21 KiB
[D] So I was wondering how you all would munchkin this. (x-post /r/WritingPrompts)
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Author: u/diraniola *
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Score: 14
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Created: 2016-08-26T21:20:25
Post:
Comments:
u/vakusdrake [+48] (27 minutes later)
Just wish for the coins to always come up heads in the future. If it comes down tails, well it'll always come down tails in the future. If that's the case just wish for the opposite of what you want, hell if you're really lazy just preface all wishes with "I wish for the opposite of x".
Anyone who's not a complete idiot should realize that the coin has absolutely no drawbacks if you know which side is going to come up beforehand regardless of which it is.If you can't manipulate the coin like that then just formulate more complex wishes such that they do the same thing regardless of which side comes up. For instance "I wish for a billion dollars, unless tails came up in which case I wish to be a billion dollars in debt."
u/GaBeRockKing [+3] Horizon Breach: http://archiveofourown.org/works/6785857 (4 hours later)
Then it always comes up sides, because that's the least likely, due to the fact that's it's possible to train oneself to flip a coin to one side or the other. Congratulations, the coin is now useless.
u/DCarrier [+9] (10 hours later)
But landing on the side is not the least likely. It's less likely to hover, and even less likely to turn into a caterpillar. There is no least likely option.
u/Roxolan [+2] Head of antimemetiWalmart senior assistant manager (4 hours later)
Then it always comes up sides, because that's the least likely
Can you explain why that's relevant?
u/GaBeRockKing [+2] Horizon Breach: http://archiveofourown.org/works/6785857 (4 hours later)
The most likely option is for that coin to land on heads, because the person using it can train themselves in such a way as to flip to one side consistently (And also because wikipedia says the chance of a coin landing on the same side it starts is .51). So the opposite, the least likely option happens-- sides.
To be fair, I don't know how the coin would determine "opposites," but there probably isn't a silver bullet for such a coin, or someone would have already munchkined themselves into godhood.
u/vakusdrake [+2] (5 hours later)
Again this ties into the problems with what counts as opposites. However as stated in the rest of my answer if that method doesn't work it is easy to munchkin to godhood through other means.
There isn't any good reason that other people wouldn't have munchkined themselves to godhood with the coin already except maybe incompetence.
u/Nepene [+1] (a day later)
If you did it, what your wish really was is something like "I wish future wishes were known and controllable to me." And so the opposite might be that you'd not know which side the coin landed on or be able to predict the effects well.
u/vallar57 [+27] Unseen University: Faculty of High-Energy Magic (2 hours later)
The big problem with this comes from the definition of "opposite".
If it uses stricly logical definition, meaning that the opposite of your wish would be [not][your wish], then you have nothing to worry about. After all, the opposite of a wish "please make it so [a glass of water appears before me]" would be "[a glass of water does not appear before me]"... which is simply [nothing happens]. Nobody said that the coin is creative in it's way of not granting your wishes.
If it uses more language based system, than it totally depends on how the wishes are compiled. RTFM first, munchkin later.
u/ulyssessword [+18] (31 minutes later)
That's extremely easy to munchkin. You know, after the fact, whether your wish was granted or not, and "opposite" is (probably) a very strong limit on how bad the misfires are.
"I wish for the winning lottery numbers^1 to be written on this flash drive." Tails. Smashes flash drive with a hammer. ..."I wish for the winning lottery numbers to be written on this flash drive." Tails. Smashes flash drive with a hammer...."I wish for the winning lottery numbers to be written on this flash drive." Heads.
^1 Or a cure for cancer, or source code for a Friendly AI, or the weather for the next week, or anything you want.
u/frozenLake123 [+17] (an hour later)
"I wish for the the source code for a friendly AI to be written on this flash drive."
The coin flips. Tails. You look at the coin, before smashing the hard drive.
Meanwhile, the source code for an AI appears on a hard drive in use, halfway around the world. A teenager looks at the new script that appears, before compiling it.
"Whats the worst that could happen?"
u/KerbalFactorioLeague [+3] (4 hours later)
That's not what the wish was though, the wish was for it to appear on this hard drive
u/Jiro_T [+6] (6 hours later)
But you can interpret "the opposite of a friendly AI on this flash drive" to be "a hostile AI on a different flash drive" (or even "a hostile AI on some place that is not this flash drive".
The entire thing depends on exactly what "opposite" means and whether it has a single meaning or whether the coin gets to choose a meaning so as to screw you over.
u/DCarrier [+9] (10 hours later)
The opposite of a friendly AI is an unfriendly natural unintelligent entity. Since it's not intelligent, it's not a problem.
u/Toricon [+7] (14 hours later)
I know a black hole that would like to have a few words with you.
u/LeifCarrotson [+2] (3 days later)
You've just described a few people I have had the misfortune of doing business with. "Natural" is, I suppose, a compliment I could give them.
u/monkyyy0 [+14] (an hour later)
You can add energy to a system this way, "I wish a pound of positive/negatively charged ions to appear inside my machine"
You could also wish for static effects and just make the same wish over and over until it worked; "I wish she loved me"
edit// what wishes don't munchkin this?
u/DCarrier [+9] (10 hours later)
You can add energy to a system this way, "I wish a pound of positive/negatively charged ions to appear inside my machine"
You are seriously underestimating how much energy you're applying to that system.
u/Strange-Aeons [+3] (a day later)
that... that would be a lot of energy.
u/LeifCarrotson [+1] (3 days later)
If you end up with a pound of dense protons, you'll probably only destroy a large portion of the planet. If you, unfortunately, end up with a pound of electrons, then at least the solar system might last a while longer.
If you convert the Earth to protons and the Moon to electrons, you'll end up with a black hole likely to eliminate the entire observable universe: http://what-if.xkcd.com/140
Please don't do that. And don't ask for a quantity of up-quarks either.
u/DCarrier [+1] (3 days later)
It does depend on how you're defining a pound. If you include the mass of the electric field, it would be comparable to having half a pound of antimatter. You'd only destroy a city.
u/LeifCarrotson [+1] (3 days later)
I assumed the coin would follow the intent of the user. A user foolish enough to request a pound of negative ions would think of a pound of electrons as the sum of the weights of individual electrons, neglecting the mass-energy. And that would level more than a city.
u/DCarrier [+1] (3 days later)
But they would also vastly underestimate the electrostatic force, so maybe those electrons would have much less electric charge than regular electrons.
u/Jiro_T [+6] (6 hours later)
You can't wish for static wishes over and over because you don't know how the coin is going to interpret the opposite of the wish, and the coin doesn't have to interpret the opposite of the wish such that a non-reversed wish will fix it. If the opposite of "she loves me" is "she hates me", then your trick will work. But if the opposite is "everyone in the world other than her hates everyone else other than me", it won't work.
u/MolochHASME [+3] (9 hours later)
That is one hell of a chaotic wish.
u/EliezerYudkowsky [+25] Godric Gryffindor (2 hours later)
I wish for the sentence "This coin lands on tails XOR FunThing" to be true. (Test with minor wishes before trying anything large.)
u/thrawnca [+2] Carbon-based biped (2 days later)
Yeah, if the wish is allowed to reference the coin itself, munchkinry is too easy. Though if you were using it in a story, I think "no self-reference" is a reasonable limitation, just like the classic "no wishing for more wishes".
u/vakusdrake [+1] (2 days later)
Unless you actually put limits on how powerful the coins effects on the world can be, that isn't going to eliminate many of the potential munchkins (of which you only need one to work).
The only other solutions other than limiting it's power would be having a incompetent protagonist, which would disqualify it from being rational.
u/thrawnca [+2] Carbon-based biped (3 days later)
that isn't going to eliminate many of the potential munchkins
Of course. I was just saying that if you can reference the coin, then munchkinry is too easy.
u/vakusdrake [+1] (3 days later)
Yes but either way munchkining is so easy it doesn't really matter, the only way it would matter in the story is if you have the person who picks up be an absolute idiot.
u/Bowbreaker [+12] Solitary Locust (an hour later)
There are many wishes that would have essentially the same result regardless of either heads or tails. Wishing a specific person 100 km directly towards the center of the Earth would kill said person either way for instance.
Other wishes would be completely harmless to you if the coin lands on tails. Like wishing for a specific valuable item or substance to appear at the exact given coordinates specified in your wish.
u/vakusdrake [+5] (5 hours later)
Well unless the coin is chooses to interpret the opposite of creating a object, to be creating a antimatter version of that object in which case...
u/Jiro_T [+2] (6 hours later)
Or as "everyone except that person is moved 100 km towards the center of the Earth".
u/ZeroNihilist [+4] (7 hours later)
That's not really the opposite though. Colloquially, the opposite of "A is moved by X" is "A is moved by –X". Formally, the opposite is "A is not moved by X".
There's no meaning of "opposite" that would lead to "All P such that P is not A are moved by X". Why would it operate on a complementary domain and, further, why would it use "the set of all people" as the superset rather than "the set of all things"?
u/Jiro_T [+1] (12 hours later)
Why would it operate on a complementary domain and, further, why would it use "the set of all people" as the superset rather than "the set of all things"?
Because the question doesn't specify which of those it does, so it can do any of them it wants to and choose between them for any reason. It could pick a colloquial opposite, a formal opposite, or something else depending on which of those it thinks screws you over the most.
u/ZeroNihilist [+2] (14 hours later)
But that wouldn't be any meaning of "opposite". It's not "heads it does your wish, tails it attempts to destroy everything you hold dear".
u/Nepene [+2] (a day later)
When dealing with an unfriendly AI, like this coin, you can hardly reliably expect it to be fair.
u/Kylinger [+1] (a day later)
I would hope the coin is smart enough to know what you want to achieve, and create the opposite effect on tails.
For example, it could boil the wish "Move Steve 100 kilometers further away from the earth's center than he currently is" down to "Kill Steve", and on tails it would do something positive for Steve instead. Maybe extend his life by however many years you would have cut it short?
How it calculates these value estimates, though, would be another question. The least exploitable version, I think, would be for it to have some sort of utility function that roughly matches that of the average human, and takes your goals into account when fulfilling the wishes. That way the results are comprehensible and predictable, but harder to game.
u/UltraRedSpectrum [+10] (2 hours later)
I suppose it would depend on how much of a monkey's uncle the coin is. For example, say you want to be more intelligent. Obviously that's dangerous to wish for directly, so you wish for a Fountain of Cleverness. The coin comes up tails. Supposing I'm the genie of the coin, there are a few different opposites I can use here.
1: A fountain is created in the desired location. Anyone drinking from the fountain becomes a complete moron.
2: A fountain is created in the desired location. Anyone who doesn't drink from the fountain is imbued with cleverness.
3: A reverse-fountain is created in the desired location. Everywhere except the inside of the fountain is flooded with the Elixir of Cleverness, and everybody drowns.
4: A fountain is created on Pluto. Anyone who drinks from the fountain becomes a superintelligent paperclip maximizer and destroys the universe.
And so on.
u/KerbalFactorioLeague [+3] (4 hours later)
Eh, 3 is just adding things onto the wish. If that could happen then no matter what the coin landed on the result could be "X, and also the sun explodes, killing everyone"
u/Roxolan [+7] Head of antimemetiWalmart senior assistant manager (4 hours later)
I disagree. "Everywhere except the inside of the fountain is flooded" is not a random extra, it's a valid interpretation (one of many) of "the opposite of a fountain".
u/None [+5] (17 minutes later)
[removed]
u/vakusdrake [+4] (30 minutes later)
That's not munchkining that's just trying to create a logical paradox. Given how presumably powerful the coin is I wouldn't recommend doing something like that if you don't want to destroy the universe or something.
u/Bowbreaker [+6] Solitary Locust (an hour later)
It would just land on heads, rebound and then land on tails before you can wish for something new. Or the other way around.
u/AmeteurOpinions [+2] Finally, everyone was working together. (23 minutes later)
Fish in a barrel.
u/ulyssessword [+10] (3 hours later)
Be very, very careful what you wish for.
"I wish for a 1 kg block of gold to appear on my desk."
Tails
A 1 kg block of anti-gold appears. The antimatter immediately reacts with the atmosphere and the desk, releasing 9 x 10^16 joules of energy (~20 megatons, or 1000 Hiroshima-equivalents).
u/vakusdrake [+3] (5 hours later)
This possibility did occur to me, and unfortunately it might make it to risky to create any material right away, one way to test it would be to create stuff on mars and see if there's anything about a bizarre martian explosion on the news later.
u/Jiro_T [+4] (6 hours later)
It could reverse the wish by creating something everywhere except Mars.
u/None [+5] (6 hours later)
[removed]
u/vakusdrake [+2] (23 hours later)
I think you vastly underestimate how much room that wish has to go horribly wrong...
What if it mutates into something capable of functioning as a GAI?
u/thrawnca [+1] Carbon-based biped (2 days later)
No need to mutate them, just increase their temperature by 30 degrees...
u/vakusdrake [+1] (2 days later)
How would that maximize their longevity?
u/thrawnca [+1] Carbon-based biped (3 days later)
Huh? I don't want to maximise their longevity, I want them dead! Cooked or frozen, can't lose either way.
u/vakusdrake [+1] (3 days later)
Yes but if it comes up heads it will maximize their lifespan!
So as I pointed out there are many ways the coin could achieve maximizing their lifespan, many of which Would not be harmless!
u/thrawnca [+1] Carbon-based biped (3 days later)
I don't think I was clear.
I wouldn't wish for malaria parasites' longevity.
I would wish for all malaria parasites to become significantly (say, 30 degrees Celsius, or maybe 50 degrees) hotter.
u/vakusdrake [+1] (3 days later)
Oh sorry I was confusing you with dspeyer and was extremely confused.
But yeah your wish seems like a pretty classic example of where most of the obvious interpretations would do what you want on both heads and tails.
u/alexeyr [+1] Steersman (29 days later)
I wonder what that would do to people inside whose bodies it happens.
u/thrawnca [+1] Carbon-based biped (30 days later)
Might be unpleasant, but the parasites are so tiny, it shouldn't make a massive difference.
u/None [+5] (6 hours later)
[removed]
u/callmebrotherg [+2] now posting as /u/callmesalticidae (7 hours later)
Did something already do this for world leaders in general, and then misplace the coin?
u/None [+2] (8 hours later)
Tails: While you're thinking about replacements, a nuclear bombs start falling
u/DCarrier [+1] (10 hours later)
Tails: No border-western followers cease to be slightly unwise.
u/vakusdrake [+1] (23 hours later)
I think you overestimate how much the coin is going to use your definition of wisdom, there's quite a few ways this could go horribly wrong...
Firstly they could become superintelligent AIs' dedicated to fulfilling whatever insane goals they had as humans.
Secondly if tails they could be superintelligent AIs' dedicated to do the opposite of what their goals were as humans, this would probably turn out even worse..
Those are just two scenarios, the definition of wisdom the coin will end up using (the prior two being one's ability to accomplish one's goals) isn't something you can know, so don't assume it will use the definition you want it to!
u/keeper52 [+3] (10 hours later)
Plenty of ways to make money.
Put a straddle on a stock (purchase an option to sell it and an option to buy it), then "I wish for this stock to go up by 30% today." (You can make there be a large change, even if you can't control its direction.)
Bet on Leicester City at 5000-1 odds, then "I wish for Leicester City to win the Premier League this year." Or, buy a Powerball ticket and then "I wish for tomorrow's winning Powerball numbers to be 26, 6, 10, 65, 33, with a Powerball of 8." (You can make anything a 50-50 proposition.)
Or, "I wish for the Royals to beat the Red Sox in tonight's baseball game," then flip, then place your bet on either the Royals or the Red Sox. (You know what will happen in advance.)
"I wish for Jack to accept the bet that I'm about to offer him." "Hey Jack, I just flipped this coin and didn't look at it. I bet you $100 that it landed heads." (You can cause the coin state to be correlated with other features of the world.)
u/None [+2] (5 hours later)
[removed]
u/DCarrier [+3] (10 hours later)
An engineer outside Yale loses a cause of some disease that makes cells stop replicating.
u/MugaSofer [+2] (a day later)
That's not the opposite! "A not-researcher not-at not-Harvard not-finds the not-cure for not-cancer" - that's a sextuple negative!
It's like saying the opposite of gaining six dollars is losing $6 of debt.
u/Areign [+1] (7 days later)
no its not losing 6$ of not debt.
u/None [+1] (7 days later)
[deleted]
u/Areign [+1] (8 days later)
Duh
u/vakusdrake [+2] (2 days later)
I think a more consistent opposite (how is yale the opposite of harvard?) would be to have someone at harvard develop a disease the gives everyone cancer.
Or maybe it somehow sabotages any potential for there to be a cure for cancer in the future.
u/SometimesATroll [+1] (15 hours later)
"I wish the coin would come up heads next time"
If heads, make wish on next flip.
If tails, make the opposite of your wish on next flip.
Repeat.
Of course you'd want to test this on minor wishes a few times to make sure it will work.
u/robryk [+1] (5 days later)
This is a perfect oracle for answering binary questions. Let's say you want to find out if X is true. Then you wish for X to be true, toss the coin and find out if it's true (if the coin came up head) or false (if the coin came up tails).