Lets assume that genies grant wishes literally, but will twist your words. How do you wish without unintended consequences? Typical rules of no more wishes, no resurrection, no forced love, no altering the past, can’t defy logic, can’t break physical laws, can’t create paradoxes, and can’t affect higher powers (this is one tough genie!).
The reality is the genie gave you your 3 beer wishes and appreciated the simplicity of the ask so told the bartender to bill genie for the rest of your beers tonight and a cab home. No monkeys paw for those wishes.
[Update] The genie just gave me my 38th beer. He’s on his 12th now and just tried crack for the first time
Prismo vibes
oh sure like I would tell you. im hoarding all my genie wish knowledge.
I’m using my first damn wish to make you spill the beans on your genie wish strategies!!!
ok first wish is for two wishes that I will be happy with the outcome of them both long and short term from my current perspective just before any wish activity goes on and uneffected by retro effects from the wishes and given the knowledge of how exactly those wishes will play out when I make them both short and long term.
Technically you can’t wish for more wishes but even so attempting to give you near omnipotent knowledge that would be required to understand how all wish activity would most likely drive you insane or kill you in a mortal body. as to whether that would make you happy may be a perspective thing when the chance is a lot of pain from going crazy or dropping dead vs the torture of having to sift through that knowledge to use it taking more time then you have to live.
When Fox Mulder encountered a genie like that, his wish was delivered in written form. It was a binder with probably more than 1000 pages. Basically, he wished for world peace, but he had to lawyer his way out of all the usual genie BS. If the genie is playing dirty, you have to design the wish like you would design a law.
Bonus Showerthought: The law is a book series specifically written for assholes.
The genie is wondering how you managed to get all that done before spontaneously finding him. He claims you must also be a genie and per genie law owes you no wishes!
Nah, I would just put the genie on hold for 7 months while I’m cooking the wish with a team of lawyers.
If you can leave genie on hold for 7 months genie’s leaving you on hold till your dead before granting your wish (genie was pretty damn offended here, this is worse than the war crime stuff for him!)
Fair enough. World peace achieved even though I didn’t get to enjoy it. Totally worth it though.
I would use my first wish to secure the outcome of the other two. Something like “Dear Genie, I wish for my next two wishes to be granted in a way that respects the intent I have for those wishes”. Then I would wish for everyone to have empathy and humility so that we can start all pulling together as a species instead of apart. For my last one I would wish that any limb that is used to hurt a child rots away and falls off. That’s just a personal one for me because I’ve never understood adults hurting children deliberately.
The genie does indeed respect the intent but is pretty heavily incentivized to screw it up, the genie, drives us all insane by making us all live each others shared experiences so we can all be truly empathetic. he also coincidentally got all the bad guys/gals.
I thought he couldn’t brake the laws of physics.
shared experiences is just neurons in our brain. basically add more and link them together.
I worry your first wish would be the hitch here though.
Your next two wishes can never go against your intent if you never make any more wishes. The genie might grant your wish by ensuring you are unable to make any more wishes, perhaps by killing you or making you unable to communicate in any form
First wish: the genie will be my eternal friend.
Second wish: free the genie from the geas — make the genie its own master.
There is no third wish.
First wish genie is an eternal friend but more like distant friend that would talk to you as a friend or give you a hand with moving but no more. then same as https://lemmy.ca/post/69470791/24857447 but maybe you get slightly nicer conditions?
The first is because of the Arabian Nights story where the guy frees the genie and the first thing it does is kill the wisher. There’s another where the first thing it does is puts the wisher in the bottle it was trapped in.
So “distant friend” is enough.
First wish free the genie
Now that the genie is free he is no longer constrained by all genie laws and enslaves us all for eternity! Great job now my weekend plans are completely ruined! /s
Replace the blood of every person that’s SA’d someone with molten sodium chloride.
Drop a 6 foot by 2 inch tungsten rod from orbit onto anyone that’s committed a warcrime, nailing them to the floor where they will be left as an example for everyone else.
Publically release complete documentation showing every country’s actions that have been directly antagonistic to their own people (I’m talking EVERYTHING. Not just ‘the files’ but every action where a country has demonstrably done something that serves only the interests of the few at the cost of the people.)
The Genie thinks you haven’t really thought this through, replacing blood with molten salt isn’t physically possible and asking for mini rods from god to be launched from orbit at earth leaves it open to the genie how many and how much force to use. the Genie thinks you either don’t respect the monkeys paw his powers or maybe that you want us all dead anyway :(
I mean, replacing blood with molten salt is entirely possible, it’ll merely boil off most things it comes into contact with, which was the intent.
The genie is more than welcome to pick how many and at what velocity they hit their targets
I fully respect the genie’s powers, and that they’d monkey’s paw it, I was leaving that part up to them, and being VERY literal with my wishes to make sure the end result was at least in the same ballpark of the wish.
Wasn’t that the point of the post? Get the best result out of a genie that’s got hard limits on their wish giving powers?
The genie has a hard time calling it “replacing” blood with molten salt with blood making up so much of the human body and what is left destroying itself almost instantly when exposed to molten salt that all you’d really get is a molten salt shaped human and some bones in a pile after. genies also pretty sure the moment he poofs away the blood there already dead so this is just an over complicated way of throwing someone into a molten pit of salt. Your going to have to trust the genie on this one.
The quantity and speed govern energy, remember the genie was just confronted with the worst of humanity what if the genie decides all of humanity needs a reset with lots from everywhere destroying us all?
This is why the genie was worried, asking a genie for revenge or destruction almost always goes terribly wrong if only on principle of the genie not bring a hitman and is looking for equal ways to turn it against the wisher.
Glad to hear the genie has some concern for the rest of humanity
(And it was either that or replacing the water they drink with milk and making them lactose intolerant, but that would use two wishes)
i’ve given (too much) thought into the wishes:
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I wish all public officials, both elected, appointed, or otherwise, work to maximize the well-being of the people they represent, and the world as a whole.
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I wish to invent practical, sustainable, achievable FTL propulsion, and live to share the knowledge to parties who can and will implement it.
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If there is no positive life after death, I wish there was, retroactively, and it was roughly inline with the form of the Good Place at the series end.
WIshes arn’t perfectly bulletproof, but are robust enough i think it would be hard to twist.
- a state of pure anarchy comes about due to the inability to the inability to maximize the well being of the people they represent to any extent as no method of measurement is defined and as one manages to maximize one metric it minimizes others making public officials disappear!
- you discover FTL propulsion as you fall into a black hole and share it with others on the same ship. unfortunately even if you find a way to escape it eons have passed and either everyone already is aware of FTL travel, or they have disappeared with the heat death of the universe.
- unfortunately this affects higher powers!
I love a good monkey’s paw thread.
#1 is fair
I dont understand #2
#3: im good with that.
Thinking about it some more:
- this is why i used ‘works to maximize’, which is an imperfect state, and allows everyone to take steps without being crippled.
- i dont get how i can discover FTL in a blackhole, when im currently on earth… are you saying that the genie makes a ship without FTL, moves that ship to a black hole, and then teleports me there, allowing me to solve the day?
- comment stands, im ok if gods end up in the after life too. its not a bad place to wind down your life.
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I would give my wishes to the genie.
You trust the genie too much!
I wish that I would feel content with my life regardless of the circumstances I may find myself in.
I wish that the world is fair and just.
I wish that I had all the knowledge humans have ever known and could access that information easily and quickly without external assistance.
Genie explains that due to the laws of physics the rules covering not changing the past and general human psychology everything being fair and just is impossible due to scarcity and previous injustices, tones down your overall intelligence level enough to make you generally lack the sense of loss or wanting to make you generally content, then puts you in a room with access to a terminal that could give you info but you’re generally too content to do anything/interact with it. The genie appreciates what you were trying to do though so it makes sure you still live an otherwise normal life.
My first wish is that my wishes are not corrupted, and they are fulfilled to the intent in my heart and mind without any trickery of bullshit.
My second wish is to have the ability to draw extremely well.
My third wish is that I can bring my drawings to life.
The last two powers will enable me to have infinite wishes by simply drawing things like immortality pills, scifi technology, and just straight up money if I wanted.
Genie grants your wishes but wipes your memory of having made these wishes and makes you dislike drawing :)
Doesn’t even have to be that… “bring to life…” so you draw an immortality pill, will it to life, and it then eats you before you have the chance to swallow it.
When it comes to life, it’s of course going to be alive, and scale wasn’t mentioned.
- Excluding myself, everyone’s knowledge of the sun rising in the east and setting in the west is inverted, as are any references, depictions, or allusions to the direction in which the sun rises, while the cardinal directions and the orientation and rotation of the Earth relative to the Sun remain unchanged, such that everyone other than myself expects the Sun to rise in the west and set in the east, while it will continue to rise in the east and set in the west as it does now.
In the chaos that this causes you get final destinationed by a logging truck that has a crazy driver losing his mind because of proclamations of the end times. Genie didn’t even monkeys paw that one. it just happened
Worth it
- I wish for a proximity 10milions american dollars worth of unirradiated gold sourced from outerspace, placed here safely next to me, neetly. After that I ask what higher powers are we talk in here, can I mess with my local mayor or no because he was democraticly elected. Can I mess with individual rich person but not a group of them?
- Annnd… Uhhhh, I’ll ask you again in a bit, just monkey paw me for the first one.
1 the genie drops an asteroid down next to you making sure the asteroid is safe. You… maybe not so much. the genie likes specificity and conciseness and only had to give 1 wish. :)
placed here safely next to me, neetly
impact from orbit is hardly safe or nea- oh. -.- this asteroid is hardly nerdy enough to be considered neetly
isnt the 3 wishes an disney invention. since wishes are a reality warping thing, you have to be specific and deliberate. wishs are basically things that warp reality, so it will break all kinds of natural law.
The genie clammed up when discussing the true source or nature of his power. needless to say genie can work within the constraints given. natural law be damned :)
