Alicorn comments on Rationality Quotes September 2012 - Less Wrong

7 Post author: Jayson_Virissimo 03 September 2012 05:18AM

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Comment author: Xachariah 05 September 2012 08:10:25AM *  21 points [-]

An elderly man was sitting alone on a dark path, right? He wasn't certain of which direction to go, and he'd forgotten both where he was traveling to and who he was. He'd sat down for a moment to rest his weary legs, and suddenly looked up to see an elderly woman before him.

She grinned toothlessly and with a cackle, spoke: 'Now your third wish. What will it be?'

'Third wish?' The man was baffled. 'How can it be a third wish if I haven't had a first and second wish?'

'You've had two wishes already,' the hag said, 'but your second wish was for me to return everything to the way it was before you had made your first wish. That's why you remember nothing; because everything is the way it was before you made any wishes.' She cackled at the poor berk. 'So it is that you have one wish left.'

'All right,' said the man, 'I don't believe this, but there's no harm in wishing. I wish to know who I am.'

'Funny,' said the old woman as she granted his wish and disappeared forever. 'That was your first wish.'

  • Morte's Tale to Yves (Planescape: Torment)
Comment author: Alicorn 05 September 2012 05:26:12PM 12 points [-]

But not everything is the way it was. Before he made any wishes, he had three.

She missed the chance to trap him in an infinite loop.

Comment author: Xachariah 05 September 2012 08:14:10PM 3 points [-]

But then the Hag would be trapped too.

She gets delight from tormenting mortals, but tormenting the same one, in the same way eternally, would probably be too close to wireheading for her.

Comment author: Alicorn 05 September 2012 08:16:47PM 0 points [-]

Well, if she got bored, she could experiment with different ways to present his wishes to him at the "beginning" and see if she can get him to wish for something to else, or word it a bit differently. Since she seems to retain memories of the whole thing. (Which is again, things not being how they were, but.)

Comment author: Xachariah 05 September 2012 08:50:07PM 2 points [-]

The psuedo-meta-textual answer is that Morte is lying to Yves while the main character overhears. Morte's making up the story just to mess around with him.

Background information is that gur znva punenpgre znqr n qrny jvgu n Unt (rivy cneg-gvzr travr), tnvavat vzzbegnyvgl naq nzarfvn. At the start of the story, the main character somehow broke out of an infinite loop of torture; he's stopped having Anterograde Amnesia, but still cannot remember much from before the cycle broke, and is on a quest to remember who he is. Morte is trying to dissuade the main character from finding out who he is, showing that things can be terrible even without an infinite loop.

Comment author: MartinB 05 September 2012 06:45:28PM 1 point [-]

Now that would be evil.