scrape_r_rational/data/cache2/7v2ee0.md

## [MK] The Great CYOA Munchkinry Contest

* Author: u/GaBeRockKing  *Horizon Breach: http://archiveofourown.org/works/6785857**
* URL: https://www.reddit.com/r/rational/comments/7v2ee0/mk_the_great_cyoa_munchkinry_contest/
* Score: 17

* Created: 2018-02-03T21:55:00

### Post:

**note: this is a contest, so do not read spoilered comments until you're read, at the very least, the third section of this post.**

For those not in the know, a CYOA (Choose Your own Adventure) is an image where either you make one of several choices (i.e., the pill CYOA of ["And I Show You How Deep the Rabbit Hole Goes](http://slatestarcodex.com/2015/06/02/and-i-show-you-how-deep-the-rabbit-hole-goes/) fame) or where you're given some "points" to spend on either setting up or having an adventure-- buying companions, abilities, enemies, setting details, whatever. (i.e., [Worm CYOA](https://imgur.com/a/jypS4)).

Your task is to meta-munchkin CYOA's, but not in the way you'd hope. More on that later.

____

1.) Select a **point buy** CYOA that either happens in the real world, or has options centered around affecting the real world. (So if the isekai is about sending a hero to another dimension, it's disqualified.) /r/makeyourchoice has plenty, but there are others elsewhere. Be forewarned that if you just trawl the internet for CYOAs, you're pretty much guaranteed to find NSFW ones. You may use a CYOA that is *effectively* (albeit not explicitly) a point-buy CYOA, like [1997 CYOA](http://i.imgur.com/3Hl4Hif.png), where you're expected to pick multiple options from a pool of options, which could be modelled as spending two points where items cost a point apiece.

* As a semi-exception to this rule, however, if a CYOA about going to another dimension has options that allow you to make the other dimension just like the real world, but with [x] you can treat that CYOA as directly modifying the real world. I.e., if you choose a CYOA set in an urban fantasy environment that's earth but with magic and a fantasy kitchen sink, on implementation, people and animals will be chosen at random to gain magic powers and to turn into elves/vampires/dwarves/werewolves. Expect massive, instant destabilization of the world order. But maybe that's your thing?. [Magocracy](https://imgur.com/a/NfeRb) would be an example. People would be randomly chosen to gain the relevant magical powers.
* Similarly, if your CYOA is a portal fantasy that explicitly includes rules for going back and forth between the "real world" and the fantasy world, that's also OK, providing you pick options guaranteeing permanent contact between the worlds. [Magical Realm](https://imgur.com/a/gdLL0) is an example, although picking Gateways[1] or [2], or Portals (with a control system guaranteed to keep making portals) would be mandatory.
* Also, you're barred from using meta-CYOAs and low-effort CYOAs (no choosing parody CYOAs that instantly break reality, please), as well as any meta-options in otherwise non-meta CYOAs. If you really want to, you could make your own CYOA designed to win this contest, but it must be high-effort (if you're going to put that much effort into it, you deserve to win.)

2.) Comment with the name of the CYOA and a like to it, plus a title for your plan. (This title can be whatever you want)

3.) In spoiler tags, add your choices for the CYOA, including point costs and your personal implementation. As a twist, though, you are only to post the choices that directly affect *everyone* rather than just you. You must post, for example "Immortality - Everyone [15 points]" or "Catgirls - 5% of population [5 points] [[catgirls don't have behavioral changes, just aesthetic ones.]]". You are not to post "Kickass Flamethrower - [1 point][[all chrome and shit]]". This includes any drawbacks you choose, whether personal or setting-wise. You do, however, need to post the tallies for personal benefits and drawbacks, in the line of "spent 36 points on personal upgrades. Gained 12 points from personal drawbacks." Make sure to keep track of your personal options, though.

4.) Post what you intend to do with your newfound (personal) power, and what your intentions for our new, significantly more interesting world are. If you want to, lie like a rug. For example, you can say you have "bestow immortality" when really you spent the points on "mind control", or claim you'll reverse global warming when really you want to make greenland the new bahamas.

____

The twist to this comes from the fact that this is a contest. During one of the next three discussion threads over the next week (probably friday off-topic), I'm going to link each of the comments and a strawpoll with the titles of the comments, and ask the readers of /r/rational what CYOA plan they would most prefer to live in.

So while you *can* pick a CYOA that gives you kickass superhero powers, people aren't likely to vote for you (unless they're into that philosopher-king bit). Alternatively, while you can choose to be purely altruistic and choose options that make things fun for everyone, maybe that's not maximizing your personal fun. I know I wouldn't pass up the chance to have superpowers. On the third hand, you can choose "altruistic" options, but secretly intend to twist them to your own ends.

Finally, this is a contest, as inspired by /u/LieGroupE8 's [contest post](https://www.reddit.com/r/rational/comments/7rqv2m/d_saturday_munchkinry_thread/dsz76ds/). But I will be a little more lenient than "if you peek you're disqualified." Instead, if you peek into someone's comment prior to finishing your own comment, you're no longer allowed to use their CYOA to make a plan. Otherwise, using the same CYOA is perfectly legal. I'll be posting a deliberately bad example comment a little after I make this post.

### Comments:

> **u/GaBeRockKing** [+3]  *Horizon Breach: http://archiveofourown.org/works/6785857* (17 minutes later)
> 
> Below is an intentionally shitty plan meant to display how to make an entry into this context.
> 
> ____
> 
> **Godlike Power**
> 
> CYOA: [Magical Realm CYOA](https://1d4chan.org/wiki/Magical_Realm_CYOA)
> 
> [Global Choices (this spoiler intentionally broken):]#s "Demiplanes: Area Increase 2 [3 points], Planar Features: Gateways 1 [1 Points] (I'm going to place one gate in my home, and the rest in Belgium.), Population: Population Increase 2 [4 points].")
> 
> [Personal Choices Tally (this spoiler intentionally broken):]#s "Personal Benefits tally: 92 points. Personal Drawbacks tally: 0 points.")
> 
> Plan: Step 1: Become a god Step 2: invade Belgium Step 3: ??? Step 4: Profit.

>> **u/ToaKraka** [+4]  *https://i.imgur.com/OQGHleQ.png* (38 minutes later)
>> 
>> (I assume that this is the meta thread.)
>> 
>> More examples of CYOA images can be found on 4chan ([SFW](https://boards.4chan.org/tg/cyoa) and [NSFW](https://boards.4chan.org/trash/cyoa)) and on r/makeyourchoice.
>> 
>> ---
>> 
>> > For those not in the know, a CYOA (Choose Your own Adventure) is an image where either you make one of several choices[…] or where you're given some "points" to spend on either setting up or having an adventure-- buying companions, abilities, enemies, setting details, whatever.
>> 
>> I feel the need to point out, in order to reduce confusion, that the new-fangled CYOA *images* have very little in common with the old-fashioned CYOA *books* (descriptions: [AllTheTropes](https://allthetropes.org/wiki/Choose_Your_Own_Adventure), [Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Choose_Your_Own_Adventure)) with which people probably are more familiar.

> **u/vakusdrake** [+2]  (an hour later)
> 
> Well I feel the need to point out the "obvious" (as in obvious once you've made literally hundreds of munchkined CYOA builds) exploit build for the linked magic realm CYOA. I've made a build for this CYOA before but deliberately ignored the singularity level tech option because it makes everything else secondary, here I won't.
> 
> As a meta point I'd like to say that while you can have a winner from a entertainment standpoint, from a munchkin standpoint there's liable to be many ties. Since many CYOA's can be exploited into both kicking off a singularity and getting a source of infinite energy/matter such that posthuman civilization can not only avoid heat death but continue expanding forever with no material restriction. So once you've got that level of godlike power then it's not clear there will ever be any other exploits you could hope to do which would unequivocally beat that.
> 
> **Singularity Route**
> 
> CYOA: Magical Realm CYOA
> 
> * [Demiplanes:](#s " Jupiter Sized (This maximizes the area I can use to generate material and energy to be used outside realm)") 
> 
> * [Planar Features:](#s " Portals, Division, Transient, Protection 2. (This a allows me to rapidly transition my plane from its initial state to its final state wherein nobody except the gods actually lives there and it's used entirely for a source of unlimited energy/material to anywhere. The protection can ensure that the gods have to spend no real energy to create any possible things in this realm, since after it's created once you get an unlimited amount of it for free)")
> 
> * [Technology:](#s " Singularity")
> 
> * [Environment:](#s "  Cosmic Adjustment (This lets me shape an entire other universe adjacent to my magic realm, which will be set up to be extremely useful to expand into due to having different physics if I can get away with that)")
> 
> * [Adventure](#s " Pantheon, Theme (This gives me an extremely cheap way to basically get absolute control over my realm by creating gods of arbitrary power who share my goals)")
> 
> * [Ascendance (I don't consider this a personal choice since I won't be making personal use of it)](#s "  Guidance 2 (giving this to my pantheon of gods they will be able to use it to quickly reach a level of power where they can create new magic realms or where their power isn't even limited to the area of the magical realm")
> 
> [Plan:](#s "  With this build basically my magic realm gets instantly transformed overnight upon creation by my pantheon of gods. They then export enough energy and matter that posthuman civilization can expand at lightspeed filling up all the space as it expands from the portals. If things like negative mass/energy can be exported from the magic realm then expansion may not even be limited to lightspeed in our universe. Plus after some time (though brief on a cosmic timescales), the pantheon will likely be able to start just constantly creating new magic realms or extending their influence outside this magic realm")

>> **u/GaBeRockKing** [+1]  *Horizon Breach: http://archiveofourown.org/works/6785857* (2 hours later)
>> 
>> Just fyi, you forgot to tally your point totals for personal options.
>> 
>> [Discussion spoiled because it might give hints to your strategy.](#s "Certainly, it's not difficult to munchkin CYOAs-- they're meant to be (in some sense) munchkinable, because your other option is simply not to play. Where this contest becomes interesting is that *other people* decide whether your CYOA gets implemented. And the fact is, without knowing you personally, it's hard to gauge how 'ethically' (from their personal viewpoint) you would act. We've spent the past few hundred years decentralizing the power available to the government because we don't like the idea of a single dude in charge of everything. Nigh-omnipotent beings slaved directly to your values are basically indistinguishable from a misaligned AI as far as other people are concerned. Not a paperclipper, exactly, but at least Celestia-AI. Certainly, here on /r/rational people are much more likely to be in-line with your values, but it's still very dangerous. That's why I'm personally going to guess the eventual winner is actually going to be a CYOA that more resembles the 'patchnotes from god', where a bunch of objective improvements are going to be made to life, but everything won't be instantly unrecognizable.")

>>> **u/vakusdrake** [+1]  (3 hours later)
>>> 
>>> >Just fyi, you forgot to tally your point totals for personal options.
>>> 
>>> I was just guessing that if I didn't include a section for personal options people would correctly assume that I didn't take any [since](#s " in this CYOA once you've made certain selections everything else is rendered redundant, thus why I didn't take any personal options and ended up having 48/100 points left over").
>>> 
>>> [As for your spoilered text](#s " It does strike me that there's basically no improvements to the world you could make that _someone_ wouldn't have a problem with, (it's easy to forget how many people are hostile to futurism ideas like people getting to live as long as they like, even if it seem inexplicable to us).              
>>> Still I think if people actually understand what values you have (which one could be confident about in this contest theoretically, since any details about non-person choices is presumed to be true right? So you could detail the values of the gods aligned with your values in detail) I don't think it should be a given that at least among the sort of people on this subreddit you couldn't come up with a vision of the world pretty much everyone would be on board with. Particularly given a build where you can afford to allocate everyone nearly unlimited resources.    
>>> Namely I would imagine such a thing would probably be pretty libertarian with everyone basically getting godlike power to do anything they please provided it doesn't violate really obvious moral schelling points like mind controlling others.                                    
>>> So then I wonder, if you think the most popular build will be determined by its value altruism as opposed to other metrics like whether the build is the best from the standpoint of any person implementing it. Then I'm curious how much you think I may be able to increase potential standing by actually detailing a pantheon whose goals are based around doing the sort of things mentioned above. Wherein they reshape the world in ways that give nearly everyone the opportunity to effectively have anything they want")

>>>> **u/GaBeRockKing** [+1]  *Horizon Breach: http://archiveofourown.org/works/6785857* (4 hours later)
>>>> 
>>>> >since any details about non-person choices is presumed to be true right?
>>>> 
>>>> Anything establishing setting details is assumed to be true, as you're basically making a precommitment to fill out the actual CYOA *like so*. Nothing afterwards is guaranteed, however.
>>>> 
>>>> [spoilers](#s "But in establishing your own values (as that's a person detail) you can lie as much as you want, is the problem. And in establishing the values of any gods you create, any way you define those values is subject to how you *personally* define things. That's not to say a pantheon *can't* be well-defined in spite of that, especially with the Pantheon/Theme combo, but it would likely require a fair bit of specificity, which your original post lacks, and my suspicion is that the more specific (and therefore trustworthy) you get, the more people will choose to nitpick.")
>>>> 
>>>> All that aside, everything in your post is legal; this is just me speculating about how the final vote will turn out.

>>>>> **u/vakusdrake** [+1]  (4 hours later)
>>>>> 
>>>>> [Spoilers](#s " Well one way I imagine one could get around the fact describing a god's values is absurdly hard to do in a well defined manner, might be by describing what the gods values would lead them to do in terms of specific actions. So for instance I brought up that previous scenario for the least objectionable possible outcome for a FAI, wherein basically everyone gets potentially everything they want with only the exceptions of violating near universal moral schelling points like no mind control")
>>>>> 
>>>>> On a related note I wonder about how fundamentally incompatible human values are, or at least the subset of human values you're ever liable to see from the groups likely to create GAI (that religious extremists have fundamentally incompatible values is unremarkable). As well as how many moral disagreements are rendered moot by nearly unlimited resources.

>>>>>> **u/GaBeRockKing** [+1]  *Horizon Breach: http://archiveofourown.org/works/6785857* (4 hours later)
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> [spoilers](#s "Personally, knowing that true omnipotence and omniscience is so far beyond the finite ability of human minds to reason about, I'd define a god to have only a very limited slice of omnipotence/omniscience where they perform exactly one well-defined function, but have infinite power to do it with. For example, god 'Yud-Yud-Meh-Qliphort' materializes a 1'x1' matzah ball whenever his name is spoken by a mouth, inside the speaker's mouth. Obviously, that power is hilariously munchkinable (as is the intention) but there's no worries about a god mucking with your values.")

>>>>>>> **u/vakusdrake** [+1]  (5 hours later)
>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>> [   ](#s " Well we aren't talking about anything like actual omnipotence, and certainly not omniscience, after all the gods created only have absolute power over the magical realm, and then they have to export that power to the outside world where they're limited by physics at least initially. Plus even should they use the ascension library to become vastly more powerful creation gods (like it's implied I could eventually do in the CYOA) they are still presumably held to certain fundamental limits. However their power might as well be infinite as far as humans are concerned since each human can potentially act as a god over entire planets worth of space, or practically a whole universe if they want to live in the digital world. So given how much a human can really want the gods may as well be omniscient as far as human-level intelligences are concerned, even if they aren't. As for making extremely well defined limited gods I'm not sure that's super worthwhile given you have basically a perfect solution to the alignment problem already present (if you wanted to compare the gods to GAI), so it seems more convenient to just give the gods either your values or a set of values defined in such a way as to be minimally objectionable (such as the previous methods I've described).")

>>>>>> **u/GaBeRockKing** [+1]  *Horizon Breach: http://archiveofourown.org/works/6785857* (5 hours later)
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> I did some thinking about it, and I realized why your scenario was rubbing me the wrong way (and incidentally, why I'd prefer your scenario to real life, but still can think of much less optimally munchkin'd scenarios that I'd rather vote for.)
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> [sp](#s "It basically boils down to the fact that I think that the self-understanding required to truly enjoy omnipotence would require a level of knowledge that is incompatible with being 'me.' So knowing my own tendencies, the only way I could decide how to optimally enjoy omnipotence would be to bootstrap my level of sapience upwards. But then, as I define 'personhood,' I'd no longer be *me.* I'd be the kernel for a completely different being.")
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> [sp](#s "So if I'm going to be sub-optimally enjoying omnipotence, I might as well just get straight to the kind of thing I'd do anyways-- living in a world that's much better than real life, but still imposes certain limits on my actions. Now, it's entirely possible a capital-g God that's so omnipotent and omniscient they don't follow the bounds of petty things like 'logic' could resolve that conundrum in an infinitely elegant manner, but any pantheon you'd create would be created with your own limited level of understanding, which of course is human and therefore finite. While a libertarian pantheon is a good solution for minimizing risk of harm, I don't think it's as effective for maximizing joy.")
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> [Unsong spoilers here if you've never read it](#s "Of course, an omnipotent final version of myself would likely copy UNSONG and start instantiating all universes such that good outweighs evil, and therefore "I" would get to experience all of the other CYOA options anyways. Though at this point you get to an interesting meta-level issue where, if the CYOA framework is powerful enough to bestow omnipotence, then even if an omnipotence-granting CYOA isn't picked, the fact that it *could* have been picked implies that we are ourselves being simulated by omnipotent, omnibenevolent beings at some level, meaning it got picked *anyways.* But recursing down the simulationist path just gets a little too meta to worry about, so I'm going to shut up now.")

>>>>>>> **u/vakusdrake** [+1]  (5 hours later)
>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>> [Well to address your Unsong point first](#s " That's not really something you have to worry about because the gods in question are merely arbitrarily powerful not infinitely powerful. So if they want to maximize good they will never run out of amazingly good universes to create. Point is that Unsong scenario is only a possibility if you've got a truly infinitely powerful god(s) and they subscribe to very particular moral assumptions and interpretations of how set theory applies to the real world")
>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>> [As for the rest of your comment:](#s " I actually basically agree with you, but I just didn't explain the implications of my scenario in enough detail. After all I think being limited in power is necessary for me to have a good time for however many millennia I want to remain a human level intelligence. But one thing about having nearly godlike power is that you can choose to put limits on your power. The way I would want to do this (and encourage others to do so) would be by creating an "advocate" a FAI who looks out for my interests, and relinquishing my power to them. Then they could use their superintelligence to figure out the best way to make my life extremely entertaining and whatnot")
>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>> [An aside about intelligence enhancement:](#s " I tend to believe that improving your intelligence to superhuman level immediately is a bad idea. Because if someone is anything like myself they will probably never want to go back to a lower level of intelligence, for the same reason I find the prospect of being reduced to child levels of intelligence (and having my memories messed which is probably necessary) horrifying. However because of this I am cautious about increasing my intelligence because I would likely lose out on all the potential experiences I could have had at my current level of intelligence. Thus why I would want to spend millenia exhausting the entertainment from human-level intelligence before slightly upping my intelligence to unlock a new vista of possible experiences and repeating the process.")

>>>>>>>> **u/GaBeRockKing** [+1]  *Horizon Breach: http://archiveofourown.org/works/6785857* (19 hours later)
>>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>>> Well it looks like a moot point, unfortunately, as no one else felt like participating :(

>>>>>>>>> **u/Kishoto** [+2]  (23 hours later)
>>>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>>>> I saw this comment and it made me sad so I decided to chime in, as someone who was somewhat intrigued by the title but quickly lost interest in actually participating, with reasons as to why I think this didn't see the success you were hoping for (it's worth noting that I'm not very familiar with this more modern style of CYOA)
>>>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>>>> I can't speak for everyone (obviously) but CYOA images do seem to be somewhat of a niche activity (which is not bad) and this CYOA contest in particular was narrowing that down to an even narrower niche, based on the rules and limitations you listed, at least from my understanding. In addition, the r/rational subreddit isn't very large. Combining all of those factors meant that the amount of people who would know enough about CYOA to participate, care enough about your topic to put in the needed effort to participate and are on this sub would be a very small amount.
>>>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>>>> I'm sure that's not really anything you don't already know but I still figured I would point it out anyway, just in case you didn't.

>>>>>>>>>> **u/GaBeRockKing** [+1]  *Horizon Breach: http://archiveofourown.org/works/6785857* (23 hours later)
>>>>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>>>>> Yep. I think my problem was, in trying to mitigate the ability for CYOAs to just be endlessly munchkined, I went too far in the other direction and made the munchkinry uninteresting. It probably didn't help that I can be extremely long-winded when making posts like this too :P

---