Well is this about permanent magnets loosing their functionality or the whole concept of magnetism just vanishing?

One puts us back to a steampunk technological ceiling the other means the universe pops out of existence; electricity, magnetism, and light are closely linked so removing one is likely to just break reality.

As en electronics engineer I’m going to “Yes But…” this and say that the lower the voltage/current you’re trying to manipulate the more concentration it requires to do it without over-voltaging the components you’re trying to manipulate and frying the circuitry.

So whilst this would be possible you’d have to:

1. Hold all the cores, ALU, etc. in the CPU at the current state that they’re in

2. Then spend time flipping the bits (not one at a time but like a whole 32 bit number) required to represent your instructions.

With enough practice and meditation you get a “feel” for the instructions and can do this but it takes time. I think this is fair as once you’ve learnt a CPU architecture most of the machine instructions are the same and it’s just a matter of getting them to run in the right order.

This way you don’t start out overpowered and there’s a high skill ceiling.

(I may or may not be writing a book around this already and have thought about it a lot haha)

Rather than listing all of the ways modern life and society would collapse it’d be easier to just say this:

Your ability to understand the world would in an instant be limited to the people that immediately surround you and you’d better quickly think of a way to find a clean water source, some land, grab an “Agriculture for Dummies” book, and some form of weapon to defend your new homestead with your new tribe.

Technopathy. Being able to sense and manipulate electronics/electricity flows to “hack” computers and less smart hardware by waving my hands and “wishing” the outcome I wanted would make my life so much easier.

I could charge a good rate for my ability and my learnt knowledge as well take down huge tech companies.

Look I hate to see industries churn through workers lives like disposable commodities but:

1. You chuckle fucks voted for this.

2. Perhaps your painful deaths etched into your loved one’s memories will cement shit like this from happening again (at least until living memory of you fades, as is inevitable with the human condition).

3. Even if it doesn’t, with you lot dying for nothing including your bosses withholding any death in service pay from your families at least we can call it karmatically even.