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.
I wish for a contract lawyer with genie experience who can write my other two wishes in a way that can’t be twisted. (But with more words needed to get that first wish right!)
Chris and Jack did a skit like this. The first wish was to have the genie audit “what if I wish” speculations to tell how they might interpret the wish. A great video.
“Your eyes fall out”
“Really? Seriously?”
Genie experience. Sure he works for the genie. Who ‘can’ do want you want. But doesn’t have to. ‘Can’ gives your lawyer an out.
What if the genie lawyer isn’t licensed(not to many licensed lawyers with genie experience I imagine!) or is in league with the genie! Honestly the genie may be less tricky than that lawyer!
The genie itself likely has legal experience. He’s just allowed the genie to select the next two wishes.
Hm, maybe I have to stipulate that whatever effect the final two wishes have on me, they have the same exact effect on the lawyer.
hmm, gonna have to be careful they are a genie repercussions might be able to be shrugged off/ignored
The lawyer isn’t a genie, just a human who knows how to word things for genies.
ahh so your going for the whole your in this together with me thing, genie may give the lawyer an out by letting the lawyer word a wish to not include themselves or in a way that avoids them. lawyers are tricky!!!
That’s what Timmy turner did
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 showerthougt: The law is a book series specifically written for assholes.
I was just discussing that episode when my son asked me if I pushed a button that killed all assholes on the planet would I push it. I didn’t even hesitate in saying yes. He then asked even if it killed me too, and I still said yes.
This led to whole discussion around this whole concept and the monkey paw theory and I also brought up the episode as well. The ending was the only correct choice to make.
Honestly, the crappy part is that you kinda have to be an asshole to get anything or anywhere in this world. Especially when it involves people in charge or powerful, nothing is given, ir must be forcibly taken otherwise you will be left holding your figurative dick while the actual assholes run train on you
I wouldn’t press that button. Getting rid of assholes is a temporary fix. The human nature will always produce more in the next generation. Besides, thanos snapping away such a big part of the population will probably result in some sort of societal collapse, famine and disasters.
yea, seems likely that it would kill 100% of humanity.
Babies are fucking assholes. they might not know better, but they are assholes.
My toddler? often an asshole, does things just to see what happens.
Teens? totaly assholes Adults: have you met them?
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 win $50M USD after tax in the lotto, in a way that lets me claim it anonymously and live inconspicuously. I’ll keep my job & benefits package, though.
- I have notably better physical & mental health now through the natural end of my life.
- I have notably better emotional intelligence now through the natural end of my life.
Too bad you’ll die tomorrow
naturally
Genie grants all three wishes but makes you very small and invisible to fullfill the second part of wish 1. good thing you asked for better emotional and mental health, you’ll need it :)
Ties in nicely with phonics’ result… an invisible person is hard to avoid colliding with.
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 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
I would give my wishes you the genie.
You trust the genie too much!
I’d wish for the ability to teleport anywhere I have already been. (I figure with quantum entanglement, the genie could grant this, our scientific knowledge isn’t there yet.) I’d wish that at the end of each day my checking account fill back up to a balance of $5000. I’d wish for a refrigerator that appeared whatever food I wanted to eat.
The Genie grants part 1 but puts the cost of doing so on you as if you had to walk all the way there yourself(and doesn’t tell you this). On wish 2 it grants this for you and every other person but also adds a $5000 fee for doing so(be thankful the genie didn’t make it a greater fee!!), and for the last wish it will appear but if you try to eat it it disappears. :)
I get to teleport and loose weight at the same time. Double wish.
I wish for the genie to, as far as their power allows, to minimize all suffering across all beings that can suffer across all time, and keeping that at a minimum, to maximize pleasure across all beings that can feel pleasure across all time
The magnitude of this wish is beyond what the genie can pull off, best genie can do is free health/spa coupons. The genie sees what you were trying to do though and won’t monkey’s paw this one
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.
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)
The second one would include the creator of Stardew Valley for having a red cross on the hospital in game. Probably similar things like childrens drawings too…
I think that was a thing in Among Us, too
How do they count?
Using the sign of the red cross when you’re not The Red Cross constitutes a violation of the Geneva convention. I.e. a war crime.
Sucks to be Swiss, I guess
Google the Swiss flag. ;)
Lmao I’m kinda dyslexic
- 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.
I wish karma was real and had immediate repercussions.
the shear amount of bad karma this caused through this wish comes back to you as Bad Karma. maybe stay home for a bit.
I’m willing to bear the cost.
Ive generally been of the view that instead of wishing for three specific things, one should instead wish for some kind of power that would then enable you to then grant yourself the things that you want (the most obvious thing might be wishing for omnipotence but this probably breaks, well, all of the rules since being able to do anything definitionally is incompatible with limits, but I suspect the limits of what is possible in this direction without breaking the laws of physics are still far beyond what humans are capable of), so as not to need the genie later when the wishes run out.
However, if you know the genie will twist your words, Im not sure that its safe to wish at all, its unlikely that you can come up with something that cant be twisted into something you dont want, language is just too ambiguous for that and the implication is that you’re dealing with something that is both incredibly more capable than you and actively malicious, doing your best to avoid its attention is probably the safest bet.
That being said, if you must wish, I figure the way Id try to do it, if boring, is to say the outcome you want, without an “I wish” but with some clear marker on when your description starts and stops, like some gesture or nonsense word, and then something like “I wish that the statement that I previously made in between the two [whatever your marker was] is now true in the way that I, the person making this wish, presently desire and in no alternate way.” It probably wont work because again, language is nearly infinitely ambiguous and the genie is much more powerful than you, but at least youre trying to avoid unintended interpretations.
Alternately, back when I still used reddit, I did once try the “monkey’s paw” subreddit with “I wish to be satisfied with whatever the result of this wish is.” and dont remember any of the answers I got actually twisting it much. Maybe something like that at least robs the genie of some of their fun.
See This is the kind of wish the genie respects! someone who realizes they’ve really run into effectively a lovecraftian God and actually suggests they wouldn’t take the genie up on the wishes! I feel like the genie might do something minor for you like making sure you never stub your toe again or ensures you never rip your pants.
I think the proper answer to the whole make the genie do what I mean/understand me from the genie’s perspective is to drive you insane by trying to give you genie like intelligence with our limited minds.
As to “I wish to be satisfied with whatever the result of this wish is”, id imagine making you a very short lived being with abundance of every kind and only enough mental capacity to enjoy that would work.
Well done, I can tell you thought about this one!
