How would you take over the modern world if you had magic?

[Numion]

At first I'd use my powers to get a spiritual / psychic talkshow. That cover would be foolproof. No one would ever believe the crap to be real, and MiB would be none the wiser, not knowing that the stage magician is really wizard. Then I'd work my way up the social ladder, with charms and dominate persons. Modify memore would also be nice .. think about making Putin for example remembering that GWB had suddenly pimp slapped him when no-one was looking

I don't know any application for that, just yet, but it could really make for some nice grudges between people.

Hmm .. sixth level? I'd teleport to mars with a shovel and dig for the friggin water and life, then do the moonwalk on front of the mars crawlers cameras, just for the sake of it. While wearing a spacesuit made to look like a 'grey'. BWAHAHAHAAa.. um .. yeah..

Actually the most useful would be to use divinations to dig dirt on anyone - with the current media frenzy during elections I could actually get elected to power by embarrassing my opponents. That would even look non-magical ..

 

[Celebrim]

So, you're rich, smart, and have access to spells equivalent of up to 6th level. You want to avoid being found out by the MIB. And you want to rule the world. How do you do it?

I'm reminded of the scene in Asimov's Foundation, in which Hari Seldon tell's the Emporer that the Empire is going to collapse and the galaxy is going to suffer a prolonged Dark Age. The Emporer asks what he can do to avert this tragedy, and Hari Seldon tells him that there is nothing he can do. The Emporer is aghast, since afterall he is the emporer and presumably wields all power. Common sense says that if the emporer wills something to occur, then it should occur. Hari Seldon then tells him that though it is true he is the Emporer, that he would be fighting against the collective social inertia of 100 trillion people, and proceeds to outline how any plan that he might adopt would ultimately fail and at most would delay the collapse a generation or so.

There have been very very few individuals in world history that have been able to wield that sort of culture shaking power. If we started counting them, we'd probably finish before we ran out of fingers on the second hand.

 

[RangerWickett]

Very good points, Celebrim. But what is 'Taking Over the World'?

You only want to rule things for one of two reasons:

1. You're power-hungry, and rather insane, and so you set your sights as high as possible. You are probably doomed to fail.

2. You have an agenda, and you want to influence everyone to fulfill that agenda.

Now, that agenda could be generous and benevolent (I'm going to eliminate hunger!), or it could be selfish (I'm going to kill all other men so I'll have all the women for myself!), or it could be any number of middle-ground things (Look! I'm Ra's Al Ghul!).

So what if you just want to fulfill an agenda?

Has anyone hear read I, Robot? At the end of the book, the world is ruled by 6 entities, all working in concert. They even explain how it happened. Basically, if you control infrastructure, you can influence things much more easily and discreetly than if you try to tell people to do things.

I mean, what's easier: convincing a person to eat a healthy dinner, or making sure that the restaurant's freezer's broken, so they don't have any ice cream?

 

[Gothic_Demon]

Any radical attempts to shift the policy of those countries - even in the face of apparantly compelling reasons - would result in massive outcry, protests, and if you weren't completely careful domestic unrest and ultimately populist revolution.

I think that, whilst this is in general terms true, you also underestimate the power and capability of a few important people to swing the majority. Look throughout history at all the awful things done when only a few people have started a movement. Get enough people to believe in you, and you're away. Many dictators do this: convince your public, through any means necessary, that you are right.

This can even be done in a democratic country, by making a majority of the voting populace believe that a certain act is a necessity. Despite the slightly poor example, think of how Palpatine turns the Republic into the Empire: One step at a time, one civil liberty at a time, one removal of public power at a time.

And beyond this, ensuring control over large corporations (e.g. Coca-Cola, defence contractors) would give you a huge sway on the politics of a country, and they can be controlled through a few individuals. Add in certain powerful lobbies, like gun control and tobacco, and the President of the United States can be put under intense pressure, and his action swayed.

And don't get me started on what happens if you take control of companies that control oil production and oil flow!

 

[Vraille Darkfang]

Charm Person + Alicia Keys = Why ya need to try to take over the world then.

Or, you can try:

Alicia Keys + Kelly Clarkson + Kelly Hu + X number of rich hotties + Mass Charm = Who needs to rule the world? That's too much like work.

If you can choose between the lifestyle of Hugh Hefner or workaholic bureuocrat, why choose to become an over-worked stressed out Type-A personality who constantly has to look over his shoulder to make suer no one has found out about him & is trying to kill them.

Or, you can use Divinations to win the lottery whenever you need cash.

 

[Celebrim]

Has anyone hear read I, Robot? At the end of the book, the world is ruled by 6 entities, all working in concert. They even explain how it happened. Basically, if you control infrastructure, you can influence things much more easily and discreetly than if you try to tell people to do things.

I'm glad you brought that up. 'I, Robot' is based on several premises, and those premises would have to be true before something like 'I, Robot' could happen.

1) A superintelligence would have to exist capable of micro and macro managing the world in a fashion that human dictators are unable to do (as per my above argument).
2) That superintelligence would have to be centralized rather than distributed in nature. In other words, that intelligence would have to constitute a single recognizable entity working as if it had a single will.
3) That superintelligence would have to do a good enough job managing the world, that the general public would be content with the current state of affairs, and anyone who discovered that the superintelligence was controlling the world would have to be rationally convinced that this was the best situation for the world to be in.

As a computer scientist, I'll concede point #1 as possible or at least that I would like to think that it is - though of course not every one would agree with me. Briefly, an argument against point #1 would note that many of the problems of running the world are classifiable as 'wicked problems' (look it up) and its entirely possible that 'wicked problems' would prove unsolvable regardless of the intelligence of the entity. Moreover, its not at all clear that humans would be capable of programming a machine with techniques for solving 'wicked problems'. However, lets concede for now #1 because it really doesn't matter.

On point #2, Asimov was writing at a time when it was reasonable to believe in 'Deep Thought'. That is to say, he was writing at a time when the current technology seemed to indicate that 'super computers' would be centralized massive entities. That is no longer reasonable to believe. In fact, computing technology seems to indicate that future computers may follow thier human counterparts in distributing tasks. An artificial super-entity of the future may in fact look more like a democracy of intelligent machines than it would look like a centralized decision making apparatus. As such, I don't really expect that it would be easier for one 'node' (or a few nodes) of the artificial super-entity to 'take over the world' than it would be for one person to take over the human super-entity. And in any event, its likely that the human partners of the AI's would view this as a failure of 'friendliness' on the part of the AI, and act to shut down any node that showed excessive ambition or any personally owned node that adopted a philosophy that the node owner found 'unfriendly'. Imagine for example what would happen if a node owned by Al Franken suddenly adopted 'conservative outlook' or if Ann Coulter's node suddenly adopted 'liberal outlook'. Both parties would see such action as a failure of friendliness on the part of the node, and neither would desire to keep using such a node as thier personal agent.

On point #3, assuming that the super-entities could solve wicked problems and run the world, its not at all clear to me that in fact the general public would be ok with this. Generally speaking, if the general public found that the supernodes had subverted thier assigned tasks and were now running the world, the general public would likely consider this to be a failure of 'friendliness' on the part of the AI's - even if the AI's where running the world in a benificient and altruistic fashion. It's therefore to me likely then that the only way that a Technocracy could be created is if it was done with the will of the governed (and that certainly true if present social structures don't collapse). And the stickler is of course, that if the Technocracy is ruling by the consent of the governed, then they haven't really 'taken over the world' in the usual since because they are constrained to only lead the public in the direction that the public would be happy with - else the public would remove its consent and the Technocracy would then face a populist revolt from (at the least) much of its human partners and probably at least some of the independent AI nodes whose friendliness constrained them to remain loyal to thier human owners or partners.

 

[RangerWickett]

Hmm. Well, are we going for a shadowy figure, who rules in secret, making all the nations of the world do his bidding? Or do we want a warlord who conquers the world, setting himself in a position of power by force of arms and magic? Or do we want a hero, who deposes 'corrupt' governments and becomes the savior of the world, leading it to their eager cheers?

 

[Dakkareth]

Well, you have magic and you're going to use it. Thus, go the traditional way: Find a master and train, kick the asses of all the other kung-fu students and then start working on ruling the world.

More specifically, join the MiB and work to get as high-up as possible. Get access to all their knowledge, their technology, their magic, their power. Work subtle changed into their agenda, as in 'In order to keep the menace of magic contained we have to reach a greater control over the planetary goverments'. Use this influence, you now have a powerbase.

Essentially you become one with the only power capable of opposing you. Literally. You could probably assassinate anyone, even slap down invasion forces as long as you're the ONLY one who has access to magic. Once you control the MiB and therefore the largest part of all magical knowledge and personage, you are free to do as you please - and the subversion of governmental power that agency represents suits you just fine as tool for your subsequent conquest (go by one of the plans above from that point on).

 

[Turanil]

Or, you can use Divinations to win the lottery whenever you need cash.

I have dreamed of this for aeons...

 

[smootrk]

the Genocide method.

Create a magic pathogenic concoction that only the chosen few have been rendered immune. The magical strain must be very fast spreading and ultimately quite deadly (I am thinking of those zombie movies, as they are deadly and self spreading). Strategically plan a massive spread of this magical disease by a wide variety of different methods of dispersal (Airborne, waterborne, direct contact etc.), and these methods should target certain key groups at the onset to minimize their ability to coordinate a method of fighting off the attack.

A certain population group or faction must have also a very complete plan for safety including safehouses and a method of eliminating the pathogen when the goals are met.

Have I missed anything for this plan?