There’s a classic personality question related to this. Don’t try and over think it. Go with your first reaction. If you had to choose between the two, would you rather have the power of flight or the power of invisibility?
Flight, because you didn’t specify your flight speed, you could also fly fast enough to be invisible to a human eye.
If an object travels 500 times it’s length in a second, it would be impossible to detect. For a 185 cm (6 foot person) that translates to 2069 mph flight speed.
For an F-15 to fly that fast, it would have to travel at 21,743 mph.
Hmm… I guess flight. I really,would not enjoy having to walk around naked. And then what if you needed to be visible? (Think invisible man… the man is invisible, but that doesn’t mean the clothes are too!!!)
On the one hand, being invisible could give me a chance to do whatever the hell I wanna do and freak people out with the floating objects.
On the other hand, being able to fly means I wouldn’t have to rely on my parents or the public transportation system and I could go anywhere I’ve been dying to visit, especially if the power of flight allows for flights faster than a jet.
Flight. Not much need/use for invisibility. Same for most people, introverts included. (Most, not all.)
@ Biligum
The test is wrong. Standardized clap-trap. Social myth. It’s the equivalent of asking “Would you prefer $5 in dollar bills or quarters?” in a world where things are expensive and change is easily acquirable for the rare situations that require it, and thinking the answer always directly relates to weather patterns.
If it was Susan Storm Richards version, I’d pick invisibility. Otherwise, flight. Flight is just more useful, even if you can make your clothes invisible and be invisible to the entire EM spectrum.
My favorite power set to pick up would be a Green Lantern ring. Power limited only by imagination and will coupled with a super computer with access to the complete records of the oldest and most anal ocd species in the universe. Imagine what you could learn from that.
Flight, without a doubt, as long as it came with wings and a tail to rudder.
Invisibility is just. . . eh. I mean, to be undetectable you’d have to be naked AND (insert word for “cannot be touched” here) AND undetectable by lasers and other things. In the place of the naked-dreams, I have dreams of falling sensations, falling backward. If I could fly, and knew how, then I probably wouldn’t have those dreams. Oh, and I’m a bit of both an intro- and extro- vert, in that if I know someone well I’ll talk to them more often than if I don’t know someone. Off-topic sentence is off-topic.
. . . But, then again, in my opinion the perfect being is a blue and red dragon. . .
I know this is way after the fact, but I’m going backward through the logs and thought it was worth a pause to discuss.
First off, a disclaimer: sixth year of university, in Engineering.
My first instinct, really, was invisibility. The work I enjoy doing, is not the kind that people see, but the kind that people use to *do* the jobs that people see. I was the lighting guy for our stage productions in high school, so the audience never acknowledged me unless I screwed up, but if I wasn’t there the show would not exist. In college I filmed things for people, or fixed computers, or built stuff that people needed, but always took a backseat while they went up front and used what I had made to do their public jobs. So my first instinct was invisibility, because it would make it easier for me to hide and do the essential background work that nobody sees.
Of course, I quickly dismissed this idea, for various concerns both practical and intangible.
In the first, I enjoy construction. This means heavy lifting and occasionally standing upon rather high, rather precarious locations. Assume the ability to fly brings only slightly more force than was required to cancel my weight, but the energy my body expends is much less than what is required for my muscles to lift my own weight. I could use the ability to negate most of my weight and make lifting work much easier (as, a 200lb man deadlifting a 200lb beam is lifting 400lb, where the same man, weighing only 5lbs, could lift 395lb of beam with the same effort, or the same 200lb beam with half the effort). Additionally, were I to slip while climbing rafters, I could decellerate myself during the fall so as to prevent injury.
Many folks here discussed the ability to fly at very high speeds or altitudes; without protection, this is impossible. The SR-71 Blackbird, flying near 100,000 feet where there is so little air you can see stars at noonday, still encouters enough friction at Mach 3.5 that the surface of the plane may reach temperatures of over 400 degrees. Were a person to attempt high-speed flight at lower altitudes (where there is enough oxygen to breathe; recall, Everest is only 27,000 feet above sea level and many die trying to summit it without supplemental O2), air is dense enough to shred a person’s flesh. The highest windspeed recorded in the US was I believe 319MPH, at the center of an F-5 tornado; that’s about as fast as a commercial airliner, but a human would be obliterated in those conditions. Flying at high altitudes, at low enough speeds that a person would not be destroyed by airborne objects (rain, hail, insects, sand) or even the wind itself, is dangerous due to the lack of oxygen and low air temperatures; additionally, there are problems associated with rapid decompression and recompression. The total change in air pressure from sea-level to space is about the same as 30 feet of water, so there isn’t much risk of “the bends”, but eardrums can easily be destroyed. So even assuming high-speed, high-altitude flight is somehow an attainable power, it is well beyond the ability of a human body to survive.
Considering invisibility as a potential power, a few complications of its own arise. Assuming invisibility results from a bending of light around the body, some light must be allowed to travel straight through to the eyes in order to see where one is going. This results in only partial invisibility; you could allow only some light to pass to the eyes, but then your vision would be quite dim. And as vision isn’t limited to a single line from the eyes but is a cone, and for that matter an ever-moving cone, the area of light-penetration must be variable. Along the same lines, if invisibility resulted from the body itself becoming invisible, the lens could not focus (as refraction is a boundary condition, and an invisible lens has no boundaries), and the retina could not absorb, so one would be completely blind; additionally, all foreign matter within the body (surgical implants, partially digested food, etc.) would likely not be invisible as well.
Were invisibility resulting from the bending of light, and communications were to be set up such that direction came from an outside source (perhaps through a radio link) and no direct vision of the outside was necessary, one would have to consider the effect of the bending field on the radio waves (as both radio and light are electromagnetic radiation, and both subject, to different extents depending on frequency, to the same refractive effects). Additionally, could one not see one’s surroundings without an external camera, the point of invisibility is defeated.
So from a practical standpoint, invisibility is all but useless as a power, except perhaps to hide in a stationary location where visual knowledge of the surroundings wasn’t important for the duration of your stay. Flight, as many would use it, is dangerous and would, without substantial protection, result in immediate death. However, used safely and appropriately, the power of flight could be harnessed to perform many practical flight- and nonflight-based tasks.
I know the note said not to overthink it, but I’m an engineer. Most of these considerations occurred to me within the first ten seconds of pondering the question.
Flight for sure. I see no real use in invisibility, because I have no need to hide my doings/I have no intention to do anything bad. BUT I have wanted to fly as long as I remember. I think Id find some kind of freedom in it, no need to be so close to other people, shortcuts…
And I don’t think that introvert/extrovert thing really works, because always before I have been considered an introvert. Even by a real psychologist. I have a slight problem with social situations…
Flight means unlimited transportation.
Invisibility means the same(with a little more discomfort but whatever) plus so many more cool uses, it’s not even close. Invisibility by far.
even though i’m already a ninja, i’d still go with invisibility. i just think that it would be cool to confuse the crap outta people with unseen antics
Invisibility, so i can steal stuff, cos im scared of heights, and would NOT like flying, even though the NON-vicious vegetarian voices that HAVE NOT eaten my brain say that it’s not dangerous to drop from a large height.
I have already said my thoughts on flying in another comment (cold up there, avoid birds and airplanes, gov’t and FFA hassle). Invisibility would be awesome as long as you could still see yourself. I wouldn’t want to end up getting hurt just because I don’t know where my feet are.
hmmm…hard to choose…I would want both, as being able to become invisible at will would come in handy, and flying away from danger is also good…hmmm…yeah, both.
@sidehack: Excellent post, and were I to attempt flight, I would never fly very high or fast, already having read lots about the dangers which speed and altitude would bring with them.
My absolute dearest wish would be control of the weather, though.
i would NOT want to read minds. *Shudder* my first thought was flight which is odd bc i always figured id like invisiblity. but it depends. would flight mean i’d get wings? cause thats a serious wardrobe issue. would i be invisible ALL the time? cause that would suck. so on so forth. now TIME TRAVEL would be fun and very useful.
Flight, because you didn’t specify your flight speed, you could also fly fast enough to be invisible to a human eye.
If an object travels 500 times it’s length in a second, it would be impossible to detect. For a 185 cm (6 foot person) that translates to 2069 mph flight speed.
For an F-15 to fly that fast, it would have to travel at 21,743 mph.
Invisibility. That way I could hide from my stalkers.
PLEASE. Have Biff crush them with his many rocket ships! D:
Hmm… I guess flight. I really,would not enjoy having to walk around naked. And then what if you needed to be visible? (Think invisible man… the man is invisible, but that doesn’t mean the clothes are too!!!)
I guess I’ll be the first one to mention on how funny the comic is..
I’d choose flight. Convenient form of transportation. With invisibility, it’s just, “Oh hey! No one can see me! I can get away with stuff!” Big whoop.
And another thing, either I’m weird or this test is wrong, because I’m an introvert without a doubt.
I’m on the fence on that particular subject.
On the one hand, being invisible could give me a chance to do whatever the hell I wanna do and freak people out with the floating objects.
On the other hand, being able to fly means I wouldn’t have to rely on my parents or the public transportation system and I could go anywhere I’ve been dying to visit, especially if the power of flight allows for flights faster than a jet.
I’m having a hard time choosing.
Flight. Not much need/use for invisibility. Same for most people, introverts included. (Most, not all.)
@ Biligum
The test is wrong. Standardized clap-trap. Social myth. It’s the equivalent of asking “Would you prefer $5 in dollar bills or quarters?” in a world where things are expensive and change is easily acquirable for the rare situations that require it, and thinking the answer always directly relates to weather patterns.
If it was Susan Storm Richards version, I’d pick invisibility. Otherwise, flight. Flight is just more useful, even if you can make your clothes invisible and be invisible to the entire EM spectrum.
My favorite power set to pick up would be a Green Lantern ring. Power limited only by imagination and will coupled with a super computer with access to the complete records of the oldest and most anal ocd species in the universe. Imagine what you could learn from that.
Flight, without a doubt, as long as it came with wings and a tail to rudder.
Invisibility is just. . . eh. I mean, to be undetectable you’d have to be naked AND (insert word for “cannot be touched” here) AND undetectable by lasers and other things. In the place of the naked-dreams, I have dreams of falling sensations, falling backward. If I could fly, and knew how, then I probably wouldn’t have those dreams. Oh, and I’m a bit of both an intro- and extro- vert, in that if I know someone well I’ll talk to them more often than if I don’t know someone. Off-topic sentence is off-topic.
. . . But, then again, in my opinion the perfect being is a blue and red dragon. . .
I know this is way after the fact, but I’m going backward through the logs and thought it was worth a pause to discuss.
First off, a disclaimer: sixth year of university, in Engineering.
My first instinct, really, was invisibility. The work I enjoy doing, is not the kind that people see, but the kind that people use to *do* the jobs that people see. I was the lighting guy for our stage productions in high school, so the audience never acknowledged me unless I screwed up, but if I wasn’t there the show would not exist. In college I filmed things for people, or fixed computers, or built stuff that people needed, but always took a backseat while they went up front and used what I had made to do their public jobs. So my first instinct was invisibility, because it would make it easier for me to hide and do the essential background work that nobody sees.
Of course, I quickly dismissed this idea, for various concerns both practical and intangible.
In the first, I enjoy construction. This means heavy lifting and occasionally standing upon rather high, rather precarious locations. Assume the ability to fly brings only slightly more force than was required to cancel my weight, but the energy my body expends is much less than what is required for my muscles to lift my own weight. I could use the ability to negate most of my weight and make lifting work much easier (as, a 200lb man deadlifting a 200lb beam is lifting 400lb, where the same man, weighing only 5lbs, could lift 395lb of beam with the same effort, or the same 200lb beam with half the effort). Additionally, were I to slip while climbing rafters, I could decellerate myself during the fall so as to prevent injury.
Many folks here discussed the ability to fly at very high speeds or altitudes; without protection, this is impossible. The SR-71 Blackbird, flying near 100,000 feet where there is so little air you can see stars at noonday, still encouters enough friction at Mach 3.5 that the surface of the plane may reach temperatures of over 400 degrees. Were a person to attempt high-speed flight at lower altitudes (where there is enough oxygen to breathe; recall, Everest is only 27,000 feet above sea level and many die trying to summit it without supplemental O2), air is dense enough to shred a person’s flesh. The highest windspeed recorded in the US was I believe 319MPH, at the center of an F-5 tornado; that’s about as fast as a commercial airliner, but a human would be obliterated in those conditions. Flying at high altitudes, at low enough speeds that a person would not be destroyed by airborne objects (rain, hail, insects, sand) or even the wind itself, is dangerous due to the lack of oxygen and low air temperatures; additionally, there are problems associated with rapid decompression and recompression. The total change in air pressure from sea-level to space is about the same as 30 feet of water, so there isn’t much risk of “the bends”, but eardrums can easily be destroyed. So even assuming high-speed, high-altitude flight is somehow an attainable power, it is well beyond the ability of a human body to survive.
Considering invisibility as a potential power, a few complications of its own arise. Assuming invisibility results from a bending of light around the body, some light must be allowed to travel straight through to the eyes in order to see where one is going. This results in only partial invisibility; you could allow only some light to pass to the eyes, but then your vision would be quite dim. And as vision isn’t limited to a single line from the eyes but is a cone, and for that matter an ever-moving cone, the area of light-penetration must be variable. Along the same lines, if invisibility resulted from the body itself becoming invisible, the lens could not focus (as refraction is a boundary condition, and an invisible lens has no boundaries), and the retina could not absorb, so one would be completely blind; additionally, all foreign matter within the body (surgical implants, partially digested food, etc.) would likely not be invisible as well.
Were invisibility resulting from the bending of light, and communications were to be set up such that direction came from an outside source (perhaps through a radio link) and no direct vision of the outside was necessary, one would have to consider the effect of the bending field on the radio waves (as both radio and light are electromagnetic radiation, and both subject, to different extents depending on frequency, to the same refractive effects). Additionally, could one not see one’s surroundings without an external camera, the point of invisibility is defeated.
So from a practical standpoint, invisibility is all but useless as a power, except perhaps to hide in a stationary location where visual knowledge of the surroundings wasn’t important for the duration of your stay. Flight, as many would use it, is dangerous and would, without substantial protection, result in immediate death. However, used safely and appropriately, the power of flight could be harnessed to perform many practical flight- and nonflight-based tasks.
I know the note said not to overthink it, but I’m an engineer. Most of these considerations occurred to me within the first ten seconds of pondering the question.
Conclusion: I choose flight.
Flight for sure. I see no real use in invisibility, because I have no need to hide my doings/I have no intention to do anything bad. BUT I have wanted to fly as long as I remember. I think Id find some kind of freedom in it, no need to be so close to other people, shortcuts…
And I don’t think that introvert/extrovert thing really works, because always before I have been considered an introvert. Even by a real psychologist. I have a slight problem with social situations…
You can’t fly into the girl’s locker room.
I literally couldn’t choose. I want both.
…
Nope, still can’t choose.
Reading minds, now that would be useful.
Flight means unlimited transportation.
Invisibility means the same(with a little more discomfort but whatever) plus so many more cool uses, it’s not even close. Invisibility by far.
Flight. Most definitely flight. I’ve had dreams of flying. They were awesome.
even though i’m already a ninja, i’d still go with invisibility. i just think that it would be cool to confuse the crap outta people with unseen antics
Invisibility, so i can steal stuff, cos im scared of heights, and would NOT like flying, even though the NON-vicious vegetarian voices that HAVE NOT eaten my brain say that it’s not dangerous to drop from a large height.
I have already said my thoughts on flying in another comment (cold up there, avoid birds and airplanes, gov’t and FFA hassle). Invisibility would be awesome as long as you could still see yourself. I wouldn’t want to end up getting hurt just because I don’t know where my feet are.
hmmm…hard to choose…I would want both, as being able to become invisible at will would come in handy, and flying away from danger is also good…hmmm…yeah, both.
Flight.
@sidehack: Excellent post, and were I to attempt flight, I would never fly very high or fast, already having read lots about the dangers which speed and altitude would bring with them.
My absolute dearest wish would be control of the weather, though.
Flight.
Honestly, if I could fly, I don’t think you’d ever see me on the ground by choice.
i would NOT want to read minds. *Shudder* my first thought was flight which is odd bc i always figured id like invisiblity. but it depends. would flight mean i’d get wings? cause thats a serious wardrobe issue. would i be invisible ALL the time? cause that would suck. so on so forth. now TIME TRAVEL would be fun and very useful.