13 KiB
[Q][D] Rationalist Wile E. Coyote and The Road Runner
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Author: u/None *
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URL: https://www.reddit.com/r/rational/comments/2unmm7/qd_rationalist_wile_e_coyote_and_the_road_runner/
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Score: 17
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Created: 2015-02-03T17:34:53
Post:
You are Wile E. Coyote. How can you exploit the knowledge a higher power will cause your actions to comedically backfire when you attempt to catch the Road Runner? Also, can you catch the Road Runner?
Comments:
u/EliezerYudkowsky [+30] Godric Gryffindor (2 hours later)
Why are you trying to catch the Road Runner? Can you go to the supermarket and buy a roast chicken instead?
If you tell me that my utility function is just to catch the Road Runner, I think I'll start by taking some of my amazing inventions and selling them to Acme, then hiring mercenaries. I will also try to place the Road Runner in morally compromising situations - maybe trolley problems - so as to try to strip It of Its plot immunity. And I shall employ all my wits and perhaps professional comedy writers to set up a situation in which the Road Runner escaping simply cannot be as funny as the Road Runner being caught.
u/OffColorCommentary [+13] (4 hours later)
set up a situation in which the Road Runner escaping simply cannot be as funny as the Road Runner being caught.
Make a trap ringed with elaborate failsafe mechanisms that, when it inevitably fails, leads directly into a trap with bigger and more elaborate failsafe mechanisms, with another even more complicated trap with bigger failsafes after that, which leads into yet another trap - a stick propping up a cardboard box that's clearly labeled "roadrunner trap" with no failsafe mechanisms at all. Commit to looking dejected when THAT's the one that works.
u/alexanderwales [+13] Time flies like an arrow (4 hours later)
What do you expect to find when you go to look inside the cardboard box?
u/OffColorCommentary [+7] (4 hours later)
Damn, you're right. That's a good way for the universe to have its comedic cake and eat it too.
u/puesyomero [+4] The Culture (7 hours later)
you could use plexiglass for the cage but risk it not being funny enough.
u/alexanderwales [+8] Time flies like an arrow (8 hours later)
This is not a situation that a person can engineer themselves out of.
u/Transfuturist [+2] Carthago delenda est. (23 hours later)
Literal anti-optimization setting.
u/Cruithne [+2] Light Sith epistemologist (a day later)
Just don't open the box. Pretend to be bothered by this to trick the universe into being amused at tantalising you about whether or not you actually caught him.
u/alexanderwales [+11] Time flies like an arrow (3 hours later)
I think I'll start by taking some of my amazing inventions and selling them to Acme, then hiring mercenaries.
Unfortunately, Acme is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Roadrunner Corporation, so this seems unlikely to work. (I would also be afraid of all of the mercenaries ripping off their masks and revealing themselves to be roadrunners right when it looks like I have the roadrunner caught.)
u/None [+3] (7 hours later)
The comedy writers may turn out to be roadrunners as well, as in universe even the trucks are shown to be driven by the roadrunner. You will have to go it alone.
u/None [+5] (17 hours later)
Why are you trying to catch the Road Runner? Can you go to the supermarket and buy a roast chicken instead?
Fucking thank you. I was going to say exactly this.
u/alexanderwales [+18] Time flies like an arrow (36 minutes later)
If God is out to get you, your only option is to convince God that he's wrong. So I guess I would attempt for a redemption arc, or try to be so pathetic (or possibly sympathetic) that God doesn't find my failures funny anymore.
u/EliezerYudkowsky [+4] Godric Gryffindor (23 hours later)
Depends how smart the God is. Jehovah is telepathic and dislikes any hint of defiance, but It has a very limited focus of attention and probably isn't bothering to read your mind at any given time, and Its architecture is clearly humanlike in other ways. It might be possible to subtly set up a clicker-training-like scenario in which Jehovah was reinforced into behaving in useful ways, pending its outright takeover by a constructed superintelligence.
u/Endovior [+14] (54 minutes later)
Huh. I was expecting a link to qntm's take on this very subject, but since it's not here yet: http://qntm.org/coyote
u/duffmancd [+7] (10 hours later)
I liked it apart from one line: "I have been sent to a world which obeys no scientific laws." While this may just be coyote speaking and not qntm, it does reinforce the idea that scientific laws are mathematical laws.
I strongly disagree. Scientists try to discover how the world works, our world seems to be very very well described by maths. Loony Toons could much more simply be described by humour. The rest of the piece seems to describe this very well (the whole, am a scientist not was, and the very last paragraph) so that one line made me strangely angry.
Again the rest was quite good, I enjoyed it.
u/xamueljones [+7] My arch-enemy is entropy (an hour later)
There's a fanfiction crossover story which is about the idea of a person being transported into a cartoon or anime universe where the protagonist even uses his meta-knowledge about the laws of comedy to anticipate certain events and set certain situations up.
Sleeping with the Girls isn't rationalist, but the protagonist does make multiple rational decisions and he does have very good excuses for most irrational behavior.
u/Sailor_Vulcan [+6] Champion of Justice and Reason (an hour later)
You mean this?
u/Topher876 [+4] (2 hours later)
Under ordinary circumstances Roadrunner WILL win because loony tunes appeals to an audience that wants to see you fail. The best idea I have is to get rid of the audience, draw vulgarities on EVERYTHING, make it so that no one could ever watch this episode, then go with a very simple plan with one point of failure and take out the the road runner.
u/Darth_Hobbes [+6] Ankh-Morpork Guild of Assassins (2 hours later)
But any profanity you write will turn into "@#$%!". Maybe try using your sign to write "This is a simulation of a hypothetical scenario in which I am a rationalist and am able to defeat the roadrunner by realizing this fact and pointing it out, depriving the situation of comedy. Now observe as I shoot the bird with this Kalashnikov rifle."
u/alexanderwales [+9] Time flies like an arrow (3 hours later)
Probably still turns out as "@#$%".
u/Darth_Hobbes [+5] Ankh-Morpork Guild of Assassins (3 hours later)
What if you flipped the audience off or made other obscene hand gestures? I've never seen a Loony Toon use a blur censor.
u/Chosen_Pun [+5] The Chosen Ones (3 hours later)
Now observe as I @#$% the bird with this @$#%@$#&%#.
u/endtime [+3] (9 hours later)
...and out of the rifle pops a flag that says "BANG".
u/Darth_Hobbes [+3] Ankh-Morpork Guild of Assassins (9 hours later)
u/puesyomero [+3] The Culture (7 hours later)
create a hostage situation with an even cuter animal in danger. plot would favor the prettier creature.... better check if there is something like plastic surgery on toon world and make yourself prettier with BIG dewy eyes!
u/None [+2] (3 days later)
Warning: make sure that your cute anime-animal partner or alternate shape is not Kyubee.
u/m3ddz [+3] (3 hours later)
Perhaps God will grow tired of the arrogance of the roadrunner and show mercy on Mr. Coyote by raining hellfire upon his enemy.
u/MoralRelativity [+1] (3 hours later)
god showing mercy, not bloody likely
u/psychothumbs [+3] (5 hours later)
I would fund my roadrunner catching escapades by getting a film crew to document my endless comedic failures. Eventually the show would become so successful, I might even stop really trying to catch the roadrunner, just going through the motions for the audience. After all, if I caught it the show would be over.
u/IomKg [+3] (6 hours later)
catching or actually eating the road runner, and by eating the question is it ok for the roadrunner to respawn in the end after i "win" or not. if the requirement is for an absolute zero-sum win then i would have to say it is impossible as its essentially a physics rule of that universe.
if the requirement is merely for me to catch it then all i would need to do is look sorry\sad etc and then "catch" the roadrunner in a friendly manner. that kind of thing is plausible.
if i need to specifically eat him but it doesn't "really" need to be him i would engineer some kind of situation where multiple roadrunners will exist(hire a few from a company, where i am expected to return them or other wise suffer a fine\pain), where most are not the real road runner and make some kind of an elaborate plan which is supposed to get me to eat him. which will backfire and cause me to eat one of my own roadrunners , thus for example needing to pay lots of money to the organization i rented it from. which would be funny. and would for a split second allow me to eat the roadrunner, before reality changed to me actually eating something else and the roadrunner being intact.
u/IomKg [+2] (9 hours later)
thinking about this a bit more it might be possible to eat the "actual" road runner and let a fake\different one live.
there are 2 ways that i can see that hapenning depending on a condition. am i on camera all of the time?
if yes then all i need to do is get someone else to get another roadrunner for after i "lose" so the "other" roadrunner will live while the real one will be eaten by me(using something similar to what is described in the previous post)
if no then i need to get into an alternate universe, thus i will lose the camera forever(it will follow the clone i switched with in that alternate universe during the mayhem) and i will get to eat the roadrunner. it will just never be shown on screen.
which is what is the actual law of that world, not that the roadrunner cannot be killed, but that on camera it must always appear as though the roadrunner won in a funny way
u/chaosmosis [+3] and with strange aeons, even death may die (11 hours later)
Humor is about subverting expectations. Therefore, it will be difficult to control the situation unless I'm also able to control my thoughts and beliefs well enough to make myself expect something other than what will actually happen. I have to catch the roadrunner on accident, perhaps without ever knowing I've caught him.
u/Nepene [+2] (an hour later)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cjdqEon7rZk
Road Runner has frequently shown damage resistant powers like intangibility. He's run through cliffs.
Wile E. Coyete doesn't have the technology to kill him, even if Road Runner stood still.
u/what_deleted_said [+1] (3 months later)
Oh actually it looks like Coyote already caught the RR--he's trapped him in the alternate reality of the painting he made.
u/MadScientist14159 [+2] WIP: Sodium Hypochlorite (Rational Bleach) Eventually. Maybe. (2 days later)
Precommit to doing, on screen, incredibly unfunny things that parents wouldn't want their kids seeing such as self harm and hard drug abuse if and only if my plan fails.
u/okaycat [+2] (2 hours later)
The Universe basically doesn't want Coyote to win. There's literally no way for you to win when God/reality doesn't want you to win. Maybe you could try to make yourself more funny and entertaining and the universe might throw some luck your way. Otherwise, you really can't win.
u/None [+2] (9 hours later)
When it's you versus God? Stoicism is the only answer. Accept your plight; accept your scenario and look at it as a good thing, not a bad. Now, if the audience laughs, you have won.
Stoicism as metarationality: winning, by changing the definition of "winning".