+- a87b402ac081 -- 291d ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------[...]+ | | | Imagine a genie who offers to grant you your wishes. There is only one cavet: you can tell that the genie is | | incredibly flakey. You deduce that the genie very likely won't grant your wish if it would benefit or impede your | | goals too much. That's just the biggest factor in how difficult the magic is for the genie to perform, as he | | explained to you. That means that detonating a random star on the other side of the universe would be about the same | | difficulty as materializing a glass of water that you probably could have gotten yourself. But granting you insane | | reality warping powers or something is probably just going to result in the genie giving up and moving on. | | | | Unfortunately you are not able to tell the exact cutoff for what kind of spell the genie is willing to perform, | | since the genie is too afraid of seeming lazy to give you an unbiased answer. You can ask for as many things as you | | want, but the genie will disappear forever after you finish asking. What would you wish for? Would you risk asking | | for a bigger wish? | | | +-- reply --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ---+Imagine a genie who offers to grant you your wishes. There is only one cavet: you can tell that the genie is incredibly flakey. You deduce that the genie very likely won't grant your wish if it would benefit or impede your goals too much. That's just the biggest factor in how difficult the magic is for the genie to perform, as he explained to you. That means that detonating a random star on the other side of the universe would be about the same difficulty as materializing a glass of water that you probably could have gotten yourself. But granting you insane reality warping powers or something is probably just going to result in the genie giving up and moving on. Unfortunately you are not able to tell the exact cutoff for what kind of spell the genie is willing to perform, since the genie is too afraid of seeming lazy to give you an unbiased answer. You can ask for as many things as you want, but the genie will disappear forever after you finish asking. What would you wish for? Would you risk asking for a bigger wish?
thread · root e97011b1…4ac1 · depth 16 · · selected e36f0b0c…cd47
thread
root e97011b1…4ac1 · depth 16 · · selected e36f0b0c…cd47
Imagine a genie who offers to grant you your wishes. There is only one cavet: you can tell that the genie isincredibly flakey. You deduce that the genie very likely won't grant your wish if it would benefit or impedeyour goals too much. That's just the biggest factor in how difficult the magic is for the genie to perform, ashe explained to you. That means that detonating a random star on the other side of the universe would be aboutthe same difficulty as materializing a glass of water that you probably could have gotten yourself. But grantingyou insane reality warping powers or something is probably just going to result in the genie giving up andmoving on.Unfortunately you are not able to tell the exact cutoff for what kind of spell the genie is willing to perform,since the genie is too afraid of seeming lazy to give you an unbiased answer. You can ask for as many things asyou want, but the genie will disappear forever after you finish asking. What would you wish for? Would you riskasking for a bigger wish?
I guess I was thinking just list all the things and see what he grants
Eh I guess I should make it so that everything is granted or ungranted at once so that you can't feel out thelimit like that.The whole point of this thought experiment is to ask a person about the problems in their lives that they don'tknow any way to solve on their own.
if I ask for multiple things, is it possible that the genie will grant a subset of the things? or is it all ornothing?
It's intended to be all or nothing. That way the number of wishes doesn't get really inflated unless the persongenuinely needs a lot of things out of their control to go right.
okay, now that I understand the parameters, I can think about what I would askis it easier for the genie to do things that would help other people, if it doesn't directly influence my life?
Absolutely, but mostly if it's people you don't care a whole lot about helping anyway. If you have a veryselfless personality and care more about helping others than helping yourself then helping yourself would be theeasier wish in this case.
then I wish for $1 trillion in gold to be discovered in Africa
Congratulations. I bet you're pretty jealous of me tho. I wished for a BLT sandwich.
was your wish granted?
Yeah, I think it was pretty close tho. I fuckin' love sandwiches.
I was hoping to trick the genie by crashing the gold market and pumping my bags of bitcoins
I mean, that sounds like a pretty relevant influence on your life...
I was hoping the genie wouldn't know that
Presumably it'd make the magic more difficult regardless of if the genie knew.
you know what, I'll just ask for a sandwich