22 KiB
(MK) Challenge: how would you Munchkin the SCP Foundation?
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Author: u/Subrosian_Smithy Nudist Beach*
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URL: https://www.reddit.com/r/rational/comments/2xn9h9/mk_challenge_how_would_you_munchkin_the_scp/
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Score: 18
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Created: 2015-03-02T06:38:23
Post:
You're not just acting to Secure, Contain, and Protect; you can utilize SCP artifacts however you'd like.
Comments:
u/TimeLoopedPowerGamer [+30] Utopian Smut Peddler (6 hours later)
Reddit has long been a hot spot for conversation on the internet. About 57 million people visit the site every day to chat about topics as varied as makeup, video games and pointers for power washing driveways.
In recent years, Reddit’s array of chats also have been a free teaching aid for companies like Google, OpenAI and Microsoft. Those companies are using Reddit’s conversations in the development of giant artificial intelligence systems that many in Silicon Valley think are on their way to becoming the tech industry’s next big thing.
Now Reddit wants to be paid for it. The company said on Tuesday that it planned to begin charging companies for access to its application programming interface, or A.P.I., the method through which outside entities can download and process the social network’s vast selection of person-to-person conversations.
“The Reddit corpus of data is really valuable,” Steve Huffman, founder and chief executive of Reddit, said in an interview. “But we don’t need to give all of that value to some of the largest companies in the world for free.”
The move is one of the first significant examples of a social network’s charging for access to the conversations it hosts for the purpose of developing A.I. systems like ChatGPT, OpenAI’s popular program. Those new A.I. systems could one day lead to big businesses, but they aren’t likely to help companies like Reddit very much. In fact, they could be used to create competitors — automated duplicates to Reddit’s conversations.
Reddit is also acting as it prepares for a possible initial public offering on Wall Street this year. The company, which was founded in 2005, makes most of its money through advertising and e-commerce transactions on its platform. Reddit said it was still ironing out the details of what it would charge for A.P.I. access and would announce prices in the coming weeks.
Reddit’s conversation forums have become valuable commodities as large language models, or L.L.M.s, have become an essential part of creating new A.I. technology.
L.L.M.s are essentially sophisticated algorithms developed by companies like Google and OpenAI, which is a close partner of Microsoft. To the algorithms, the Reddit conversations are data, and they are among the vast pool of material being fed into the L.L.M.s. to develop them.
u/ArmokGoB [+6] (22 hours later)
This is a great summary of the problem space, and the reason as far as I can figure the best approach is not to do any of those things, but to create in isolation as much utility as possible in finite time and finite space.
My best idea for how to do this is to somehow create a Zeno hypercomputer or similar object that can preform infinite computation, then upload a seed for a civilization and do a variant of a Permutation City style launch.
Exactly how to do this is tricky, but I'd start by messing around with/examining SCP-914 (the most powerful and usefull SCP by far), SCP-079 (just change the utility function, somehow), SCP-119 (to put everything into once done and started up), http://www.scp-wiki.net/scp-117 , http://www.scp-wiki.net/scp-155 (Somone already did this! Also explains the concept. Sadly, it's not sufficient for my purposes, but it's worth examining), http://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/scp-158 (might be of help for uploading?), http://www.scp-wiki.net/scp-191 (Worth asking her for help with some things, if she's cooperative), http://www.scp-wiki.net/scp-291 (to extract brains, useful for later uploading maybe?),
u/itisike [+5] Dragon Army (a day later)
I'm new to SCP. Is there an organized way to get into it without just reading random articles? Any structure to make it easy to read straight? Ebook would be best.
u/d60b [+3] (25 days later)
For a long time there wasn't, but now: first Google result for scp foundation ebook.
u/TimeLoopedPowerGamer [+5] Utopian Smut Peddler (a day later)
Reddit has long been a hot spot for conversation on the internet. About 57 million people visit the site every day to chat about topics as varied as makeup, video games and pointers for power washing driveways.
In recent years, Reddit’s array of chats also have been a free teaching aid for companies like Google, OpenAI and Microsoft. Those companies are using Reddit’s conversations in the development of giant artificial intelligence systems that many in Silicon Valley think are on their way to becoming the tech industry’s next big thing.
Now Reddit wants to be paid for it. The company said on Tuesday that it planned to begin charging companies for access to its application programming interface, or A.P.I., the method through which outside entities can download and process the social network’s vast selection of person-to-person conversations.
“The Reddit corpus of data is really valuable,” Steve Huffman, founder and chief executive of Reddit, said in an interview. “But we don’t need to give all of that value to some of the largest companies in the world for free.”
The move is one of the first significant examples of a social network’s charging for access to the conversations it hosts for the purpose of developing A.I. systems like ChatGPT, OpenAI’s popular program. Those new A.I. systems could one day lead to big businesses, but they aren’t likely to help companies like Reddit very much. In fact, they could be used to create competitors — automated duplicates to Reddit’s conversations.
Reddit is also acting as it prepares for a possible initial public offering on Wall Street this year. The company, which was founded in 2005, makes most of its money through advertising and e-commerce transactions on its platform. Reddit said it was still ironing out the details of what it would charge for A.P.I. access and would announce prices in the coming weeks.
Reddit’s conversation forums have become valuable commodities as large language models, or L.L.M.s, have become an essential part of creating new A.I. technology.
L.L.M.s are essentially sophisticated algorithms developed by companies like Google and OpenAI, which is a close partner of Microsoft. To the algorithms, the Reddit conversations are data, and they are among the vast pool of material being fed into the L.L.M.s. to develop them.
u/The_Insane_Gamer [+1] Make life take the lemons back (5 days later)
Start with 176, 682, 914, and go from there.
u/Rhamni [+2] Aspiring author (10 hours later)
I like 152. Timey wimey stuff in general, especially when things go horribly wrong. Still, it seems to indicate that something more powerful than the foundation has the ability to change things in the past. Or maybe it's just reporting what happened on close parallel Earths.
u/LazarusRises [+1] (a day later)
Hold on, how do you figure Able hunts down anything that becomes too powerful? As far as I'm aware he's just an immortal biblical killing machine. (With extradimensional blades, for some reason.)
u/TimeLoopedPowerGamer [+3] Utopian Smut Peddler (a day later)
Reddit has long been a hot spot for conversation on the internet. About 57 million people visit the site every day to chat about topics as varied as makeup, video games and pointers for power washing driveways.
In recent years, Reddit’s array of chats also have been a free teaching aid for companies like Google, OpenAI and Microsoft. Those companies are using Reddit’s conversations in the development of giant artificial intelligence systems that many in Silicon Valley think are on their way to becoming the tech industry’s next big thing.
Now Reddit wants to be paid for it. The company said on Tuesday that it planned to begin charging companies for access to its application programming interface, or A.P.I., the method through which outside entities can download and process the social network’s vast selection of person-to-person conversations.
“The Reddit corpus of data is really valuable,” Steve Huffman, founder and chief executive of Reddit, said in an interview. “But we don’t need to give all of that value to some of the largest companies in the world for free.”
The move is one of the first significant examples of a social network’s charging for access to the conversations it hosts for the purpose of developing A.I. systems like ChatGPT, OpenAI’s popular program. Those new A.I. systems could one day lead to big businesses, but they aren’t likely to help companies like Reddit very much. In fact, they could be used to create competitors — automated duplicates to Reddit’s conversations.
Reddit is also acting as it prepares for a possible initial public offering on Wall Street this year. The company, which was founded in 2005, makes most of its money through advertising and e-commerce transactions on its platform. Reddit said it was still ironing out the details of what it would charge for A.P.I. access and would announce prices in the coming weeks.
Reddit’s conversation forums have become valuable commodities as large language models, or L.L.M.s, have become an essential part of creating new A.I. technology.
L.L.M.s are essentially sophisticated algorithms developed by companies like Google and OpenAI, which is a close partner of Microsoft. To the algorithms, the Reddit conversations are data, and they are among the vast pool of material being fed into the L.L.M.s. to develop them.
u/LazarusRises [+3] (2 days later)
Fair extrapolation. I actually wish your logic was included in the article--it would make it much more pointed and less "WHAAAH DANGEROUS ANCIENT ARTIFACT".
u/EliezerYudkowsky [+26] Godric Gryffindor (2 days later)
I'd work for SCP in a heartbeat. They're competence pornography. They have literally hundreds of world-ending threats and they show up and contain them immediately and the world goes on spinning and... I just can't imagine. Our own world would be destroyed by the third artifact found. If I could get in touch with SCP I'd just lay out the whole problem directly and the O5s would get together and figure out how to solve it and if I needed a small research base they'd just give me one and just... ugh.
u/VorpalAuroch [+11] Life before Death (2 days later)
To be fair, according to one version of the origin of SCP they literally have a divine mandate (which probably carries with it one person who permanently lacks any form of akrasia), and according to another they exist entirely to clean up their own mess, which they nonetheless continue generating (apparently just slightly more slowly than they can deal with it).
u/DHouck [+8] (3 days later)
They mostly succeed by fiat. There’s so much infighting it’s amazing nobody’s destroyed the world on purpose just to get at the others. They do enough experimenting to be dangerous, but they don’t do enough to actually learn much of use.
u/ArmokGoB [+5] (3 days later)
I'm pretty sure that's quantum immortality and outcome pumps type stuff, not actual competence. There's the whole Book of Endings thing, for example.
u/Chronophilia [+3] sci-fi ≠ futurology (5 days later)
Even so, if so many alternate Foundations got themselves killed off, the survivors must be more competent than average. A competent Foundation survives one time in a trillion, an incompetent one survives one time in a quintillion - which one will the outcome pump push us towards?
They're supernaturally pushed into competence, but if that effect turned off tomorrow, they'd still do more than adequately on their own merits.
u/Subrosian_Smithy [+9] Nudist Beach (3 days later)
I'd work for SCP in a heartbeat.
Cool. Your new assignment is to the D-class group which cleans 173's cell.
/s
u/Mr_Smartypants [+9] (3 days later)
They said it was blood and poo.
But it's really nearly all poo.
:/
u/xamueljones [+19] My arch-enemy is entropy (21 minutes later)
Using SCP artifacts poorly is an extinction level event.
This is why they focus on Containment over Research and Development.
This is a test where answering in any way other than [REDACTED] will get you fired.
u/gregx1000 [+8] (an hour later)
[REDACTED]
u/xamueljones [+8] My arch-enemy is entropy (an hour later)
That's the wrong [REDACTED] you fool! You're fired.....into the Sun.
u/TimeLoopedPowerGamer [+18] Utopian Smut Peddler (6 hours later)
Reddit has long been a hot spot for conversation on the internet. About 57 million people visit the site every day to chat about topics as varied as makeup, video games and pointers for power washing driveways.
In recent years, Reddit’s array of chats also have been a free teaching aid for companies like Google, OpenAI and Microsoft. Those companies are using Reddit’s conversations in the development of giant artificial intelligence systems that many in Silicon Valley think are on their way to becoming the tech industry’s next big thing.
Now Reddit wants to be paid for it. The company said on Tuesday that it planned to begin charging companies for access to its application programming interface, or A.P.I., the method through which outside entities can download and process the social network’s vast selection of person-to-person conversations.
“The Reddit corpus of data is really valuable,” Steve Huffman, founder and chief executive of Reddit, said in an interview. “But we don’t need to give all of that value to some of the largest companies in the world for free.”
The move is one of the first significant examples of a social network’s charging for access to the conversations it hosts for the purpose of developing A.I. systems like ChatGPT, OpenAI’s popular program. Those new A.I. systems could one day lead to big businesses, but they aren’t likely to help companies like Reddit very much. In fact, they could be used to create competitors — automated duplicates to Reddit’s conversations.
Reddit is also acting as it prepares for a possible initial public offering on Wall Street this year. The company, which was founded in 2005, makes most of its money through advertising and e-commerce transactions on its platform. Reddit said it was still ironing out the details of what it would charge for A.P.I. access and would announce prices in the coming weeks.
Reddit’s conversation forums have become valuable commodities as large language models, or L.L.M.s, have become an essential part of creating new A.I. technology.
L.L.M.s are essentially sophisticated algorithms developed by companies like Google and OpenAI, which is a close partner of Microsoft. To the algorithms, the Reddit conversations are data, and they are among the vast pool of material being fed into the L.L.M.s. to develop them.
u/xamueljones [+6] My arch-enemy is entropy (8 hours later)
Ugh, it's Thursday isn't it?
u/IsMyNameTaken [+2] (3 days later)
There's an SCP for that!
u/Chronophilia [+10] sci-fi ≠ futurology (a day later)
The SCP universe isn't coherent enough to munchkin. Too much stuff changes from one article to the next.
Sometimes the Foundation casually sacrifices thousands of D-class to one of their charges, or mindwipes entire continents. Sometimes they're a tiny, overworked facility that employs a few hundred people. Some SCPs are contained with advanced technology that ought to cost trillions if the Foundation actually paid for them. Others are just kept in a room with a locked door and no cameras, even though lives are at stake. Some things have been stable for decades or centuries, while others are constantly days from a containment breach that just... never... happens.
The simple fact is that most of the writers haven't read the entire archive, or even the majority of it. There's no Universe Bible, nothing that is universally accepted about the Foundation, so writers pretty much have free rein to make up background details and not worry about contradicting each other. In fact, such contradictions would be obvious if SCP articles referred to each other, which is why "crosstesting" is forbidden.
The only way to read it that makes sense is for the Foundation to be set in a multiverse. We're reading articles collected from different versions of the Foundation, with no rhyme or reason to the numbering scheme. It's not that strange an idea, considering the sheer number of parallel universes and alternate timelines that are mentioned. Some SCPs will be shared among them - 628, in-universe, is explicitly immune to being erased from history, so it will persist across timeline resets. (Out-of-universe, 628 is one of the oldest and most well-established SCPs, so it predates the "no crosstesting" rule, and also it's funny to test every new supernatural weapon on it.)
And since there's no knowledge of which SCPs belong to which universe, nor of how these universes connect to each other, it's hard to say what we'll have available to munchkin.
In short, there is insufficient data for a meaningful answer.
u/qznc [+8] Chaos Legion (a day later)
The SCP universe isn't coherent enough to munchkin. Too much stuff changes from one article to the next.
This. For an alternative, we could munchkin the Lovecraft universe or the “Laundry” series of Charles Stross (Laundry example novella).
u/chthonicSceptre [+9] Highly Unlikely (5 hours later)
Hmm... I would...
No, that wouldn't... How about... No...
Huh, just about the only SCP you could use without endangering yourself would be SCP-███, or maybe SCP-███. To do that, you would have to [DATA EXPUNGED] limited by the extremely small number of SCPs that have any useful effects whatsoever. To use the classic example, SCP-173 is just a homicidal statue that exudes filth and pauses when under scrutiny. What possible use does it serve that I can't do more safely with regular weapons?
On the other hand, there is at least one tale regarding the munchkining of SCP-914, although I can't find it.
u/rthomas2 [+3] (a day later)
The moment I realized I was in SCP-world, I'd kill myself and hope I respawned in a better universe. Only winning move in that one is not to play. Honestly: the SCP itself seems to be the best possible attempt to successfully deal with the horror inherent to that world, and few if any of its members retain their sanity, let alone have anything resembling happiness.
u/InkmothNexus [+3] (a day later)
SCP-500 has no drawback aside from lack of supply. SCP-38 can clone the pills, although the new ones only have 30% effectiveness. If that means any given copy pill has a 30% chance of working, then downing a dozen pills is 98% effective at curing anything. the tree makes 200 pounds at a time of what it's cloning and does so in minutes.
006 is the fountain of youth.
914 set to very fine is an optimizer of some kind. just keep throwing stuff in.
it might be possible to make a deal with 738 you wouldn't regret.
u/None [+6] (a day later)
"an optimizer of some kind" does not sound remotely safe.
u/InkmothNexus [+3] (a day later)
meant in the sense of "makes an optimal version of the input", not the paperclip optimizer sense. plenty of self-replicating SCPs that pose a threat in the "everything is cake/kittens/etc sense.
u/None [+5] (2 days later)
It's still not particularly safe in an ordinary sense. For example, it once turned a fire extinguisher into a flashlight-like device that suppresses all combustion within its cone of effect, which is generally lethal to humans.
u/None [+2] (3 days later)
Lots of things are dangerous to stand in front of, but they still have practical uses. I don't think standing in the cone of effect of a chemical fire extinguisher is all that good for you.
Besides, finding that out is what D-class are for.
u/Cuz_Im_TFK [+3] (a day later)
Can someone help me understand what Munchkin-ing is in the context I'm seeing on this sub? I've heard of it once I think, relating to D&D... is it like optimizing within the given parameters so much that it's not fun anymore?
u/adad64 [+3] Chaos Legion (2 days later)
Completely disregarding the spirit of the law in favor of optimizing the letter of it, yes. Generally taken to extremes.
u/None [+2] (2 days later)
I'd argue against the "not fun anymore" bit, so long as you restrain it to either a) real life, where it's indistinguishable from creative problem solving, b) musing and concepts such as this thread, where it's indistinguishable from ...creative... problem solving, and c) settings where the antagonists are munchkins too or have power scaled to munchkin'd capabilities.
u/hoja_nasredin [+2] Dai-Gurren Brigade (3 days later)
define the problem better. how would I write a novel set in SCP world?
How I as one of O5 increase the efficency of the agency?
How would I as a person extraneus to SCP find it and exploit it to rule the world?