The last thing they said. I’ll never have to say “What?” 4 times in a row again.
You win. The amount of times I’ve wished the real world had subtitles…
Hi Taurus, I hope your birthday went well. I’m sorry that it seems I missed it.
That’s closed captioning
Huh? Does this come with all people? How do you set it?
Hell, just put their name, that would be a big help for me.
Ok, I change my answer.
Only if the words were intended for you to hear.
I say a lot under my breath to keep from bursting, but also keep from completely roasting the idiots I deal with daily.
Number of times they molested kids.
Monkey paw’s finger curls: You can see them. They’re EVERYWHERE. People you thought you knew and loved have numbers greater than zero over their head. Despite your horror, you try to make use of the power to try to bring them to justice. No one believes you. You have the Cassandra’s curse of the status quo. ‘Steve? What are you talking about? He’d never do anything like that. Butter wouldn’t melt. You should probably shut your mouth before we get offended about what you said about our friend and kick the shit out of you. Know what I mean?’ You watch the news and see everyone who has a position of power over you and your loved ones has a non-zero number. You try to escape into fictional media but your favorite actors are non-zeroes, the author pictures in your favorite books show non-zeroes, the album sleeves of your favorite bands show non-zeroes.
Knowledge can be a burden.
Then as you live in horror and disgust, you see people’s numbers rise day after day, unable to prove to others their horrendous crimes.
And then you befriend a stranger on the internet. You are nervous at first but you can’t see them, so you can imagine their number is zero. You hit it off. They’re amazing. Funny. Sweet. Kind. Hardworking. The relationship turns into a distant romance. Then you finally meet. You had no idea the number could go that high.
Or… you meet up and are flabbergasted by their ZERO. You could not be happier. You get extremely close, get married, have a child together… twins! You’re out overnight with friends, and your partner’s friend comes to visit. You return the next day to find the kids sleeping in and your beloved and their friend having a nice brunch, laughing with each other gleefully with the number two over each of their heads.
Or x2
You meet up for the first time in real life, and they do not have a number. How could this be? EVERYONE has a number, thank the gods they’re almost always zero! You’re immediately suspicious of their intentions and past actions. They’re not acting anything like they did online… they’re actually acting really fuckin weird, which greatly discomforts you.
You grapple with this internal conundrum, but you had failed to notice something crucial: The instant you saw each other, their eyes so briefly darted up, looking above your head.
We truly live in the worst timeline that this would even be considered.
Jeeeesus Christ! I was thinking like “farts per day” or “no-blinker lane change count”. You’re going straight to the show.
What’s the point though? We already know the worst offenders without this special power and not a fucking thing is being done about it.
Edit: I misunderstood the question. I thought it was for everyone to be able to see it. Yeah, this would be a good one to have to know who to avoid…
First name.
“Hey Janine, can you move your cart out of the way, thanks, gonna get by here and go get some ice cream sandwiches.”
“Excuse me, Ravi, trying to get off the train, one moment, thanks.”
“Oh hey, you’re a Tanis too, just like me, neat!”
This will absolutely weird everyone out.
Oh of course I’ll play your game Rumplest… random stranger.
Tanis is a nice name.
My mom gave it to me!
(And then I kept it when I transitioned, and now she says it’s too feminine and she wishes she didn’t. No backsies, mom! It’s mine and I’ll never be your son.)
Tanis is a great name. Also the name of my favorite character in the first two borderlands games
It’s an awesome name and your mom sounds like a butthead!
everyone would feel like they are working retail.
Would it be their preferred name or legal name? What about people who go by different names in different contexts? For example, William at work, but Bill with friends & family? Or stage names? Or professional titles?
Since it’s updated in real time, people would get to update that as they see fit. A trans lady who’s not out at work might be Sophie at the bar, but Leon in the office, for example.
Realtime running count of lies told
Similar to the other reply, it’s a good idea and seemingly pragmatic, but we could spend a decade arguing over the pedantry of what qualifies as a lie and still not be done.
Truth is tricky
How about any statement told with the intent of the recipient believing something about the world that the speaker knows to not be true
That’s a very good angle, honing in on exactly the problem of lying.
“Intent” could get just as tricky. With all the various forms of psychosis, delusion, etc. it’d be tough to say whether someone “meant” to do something. (It’s trickier than we’d usually like to admit even for a typical person.)
The same kind of problems exist around whether the speaker “knows” something to be false.
Then there’s the problem of fiction. Bedtime stories, campfire stories…
And not exactly a technical problem, but what about a doctor who knowingly oversimplifies or otherwise intentionally twists his words in an attempt to get the patient to manage their condition optimally? Parents who lie about how something works to help their kids understand something or behave safely? Teachers who oversimplify physics lessons to present it in a way their students can grasp for now. Not exactly a technical problem maybe, but would we want “noble lies” to affect the counter? This is a little off track, just occurred to me and felt like writing it out 🤷♂️
This one doesn’t pose a direct problem really but maybe helps me get to my point: what if people who rode a train moving at relativistic speeds when lightning struck both ends talk with someone who was watching from outside about when the lightning struck? Truth is tricky…
But making it, “how often did they attempt to intentionally deceive” as you suggested is a great approach imho. Maybe almost realistic. There’s probably some biological indicators of that right? … for non-psychopaths
Let’s start with the times you’ve said something you know to be untrue.
So sarcasm is lying?
Does reading the Big Friendly Giant to a nephew count as one big un-truth or many small ones?
“You are a king, then!” said Pilate.
Jesus answered, “You say that I am a king. In fact, the reason I was born and came into the world is to testify to the truth. Everyone on the side of truth listens to me.”
“What is truth?” retorted Pilate. With this he went out again to the Jews gathered there and said, “I find no basis for a charge against him.
I am innocent of the blood of this just person. See ye to it.
Oh, please, mine wouldve stopped counting by middle school.
RampantParanoia2366
Is “how much I would like them on a scale from 0 to 10 (with a resolution of like 0.01) if I got to know them at a deep level” allowed? Or is that cheating?
It’s a hypothetical question, so yeah. It can be whatever you want it to be. =)
I’m here to toot for the “lifetime farts” number
% of how genuine they are with me, easy to figure out who’s worth the time and who isn’t.
Could be a problem in a relationship tho. I take it back, just the cumulative numbers of fart in a lifetime.
The “genuineness” statistic sounds like the sort of thing that would gradually drive me insane.
I’d probably end up staring into the mirror and seeing an abysmally low number for myself.
And you find the one person who’s 100%, but actually they’re a dick. It seems like they’d be a dick.
Like, I’d be unusually high, but I still purposely don’t say certain things.
Ive been kinda obsessed with truth my whole life and I recognize the more I do not speak truth the less I can recognize what it. It is problematic for sure. Its good we can choose not to speak.
Ime some honest people speak the truth but don’t suck up or try to sell it. But are passed by for people who flatter and put on a show.
I love and hate this one, really a good monkey’s paw one!
The time and date of their death.
Add location too, otherwise that’s just cruel.
“You’re going to die in 2 days!”
“Oh god, how? Where? Why?”
“No idea, get fucked scrub!”
Having kids makes this a burden IMO. It would be very difficult to know that any of my kids would die before me let alone the exact time
A scale of 1-10 at how likely we could be friends.
I imagine everyone would be surprised by the number of 8’s, 9’s, and 10’s.
We’re very good at making friends when we try.
The way it works doesn’t even involve compatibility, so much. It’s just how much you’ve conversed over time without incident, like monkeys grooming each other.
An icon to indicate if they washed their hands after the last time they used the bathroom.
Or a percentage of how clean their hands are.
Some dude with no hands just has a DIV/0 error floating over his head.
all the others seem a lot more invasive, so I’ll go with their pronouns/gender so I never have to ask and be awkward
And then ill still forget their names and have to ask and be awkward
It’s not awkward to ask, I appreciate it when people do. I use any of them so it’s awkward to respond, but it’s nice that people care hahah.
what happens when you see none?!
Number of cumulative years they would be imprisoned for, had they been caught and convicted of every single crime they ever committed.
I’m betting most adults are not at zero.
Nobody’s at zero. It’s been said that the average American commits 3 felonies per day. The law is so long that you couldn’t read it in a lifetime. There are more criminalized actions than you can imagine.
This wouldn’t impart any useful information in a world where rapist pedophiles get time served and protesters get a life sentence for being adjacent to another crime handing out zines.
I feel like this would be a misleading measure. My dad has been self medicating anxiety, adhd, trauma, and potentially autism with pot for about 40 years, in our state an oz is 6 months on first offence. If we only count that on his usual consumption rate, baring any time he’s got extra, tried other things, or the myriad of other dubious things he’s gotten into, he’s lookimg at 1,440 years in jail. If you add anything about quality, growing, having large amounts, that’s going to skyrocket. In comparison, a double homicide nets you 100 points in this hypothetical.
Put my stoner dad next to a serial pedophile with 10 victims below the age of 12 and my dad looks like a fucking monster.
Oh, I’m probably up to 1000 years just for listening to music from the internet.
Maybe the number should exclude victimless crimes.
Nah, it’s more fun to guess if the dude with 1000 years over their head is a serial killer of was in high school during the Napster/Gnutella years
Fuck, I didn’t think about that. The only reason I didn’t starve to death in highschool was the money i made torrenting moves and selling bootlegs of new or obscure films and games. I’d make Manson look like rookie numbers…
this is going to be of limited use do to wierd laws and going to be vastly different for someone country by country
Why?
You can’t fix it until you can measure it.
If everyone knew this number about everybody, a lot of stupid laws would change overnight.
This works only if all laws are correct. Otherwise you end up seeing “100 years” for copyright infringement. In the world you imagined, who cares why they have 100 years on em? The never-can-be-bad law is always correct, and a 100 year sentence is always just and good. Otherwise who gives a fuck?
Lame. In Russia they d give you 10 years for thinking that killing neighbours is bad
I’ve been in possession of weed enough times that my number would probably be higher than someone who murdered a couple of people but never had weed on them.
A boolean indicating if they want a conversation or not
or maybe between 0 and 1. that way it would be easier to see if the topic that I’ve decided is super interesting and won’t shut up about is interesting to the to the other person as well. If I start seeing the number dropping quickly, time to change topics or just walk away.
Ugh, the scoremaxing techniques salespeople would develop to be able to game that number in real-time without your ability to obscure your actual interest.
Human or Not Human
HP bar, level, and whether they have aggro
It would also be helpful to know how much mana they have left
