Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with what-if

Imagine all the people

amtho — Fri, 07 Apr 2006 19:04:19 -0800

DreamWithMe filter: What if everyone read science fiction? How would the world be different? How do you think reading sci-fi has affected your world view? Your actions? Your life? Has it made you different from other people?

If children (or even adults) were encouraged/made to read science fiction, how would exposure to key concepts (thinking about the distant future, interaction with very different beings, other ideas I can't think of right now) affect their world view? Their future actions? Their votes? Their ideas, especially if they became policymakers?

Would there be negative effects? Would there be positive effects?

Yes, I know this question is potentially oversimplifying things and that people are complex, so it would be difficult to really predict -- but I'm interested in whether anyone else has thought about this. I'm mainly focused on sci-fi -- I'm personally thinking about Neal Stephenson, Heinlein, Asimov mainly, but don't mean to limit this question's scope that much -- but if you have thoughts about fantasy-genre fiction, I'm open to it.

Bonus if you can recommend one book or series you'd love for all high school graduates to have read.

What would happen to the moon?

Grod — Wed, 25 Jan 2006 14:19:56 -0800

If there's anyone here who groks physics and math and astronomy and astrophysics here's a great big what-if for you. Pretend the planet Earth was destroyed. Smashed into chunks ranging in size from grains of sand up through mountains. Presumably the atmosphere would be lost to space, much of the former planet would fall slowly into the sun or flee outward. What was left would form a new astroid belt, depending on how the actual destruction was caused it would probably become a planet again, at some point. Assuming that nothing directly impacted the moon, what would happen to it? Most of the earth's mass would still be around, just spread out a bit more. Assuming the moon's orbit didn't intersect the debris, would it continue to orbit? Would it fall towards the sun? Fly away from the sun? What?

What would a blind world 'look' like?

goodnewsfortheinsane — Fri, 27 May 2005 10:28:20 -0800

What if most people were born blind, and seeing was rare? Literary mag The Believer has an Idea Share section, which is a collection of (apparently anonymously submitted) hypothetic book premises and themes, shared online in the hopes that someone will make a book out of it. I was particularly intrigued by this entry:

The field of alternative history has been created out of “what if” questions—(“What if the South had won the Civil War?” etc.) This practice should expand to other fields. Alternative Biology: “What if two intelligent species had developed at the same time?” Alternative Sociology: “What if the majority of people were born blind, and seeing was rare?” Sort of an academic sanctioning of science fiction.

I think there's a gold mine of hypothetical scenarios here, and the two examples given are sublime. Let's focus on the blindess one for now - if this goes well, I'll let someone else ask the (paleonto-)biology one (indeed the seed for a book of its own), or feel free to come up with your own alternative science premise.

So, what would a world where most people have no vision faculty be like?