20 KiB
All paths to happiness
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Author: u/None *
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URL:
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Score: 50
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Created: 2016-03-29T22:17:34
Post:
Comments:
u/Noir_Bass [+29] (5 hours later)
He got old...the guy with the ridiculous omnipotent oracle device got OLD. And it's not like he didn't get the idea to use the machine to pull great scientific discoveries out of thin air, either. He just never thought to ask it for a cure to aging. I'm just deeply not ok with this.
u/xamueljones [+13] My arch-enemy is entropy (6 hours later)
I KNOW RIGHT?!?!
u/want_to_want [+8] (16 hours later)
Yeah. Transdimensional Brain Chip was way better :-/
u/fed456 [+1] (a day later)
Ooh, that looks like a fun read
u/abcd_z [+1] (a day later)
"Are you blackmailing the pope?!"
"Yes!"
u/SnakeAndChariot [+2] (a day later)
Transdimensional Brain Chip was tons of fun, but TBC's been done before. I think All Paths was just meant to explore some ideas outside of TBC Spoilers
u/Roxolan [+29] Head of antimemetiWalmart senior assistant manager (3 hours later)
Hey, this is a thing I've brainstormed before! And it has some ideas I didn't think of. But it also has some issues I had caught.
My computer had captured the sequence of eighty thousand million 0s and 1s with which the machine had answered to those keystrokes [...] I put an “.avi” extension to the resulting file and tried to open it in the video player of my operating system.
So, the problem with this approach is that you are not optimizing for the best possible movie. You are optimizing for whatever sequence of 0s and 1s results in the highest number getting typed on your keypad.
This can go wrong in a number of ways. For example, in that search space, there may be a video that fills you with such self-loathing that you decide you wish to end all of your lives. So you type 99999 and then kill yourself.
In fact I expect there are all sorts of possible videos that would convince you to input 99999 because the other you's "need to see this". A humongous amount. (Almost none of which would be an excellent Oscar-bait movie, since those usually get their you's to input "1" as planned.) I very much doubt that the one most effective at convincing you to spend a while typing 9's will be any good for you.
And that's not even getting into the more exotic scenarios.
Maybe Basilisks are possible, in which case the winner will be whichever video is most effective at hacking your brain to get you to write lots and lots of 9's, until your nose presses the Enter key when you collapse onto the blood-soaked keyboard.
Maybe the file triggers a specific bug in your video player, which spirals into some kind of spontaneously generated virus, which just happens to contain code that allows it to hack your keyboard's drivers and input numbers faster than any human possibly could. That's unlikely for a search space this small. But if you keep messing with larger and larger randomly generated files, eventually you'll get nothing but more and more efficient versions of this virus.
Using the same technique, in the following years I “wrote” the best-selling novels, I “programmed” the best video-games, I “recorded” the best songs, and made the most important scientific discoveries. I won all the research prizes that could be achieved with a merely theoretical setup
Okay, I'll just roll with the wish fulfillment fantasy here, but there's no way you don't end up in some kind of cell after your second highly public miracle.
decided that this file would tell me what to do during the next year to be happy: throughout the year I would follow all the advices included in that file which made some sense
In addition to the problems listed above (and we are now definitely into virus territory), and the one the story itself pointed out, now we have ethical concerns. Of all possible sets of sensical instructions, most will result in your painful death. Of the remainder, most will result in pain for yourself and others. How much death and suffering are you willing to inflict, throughout the multiverse, just for the chance to improve the surviving you's lives?
Well, that text was only one idea that another myself, from another universe, valued enormously for how much he felt intrigued by it, nothing else.
(As a side-note: it's weird how casual the narrator sounds here, having just encountered literally the most exciting idea possible for him under those conditions.)
I approach the machine and I introduce the value which, according to what we all agreed four decades ago (when it was just I), would represent the maximum possible score. In fact, we had (I had) agreed that that score would be, in fact, unreachable, and that all scores would have to be beneath it. [...] Fuck you, fuck you, bastards!! Now you all will receive the instructions that lead to this shitty life of mine!
Sorry, narrator, but they won't. This experiment is so ridiculously open to noise that the winning number is going to be way, way above whatever limit you feel the need to bind yourself to. And it won't be typed by human hands.
u/rictic [+4] (3 days later)
Nitpick: The search space of all 10GB movies is absolutely big enough to contain a file that will take control of any imperfectly secure video player with room to spare. Likely enough room for a super AI with the goal to enter the largest possible number into the device.
I'd give good odds that every possible 10 KB file is almost definitely enough to bypass the video player and hack the value input panel, provided it's wired up to the computer.
u/IWantUsToMerge [+3] (a day later)
It really sounds like this story should be written over. This is great stuff, but why should anyone read the original again when you or I could take its ideas and write something even greater that covers the same ground, and more?
u/Roxolan [+2] Head of antimemetiWalmart senior assistant manager (2 days later)
Ha, I wish I was as good at writing original work as I am at nitpicking ideas.
(My submission in this week's rationalfic contest is kinda in the same genre; that's my current creative writing level.)
u/AppleJuiceBoxes [+19] (3 hours later)
Eat it, Coil.
u/Chevron [+7] there is no antimemetics division (6 hours later)
My thoughts exactly. Imagine how much more Coil might have accomplished with this thing (or most rationalists for that matter [if we ignore how it would probably destroy the world that is]).
u/AppleJuiceBoxes [+6] (6 hours later)
If uninterrupted by Cauldron/Simurgh bullshit, Coil could probably solve most of the world's problems before the system included enough insanity and sabotage as to be unreliable.
u/Chevron [+14] there is no antimemetics division (8 hours later)
He also probably wouldn't be stupid enough to go ahead and create literally every possible 10GB file and just see what happens.
u/Running_Ostrich [+4] (a day later)
That's the thing about Worm though - it's designed with multiple layers of Cauldron/Simurgh bullshit. If there weren't, then I feel like most of the worlds' problems would have ended before the story proper even begins.
u/alexeyr [+1] Steersman (4 days later)
Wasn't he only able to get as far as he did in the first place thanks to Cauldron bullshit?
u/LiteralHeadCannon [+30] (an hour later)
Although the multiversal mechanics are neat (and similar to things I've thought of myself), this is a classic example of how "precommitments" as we imagine them are not actual precommitments in game theory.
On the same tack, are the odds of a film consisting of literally random binary winning twenty four Oscars really higher than the odds of somebody's fingers slipping and typing in an absurdly high number when they meant to type in zero?
u/None [+7] (2 hours later)
[deleted]
u/None [+1] (a day later)
I know it's a joke, but nothing bad would actually happen to most versions of him until he input his result and received the actual data.
u/xamueljones [+7] My arch-enemy is entropy (3 hours later)
To me, this guy didn't use his machine to it's full potential.
There should have been a section where he uses it to 'find' scientific discoveries and drastically advance technology at a significantly faster pace for immortality and anything else he could possibly need.
u/super-commenting [+9] (5 hours later)
It does say he makes scientific discoveries it just didn't focus on that.
u/awesomeideas [+7] Dai stiho, cousin. (6 hours later)
I've only read the first few lines, but there's actually an iPhone app that purports to do this.
Edit: Well, only the bifurcation bit. But still.
u/None [+5] (a day later)
The bifurcation bit is the much more trivial half of what that Oracle does.
u/awesomeideas [+4] Dai stiho, cousin. (a day later)
Well, obviously you just kill yourself in the universes wherein you don't get what you want.
u/redstonerodent [+5] High Council of Gallifrey (4 hours later)
Why does he only press it once each year? He could press it say, 1000 times, so that only 1 in 2^1000 of him has to follow advice for a year instead of skipping to the good life.
u/Roxolan [+3] Head of antimemetiWalmart senior assistant manager (13 hours later)
This would be a great reduction of suffering if his plan worked, but ultimately it does not solve the problem. 1 is too many.
u/Arancaytar [+5] (14 hours later)
The guy would probably have been better off guessing a method for extending his life or stopping old age; that'd have taken off the time pressure.
... come to think of it, wouldn't one of the open-ended instructions have been precisely that? And wouldn't that score incredibly highly?
u/vakusdrake [+3] (4 hours later)
I'm interested in how someone might actually use a device like this.
Off the top of my head I can't think of that many things you could do with this, you can't ever split too many timelines, because if you do there will inevitably be one universe where the highest value happens not to coincide with what you want.
Honestly using only one device I'm not sure how many universes you could create and interact with, before you get unwanted results but I'm guessing it can't be more than millions at most.
u/Gurkenglas [+2] (14 hours later)
You can press the button once, enter 1 in the 0 timeline, live your life/acquire information in the other timeline (what happens if the button never gets pressed? Automatic 0?), and send a letter back in the following way: Press the button, if it's not the next bit of the letter, enter 0; repeat. When the letter is done, enter 2. This is not quite as dangerous in and of itself because it only involves one timeline with a possible traitor (and linearly many that diverge by a few seconds). You might want to decrease the probability that you don't get to use the plan by repeating the "You can press the button once, enter 1 in the 0 timeline, " step a (predetermined) number of times - best get the computer to do it a ridiculous number of times (Good thing we're still being linear! We might still want to use a CPU that absolutely does not fuck up one in a zillion logical operations.). The danger here is that the first AGI to get spawned by the mundane world will hack you to send back the optimal letter, so you might not want to wait too long before sending one. (Or even just some friend/government could coerce you to send yourself advice that would send the device into the hands of that friend/government, so better tell nobody, and don't drink.)
u/xamueljones [+2] My arch-enemy is entropy (20 hours later)
what happens if the button never gets pressed? Automatic 0?
Actually, that timeline's information would never be sent back and since there are other timelines who has the main character live to send information back, it's as if he never 'sees' any futures that results in his death. That's a potential 'flaw' in the machine. If there is an extremely likely future which results in his death and a very unlikely future that doesn't result in his death, he will only receive information from the unlikely future and end up surprised when he dies if the information doesn't affect his actions enough to avoid the likely death.
u/Gurkenglas [+1] (20 hours later)
If the machine doesn't get destroyed with him and ends up in a cave, it'll end up in that timeline's sovereigns hands.
u/xamueljones [+1] My arch-enemy is entropy (21 hours later)
Maybe that's how he could have plausibly got the machine in the first place. I couldn't imagine any genius inventor who made the machine without realizing it's potential and letting it go otherwise.
u/vakusdrake [+2] (a day later)
Like I said you probably can't expect to get any useful results once you create more than millions of universes (even with massive precautions). Which means you probably can't do much along the lines of creating information out of pure noise like he did in the story.
However you can still use it to potentially generate simple information in addition to using it to get information from really lucky versions of yourself.
However ultimately in real life you would have to deal with the fact that if you do anything to big with the device it will attract dangerous attention.
u/None [+1] (a day later)
Engineering a fairly lucky, long lived Vegas trip that still seems plausible to the outside observer is probably a good way to get started. Once you have some (6 digits is likely enough, and will not attract serious attention in a market that large if collected slowly) seed money better precautions and layers can be set up to conceal your Oracle.
u/OutOfNiceUsernames [+5] fear of last pages (2 hours later)
A nice thought experiment that is going into my dimension-related media collection.
Also, I don’t know in what percentile of bifurcations will mr. Rodríguez read through this thread, but here are some nitpickings anyways:
I decided that, in the universe in which I succeeded, I would type 1 into the machine keyboard and press enter, and in all others I would type 0 and press enter.
Even assuming that the universe is completely deterministic and at the time of splitting all the universes were the same, his alt-versions’ states of mind would get slightly changed based on the output they read on the pager’s screen. And with 2^160 universes, at least in some of them the resulting state of mind would be self-sabotaging (sending a 1 when according to the rules they should’ve sent a 0). He got that partially covered by the end of the story, but still.
For the following years, I enjoyed all kinds of luxuries from my unlimited economic capacity.
He wouldn’t have years, since the society would quickly adapt to — and drastically change because of — this openly accessible toolkit.
all myselves would have viewed all the movies that can be stored in a 10 gigabyte file (btw, enough to obtain a high image and sound quality)
A cinema-tier file-format would require much more disk space than that, not mentioning the raw originals.
the ending drama
Was somewhat interesting and yet completely unnecessary. Besides, I reckon that if a meeseeks was getting a row of 1s without feeling any happier, he would just auto-terminate his branch of experiment by typing in a 0, since the advice was clearly not working.
Questions:
This myself had no chance to test it before scoring it, because in order to do so he should have created his own universes in order to establish a new communication, which would have prevented him from communicating with me: every time you write a score, you break the possibility of getting in touch again with formerly deployed universes.
Couldn’t he have acquired multiple splitting-tools, especially since they were so cheap? This way resetting wouldn’t be required — each separate device would be linking to each separate bifurcation set.
u/xamueljones [+3] My arch-enemy is entropy (3 hours later)
A nice thought experiment that is going into my dimension-related media collection.
What others do you have? I love reading about splitting dimensions and would like to find more stories about this concept.
u/OutOfNiceUsernames [+8] fear of last pages (3 hours later)
(Be warned that just seeing some of these grouped together will likely spoil their twist)
- story The Man Who Folded Himself
- story --All You Zombies-- (R. Heinlein)
- story Branches on the Tree of Time
- manga Qualia the Purple
- webcomics Transdimensional Brain Chip
- film Predestination
There is more time- and dimension-travel related (e.g.) stuff but their association with this story is weaker.
u/xamueljones [+2] My arch-enemy is entropy (4 hours later)
Thanks! I've already read all of the recommendations, but the film, Predestination, is new to me. The last link is very helpful too.
I noticed that you seem to want to add stories with time-travel/split-dimensions to your collection. If you want the manga, Qualia the Purple, as an offline copy, I know how to help you get a pdf copy.
u/FeepingCreature [+2] GCV Literally The Entire Culture (15 hours later)
I'm also going to cautiously recommend the movie Next, which has a terrible story, but really good demonstration of practical use of a precognition/splitting power.
u/xamueljones [+3] My arch-enemy is entropy (20 hours later)
I've watched that the year it came out. Really cool use of the power in a lot of different situations, but the ending was terrible. No one with So yeah, terrible story with nice characters and powers.
u/TastyBrainMeats [+1] (7 days later)
Qualia is one of my favorite stories. It's a hell of a read.
u/IWantUsToMerge [+1] (a day later)
I would receive immediately the sequence of 0s and 1s from the universe where the entered value was the highest, independently of how long it took for that value to be entered in that universe.
I understand that it can be difficult for an author to estimate what would be obvious to their characters but.. wow, he wasted multiple years due to not having realized this earlier, I really do not believe it would have taken him longer than 3 days to notice it unless he was especially bad at noticing confusion and generating hypotheses. I noticed it right away and I don't even have the thing in my hands.
u/IWantUsToMerge [+2] (a day later)
Hm, on reflection, having him realize everything as early as he should have instead of doing extremely stupid things that illustrate the folly of the naive approach would have been less educational. Hard to call it a clear mistake.