If Thanos had, instead of randomly wiping out 50% of all living things, he had instead in each species wiped out only the dumbest 50% what would the reaction of each avenger have been?

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• GraniteM@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  Isaac Asimov, a very intelligent person, wrote a lengthy essay to the effect that he had no idea what intelligence was. He talked about how society would generally consider him more intelligent than the nearly illiterate man who repaired his car, and yet whenever something went wrong with his car he would go to his mechanic and listen to his advice as if it was being handed down from the mountaintop by Moses himself, because Isaac Asimov knew fuck all about car repair. He talked about how he thought that supposedly objective IQ tests were generally a series of gates designed by people already considered intelligent to keep themselves in power, and that they totally disregarded huge swaths of indispensable human knowledge and talent. Isaac Asimov, who has been published in literally every section of the Dewey Decimal System, concluded that he had no firm idea as to what exactly “intelligence” even was.

  In short, how could one even define “the dumbest 50%”?

  And that’s why Thanos should have made everybody half as large as they once were.

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  • deweydecibel@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    He talked about how he thought that supposedly objective IQ tests were generally a series of gates designed by people already considered intelligent to keep themselves in power, and that they totally disregarded huge swaths of indispensable human knowledge and talent.

    Modern psychology supports this, too.

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    • ButtholeSpiders@startrek.website ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      I agree, I took a few IQ tests and scored high and initially it made me wonder is if everyone else was as concerned as I was watching our species being driven into early graves for yearly profit projections.

      Suffice to say, most people I met who scored high lacked the foresight to even think we might be screwed. Which led me to a swift conclusion that your IQ doesn’t mean jack squat, it was a biased system that was simply a biased form of dick measuring.

      Perhaps I’m disillusioned, but the best summary of our species is that old video of a chimpanzee in a zoo pissing in its mouth.

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    • scarabic@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      snort “modern psychology” calls pseudoscience on someone? That’s my laugh if the day. Thank you!

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  • Aussiemandeus@aussie.zone ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    I love the entire story, then your very solid and succinct answer

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  • soggy_kitty@sopuli.xyz ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    The dumbest 50% is everyone but me.

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  • Kahlenar@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    Ahhhh the GOAT. Seriously, as a smart kid everything else about me was ignored. Something wrong at school? You CAN do it, so just do it. D&D breaks up mental stats, but there’s even more out there. Int, Wis, Cha to start. Then there’s motivation, happiness, and empathy, and more. The mind is super complex and an int score of 18 being all that matters is like the saying “this hammer solves my nail problem, it will surely solve my window problem.”

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  • kSPvhmTOlwvMd7Y7E@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    Lol dude is asking for scientific way to define “dumbness” in a world with infinity stones and flying people

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    • deadbeef79000@lemmy.nz ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      Thanos selected the 50% luckiest people. That’s good for everyone!

      Larry Niven enters the chat

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  • Varyk@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    Love the tag.

    and good Asimov story thanks

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  • RememberTheApollo_@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    I really appreciate Asimov’s thoughts. Ethical hat off for a second - I would suggest removing the most destructive 50%. If someone is truly stupid they might just as well be harmless. However, removing the swathe of the population that engage in violence, greed, etc. would be a far better use of the finger snap than some metric of stupidity.

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    • feedum_sneedson@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      I would characterise that as “ethical hat on”.

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    • FaeDrifter@midwest.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      Multiverse Thanos where he tries to wipe out the 50% most destructive, but snaps himself out of existence first because even by trying he made himself the most destructive person in the universe.

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  • bouh@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    The definition for intelligence changed over the last 2 centuries because we keep discovering how an animal can fit the definition, and intelligence was used to separate humans from animals. Now it’s even worse because people are trying to separate AI from humans.

    I like the concept laid out by Delany: in a novel he describe 3 levels of intelligence based on the understanding of various point of views, but it’s not a ranking.

    The first stage is simplex: people don’t understand the science of the world, so everything is kind of magical but this concept of magic make the world hold itself and they can grasp everything and use everything with this conception of magic.

    Second stage is complex: people have an understanding of science and they can explain many things, but not everything. And when they can’t explain something, they can’t cope with it, because they don’t have the conceptual tools for it. Thus they will either deny this thing existence of plug it into their existing concepts by ignoring the feature that can’t fit.

    Third and last stage is multiplex : people can accept that there are theories different than the ones they know, ideas also. Point of views can shape the way you see the world, and even the scientific theories you have to explain the world can be seen as a point of view on the world, so changing this point of view can bring a new or different understanding of a phenomenon or thing or person. These points of view all coexist at the same time, none of them is more true than the other. Like the concept of magic, this allows to grasp, use or accept even the ununderstandable and the unknown, but with a better ability to understand than the simplex stage.

    I like this model. But it’s more a model for open-mindedness than intelligence. But maybe that’s the thing.

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  • DogMuffins@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    Even with the classic definition of intelligence it’s just useless - not predictive or indicative of anything.

    A student without the skills to learn isn’t going to learn much regardless of whether they’re intelligent.

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  • scarabic@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    Good questions from Asimov. But just like with car repair, he didn’t know this subject. It has been a field of study for a while, and researchers have worked directly on this core problem defining general intelligence distinct from specific knowledge.

    This Veritassium video is a balanced overview of the topic: youtu.be/FkKPsLxgpuY?si=iY7QBEQK1DkzNhxI

    Needless to say, no, the IQ test is not a conspiracy by people who are good at number sequence problems to keep themselves in charge of the world.

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    • bouh@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      IQ of someone is not stable: it changes depending on how much you train to do it or the mental/psychological state you are in when you pass it. Thus it is not a sound scale to measure anything.

      The fact that it is merely a ranking of people further push it in the realm of straight bullshit.

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  • HeyThisIsntTheYMCA@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    So Thanos could eat them more easily?

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  • Willy@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    sorry to stop the circlejerk, but this is dumb. an intelligent person could learn to repair the car more easily and have more insight than a moron. intelligence exists and we all experience it everyday. the wais-r is a relatively good test, but no there is never going to be a perfect way to measure intelligence. you can say intelligence is just what the test measures which is really pretty non biased, but that’s reducing things too much. y’all know morons and people that are crazy fucking smart. experience in different subjects is distributed, but the ability to gain experience quickly is the biggest difference.

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  • MajorHavoc@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    And that’s why Thanos should have made everybody half as large as they once were.

    Holy cow. However intelligence is defined, you’re smarter than I am. That would have been a really short film.

    …and I’m just realizing that universe would look pretty much exactly like those little kid Marvel Adventures shows…

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  • bleistift2@feddit.de ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    Do you happen to know where Asimov published this opinion and what its title was?

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    • GraniteM@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Found it!

      The essay is “Thinking About Thinking,” ©1989, collected in the book Magic: The Final Fantasy Collection.

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• contextual_somebody@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  Yeah, because it’s so morally defensible to eliminate all of the developmentally disabled and republicans.

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  • mojo@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    rip grandma

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  • WHYAREWEALLCAPS@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    cougheugenicscough

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  • ichbinjasokreativ@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    I’d bet good money that most republicans are smarter than AOC

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    • FooBarrington@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      You think most Republicans could graduate cum laude with a BA in International Relations and Economics?

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    • Squizzy@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      Given they are republicans who harp on about one member of Congress that likely doesn’t represent them, I doubt it

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    • ChaoticEntropy@feddit.uk ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      Case in point.

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    • onionbaggage@lemmynsfw.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      Done, how much we going in for?

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    • Epicurus0319@sopuli.xyz ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      Considering that most are over 70 and believe in a magical ecosystem that would suddenly stop burning with ever-increasing frequency and severity each summer overnight if West coast states where that happens most often elect more Republican leadership- I highly doubt they’re that clever at all, let alone more so than one congresswoman who lives in their heads rent-free

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    • rishado@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      Jokester over here

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• idiomaddict@feddit.de ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  Hang on, do you mean “with the capacity to be dumbest,” or is he killing all the babies and children

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  • Poik@pawb.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    I mean, the average newborn is smarter than the average politician, so maybe it’s not as bad as we think.

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    • GnomeKat@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      Bruh babies cant even talk or have object permanence, don’t try to spin that as being smart.

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    • RaivoKulli@sopuli.xyz ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      Politician dumb

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• pwnicholson@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  They’d still be appalled and try to stop him given their strong moral code. And given that they’d be at full strength they’d probably find a way to stop him and reverse things faster than they did in OTL

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  • deweydecibel@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    I’m frankly astonished anyone could genuinely think the Avengers would ever somehow be more ok with letting Thanos kill “only the stupid people”. Like…that’s a very strange read on these characters to think they’d ever react any differently in this scenario.

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  • RootBeerGuy@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    You think none of the Avengers is in the “dumb” 50%?

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    • Globulart@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      Of course not, didn’t Drax have a calculus scene in guardians 3?

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  • DarkDarkHouse@lemmy.sdf.org ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    Deep cut

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  • MajorHavoc@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    And given that they’d be at full strength they’d probably find a way to stop him and reverse things faster than they did in OTL

    Good point. But I dunno. Thor is a big power loss, and unless Captain America gets a free pass for emotional intelligence counting, they’re short in leadership, too.

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• deweydecibel@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  Would they have all still fought against him? I know this is No Stupid Questions but…come on.

  Why on Earth would the Avengers react any differently? Is the assumption that they’re moral bankrupt enough to actually reconsider in this scenario?

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  • RaivoKulli@sopuli.xyz ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    You see the Avengers are super big into eugenics. It’s in the subtext mate

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• phoenixz@lemmy.ca ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  50% was such a dumb number anyways.

  It requires a single doubling to get back to where we were. To double, you’d need about 10 times a 7% growth. Probably within less than 100 years you’d be back at the same problem

  Not to mention that when you murder a shit tonne of people, and when it’s over you’ll likely have lots of people getting babies, so you get a birth wave about 9 months later. That regrowth starts FAST.

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  • Kyoyeou@slrpnk.net ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    This message was brought to you by the Rabbits in Australia

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    • RaivoKulli@sopuli.xyz ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      Build the fence! Build the fence!

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• MTK@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  The real question is which avengers would be gone. Putting my money on Thor

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  • Moobythegoldensock@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    Thor, Starlord, Drax, and Mantis would all be toast.

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  • lud@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    Not necessarily any Avengers would be gone.

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    • MTK@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      If Thor is on the upper half of intelligence in his kind then…

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    • MajorHavoc@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      Good point, technically. But… We all know Thor would be gone. There’s no way the rightful heir to the throne of Asgard is in their top 50% intelligence.

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• RightHandOfIkaros@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  I mean, he could have just created 200% more resources as well. Or he could have equually redistributed all the resources. The problem he was trying to solve would still eventually happen again, because solving the problem relies on everyone working unselfishly, which is simply not possible when humans are involved.

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  • lazylion_ca@lemmy.ca ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    I think he should have cut the birth rate to a third of what it now. No one would notice. No one would die or be missed. There’d just be a lot less people within fifty years.

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    • AngryHumanoid@reddthat.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      OK while that would be a better idea the thought that no one would notice is laughable. We have detailed pregnancy rate records going back 75 years, an immediate 30% change would definitely raise a lot of red flags.

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  • HessiaNerd@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    That wouldn’t have impressed death. He is into goth girls.

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  • Thief@lemmy.myserv.one ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    Actually a good point. He should have just done that.

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  • damnthefilibuster@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    Yeah, Dan Brown dealt with it in a much better manner.

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• PreparaTusNalgasPorque@kbin.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  I think the whole 50% depopulation is a flawed premise, of the hundred of thousands of years modern humans have existed that would throw total population back to... 1970

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  • deweydecibel@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    It wasn’t just humans, it was the whole universe. He wasn’t concerned with how each individual species populations fluctuate, he just had a solution in his head and went with it.

    Ya know, the “mad Titan” thing.

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• IphtashuFitz@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  I think it largely depends on his definition of “dumb”…. Given he’s already committed to wiping out half of all life, I’d consider his mental facilities to be of questionable already. His idea of who is dumb may be similarly questionable…

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• Annoyed_Crabby@monyet.cc ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  Dude, he killed Vision and Gamora and other people close to the member of Avengers, no way they gonna let him off the hook.

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• Nioxic@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  Then we know he would have killed all of GOTG

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• Kolanaki@yiffit.net ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  Why couldn’t Thanos just wish for unlimited resources? Or universal peace? Or literally any number of things that would have solved the problems he was trying to solve? His method was stupid.

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• dangblingus@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  He also could have just created trillions more planets so that there wouldn’t be natural resource shortages. Nope. Gotta murder quadrillions of life forms.

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• Crackhappy@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  I don’t think the hulk would have reacted at all, since he’d be gone. But does that mean Banner would stay somehow?

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• Poob@lemmy.ca ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  Thanos was a fucking stupid character in the MCU. The human population is currently doubling every 61 years with a growth rate of about 1.14%. Assuming similar numbers across the galaxy, he didn’t do anything except cause suffering. He’s a very poorly written villain.

  I guess to stay on topic, they would have looked at population growth, and determined that his plan was moronic, and fought him.

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• SpiralSong@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  I always wondered if your goal is to reduce population. Why not just make half the people infertile?

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• CeruleanRuin@lemmings.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  Ant-Man: Well come on, wait, you know, there are different kinds of intelligence, right? Please someone tell me I’m not making that up.

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• Showroom7561@lemmy.ca ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  Thanos could have literally chosen 1000 other options that were better than killing 50% of all living things, and I’m sure nobody would have disagreed!

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• zepheriths@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  That leaves an interesting situation for Bruce banner/the hulk

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• randon31415@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  You killed all of our kids!

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• Drusenija@lemmy.drusenija.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  What would make this question more interesting is can you think of any metric where they would flip, or at least consider it. For example, all the members of Hydra (a bad example, would never make 50%, but you get the idea).

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• cerement@slrpnk.net ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  would’ve still fought him because their job isn’t to stop evil, it’s to maintain the status quo

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• morphballganon@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  Avengers would have been much better prepared. T’challa, Hank, Janet, Dr Strange could have all helped plan the response. Bucky, Sam, Hope, Peter Parker could have all helped execute the plan.

  Drax and Quill are still goners. The rest probably aren’t snapped.

  Vision, Gamora, Loki, Heimdall unchanged since they died before the snap.

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• TheYear2525@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  Would they all still exist?

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• fiat_lux@kbin.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  Can we please not hypothesise about eugenics and people's reactions to eugenics, with the current global climate?

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• otter@lemmy.ca ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  Not an answer to the question, but relevant communities that could use more activity

  !asksciencefiction@lemmy.world

  !whowouldwin@lemmy.world

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• twelvefloatinghands@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  Exactly the same

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• Poob@lemmy.ca ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  Thanos was a fucking stupid character in the MCU. The human population is currently doubling every 61 years with a growth rate of about 1.14%. Assuming similar numbers across the galaxy, he didn’t do anything except cause suffering. He’s a very poorly written villain.

  I guess to stay on topic, they would have looked at population growth, and determined that his plan was moronic, and fought him.

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• cooopsspace@infosec.pub ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  You could take like 80% for all I care, I’ll be fine :P

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