Most Useful Super Power

[Gail Allen]

What super power would be the most useful super power to have? All super powers have their definite benefits, but which one would be the most all-round useful one to have? Imagine you are the president and you get to pick to have one super hero with one super power at your disposal. What super power would this person have?

[Dexter York]

I shall be revealing the ultimate answer to this debate, and possible closure post.

The best super power of all time is the ability to adjust probability.

This super power defeats every single other super power. It will give you ultimate success in everything you want. Jumping off a building? Adjust the probability of hurting yourself to a low digit (like 1.0×10^-9) and you survive. Same goes for anything else, it could be getting fat, winning the lottery, sleeping in every day and not getting fired, anything at all.

[Finn Cullen]

If the premise is not simply what is the best superpower (which would certainly be having an armpit that dispenses sun-block) but which superpower you would like at your disposal if you were President then I would argue as follows.

The role of President suggests some political post. As Orwell posits in 1984 the goal of any person or group in power is to remain in power. Therefore as President I would like to have a superhero at my disposal who had the power to make people believe what I told them. No matter how unlikely, no matter how contrary to other evidence, no matter how dissonant with previous messages, the people would believe. Policies could be advanced, resistance eliminated, social trends changed and shaped. Imagine Twitter but in a cape.

[Prof. Maxim Trevelyan]

This is my usual answer with these topics, but I think the most useful superpower to have would be the ability to (re)fill anything possible, either physical or not in nature. It would basically give you anything you wanted, or give you the necessary quantity of tools to do what you wanted.

Are you thirsty? Refill your glass. Do you need money? Refill your bank account. Do you have that annoying neighbor that keeps letting their dog go potty on your lawn? Refill their bladder.

I also cannot really see the drawbacks to the power either. You cannot overdo it as it always fills up only to the brim, kind of, but you could be exploited by other people if you let your powers slip.

[Caius Magnusson]

My response to this question is very similar to some of the previous answers, although I think it's more precise / specific than what has been provided so far.

Personally, I think the most useful super power is the ability to change the rules of reality.

This might seem vague at first, but it becomes clearer once we think about specific cases. For instance, if a person wants to always have money, they can add a rule that states "a bank account from which I withdraw money will always have at least $1,000,000 available, with no legal issues or resulting inflation arising from withdrawing, using or transferring that money". Essentially, you rewrite a wish of yours into the very core of the universe, making it part of reality.

This is very similar to the idea of modifying probabilities proposed by Dexter, but there are two issues with probability modification - you could theoretically be extremely unlucky and get the negative outcome if the probability is non-zero, and probability modification requires you to account for all scenarios related to a situation. Maybe you're not getting hurt if you are jumping off a building if you alter the probability of injury, but you could very much have a panic attack and get PTSD from the practice, depending on how you defined injury. If you closed that loophole by defining injury as being either physical or psychological, there might be still another form of harm you might be subject to that you have not foreseen.

On the other hand, if you alter reality to account for the room "no harm of any kind will arise from me falling from any height, with this rule accounting for both the falling process and the subsequent impact", then all possibilities are addressed. You can't suffer physical harm, psychological harm, financial harm (from breaking a third-party object that you need to replace) and so on and so forth.

Of course, there's the potential of someone twisting a rule in a very negative way, so it is a mighty dangerous power too. However, that does not remove its nature as the most useful one, provided it's used sensibly.

[Hiya Debnath]

I think that the most useful superpower is the ability to create unlimited happiness. There have been so many instances in history and so many events in fictional tales in which a person or being asked for a certain superpower or for some other boon because they weren't happy with their current circumstances, but upon the circumstances being changed, they were still not satisfied and then wanted something else, possibly even completely the reverse of what they had earlier wanted. For a few mere examples, King Midas asked for a touch of gold, that is, whatever he touched would turn into gold, signifying that he thought that wealth was the ultimate boon, only to discover that it wasn't really the ultimate boon. King Ashoka wanted to conquer the world, but converted to Buddhism when he noticed all the bloodshed and began to crave peace thereafter. I have known instances when people chose to remain a subordinate because they wanted peace and did not want to be involved with the responsibility of making decisions, but, then craved more power nevertheless. They wanted to change reality but were never happy nevertheless even after the reality was changed because they wanted something else. The truth about the human mind is that it can only be happy when it is chasing something or pursuing something. We do not realise it and think that want and need is the source of all sadness and dejection, but in reality, fulfilling a want or need is exactly what we live for. We would never stop wanting or needing anything. If we had everything, we would possibly want more, even eye that that is impossible, and even if we achieved the impossible, our happiness would be longer lasting but still just temporary nevertheless. We think that if we had that one thing, we would be happy. But we do not realise that if we had that one thing, we would be craving something else, because once we had that thing, we would find it boring now that that thing is ours and doesn't provide the thrill of the chase or of pursuing something. We are all thrill-seekers by nature even if we do not admit it. Even those who say that they only want a stable job nevertheless engage in various pursuits outside even the stablest possible job, just to get a thrill out of it. It is human nature to want and need more and more and keep looking for development, even when they seem to have everything, because our definition of everything keeps changing. If we had conquered the whole world, we'd be looking to space. In other words, joy and happiness is always momentary and fleeting to us. Fulfilling a need makes us happy temporarily only to become the starting point of another need. So, I would say that the best superpower is that of the ability to be happy unlimitedly, irrespective of the circumstances. That is the only thing that would actually keep a human being content and stop them from wanting more, and make them finally fulfilled and without any needs.

[Galena May]

I really like how the person above me pretty much closed this discussion by reiterating that "The grass is always greener on the other side". That is really a great way to look at this. Satisfaction and contentment is indeed rare.
I feel a need to add something here - ultimate satisfaction correlate to achieving all the tiers in a hierarchy called the Maslow's hierarchy of needs. "Feeling of accomplishment" and complete self-fulfilment are actually a part of one of its highest tiers.
I would modify that a bit further, though. I think that the ability to permanently satisfy anybody/ anything including oneself (do not read people -pleasing, I am merely talking along the lines of master- manipulator or super-therapist as a superpower) is even better. Even if we are satisfied, we will be surrounded by people who are not, who will keep trying to disrupt our balance and project on us. It is impossible to have happy and positive people around all the time, but the best we can do is always keep trying. If a superpower could do that for us, it would be great, I think.
Going back to the original poster's post, they added that we imagine we are politicians. As per someone else's opinion above, a politician's main goal is to stay in power. If I were to limit my wants/needs to being a politician in power, I would also agree to the one who said above that the ability to make anyone believe whatever we said is true is the ultimate superpower. But, there's the catch in the sentence right there, "If I were to limit my wants/ needs to".Therefore, I think that the ultimate superpower would vary depending upon what we are lacking the most at the present moment - we could be lacking happiness/money /power anything, and as has already been stated, we will never stop wanting/needing something, so the ultimate superpower in our opinion will forever be subject to change.