Poll: Jumping or Force

[Daggedawg]

Teleportation, easily. No more travel costs, ever. Just need an idea of where to go, and you're there.

When it comes down to it, telekinesis just doesn't have that many practical applications in everyday life. Sure, picking up objects form across the room might save time and effort, but that's about all I can think of that wouldn't have some troublesome societal repercussions.

 

[Simskiller]

And then throw in mind control for good measure. The best power ever.

 

[PurePareidolia]

The problem with teleportation is always conservation of momentum. If you jump out of a plane, you're hurtling towards the ground at terminal velocity, even if you dodge, you're still going at that speed. Unless you could halt or redirect your momentum it'd be substantially less useful than you'd think.

On the other hand, anything you do with teleportation you can do with telekinesis, it'd just be slower (though not necessarily that much slower) so I have to go with that.

 

[alandavidson]

Eh, this is a though one. But I can think of a lot more real-world applications for Force. Now if I have a friend who can Jump, we'd be practically unstoppable.

 

[Whispering Cynic]

Telekinesis. Teleportation is nice and all, but I can see myself getting much more done with TK... with enough creativity, the potential is almost limitless. Also, don't know about you people, but I've always wanted to try demolishing a building with just my mind.

 

[RedDeadFred]

Considering there probably isn't any limitation to what you can do with telekinesis, I'd have to go with that. Eventually, with enough practice, you'd be able to fly around at the speed of light and go anywhere almost as fast as a jumper but with the added bonus of having a constant indestructible barrier around yourself and the ability to manipulate matter at your will.

 

[Yopaz]

Jumping. I can teleport to school and back home and save a lot of time with the buses. I would love to have that.

The force thingy seems like something I would have use of. It's great if you're going to fight crime or be a villain, but I rarely see the use of being able to throw or crush a car.

 

[Trippy Turtle]

Probably jumping just because I loved the movie so much. Telekinesis would be awesome but Jumping is just... more practical.

 

[dystopiaINC]

Think of the possibilities of teleportation. You can have a house with no doors, jump from room to room, you can never get caught in a trap, live in new York but spend the day doing something in every major country around the world. Breakfast in Ireland, surfing in Hawaii, lunch in Italy, hit up a bar in Germany, then go snow boarding in the alps. And Maybe have dinner in Tokyo. Sound like fun? Now think about not having any sort of travel time, instant world wide travel. Now think about this, you can do several things for quick cash, jump into a bank vault. Transport packages (for a huge fee) even military assistance. Instant troop transport insert/extraction. Big money.

Plus who's to say there is no room for your powers to get better? Hell I think the author of jumper wanted to do a third book where they could jump through time..... think about that.

 

[ajemas]

Think about this from a practical standpoint. Can you imagine what would happen if it became widely known that you had telekinetic or teleportation abilities? The entire planet would be enthralled with your abilities. Every scientist would want a chance to analyze you and figure out how you work. Governments would seek to use your powers for their own purposes. Militaries might even target you as a potential threat to national security. It is safe to say that you would constantly be under scrutiny.
Because of this, I would choose teleportation simply because it is much easier to disguise and hide. I could teleport into a public bathroom or in a closet or something to avoid detection, and if somebody sees me I can be far away in an instant. Besides, think of the money you would save on gas!

 

[Rowan93]

actually in the movie chronicle, the power gets stronger the more you use it, theres no limit known but just know you coulde level multiple buildings in a matter of days.

Also jumpers can teleport anything theyre holding onto with them. but jumpers cant jump while being shocked with electricity.

also also neither are invulnerable and you can die, but the force power cant stop attacks if you lock on to whats coming at you.

Sure, the telekinesis itself is high-power, I'm talking about the "tier" that telekinesis is on. Any goal you want to achieve with telekinesis you can also achieve with teleportation, and the way you would go about it with that power is generally safer and more reliable, but less fun.

Wait..... what?

How are you going to crush a car with the Jumpers power? Or knock and army of soldiers back, lift a building etc.

They're two very different powers and their applications are just as different.

Teleportation isn't generally an offensive power, characters like nightcrawler etc use it offensively, but it's not got anywhere near the same level of combat applications as telekinesis.

Your end goal in crushing a car isn't just to crush the car (usually) - maybe you want to kill everyone inside? maybe you want to stop someone from commuting?
Walk out into the street so the driver swerves and crashes, disappear before you get hit. Slit their throats in the middle of the night. Teleport into the back seat, and leave behind a pipe bomb.

If you're trying to knock back an army of soldiers, your goal is something like "fight off the army without getting killed in the process" - jump from place to place faster than the enemy can aim, and you can take down a platoon with a box cutter.

Winning against a platoon of soldiers with telekinesis is difficult unless you have superhuman senses and reaction speeds, because that's what you need to even have a vague idea of where a bullet is in-between the time that it's inside a gun and the time that it's inside your spleen.

If you want to collapse a building... well, that's going to be more tedious, you'll have to steal a bunch of explosives and set up the building to explode, and doing it properly will take a few days of preparation, but if you do it right you won't even get caught. While on the other hand wrecking it with telekinesis will give you all kinds of trouble you don't want to have to deal with.

 

[Guffe]

I'd take the Jump power.
And I also liked that movie, just watch people battle and see loads of nice places

 

[wyrmslayer1991]

Yeah, they could fly in chronicle. I'm going with that one.

 

[rednose1]

Man, teleportation is being underrated I think. Sure, you can throw buses around, but how often would you need to do that? Most likely you'll be wrecking havoc or trying to take over the world, in which case enjoy being the first person on the moon to die after I teleport your ass there.

 

[Rowan93]

Sure, the telekinesis itself is high-power, I'm talking about the "tier" that telekinesis is on. Any goal you want to achieve with telekinesis you can also achieve with teleportation, and the way you would go about it with that power is generally safer and more reliable, but less fun.

Wait..... what?

How are you going to crush a car with the Jumpers power? Or knock and army of soldiers back, lift a building etc.

They're two very different powers and their applications are just as different.

Teleportation isn't generally an offensive power, characters like nightcrawler etc use it offensively, but it's not got anywhere near the same level of combat applications as telekinesis.

Your end goal in crushing a car isn't just to crush the car (usually) - maybe you want to kill everyone inside? maybe you want to stop someone from commuting?
Walk out into the street so the driver swerves and crashes, disappear before you get hit. Slit their throats in the middle of the night. Teleport into the back seat, and leave behind a pipe bomb.

If you're trying to knock back an army of soldiers, your goal is something like "fight off the army without getting killed in the process" - jump from place to place faster than the enemy can aim, and you can take down a platoon with a box cutter.

Winning against a platoon of soldiers with telekinesis is difficult unless you have superhuman senses and reaction speeds, because that's what you need to even have a vague idea of where a bullet is in-between the time that it's inside a gun and the time that it's inside your spleen.

If you want to collapse a building... well, that's going to be more tedious, you'll have to steal a bunch of explosives and set up the building to explode, and doing it properly will take a few days of preparation, but if you do it right you won't even get caught. While on the other hand wrecking it with telekinesis will give you all kinds of trouble you don't want to have to deal with.

why not just teleport with pieces of steel beams from the building you want to destroy?
why not jump with the car and let gravity do the work?
explosives? why so complicated?


telekinesis has the great advantage in doing all this discrete.
you don't even have to point your fingers to the object and you sure as hell don't get any attention on you by phasing in and out when you grab a electromagnetic/electrified cable.

you can walk down the street and take a look at the building you want to destroy and its done. no suspicions.
you can turn the soldiers or army against each other.

and as for the bullets, just create a telekinetic shield with high density in front of you and you're good.

Hadn't thought about those first two - but if you're not even gesturing for things to fall over, that's taking almost all of the fun out of it, and controlling more than a handful of people by telekinesis is probably too complicated to do - it's basically multitasking for holding however many rifles at once, to make any more than a small squad of people shoot each other will be just about impossible if you have an ordinary human brain.

The telekinetic shield isn't an actual thing though. You can't just produce a wall made out of force, that's just not a thing, it denies everything we know about what the word "force" means. You could either try and sustain a force pushing in the general direction the bullets will be coming from, which might produce a strong enough wind to stop the bullets but that'll either punt you into the ground at supersonic speeds or it'll knock you back so you end up somewhere in the stratosphere, depending on whether your powers are reactionless or not.
The closest thing you can do is put a chunk of metal in the way, but that's awkward and sends a very strong message to the snipers about how you're totally vulnerable to bullets as well as signalling your precise location.

 

[spartan231490]

I would pick teleport just because of the convenience of said ability. It would save me soooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo much time. But telekinesis is cooler.

 

[snappydog]

Oh man, I do not know. I think on balance I'd take the Chronicle powers purely for versatility. I mean, I can move stuff and fly, whereas with teleporting I can get from one place to another very quickly and that's it.
I mean, don't get me wrong. I wouldn't turn down the ability to teleport if it were offered, especially not if it comes with optional Nightcrawler a la X2 smokey effects, for bonus win. But because you could do so much more with it - and let's face it, it would make the little things in life a lot less boring - telekinesis.

 

[RickyRich]

As someone who loves Star Wars, I'll choose the force. Moving shit with my mind would be great and it would finally give me an excuse to dress like a Sith Lord.

 

[Shpongled]

Surely if you have the power to manipulate matter to your will, you can essentially teleport anyway? It'll never be instant since you can't hit the speed of light, but what's stopping me flying at 99.99999999% the speed of light and arriving everywhere at essentially the same time as the guy who chose teleport?

You guys would really forsake all the advantages of telekinesis for the boon of arriving at your destination half a microsecond earlier? The only advantage of teleporting I can see is the ability to travel to places even light takes a long time to reach instantly. But then again, if you teleport there you'll die instantly anyway.

So.. yeh, telekinesis.

 

[Rowan93]

snip

Wait..... what?

snip

snip

why not just teleport with pieces of steel beams from the building you want to destroy?
why not jump with the car and let gravity do the work?
explosives? why so complicated?


telekinesis has the great advantage in doing all this discrete.
you don't even have to point your fingers to the object and you sure as hell don't get any attention on you by phasing in and out when you grab a electromagnetic/electrified cable.

you can walk down the street and take a look at the building you want to destroy and its done. no suspicions.
you can turn the soldiers or army against each other.

and as for the bullets, just create a telekinetic shield with high density in front of you and you're good.

Hadn't thought about those first two - but if you're not even gesturing for things to fall over, that's taking almost all of the fun out of it, and controlling more than a handful of people by telekinesis is probably too complicated to do - it's basically multitasking for holding however many rifles at once, to make any more than a small squad of people shoot each other will be just about impossible if you have an ordinary human brain.

The telekinetic shield isn't an actual thing though. You can't just produce a wall made out of force, that's just not a thing, it denies everything we know about what the word "force" means. You could either try and sustain a force pushing in the general direction the bullets will be coming from, which might produce a strong enough wind to stop the bullets but that'll either punt you into the ground at supersonic speeds or it'll knock you back so you end up somewhere in the stratosphere, depending on whether your powers are reactionless or not.
The closest thing you can do is put a chunk of metal in the way, but that's awkward and sends a very strong message to the snipers about how you're totally vulnerable to bullets as well as signalling your precise location.

have you seen the second x-men movie where magneto pulls all the pins from every grenade every soldier is carrying?
thats how you screw up a whole squad without much micro management (pointing guns, pulling triggers).

and if they do not have grenades lift them 20 feet upwards and again let gravity do the work. its almost the same amount of work you'd had to do if you were jumping around slitting throats. plus with telekinesis you can push them down if you need some time to do so or just push them with enough force in the front. (its like getting hit by train)

since you can lift objects with telekinesis without influencing other nearby objects (like picking one single grain of rice from a rice bowl) this means that you can control this force and the amount of energy/force that is required to lift the object against its own weight (mass x gravity) without having to use a large impact area on the object with said force.
this means you can, in time learn to focus on this tiny force area thus creating it without having to rely on objects and their weight.
and since you can almost effortlessly 'pick up' any object of any size (infinite?) you might be able to create this force field/ball with an high enough density/gravity to trap every bullet inside it, no matter how fast it might travel.

the only downside with it would be that you might be shred into pieces by this force ball. (like being near a black hole, but not that extreme)

but if you manage to pull it off around you, every bullet fired at you would only feed your 'bullet shield'.
and there is nothing more awesome than to slowly walk into an army, killing every soldier with their own bullets that are flying around you.

this is why telekinesis is awesome. (but not realistic)
and considering that we get the power of telekinesis of the movie chronicles we might, after hard training, be able to stop the world from spinning. (if you want to be a hyper villian.)

teleportation of matter might be possible since people already successfully teleported energy http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/arxiv/24759/

but consider that teleporting breaks you into atoms and beyond thus killing you and reassembling a copy of you somewhere else.
and given the possibility of errors that can occur by breaking down a million, million, million, million, million, million of atoms and reasembling them, you might end up after 5000 teleports with no nose or a small hole in your heart. (and thats not good)

and the capacity of moving and/or reassembling this many atoms would really be just about impossible if you have an ordinary human brain.

this would mean you might start to use patterns whenever you fight to be able to process this calculations, fast. and having a pattern can turn things from bad to worse if the people see you fight enough times. plus repeated actions can make you sloppy.

and if it goes wrong like in the harry potter series your legs might chill out in jamaica and the rest of you in moscow.

so in short i'd like to screw around with objects a thousand times to infinite heavier and bigger than me rather than screw around with myself (and btw preventative tactical 'thats what she said' strike)

Problem with the grenade thing is you have dozens of people pointing automatic weapons at you for the next five seconds, and now they *really* don't like you. Some of them will also be smart enough to throw them at you, and while that won't do much it'll still be pretty distracting. Maybe for a stealth kill that would work.

See, this force thing would have to affect the air around it. If it's enough force being applied to stop a bullet, that means supersonic winds. You are now being affected by supersonic winds pointed in the direction of the people shooting at you - which will pelt you into the tarmac that they're standing on. If you have the force going in every direction, the air around you disappears and you're trying to breathe vacuum.

The teleportation in Jumper seems to revolve around wormholes - the guy actually leaves a little wormhole behind him, which someone completely mundane can go through if they're fast enough. In the finale (spoiler alert) the bad guys even set up generator-type-whatevers to keep the wormhole open and chase after him.
Of course, the wormholes can be produced bloody quickly so there's not much risk of being caught via these, if you take appropriate measures to not get tazed which somehow nullifies the powers. (Why none of the characters didn't just put on a Faraday cage is beyond me)