered-down version of the concept: "able to create/destroy/rearrange energy and spacetime in accordance with arbitrary whims". This definition avoids the paradoxes implied by the "able to do anything" definition. If we do follow the "able to do anything" definition, that means we are able to limit ourselves to a self-consistent definition if we chose to. Since the questions you initially asked were regarding coping with omnipotence, I would make this self-limitation an almost mandatory step. I wouldn't rule out the possibility of coping without this limitation, but it seems like the simplest solution to me. This is a very good point.
Even Dr. Manhattan has limitations, though. He's even said it himself: "I can change almost [italics for emphasis] anything". I think LordWarGod is going for beings more akin to the Overmonitor.
