scrape_r_rational/data/cache/4p5pas.md

Writing prompt, you have a special type of clairvoyance - you can see the outcomes of all possible choices. A short story. [RT][TH]

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• u/ZeroNihilist:

  If you can see the outcomes of all possible choices for several years into the future, everything is already solved. Even things that can't be solved in **N** years can have **N** years of results fed into a separate branch (with some overhead for integrating that knowledge).
  
  Not to mention that you don't actually have to cure cancer or whatever. You could set up an experiment to selectively mutate your cells with precise values that lead to you becoming an immortal demigod.
  
  I mean, the search space for even half a year is a truly ridiculous size. If you can examine it in "real time" you're able to solve virtually any problem the human race would ever need to solve.
  
  Cracking a file encrypted with a trillion-bit key? You don't even have to write any code, just find the path that has you correctly decrypting it.
  
  Better than a quantum computer, you're the nexus of a quantum reality. If there exists a possible future contingent on your actions within the time constraint, you can bring it about.
  
  Something as comparatively simple as becoming dictator of the world is small potatoes, frankly.
  
  You could start by transitioning the world to a post-scarcity economy with practical fusion reactors, asteroid mining, and extraplanetary food production; create a friendly AI (guaranteed friendly for at least **N** years, at least); solve the creation of artificial organs and the treatment of every known disease (not to mention discovering and solving plenty of unknown ones); and set humanity on its exponential expansion across the galaxy.
  
  In fact, your biggest concerns are probably going to be to do with managing your own mental state. Seeing the future in such detail will almost inevitably warp your value system. You may choose to trust that this is making you wiser, steering you towards some idealised version of your value system that you don't already have (i.e. filling in the blanks of your underspecified morality), but it's just as likely that your future beliefs would seem abhorrent to your past self.
  
  And how would you tell the difference? Future you will believe their beliefs are correct just as you believe yours are, regardless of whether those two sets are compatible.
  

  • u/alexanderwales:

    Yeah, I really thought that with that prompt it was going somewhere more interesting. I mean, it's a neat story, but the power as presented in the prompt is [Golden Man](http://sickmyduck.narod.ru/pkd082-0.html) levels of precognition which rival or possibly beat Contessa. Using it to stop crime or wars is ... well, underwhelming.
    

  • u/chaosmosis:

    You could constrain it by saying that you have memory and skill constraints (even exceeding human baseline). It also doesn't need to be instantaneous: perhaps one thousand possibilities per second is its intrinsic speed.
    

• u/Me66:

  Thanks for sharing my story! I really appreciate it.
  
  I didn't know about this sub so I'm really looking forward to reading more stories.
  

• u/tilkau:

  I think being able to just see choices, without outcomes, would be more interesting. Getting a good constraint on it might be hard, though.
  
  Maybe : if you think of a subject, you get a list of choices you could make relating to that in the next 5 seconds. All of the choices satisfy at least one of your values (you don't know which), and you can tell accurately *how much* satisfaction will result. However, the amount of satisfaction is determined by measuring the future satisfaction of each of your values and taking the maximum of these, rather than calculating the average, sum, or median.
  
  Is it possible to use this power for actual good, given that it in effect has an alien value system (real you generally doesn't value one thing to the exclusion of all else)?
  

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