I don't know. When I see another person suffering, and feel their pain, sometimes there's that fear you speak of, yes (I feel it when I hear about instances of transphobia for example). But not always. Sometimes I just don't want them to suffer. There's not much logical explanation for that, it's just something I feel. I don't know. The argument that people ultimately don't really give a shit baffles me. If that selfish fear's a strong element as you argue, why do people even give their lives for others?

I dunno. When I see people making those sorts of statements, sometimes it seems like they're generalizing from their own feelings. That doesn't mean that it doesn't hold true for a lot of people (and I'm sure what you say holds true for many people). But, well.

Well, yeah, generalized fixes would have to be the order. But if I ended up with that kind of power, I'd just do what I said in my response to Relee's comment. Fix the minimum to at least reduce carnage, then make sure no one does further meddling on others against their wills (voluntary meddling's a different thing), then just leave it off at that. I wouldn't fix every ugly thing, because that's far too much to do on a global scale. Humans'd still be petty, etc. after I was done--I couldn't trust myself to know what's best for everyone.

Of course, that's assuming I can manage to keep from being corrupted by said power. That's why my second and last act with it would be to cut off my (and everyone else's) ability to do that stuff.

Truthfully, it'd probably be safest if this kind of global power never came to pass, yeah. Too much random factor, chance in who attains it first. Fortunately, it's most likely that it'll never happen anyway--that kind of scale is difficult to achieve in the first place, and counters can be developed to everything.

In practical terms, it's very improbable and very dangerous. But I sometimes think about it as a pure thought experiment.