Invisibility Or Flight

I heard a piece some time ago on This American Life about an enlightening parlor game you can play with friends. (It's also one of many good IceBreakers.) http://www.thislife.org 2001 archive episode #178.

Would you rather have the power of invisibility or the power of flight? And why?

In the TaL story, so many people asked questions about the powers that the guy who came up with the questions established some ground rules:

you can turn the power on and off at will
you're the only person with either power
for flight:
- you can travel up to 1000 mph
- you can travel as high as you can breathe
- you can carry whatever you could normally carry
for invisiblity:
- your clothes become invisible too

Advantages of Flight:

Never take an airplane trip ever again.
Say goodbye to rush hour traffic.
Make money smuggling narcotics.
Drag your enemies up in the air and drop them.
Super cool.

Advantages of Invisibility:

Get a lot of money very quickly. Walk into a bank and transfer a million dollars to your bank account in the Caymans.
Gather blackmail material on people in positions of power.
Make money smuggling narcotics.
Enact revenge on your enemies while still hiding your power. From the invisible kick in the ass to the invisible foot that trips them onto an oncoming truck, the possibilities are endless.
Generally go places where you're unwanted.

Comparison:

Invisibility is a useless power in itself. It only confers power over other people and social situations. Flight conveys comparatively little power in social situations or over other people but is an intrinsically useful ability.

It couldn't possibly be otherwise since flight is an ability that many animals and machines already have (so useless in social situations) but is still defined as a physical ability. To gain social power from flight, one would have to go back to times before flight was understood, let alone mastered, and pose as an angel or god. On the other hand, invisibility is an ability that no human, animal nor machine has (consider the chameleon) (so useful in social situations) but is defined in terms of other humans (that is, as the ability to pass undetected) so useless as an intrinsic human ability.

To make invisibility into something intrinsically useful, one has to redefine it in physical terms. For example, complete transparency to all electromagnetic radiation. If it were always on (warning time would presumably be measured in milliseconds), this would give a person the ability to survive a nuclear blast from a few miles closer than otherwise (though one would still be screwed if close enough to be hit by debris). This is cool but not very interesting. If one extended invisibility still further so that the person's body doesn't interact through the electromagnetic force with anything outside of them, then that person would be able to pass through the sun. This would be VERY cool. Of course, it would have to be turned off to do such things as eat, not fall into the Earth's core and be stuck there for all eternity with no means of propulsion, and, most importantly, go to work.

Useless because it "only confers power over other people and social situations"?! That's the right kind of power for a lot of people.

Invisibility need not work by physical means like making you transparent. Instead, and far more likely to work, is 'psychological invisibility' where the minds of those looking are clouded somehow, or they are just made to look elsewhere. Consider stage hypnosis and other illusions, optical and otherwise.

With 'physical' invisibility, people forget that if you make your head transparent, you make your eyes transparent. With transparent eyes the lens would not refract, the eyeball would not keep ambient light out, and the retina would not be getting an image or be sensitive to one. You'd probably be blind. Now blindness is not the end of the world, but it is not to be sneezed at.

"Flight conveys comparatively little power in social situations or over other people"

Hmm, that doesn't seem true. Mystics who claim this power seem to do quite well for themselves, so I'm sure actually having it would be an advantage.

Personally, I always preferred the ability to teleport from one place to another. Get home faster -- no more getting stuck in traffic.

There's a thought -- commuting to work from Paris. Why would you leave Paris to work? Stay there - it's a delightful place. Summer 2003 - record heat wave, temps 100+ F.....contrast the West Coast of USA north of San Francisco at the same time

There's a very nice novel by AlfredBester? about this. What happens to the world if everyone has the ability to teleport. It's called "Tiger Tiger" but it's also been published with the title The Stars My Destination. In it, self-teleportation was called "jaunting".

http://books.fantasticfiction.co.uk/n0/n3844.htm?authorid=243

LarryNiven also wrote several stories on the subject. The title of one, "Flash Crowd", has entered the JargonFile: http://info.astrian.net/jargon/terms/f/flash_crowd.html. SlashdotEffect is a synonym.

Wouldn't moving through the air, unprotected, at 1000 mph kill you pretty quickly?

Part of the power is that it's safe. Maybe you have some sort of force field that accelerates the air in front of you.

A disadvantage of flight is that it would be difficult to keep it secret. If it weren't secret then various organizations, especially government, would be interested in studying you in order to duplicate it. If they couldn't duplicate it they would still want to use you, perhaps taking hostages to control you. Even if you took off and landed in secluded places, presumably you could still be tracked by radar, or even seen flying. If you went too fast to be seen easily, the wind resistance still might make noise, especially if you broke the sound barrier (about 750 mph at sea level; about 660 mph at typical aircraft cruising altitudes).

Flight has lots of uses. Slightly modified, invisibility can be very useful as well. I agree that flight has liabilities (you become a prime lab specimen). It also sets you up for a variety of Superman-type save-the-damsel scenarios, with attendant notoriety (subjectively good/bad).

Invisibility, if you could still see (some special sampling-in-passing of light waves, sight in out-of-band frequencies, whatever) has its own benefits.

I'd say in either case you would want to keep the ability a secret. This is lots easier with invisibility. Flight is just about certain to be detected in short order, and as desirable as the ability is, the jealousy, fear, scientific fascination, and parasitic entourage would wear thin really fast. Invisibility won't make the same splash, but almost by definition it's going to be easier to keep your privacy intact.

Fame and fortune are fickle, so as fun as flying might be, I'd have to pass and go for invisibility (assuming one's sight isn't impaired when exercising the power). This is too bad, really, since the emotional resonance of flying is certainly higher than that of invisibility.

Now, adding the dimension that such a power could be conferred (by teaching, chemistry, or magic) on another, then I think flying is the more desirable. As a racial attribute, flying offers more benefits. Once it becomes something that can be passed on, the jealousy and fear factors are ameliorated, and the condition of "unique and therefore scientifically compulsory" is aleviated.

So, if you are the only one, then invisibility. If you can pass it on, then flight.

CategoryWhimsy