scrape_r_rational/data/cache/6f1mx2.md

[D] Saturday Munchkinry Thread

Post:

Welcome to the Saturday Munchkinry and Problem Solving Thread! This thread is designed to be a place for us to abuse fictional powers and to solve fictional puzzles. Feel free to bounce ideas off each other and to let out your inner evil mastermind!

Guidelines:

• Ideally any power to be munchkined should have consistent and clearly defined rules. It may be original or may be from an already realised story.
• The power to be munchkined can not be something "broken" like omniscience or absolute control over every living human.
• Reverse Munchkin scenarios: we find ways to beat someone or something powerful.
• We solve problems posed by other users. Use all your intelligence and creativity, and expect other users to do the same.

Note: All top level comments must be problems to solve and/or powers to munchkin/reverse munchkin.

Good Luck and Have Fun!

Comments:

• u/MolochHASME:

  you explode when you get mildly surprised. You get better afterwards.
  

  • u/NotACauldronAgent:

    Pulsed Explosive Power? How big an explosion we talking here?
    

    • u/MolochHASME:

      half a stick of tnt
      

      • u/NotACauldronAgent:

        Randi Prize!
        

        • u/PM_ME_EXOTIC_FROGS:

          You should [know better by now.](http://alexanderwales.com/the-randi-prize/)
          

  • u/Charlie___:

    Hope you like long distance relationships. 
    
    Most of my useful ideas involve space travel. Depends on things like energy conservation, momentum conservation, exposure to vacuum while "getting better," etc.
    

  • u/Chronophilia:

    I would certainly be a bit surprised if I exploded.
    

  • u/ShiranaiWakaranai:

    I would be surprised that I get better after exploding, thus causing an endless series of explosions. 
    
    Also, forget exploiting this power, even living in society would be all but impossible. Mild surprises happen all the time, even waking up each day is a mild surprise to your brain (since it realizes everything immediately before was a dream).  You would leave a constant stream of explosions allowing anyone to track you down with ease, where they will then kill you for good to stop you from being a danger to everyone else. 
    
    Or worse, be the ones to exploit your ability for explosions.
    

  • u/None:

    [deleted]
    

• u/Djerrid:

  You can make solid surfaces frictionless by touch. Only the part that you touch becomes frictionless. You can turn it on and off at will and is essentially permanent. 
  
  Some of your goals could be world domination, science and technology breakthroughs, or just general hijinks.
  

  • u/Gurkenglas:

    Friction is in parts a function of shape. If I make sandpaper or gears frictionless, do they still perform their function? Does their shape change visibly?
    
    Would moving a finger across material at ludicrous relative velocity to turn it frictionless hurt? If not, I can replace maglev, increase engine efficiency, etc.
    
    What happens if material I targeted is melted temporarily? Blendered?
    

    • u/Djerrid:

      Good question and stuff I didn't consider. I'm not sure this is a good answer but I would say that the material would not be able to convert kinetic energy into sound or heat when rubbing up above anything else. Maybe something like superfluidity perhaps? So, a frictionless fan would work even more efficiently because it would make no noise from the blades touching the air. 
      
      And I have no idea why gears wouldn't work if the teeth were meshed well. It would work like the ultimate well-oiled machine. 
      
      I have no idea if this at all makes sense in the world of physics so correct me if I'm wrong.
      

      • u/ShiranaiWakaranai:

        Because in the world of physics, friction is actually the result of miniature gear teeth. For example, if you have a wooden table, and you try to slide something across it, it slows down because of friction. What exactly is this friction? It's (partly) the fact that the table surface isn't actually flat. When you zoom in a lot, there's actually tons of little hills and valleys. When something slides across your table, it's getting stuck in those valleys the same way gear teeth are stuck in each other, and losing energy since it pushes around the hills and valleys of the table when it hits them. 
        
        So making something frictionless is like removing all the hills and valleys, making it totally smooth. But in a sense, gear teeth are just much larger hills and valleys, so does making them frictionless turn them into simple cylinders with no teeth? If not, what magnitude must a hill/valley be in order to not be erased by your frictionless superpower?
        

  • u/Electric999999:

    Does this include air resistance/drag? Because that would make launching things into space somewhat easier, so that's a nice starting point.
    

  • u/SirReality:

    Important clarification: does my hand experience friction on when inducing frictionless state?
    

• u/Nulono:

  You have the ability to send one bit of information back in time to your past self. You can decide when to send it, and when to receive it, and whether it is a 0 or a 1, but it's a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.
  

  • u/ShiranaiWakaranai:

    You're going to need to define this more clearly. If I send a bit to my past self, causing him to take a different action, is my current future erased? Do I, in effect, get another chance to use the power?
    
    Basically, I'm thinking of winning a lottery like this. First, i buy the lottery ticket with the smallest number. Then if I win, I send a 1 back to the past. If I lose, I send a 0. 
    
    If I receive a 0, I choose to buy the lottery ticket with the next smallest number. Doing so erases the future where I sent myself a 0, so I have not used my power yet. Thus I can once again send myself a bit from this new future, telling my past self whether I won. Repeat until I buy the winning ticket.
    

    • u/Nulono:

      The next smallest from what? How would you keep track of which number your're on?
      
      **EDIT:** Something that *might* work is using some nondeterministic method to choose your lottery numbers and  then sending the opposite of whatever bit you received if you don't win.
      

      • u/ShiranaiWakaranai:

        It's standard time travel abuse: if you have an artifact that lets you time travel back only once, using it sends you to a past where the artifact hasn't been used yet, effectively letting you use it again.
        
        So you can keep track of what number to buy based on the number of 0s you have received.
        

  • u/alexanderwales:

    It depends somewhat on how the power actually works. When do I decide when to receive it? When I send it, or when I would receive it?
    
    If you can define reception from the "future" point, then you can encode a lot more information by choosing when to send the single bit to. For example, if I receive the bit at 10:34PM, 6/3/17, then I've actually gotten a much larger number of bits (how many depending mostly on how wide or narrow my timespan is).
    

• u/MonstrousBird:

  You have the power to convert people to sincerely hold your core values, but you must be touching them at the time. The touch can be initiated by either party, but if they touch you you will need a moment to focus on your values to do it. The length of a brief handshake is enough, but if their hand just brushes yours it wouldn't be enough unless you already had your values in mind. 
  
  How do you use this power to promote your core values? And what are the dangers to yourself and your ethics?
  

  • u/PM_ME_EXOTIC_FROGS:

    This power is already win condition tier, no need to *munchkin* it.
    
    Meet up with world leaders, shake their hands, convert them, and have them do whatever you want, probably ending with a computronium construct acting in your best interests consuming and expanding from Earth.
    
    ???
    
    Edit: The first step to this plan is the same as the first step without this power: heightened longevity. We're also going to stop wastage of negentropy on stuff like religions (this one is hard, possibly doable in most part through a truly excellent PR campaign, and should only really be done for fun as it's ineffective on the whole), wars, and bad policies, we're going to popularize existential risk mitigation and effective altruism and focus on such problems, form a single world government, dramatically accelerate technological process, and puppeteer the world government from the shadows on easy mode thanks to at-will mind control. Basically, we're utopiaizing Earth and its future light cone by solving cooperation problems and stupidity.
    

    • u/PM_ME_OS_DESIGN:

      Unless you're "a selfish person". If you're selfish, then you're potentially completely fucked - you shake hands with person X, and person X becomes interested in supporting person X.
      
      So step 1 is to achieve enlightenment, I guess.
      
      EDIT: Also, don't tell anyone or go public, and make sure your minions don't leave a pattern of suddenly changed behaviour after meeting you, for much the same reason. Once you meet sufficient people, publish a manifesto or something that can "inspire" people. Although realistically, keeping hidden would probably require government assistance thanks to the wonders of Big Data. Still, easy to fix: Meet a general, shake hands, get help and arranged meetings. Go to a UN convention or something.
      

      • u/PM_ME_EXOTIC_FROGS:

        The impression I got from the OP is that *your* values are used: so if you want cake, the target doesn't want cake too, they want you to have cake.
        

  • u/Gurkenglas:

    If I make this public, depressed people and involuntary *paths and *philes might line up to see me. Global legislation should be afoot on whether criminals can be pardoned through this rehabilitation - knowing that crime need only net you a voluntary brainwashing might drive up crime rates. Given a global birth rate of 4.3 per second, mechanical help should cover all interested parties. Staying put consolidates my safety from state parties, and Germany might appreciate Mekka-tier tourism. Experiments with telepresence through skin transplants are in order.
    

    • u/None:

      If you make it public you get assassinated 
      
      Well, that's not actually likely but it's more likely than "global legislation" to basically brainwash a bunch of people to the morals of an unknown super.
      

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