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Alicorn comments on Rationality Quotes September 2012 - Less Wrong
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Comments (1088)
Wish 1: "I wish for a paper containing the exact wording of a wish that, when spoken to you, would meet all my expectations for a wish granting X." For any value of X.
Wish 2: Profit.
Three wishes is overkill.
Genie provides a 3,000 foot long scroll, which if spoken perfectly will certainly do as you ask, but if spoken imperfectly in any of a million likely ways affords the genie room to screw you over.
Or the scroll is written in Martian.
I just take this as evidence that I -can't- beat the genie, and don't attempt any more wishes.
Whereas, if it's something simple then I have pretty strong evidence that the genie is -trying- to meet my wishes, that it's a benevolent genie.
"I wish for everything written on this scroll." Or some variation thereof that more exactly expresses that general idea.
All of the nouns named on the scroll appear. Some of them are things that the wording of the scroll expressly insists that the wish must avoid, due to their being lethal or otherwise undesirable.
"I wish for everything that would happen if I read this scroll perfectly."
Among other things, you would suffocate due to that four-minute no-breathing-allowed Martian word in paragraph nine.
4 minutes is survivable if trained.
Fine, thirty.
Not while speaking.
Ooooh. Well played.
In the likely event that it's impossible for you to read the scroll perfectly, it's true for all X that "X would happen if you read this scroll perfectly". Which means that anything the genie feels like doing satisfies that wish. Or possibly the genie has to make everything happen that could possibly happen. Neither of those seems like a good outcome.
Hm... how about "I wish to have all the skills and abilities required to formulate an unambiguous wish in standard English that would allow me to fulfill any of my non-contradictory desires that I choose, and to be able to choose which of any desires that are contradictory said wish would fulfill, and to be able to express that unambiguous wish in an unambiguous way in less than thirty seconds and with no consequences to incorrectly expressing that wish apart from the necessity of trying again to express it."
Wish 2: I wish for a text-to-speech device capable of reading from this scroll with perfect accuracy.
Wish 3: delegated to the device from #2.
Too bad Martian words sound exactly like lethal sonic weapons and your original X that your wish is about doesn't, strictly speaking, require resurrecting you to enjoy it.
Or, the genie doesn't have to respond to wishes that don't come out of Master's mouth.
Are we going to keep patching up every hole she points out? Or admit that a UFAI genie can be smarter than any human (even if that human is our esteemed Alicorn, or (gasp!) Eliezer)?
Text-to-speech device provided. It reads from the scroll with perfect accuracy and low speed. It will take a few hundred years to complete this task.
You will need to change the batteries once an hour; it you forget, it starts reading from the start of the scroll again. (And where do you get a large supply of size Q batteries, in any case?)
I know some electrical engineers. It's not all that hard to rig up an uniniterruptible power supply that runs off line voltage. The delay is inconvenient, but for the right wish it's acceptable.