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
I wish that all my wishes are granted in the manner in which I intended, with no unforeseen complications or consequences.
I wish for the ability grant any and all wishes at my discretion for myself or others in a manner and method of my decision.
- The Genie explains the only way to make all your wishes exactly the way you want would take an all knowing, all powerful being to deal with any possible side affect at any arbitrary time period. If genie granted that in your human form you’d go crazy and die, you might argue that this isn’t what you meant but you’d also be dead so the genie would think this must have been foreseen and a known consequence of becoming all knowing as a limited being… never mind the whole messing with higher powers argument rule.
- even if you gave up wish 1 you only get 3 wishes! no new wishes, but the genie says he will allow you to use your last wish on others if you wish…
so becarful what you wish for. like Wishmaster, and djinn from xfiles.
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!
#1 is fair
I dont understand #2
#3: im good with that.
I love a good monkey’s paw thread.
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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.
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 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.
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
- 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 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!
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 :)
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.
(And it was either that or replacing the water they drink with milk and making them lactose intolerant, but that would use two wishes)
Glad to hear the genie has some concern for the rest of humanity
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
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 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. :)
It would be very difficult to place the asteroid next to them in a manner that is both safe and neat in relation to anything involved, while harming the wisher. Like, how would you kill them neatly with an asteroid?
It said Genie had to place it next to them neatly. Genie just had to make the asteroid indestructable or very hard to not take damage and the speed by which it got there was enough to destroy everything around it. see the multiple meteorites whose simple sound shattered windows for miles
That doesn’t sound very neat
it was, for the asteroid!
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
