What if you could erase one aspect of mankind?

[Imperator-Zor]

This is easy, Sadism.

Most of the other human qualities have redeming qualities. Greed can compell people to invent and build things that make them money and inrich the economy. Laziness can cause people to develop tools and systems to save time and effort to the benefit of all. Rage can be directe against legitimate scumbags. You can't care about everyone and everything. Our less noble atributes can be useful tools and have had their benefits to humanity. The negative aspects of most of them are the side effects of them, not the intent.

Sadism is not like that. Sadism compells people to inflict misery on others without benefit to anyone. It seeks to make the world a worse place. It has no redeeming charactistics.

Zor

 

[BiscuitTrouser]

Hmm. I think I would abolish mortality because hey, if you are going to do something, go all in.

Alternatively, I would kill off compassion, because then I could stop pretending.

i would just erase all of humanity, that would solve everything!
no war, no corruption, no waste, no... sonic games...ah fuck it just kill all humans

Fixed. Your grimdarkcoolness im afraid you cant speak for all of us in your cool uncaring attitude we dont all share your badassness... these responses are more predictable and more annoying than the "religion" response.

Id say greed. The desire to have more than you need. To have more than you even ever want just because. Id remove the random desire just to obtain more and more and more while depriving others.

 

[ReinWeisserRitter]

Greed, the will for excess, more than you could possibly need or use, at the cost of all else. I'd destroy it and every trace of it without question or hesitation.

 

[ReinWeisserRitter]

Over population is just a trendy thing to say...well if you can consider trendy 3 or so decades of people other than scientists saying the world was about to end because of overpopulation.

Ignoring the fact that our population gets consistently bigger. We're a sixth larger, just based on what's been recorded, than we were when I was a child, which was half my life ago; that's a pretty fricking massive growth rate.

 

[Whateveralot]

Ideology.

Humanity should just be working together; not split up in pre-fabricated thinking patterns, like political parties.

Just an idea.

 

[Stravant]

Erase the ability to breed. Slowly but surely we will all now go extinct due to no more people being added to the population.

My choice as well

 

[otakon17]

Greed. We'd definitely start seeing a change in how society works.

Ya beat me to it. Greed is definitely one of the major vices of today's society on whole.

 

[latiasracer]

Erase all but one language. Preferably keep English.
By God that would solve so many problems... sucks for translators and foreign language teachers though.

^This! A Very wise choice indeed!

Hmm, I'd probably remove the burning aspect we seem to have to make as many babies as possible... 1 Per family seems good. And hey, maybe people just won't want one. I know this happens now, but not as often as we need it to

You know that's a plan for extinction right? Every generation cuts the population by more than 50% under your plan.

Hmm, maybe my idea isn't the best...

But we are over-populated already, so wouldn't it be a good idea for a while? Just to get the number down.

Parts of the world is still underpopulated and under reproducing, that's why most countries still have immigration needs.

Over population is just a trendy thing to say...well if you can consider trendy 3 or so decades of people other than scientists saying the world was about to end because of
overpopulation.

Eh, Im prooved wrong then. Im not really a person of science, i just figured i'd add my uneducated view to this thread XD

But hey, i learned something today!

 

[DarkRyter]

Not being able to go super saiyan.

That's the worst part.

 

[SD-Fiend]

Not being able to go super saiyan.

That's the worst part.

you win. I don't know what but you just win

 

[2012 Wont Happen]

Self interest.
I would completely eliminate the basis of all anti-Collectivist ideology.

 

[Burning Bard]

No I think we're fine.

Humanity is like a rose, wouldn't be worth it without all those thorns to deal with.

 

[xPixelatedx]

The fact that we are Anthropocentric

God this world would be so much more nicer if we weren't so full of ourselves.

So you'd see technological innovation stagnating, eh? The whole reason we invent all this crazy shit is because we want to make things better for ourselves, removing that desire removes our desire to make cool new things.

There is a difference between having an ego and wanting to better our lives. If anything, less of the ego would make us better our lives more. If we didn't believe ourselves to be so perfect and important, we might actually be trying to pull away from fossil fuel right about now because it's effects on the world would be more important to us then what it does for us. You see in order for there to be innovation one must first admit there is a problem. If we could fess up to our own shortcomings more willingly and honestly, we would probably make more things, not less.
But innovation isn't the best example of why this should be. The worst of it is how we fracture off this belief that 'humans are better then everything' into smaller groups, and then you get things like 'what ever I am is better then everything else'. That's the kind of mentality that makes someone beat up/kill another person because they are from a different school/town/country/race/religion.

I would get rid of the urge to get rid of aspects of humanity. Flawed as we are there's a reason we're built like this. Trying to change that equation will only cause more problems than it ever hopes to solve.

Would it? Or is this a case of being anthropocentric?

 

[SpaceBat]

Hmm, I suppose I'd erase human greed.

 

[bossfight1]

I'd delete a great portion of religion. A great deal of the world's problems might be gone if no one ever decided to write down a bunch of things that he randomly considered taboo, and said that it is the writing of the great creator.

I am NOT saying that the very idea of God, heaven and hell should never have been considered. The ten commandments, for the most part, seem like they would be perfectly reasonable across time. I'd also have them made VERY CLEAR, for people who look too deep into their meanings (*cough* *WBC AND 7TH COMMANDMENT* *cough*). As in, YOU SHALL NOT CHEAT ON YOUR BETROTHED. Plain and simple.

 

[derelict]

If you're gonna do that, why not just eliminate the capacity to be WRONG? It solves all the same problems but doesn't make any new ones.

Well, being wrong is also necessary for progress. Lying just deters it. Technically everything we know about the sciences is only right until proven wrong, anyway.

 

[4RM3D]

But innovation isn't the best example of why this should be. The worst of it is how we fracture off this belief that 'humans are better then everything'

That belief is based in fact. I don't see chimpanzees driving cars and using AK47s, and I never saw them building space capable rockets and putting us on the first prototypes as test dummies. When I do I'll concede the point.

It depends on the definition of what you would describe as 'better than'. Humans may have a superior intellect, but they are not better at everything. In the animal kingdom at lot of animals are better at something than humans. For example a Jaguar can run much faster than any human can. But then again, humans can build cars to 'outrun' Jaguars. Incidentally, there is even a brand named after the Jaguar.

Yes, humans can build many things to compensate for their relatively weak bodies. But even so, we can not surpass every creature on this planet (yet).

Starfishes have regenerative capabilities we have yet to mimic. And maybe even more spectacular is this little creature known as Tardigrade (aka the Water Bear) [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tardigrade]. It is one of the most resilient creatures that lives on this planet.