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[D] Saturday Munchkinry Thread

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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/the_terran:

How would humanity fare in what I refer as an infocalypse?


Overnight, every piece of textual information becomes irreversably encrypted. All digital data is gone, every piece of book or writing down to the street signs is now just gibberish. Any technology that relies on firmware stops working. Pictograms are fine but any written information in pictures is likewise gone. This includes hieroglyphics (they are now different hieroglyphs with no meaning).


What are the ramifications? How much of the classical and modern literature can be pieced back together? If this were a daily recurrent event how would we cope with not being able to record anything?

u/None:

Hm. The biggest problem I see here is the encryption of all pre-existing code. Assuming that it can't execute any more, we would have to rebuild the entire digital revolution from scratch. That means the vast majority of infrastructure, down to cars, trains, and combine harvesters, abruptly stops working. If this had happened in the 1960s, it would be a cultural catastrophe. Right now? It would be a humanitarian and environmental catastrophe.

Also, graphic designers would be very smug.

The ones that survive.

u/Gurkenglas:

If it's a recurring event, write a text in rare materials using parts of the alphabet that need less than average material, then harvest more rare materials the next day.

u/tonytwostep:

So, "textual information" is gibberish, but pictograms are fine? In that case, I guess I'm confused as to where the line is drawn.

Pictograms are a form of writing, in that they're a set of symbols that convey a specific meaning (or set of meanings).

So does that mean symbolic street signs (those without text) are perfectly comprehensible? What about emojis? What about, say, Chinese characters, which are generally considered logograms, but some (like the numeric 一二三) are ideograms (like street signs)?

And post-infocalypse, are humans completely unable to understand anything written going forward, and/or is text auto-encrypted going forward? For instance, if we write the word 'Apple', does it just automatically encrypt, or do we just not understand it? If we map the letters to new symbols, or pictures, or emojis, and write the word, will it still encrypt?

u/Nulono:

Just textual information? So audio recordings are unaffected?

u/CCC_037:

So source code becomes totally unreadable. But does the already-compiled software stop working?

If not, then I predict a sudden uptick in the use of videos for instructional and entertainment use - YouTube will become the new library, even more than it is. Current software will become a near-unattainable perfection, at least until someone invents an audio- or pictogram-based programming language and people start rebuilding codebases...

u/the_terran:

Would compilers still work though? Youtube videos also would be unreachable unless someone already converted to film stocks. Pictogram based programming sounds interesting if we can figure out a medium it would compile.

u/Predictablicious:

You developed a future-only time travel machine. It's similar to relativistic time dilation, it builds a spherical, self sustaining, "field" that slows downs the rate of time to a very small fraction, roughly a second per year.

Creating and dissipating the field requires a decent amount of energy, roughly 10 million joules. The process can take from 1 to 10 seconds to complete, can't be done faster or slower.

It's possible to place things inside the field later, but the time dilation is very harmful for whatever is only partially inside (e.g. things short-circuit because the time dilation acts as increase resistance, limbs are lost from blood flow problems). The field has some surface tension, 1N is required to push through, which avoids many accidents.

Besides using it to preserve people (i.e. cryonics without the cryo) or valuable things (e.g. art in museums) what other of neat things would be possible?

u/ArgentStonecutter:

The amount of energy required to push things into the field seems low. You would logically have to supply enough energy to accelerate them to the speed they would seem to be moving inside. Logically, a time retarder field would act like a very rigid body, the permeability and rigidity of the virtual object would be in proportion to the level of acceleration.

I suggest reading Niven's short story "ARM" where his future cop Gil Hamilton encounters what's basically the opposite of your machine. A lot of the effects of objects inside the field on the outside world would be reversed for yours.

u/DCarrier:

That's only about 3 kWh. At the average price in the US, it would cost 33 cents per use. It's cheap enough that I imagine rich people would use it as a refrigerator. Imagine being able to keep your food fresh and piping hot so you can just take it out and eat it.

It would be good for sending astronauts to other planets. Which I admit is an example of cryonics without the cryo, but it's nice to show specific uses of that.

Could you nest these fields?

u/Nulono:

Would light be able to penetrate this field? Light inside this field would effectively be traveling at 21.25 mph, which might be something worth investigating further.

u/ArgentStonecutter:

It better not, because a year of even fairly dim light delivered in a second would cook anything you put into it.

u/awesomeideas:

It would be possible to travel forward through time, which would be pretty neat in itself. The trick would be keeping this secret from all the clever people who would likely also try to *get* to the future faster instead of actually *building* the future

u/ArgentStonecutter:

One of the things explored in Vernor Vinge's "Bobble" stories.

One of the problems was the Singularity happening while they were locked in bobbles. Into the ruins of civilization. Apparently everyone's dead or transcended.

u/Mowtom_:

A while ago there was a question here that involved Undertale spoilers.  I didn't read it because I hadn't played it yet.  Now I have, but I can't find that comment thread.  Any help?

u/MagicWeasel:

I have a gargoyle character in my urban fantasy universe. He follows orders and I want to make him into a paperclipper. (EDIT: after some thought, papperclipiper is probably the wrong word: I want him to follow orders and it to have unforseen consequences in a kind of AI safety lesson sort of way, but not for his utility function to literally be something ridiculous)

He's been around for some 50,000 years but underwent a mind-wipe about 3000 BCE as part of his story arc that will almost certainly never make it to the page. So the event I'm asking about can be set any time within the last 5,000 years.

Gargoyles are a species of willing servants: their utility function is to maximise their "master's" utility function. They can fly and transform and do some small magic spells (making things disappear into a pocket dimension). They are also fully sentient: this particular gargoyle has had several wives over the years, children, etc. But they value their master's utility above their own children's. 

So, they'll follow orders for the most part: but if you order them to cut off your leg, they're not going to do that unless your leg is stuck in a bear trap and you're a vampire and the sun's about to rise. 

They have experience from living in human society that e.g. humans die when they don't have access to oxygen, that people don't actually want him to press their sexual pleasure buttons 24/7 even if they ask to be happy all the time, etc. However, I imagine early on in his career he may have had to learn some of the things that are more unique to our cultures (50,000 years ago he came from something that was basically Atlantis, so he'd be familiar with most general parts of human-ish society from having lived and grown up in one), which could be some paperclip opportunities.

Random summary:

- If his master dies without a will, Gargoyle will assign himself to an obvious heir / the head butler in the castle / a passing street urchin

- If he's like going hiking in the wilderness with his master and his master is killed by a stray bolt of lightning the Gargoyle will start slowly going a bit insane, assign himself to be the servant of a local animal or tree and do his best to interpret that creatures' desires until he sees a person and is like "oh my god will you let me be your master PLEASE"

- If e.g. his vampire master wants to kill the gargoyle's son, he can and will interpret things creatively: "if Master kills Son, the police will find a body, come looking, they might take Master and put him in prison and the prison has a yard where he has to go out in the sun! So Master killing Son will kill Master! I'm going to have to stop this for  Master's OWN GOOD"

- He can't be stolen 

- He's basically invulnerable, but will be very unlikely to follow orders resulting in his own death because he won't be able to follow future orders from his master or future masters he might have

- He can transform and fly

- He will follow an order to the best of his ability and knowledge, and is willing to negotiate after the fact

Restating the challenge:

Given this, what's an order or unstated desire the Gargoyle can misinterpret that will result in undesirable behaviour that will not be easily corrected? But will also not destroy the universe, please...

Preferably this is something that happens in the 1900s-present day, but anything that could explain how he learned a certain human moral norm in ancient Egypt would also be great to write about.

u/None:

The way to make him a paperclipper, I think, is for him to go insane and latch onto a concept as his master - something that can't be harmed by his actions. His master could die, and then in the daze, a passing preacher could inspire a religious fervor in him. He latches on to God as his master, and sets about engineering the biblical apocalypse.

That might be a bit on the nose, though.

u/GemOfEvan:

>their utility function is to maximise their "master's" utility function

How do they know what's in their master's utility function? Apparently they can refuse certain orders like cutting off their master's leg. What if their master is suicidal? 

Your example of creative interpretation creates some questions. If the master's utility function says "I will gain 1,000 utility points by killing the gargoyles's son with a 0.1% chance this will lead me to prison, which I rate at -10,000 utility points", apparently the gargoyle can refuse due to the off chance the master can go to jail. So, the gargoyle must have some heuristic independent of their master's for their decision making. Based on this ability, the gargoyle should be able to reason himself out of any clearly unreasonable paperclippification.

>He's basically invulnerable, but will be very unlikely to follow orders resulting in his own death because he won't be able to follow future orders from his master or **future masters** he might have

Future masters, eh? What about a future master that will live until the heat death of the universe? Surely, since this master will live so much longer than all his other masters, the gargoyle should prioritize the master that will appreciate his efforts for the longest...

Introducing the gargoyle to Roko's Basilisk sounds like the perfect way to induce the desired effect. Sometime in the 1900s, the gargoyle pieces together to idea of the basilisk and realizes what he must do. He secretly nudges the path of invention, facilitating the unprecedented rise in computing power and technology while seeding the ideas of AI so that his master will someday rule. Perhaps he tries to make humanity complacent of the threat of a rogue AGI. Perhaps he acts just has he would normally, as a benign servant whose only goal is to serve his masters' wishes. If only there was some version of him will the computing power to truly serve its master so dutifully as he does...

u/CCC_037:

What happens if he is unavoidably separated from Master for some time - long enough that it is plausible but not certain that Master may have died in the interval? (This might happen if e.g. he is out shopping, and by the time he gets back Master has vanished and he does not know whether Master left of his own free will or was taken by competent kidnappers... and either way he can't find Master for at least six months).

Also, what happens after he is reunited with Master; how hard is it to persuade him to leave Master's side to go shopping again in the future (or even just to give Master a bit of privacy when Master wants to go on a date)?

u/MagicWeasel:

>  unavoidably separated from Master for some time

He's going to spend the time looking for his master and maintaining his affairs; this will probably happen until someone gives him an order and the "endorphins" from that would cause him to imprint on someone new, maybe? 

Like, I imagine, biologically, he'd get "gargoyleoxycontin" (call it GO) from obeying orders and improving his masters' happiness; but eventually he's not able to keep doing that if he's not getting the positive feedback of improving his master's utility function (you know... a smile or a thankyou in return, or just seeing that now he's got the master a more comfortable chair he no longer shifts awkwardly after sitting several hours). If the master isn't around and he's feeling like a failure he's going to be motivated to find a new source of GO, and whoever is responsible for that will reap the benefits.

So that's what I'd probably say would happen: similar to the tree example in my OP, he'd keep trying to satisfy his absent master (and locate them), until one day he gains so little satisfaction from "satisfying his absent master" that the hit of GO he gets from the New Person is high enough to outweigh the huge negative hit to his GO from abandoning his "current master".

Of course, this has consequences - he'll basically be forced to work for a utility monster - so it's probably not a full, workable solution. I do kind of like the idea of him spending a century looking for a missing master and eventually deciding that the master must be dead; might write a drabble of that, in fact.

Also, it's a wonder that a wife or child of his hasn't managed to manipulate the world so that way wife/child ends up as Master which would solve a hell of a lot of problems for Gargoyle (and is perhaps the way the original imprinting was meant to work from a biological point of view?). 

> how hard is it to persuade him to leave Master's side to go shopping again in the future

Probably not very, if that's what Master wanted and Master was in a secure location. Master wants Gargoyle to go shopping, so off Gargoyle goes! (Maybe Master sneaking off is what Master wants!)

u/CCC_037:

Okay. Next question, then; what happens if Master is explicitly suicidal? On the one hand, Master wants to die and doesn't want to be prevented from dying; on the other hand, if Master dies then Master can never say 'thank you' again.

> Probably not very, if that's what Master wanted and Master was in a secure location. Master wants Gargoyle to go shopping, so off Gargoyle goes! (Maybe Master sneaking off is what Master wants!)

Okay, let's adjust the situation a little. Master has a 'friend', called Brutus. Gargoyle overhears Brutus plotting to betray Master. Gargoyle dutifully reports this to Master, and is told by Master (who believes Brutus is a better and more loyal friend than Gargoyle, mainly because Gargoyle is new) that he must have misunderstood and he is absolutely under no circumstances to harm or imprison Brutus.

Brutus is in the next room, sharpening his knife. (He collects knives). Master tells Gargoyle to go shopping. How does Gargoyle handle this?

u/MagicWeasel:

> what happens if Master is explicitly suicidal

Gargoyle would provide a euthanasia service, but would likely do his best to get an heir from the Master first, so he'd feel like he was confident do be able to continue doing master's wishes by following NuMaster. If Master refused, he'd serve master by providing the euthanasia service and then either present himself to his immediate prior master (if appropriate), a friend of the suicidal master, or the next person he happens to come across.

> Brutus hypothetical

Gargoyle would call in a favour and get someone else to do the shopping (whether it be a supernatural friend of his, ordering the items online, or getting a TaskRabbit) and monitor Brutus. If the shopping could not be done otherwise, the shopping wouldn't get done. He might try and take Brutus on the shopping trip with him though that depends on the definition of "imprison". I think Gargoyle would consider forcibly carrying Brutus under his arm on the shopping trip to be excluded from the definition but if it was included he wouldn't go on the shopping trip or would remove all feasible weapons from the vicinity.

Most likely he'd openly disobey the order and say that he doesn't trust Brutus so he's not leaving and the Master would get very grumpy at him for that. If Gargoyle was presented with suitable evidence of Brutus' loyalty, he'd happily go shopping.

u/CCC_037:

Hmmm. So, if Master wants to die, then that's explicitly permitted.

Alright. Next hypothetical. Gargoyle is off on Master's business when he happens to find a coin lying on the ground, and he stops to pick it up. Five minutes later, he sees a beggar at the side of the road, looking for coins. Gargoyle knows that if he gives the beggar the coin (which is not Master's coin, so doing so does not in any way impoverish Master) then the beggar will thank him. Now, clearly the beggar is not Master, and Master has given no explicit or implicit orders one way or another about beggars. If Gargoyle gives the coin to the beggar, and the beggar thanks Gargoyle, then does that give Gargoyle some GO?

Taking this to the monstrous extreme, would Gargoyle collapse the local economy to create more beggars so that he gets more GO by giving them coins?

Similarly, will Gargoyle arrange things in such a way as to (untraceably) cause problems for Master, where such problems can be easily, quickly and above all else *visibly* dealt with by Gargoyle, so that Master will be grateful to Gargoyle?

u/MagicWeasel:

My heuristic for this is "Gargoyle acts to you like the best possible friend would".

Specific beggar example, it depends on the Master.

Is Master a generous, philanthropic sort? Gargoyle would give beggar money, and tell Master about it later. He gets a tiny GO hit for giving beggar money, large GO hit for Master being proud of him.

Is Master a miserly sort of guy? Gargoyle would keep coin, miss out on GO from helping better, but get a huge GO dose for giving Master the coin. 

Master exactly in between? Gargoyle would keep coin for himself, so he can buy things for himself / his master / his family. 

> Taking this to the monstrous extreme, would Gargoyle collapse the local economy to create more beggars so that he gets more GO by giving them coins?

No, he'd "lose" a ton of GO (gain lots of anti-GO?) from creating the beggars in the first place. 

> will Gargoyle arrange things in such a way as to (untraceably) cause problems for Master, where such problems can be easily, quickly and above all else visibly dealt with by Gargoyle, so that Master will be grateful to Gargoyle?

No, the GO loss from causing a bad thing would be an order of magnitude more than the GO gain from solving the problem. Like, let's give the following GO "scores" as examples:

-1000: Causing someone to become a beggar

+1: giving a beggar a coin

+40: making generous master proud

+50: giving greedy master coin

+100: bringing a beggar out of poverty

+110: preventing someone becoming a beggar

NB: there's probably a way to "money-pump" these (e.g. takes more than 100 coins to bring a beggar out of poverty), they're just for illustration

u/CCC_037:

Okay, so Gargoyle's GO levels depend on what Gargoyle knows he did, not what Master thinks he did. (Which probably means that he doesn't actually need to *tell* a generous Master about giving a coin to the beggar to get the huge GO hit from doing as Master wants. Especially if Master disapproves of bragging). There might still be a way to game this, but it requires deliberate self-deception on the part of Gargoyle, so that seems unlikely to work.

Next scenario, then. Let us assume that Master is addicted to Drug. Master will do anything to get more Drug, even though it's completely messing up Master in the long term. Gargoyle knows that getting Master off Drug will be long, hard work, and Master will fight every step of the way; but, at the same time, Drug is ruining Master's life. How does Gargoyle handle this situation?

u/MagicWeasel:

Under the "best friend heuristic", Gargoyle would get Master off the drug as compassionately as possible; unless Master is very old and likely to die soon, or the "ruining his life" is something that Gargoyle can fix himself. (Is it stopping Master going to work? Gargoyle will impersonate him and work remotely.) 

I think the spectrum of drug use is such that a habitual user who doesn't have to worry about things like money or housing could probably have a life the Gargoyle would be happy with?

u/CCC_037:

Hmmmm. I guess Gargoyle could fix most of the "ruining his life" by working triple-time earning (or stealing) enough money to keep Master well supplied with drugs without Master selling off his house and all his possessions. (I don't actually know all that much about ho drug addiction works - I'm just trying to think up situations where Master's stated desires and what is best for Master are as contradictory as possible).

Next question, then. Brutus has betrayed Master, using a Magic Device that more or less mind controls Master, making Master deliriously happy whenever Master does what Brutus tells Master to do. Gargoyle knows that Master will be eventually thankful if Gargoyle destroys the Magic Device, but Master will never be anywhere near as happy out of its control as he is while under its control. Should Gargoyle destroy the Device?

Follow-up question - instead of Brutus using the Device, Gargoyle simply finds the Device and finds out what it does. Will Gargoyle use the Device on Master to make Master happier?

u/MagicWeasel:

> drug addiction example

Yeah, I don't know much about severe, say, heroin addiction either and unless I want to write a story in which Gargoyle has a master with a severe heroin addiction, there's really no need for me to go research that. I get the feeling a lot of the problems are related to money, assuming "cutting all contact with family" is not considered a problem - which it might be to a gargoyle, but I guess it depends on how nice it feels to be on heroin? Like, stereotypical heroin addicts tend to prefer being on heroin to being with their family, and I'm not sure if that says more about how good heroin is or how bad a typical heroin addict's family is. But regardless if the Master would prefer heroin to having their wife and kids around, the repugnant conclusion is that Gargoyle should not interfere with this "downwards spiral". 

>  Gargoyle knows that Master will be eventually thankful if Gargoyle destroys the Magic Device, but Master will never be anywhere near as happy out of its control as he is while under its control. Should Gargoyle destroy the Device?

I'd say yes; "pure" happiness isn't everything. Otherwise Gargoyle should invent the proverbial machine that stimulates your pleasure neuron and you just sit there blissed out like you're on a sybian machine or something. 

>  Gargoyle simply finds the Device and finds out what it does. 

Oh! I already answered that question just now! Great minds think alike.

Interesting thought: let's dial Device down a bit and say it is instead a drug that treats Master's otherwise untreatable, say, epilepsy (or depression). Would Gargoyle spend his time trying to invent that drug? Thinking about him as a character, he's not a "scientific" sort, but if it was in the best interests of his master he'd have to learn to be so, or at least hire a team of scientists to do it on his behalf. 

Looping back around: if Master has untreatable depression such that euthenasia might be the most compassionate option, would Gargoyle prefer to devote years to developing a cure for that depression or just do the euthenasia and then find a less depressed master? I suppose you'd weigh it against the number of years Master would live without depression and then do a QALY type thing on it to determine if spending X years with extremely bad depression is worth it to acheive Y "happy" years.

u/CCC_037:

> Interesting thought: let's dial Device down a bit and say it is instead a drug that treats Master's otherwise untreatable, say, epilepsy (or depression). Would Gargoyle spend his time trying to invent that drug? Thinking about him as a character, he's not a "scientific" sort, but if it was in the best interests of his master he'd have to learn to be so, or at least hire a team of scientists to do it on his behalf. 

To expand on this, then; assume Master is an average, well-adjusted human who suffers from neither clinical depression nor drug addiction. Should Gargoyle deliberately get Master addicted to heroin, and does the answer to this change if the previous Master was an addict?

u/MagicWeasel:

> Should Gargoyle deliberately get Master addicted to heroin, and does the answer to this change if the previous Master was an addict?

Oh that's getting dark. I'd say no, because Master, when asked, would say he didn't want to be a heroin addict. But if prior Master was, and lived a blissful life, then Gargoyle would think "for your own good!".... It's a good thing Gargoyle has spend the past 400 years in service of vampires who don't get addicted to drugs or this might actually be a real possibility.

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[D] Saturday Munchkinry Thread

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