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All paths to happiness

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u/Noir_Bass:

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:
```
I KNOW RIGHT?!?!
```

u/want_to_want:

Yeah. [Transdimensional Brain Chip](http://brainchip.thecomicseries.com/) was way better :-/

u/SnakeAndChariot:

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](#s "'crowd-source yourself to invent everything to rule the universe - PROFIT'.")

u/Roxolan:

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:

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:

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:

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:

Eat it, Coil.

u/Chevron:

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:

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:

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:

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/LiteralHeadCannon:

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:
```
[deleted]
```

u/xamueljones:

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:

It does say he makes scientific discoveries it just didn't focus on that.

u/awesomeideas:

I've only read the first few lines, but there's actually [an iPhone app that purports to do this](http://cheapuniverses.com/universesplitter/).

Edit: Well, only the bifurcation bit. But still.

u/None:

The bifurcation bit is the much more trivial half of what that Oracle does.

u/awesomeideas:

Well, *obviously* you just kill yourself in the universes wherein you don't get what you want.

u/redstonerodent:

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:

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:

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:

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:

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:

> 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/vakusdrake:

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/OutOfNiceUsernames:

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:

> 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:

*(Be warned that just seeing some of these grouped together will likely spoil their twist)*

* story [The Man Who Folded Himself](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Man_Who_Folded_Himself)
* story [--All You Zombies--](http://emilkirkegaard.dk/en/wp-content/uploads/Robert-A.-Heinlein-All-You-Zombies.pdf) (R. Heinlein)
* story [Branches on the Tree of Time](https://www.fanfiction.net/s/9658524/1/Branches-on-the-Tree-of-Time)
* manga [Qualia the Purple](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qualia_the_Purple)
* webcomics [Transdimensional Brain Chip](http://brainchip.thecomicseries.com/) 
* film [Predestination](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Predestination_%28film%29)

There is more time- and dimension-travel related [\(e.g.\)](https://www.reddit.com/r/booksuggestions/comments/3uglms/looking_for_stories_about_people_who_can_interact/\)) stuff but their association with this story is weaker.

u/xamueljones:

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:

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:

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 ](#s "precognition should ever be capable of being surprised and the bit with the terrorist should not be possible (even though it was all a vision).") So yeah, terrible story with nice characters and powers.

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All paths to happiness

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