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!).
I wish for the ability and wherewithal to modify my wishes after making them.
Then I wish to be happy and work from there.
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.
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.
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?
Yeah, if you use the broadest possible definition, then pretty much everyone would be gone. Even if you restrict it to only adults who are aware of what they are doing and still choose to be an asshole fairly often, you would be removing a huge part of the population. Sounds like a pretty bad move to me.
That sort of thing might come close to nuking the entire species back to the stone age. Then again, that would be good for the environment in the long run. It could take like 20 000 years for the human species to fully recover from that one button press. I think I’m beginning to see some benefits… nah. Still a bad idea.
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
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
- 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 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.
That’s what Timmy turner did
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!!!
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
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.
I wish the genie can read my mind
I wish that the genie completely understand my thoughts and intentions
I wish that the genie is forced to only be able to grant me exactly what I’m thinking of, with no room for misinterpretation
Easy
Genie graciously grants all 3 wishes but now you’re out of wishes. The genie does appreciate being able to snoop on your thoughts though!
Im sure he appreciates being able to see what im thinking about doing to his lamp hole ;)
Maybe the genie will spend less time snooping in your thoughts…shivers a bit
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
I would give my wishes to the genie.
You trust the genie too much!
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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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.
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.
