Poll: To make a God.

[GiglameshSoulEater]

Yes, I would become a god, and reign over everything.

However, for most of the time, I would be in my 'avatar', living in the normal world and on the whole disconnected from my powers.
Makes things more fun, yeah?

 

[rutger5000]

But there have been good dictators, plenty of them. Many of the Kings and Queens of europe could be considered to be dictators plenty of them took care of their citizen. I think Napoleon might have been a dictator (not quiet sure) too. And he took proper care of his people too (granted only his people and not).
Before you say things like power corrupts look at people like Ghandi and Nelson Mandela. They were / are incredibly powerfull they could easily rally 500 milion people each. That's some great power there, much more as say Hitler who could barely control 50 milion. Honestly I think arguments like power corrupts are used for the weak who just couldn't handle the power and let the power handle them. I like to think there are still people on this earth who could stay pure and take the role of a God. Accepting the alternative is too depressing for me.

Yeah, it is about the weak being incapable of using powerful correctly. However, the strong willed are also likely to become corrupt and would be far worse for the world than the weak. It might not be pleasant, but even as an optimist, you can't trust one person alone to have all the power.

Monarchs were all cunts to their people. They'd appoint people to look after their land and people and so long as the people didn't revolt, there wasn't a war and they had money they were happy. The people who worked on the land couldn't move without their lord's permission to leave their land and would pay their people shit wages and generally not give a shit about their quality of life.

Tribes are the only society that is generally nice to each other. That's only because they each rely on one another to get specific jobs done well. When you have a country to run, there are thousands or millions of people doing the same job, as long as it gets done at that point the people don't matter.

As Winston Churchill said "democracy is the worst form of government, except all the other forms that have been tried."

You still didn't answer to my examples of Ghandi and Nelson Mandela. Apart from that it really depends on where you want to place your trust in. Do you want to place it. Do you want to place it in the intellect of a few individuals who indeed can be corrupted, or do you want to place it in the hands of the general poplulation, a great part of which can be easily be manipulated using fear and discontend? The later is democracy the former some kind of dictatorship. Personally I think the best option is to find a middle ground heavily in favor of the intellect of individuals, perhaps a system where all votes aren't equal but their worth being decided on a test or something.
As an extra note I never understood why people quote Churchill. If it wasn't for the holocaust his rule would have made England morally equal to Germany. Abbandoning/betraying alies like Poland (Through out WWII and after) and France (Dunkirk), the bombing of Dresden and the like. Honestly is this a man you want to quote?

 

[Apollo45]

First off, interesting scenario

For argument's sake, I'll agree that we should do it. As to who, would that really matter? Anyone, child or elder, saint or crook, no matter their personality or creed would be utterly changed just by having omniscience thrust upon them. (I'm assuming belief in causality from here on) They would know every event and every cause and effect from each and every action. The person would be infinity empathetic to every other living organism and would be in complete understanding of all physical and metaphysical phenomenon. If someone did know that, wouldn't you trust them to do the right thing? A single individual's suffering would be their own; now multiply that by the number of organisms in the given universe and that's a pretty heavy incentive to play nice.

In fact, would they really have any freedom to act as they chose? Wouldn't they know what they would do as soon as obtained omniscience? If nothing else, they could create an alternate universe and create another sandbox with which to exercise his or her will. (This is also assuming that, at the bestowal of their godhood, they weren't the original deity who created the universe in the first place, but this gets into perceptions of time that would really extend this question.)

Sorry for rambling, but, again, interesting question.

But, from that same point of view, wouldn't they be empathetic to everything that's suffering in the universe? What's to say that they wont decide, for the good of everyone, that it's best to wipe out all life, and thereby end all suffering and all potential for suffering in the future? Or what if they decide to make everyone the same, eternally happy person, with nothing in their lives but pure bliss? As good as that might sound, would you skip out on everything that life has to offer you for monotony the rest of eternity? Would you risk them turning every living thing in to a carbon copy of every other living thing, or eliminating all life, in an attempt to end all suffering (which, mind, would include their own)? Would you bank your life, and everyone else's lives, wants, hopes, dreams, and experiences on the fact that this omniscient, immortal human would find there to be a level of suffering in the universe that's acceptable to allow in order to preserve the life we all know?

Compound that with this; does learning something new fundamentally change who you are? Do people who are of similar knowledge in the world act like each other all the time? Does one person with power act the same as the next person with power? If two babies are raised exactly the same, with the same things, the same knowledge, the same friends, do they end up the same person? It goes back to nature vs nurture, and I've always been inclined to believe that who a person becomes relies on a combination of the two. If they retain their personality through Godhood, that means they retain any faults they may have along with any perfections. In light of that, do we want a human being as a God?

Personally, I don't think I would do it. It's not worth the extremely high risk that this new God would just end everything in the blink of an eye, thinking it's better for the universe that way. I wouldn't want to risk it.

For the sake of argument, however, if I did decide to pick someone, I would have to pick a businessman, someone fairly neutral on all subjects, with a good mind for organization, keeping things running, and keeping things running well. Not someone who is "good", but neither someone who is "evil". Someone right about in between, maybe leaning a bit towards the "good" side of things, but not too much. If we chose someone who was a veritable saint, in the process of them becoming a deity they might decide to completely eliminate all suffering. In order to do that, as I said above, the logical decision would be to make everyone exactly the same, and make them experience bliss 24/7. Likewise, if we chose someone evil they might do the opposite. Or they might do the exact same thing for different purposes. Choosing an ethical yet strict businessman who has accepted the reality that not everyone can be happy all the time, and people need to work for themselves and the company in order to improve the whole, but also that, for the most part, people just want to live their lives without interference, means that they will improve things that need improving, fix things where things are broken, but not interfere with the lives of people beyond what is necessary to keep the universe running.

And that's my long-winded response to the subject.

 

[The Unworthy Gentleman]

You still didn't answer to my examples of Ghandi and Nelson Mandela. Apart from that it really depends on where you want to place your trust in. Do you want to place it. Do you want to place it in the intellect of a few individuals who indeed can be corrupted, or do you want to place it in the hands of the general poplulation, a great part of which can be easily be manipulated using fear and discontend? The later is democracy the former some kind of dictatorship. Personally I think the best option is to find a middle ground heavily in favor of the intellect of individuals, perhaps a system where all votes aren't equal but their worth being decided on a test or something.
As an extra note I never understood why people quote Churchill. If it wasn't for the holocaust his rule would have made England morally equal to Germany. Abbandoning/betraying alies like Poland (Through out WWII and after) and France (Dunkirk), the bombing of Dresden and the like. Honestly is this a man you want to quote?

I didn't refer to your examples because they were, for the most part, irrelevant. You have 2 people from history who can be trusted with power. Other than a handful of trustworthy people, the rest of the world is corrupt and ruthless. But, I don't think you're understanding the true power you're giving these people. This isn't political power, it's all power. No restrictions or anything. This is power in itself, how it would be in the world of forms. To go with Plato even further, the only people who can be trusted with such power are philosophers; people who seek nothing other than knowledge and wisdom of everything. But even then, I don't think I could trust someone with that much power. Only those who know true evil can be trusted to be truly good, yet to know true evil you can't be trusted to be truly good.

I only quoted Churchill because he summed up how I think of different types of government. I don't think the current kind of democracy is the best, but it's far better than giving one person all the power. I know Churchill wanted to continue war after things ended with Germany, but he does have a point with democracy, just not in it's current form.

 

[Sunrider]

Do it to Richard Dawkins

This would be the best thing ever. Someone as reasonable as him could actually pull through.

You refer to the anti-religious man who just joined a religion as "reasonable"?

Seriously though, choose someone who doesn't think it's perfectly acceptable to walk around telling everyone they're morons, and then creating your own version of what you claim makes them morons.

http://www.the-brights.net/vision/essays/let_there_be_brights.html

I could say what I feel like saying here, but I don't feel like getting a warning because of a "religious crap-tossing competition".

 

[rutger5000]

You still didn't answer to my examples of Ghandi and Nelson Mandela. Apart from that it really depends on where you want to place your trust in. Do you want to place it. Do you want to place it in the intellect of a few individuals who indeed can be corrupted, or do you want to place it in the hands of the general poplulation, a great part of which can be easily be manipulated using fear and discontend? The later is democracy the former some kind of dictatorship. Personally I think the best option is to find a middle ground heavily in favor of the intellect of individuals, perhaps a system where all votes aren't equal but their worth being decided on a test or something.
As an extra note I never understood why people quote Churchill. If it wasn't for the holocaust his rule would have made England morally equal to Germany. Abbandoning/betraying alies like Poland (Through out WWII and after) and France (Dunkirk), the bombing of Dresden and the like. Honestly is this a man you want to quote?

I didn't refer to your examples because they were, for the most part, irrelevant. You have 2 people from history who can be trusted with power. Other than a handful of trustworthy people, the rest of the world is corrupt and ruthless. But, I don't think you're understanding the true power you're giving these people. This isn't political power, it's all power. No restrictions or anything. This is power in itself, how it would be in the world of forms. To go with Plato even further, the only people who can be trusted with such power are philosophers; people who seek nothing other than knowledge and wisdom of everything. But even then, I don't think I could trust someone with that much power. Only those who know true evil can be trusted to be truly good, yet to know true evil you can't be trusted to be truly good.

I only quoted Churchill because he summed up how I think of different types of government. I don't think the current kind of democracy is the best, but it's far better than giving one person all the power. I know Churchill wanted to continue war after things ended with Germany, but he does have a point with democracy, just not in it's current form.

But were only looking for a handfull of people. The great thing about having this God is that we won't need to look at humanity as a whole, and you're right they only had political power. But I feel that is the only power we need to worry about. When you look at history this is the only power humanity has proven incapable of handeling (except for a few cases) we already are Gods in any other field. We can create live, destroy the world, change the coarse of rivers, make deserts fertile or make fertile lands to deserts and brainwash people to do and believe whatever we want to do/believe them (with a few possible exceptions). Sure we could handle these powers a bit better, but I don't see any risk in having one extra person who holds all those powers combined. Especially since these powers already exist.
But again it depends on where you want to place your trust. I prefer individuals above groups, since there are only a handfull of positive accomplisments of large groups, the rest of waht 'humanity' achieved was either done by individuals or just small groups.

 

[SilentCom]

Humans do not make good gods because they are human. Pretty simple really.