Alternatively, consuming massive doses of fat-soluble vitamins (particularly Vitamin E) is a really bad idea. Can't remember where I read it, but I assume it was the same study, and the multivitamin quantities involved were many times the RDA.

Would it be wrong to suppose that the body is more active in metabolism than given credit for? Every chemical induced regularly over a period of time is not guaranteed- but still subject to requiring a higher threshold than was previously necessary. My proposal is not empirical whatsoever, minus the observation of my own habits and metabolism. Given, I am young, and still have a metabolism that acts like ants on a cookie, i still fully support the idea that the body changes over time, and supplements and dietary habits must adapt as well.

Consider that someone has taken calcium supplement for years. An important answer to know would be; would stopping the supplements for a week cause a sharp drop in calcium levels, or would the body have a reserve of calcium to sport the break?

By the way my body acts, and what I would put my pennies on- is that I would witness a sudden drop in calcium levels, and require to take additional supplements to back up the gap, or possibly resort to feeding myself smaller supplements daily to ween my body off the daily dependence on calcium pills, and thus requiring my body to extract more calcium from the foods I ingest.

The reason I say this is because it directly affects the truth in the response to the above prompt.

In my case, a recursive-sum type function based on past diets and supplements would be necessary to determine the proper amount of minerals I take daily. All I'm proposing is, that the answer to this prompt lies less on the side of what, when, and how, and more towards the notions of how your metabolism has been crafted by past habits.

I know that when I eat fast food, which I inadvertently eat almost daily, my body- as its been conditioned, bypasses all the fats and greases. I'll admit I could be more savvy on Bayes Theorem or other theories of conditional probability, but I think that what's going on here relates to how the prompt must be answered. It's my assumption that because of the levels of fats and greases I put into my body, (also- my metabolism) my body chooses to extract very little, as it picked up on the trend that fats and 'bad carbs' come by the pound. Relating to this, I think if I stopped eating fast food and adopted that shellfish diet that seems popular around here, my exposure to fats at that point would begin to take stronger effect, and more unwanted chemicals would be processed by my body. I have a few vegetarian friends, and oddly, they all seem to be overweight. It seems their bodies have been taught by near-starvation to engulf anything that touches the stomach.

Is this credible? No, not at all. Is it logical- barely, if so. Just saying. Food for thought.

Would it be wrong to suppose that the body is more active in metabolism than given credit for? Every chemical induced regularly over a period of time is not guaranteed- but still subject to requiring a higher threshold than was previously necessary. My proposal is not empirical whatsoever, minus the observation of my own habits and metabolism. Given, I am young, and still have a metabolism that acts like ants on a cookie, i still fully support the idea that the body changes over time, and supplements and dietary habits must adapt as well.

Consider that someone has taken calcium supplement for years. An important answer to know would be; would stopping the supplements for a week cause a sharp drop in calcium levels, or would the body have a reserve of calcium to sport the break?

By the way my body acts, and what I would put my pennies on- is that I would witness a sudden drop in calcium levels, and require to take additional supplements to back up the gap, or possibly resort to feeding myself smaller supplements daily to ween my body off the daily dependence on calcium pills, and thus requiring my body to extract more calcium from the foods I ingest.

The reason I say this is because it directly affects the truth in the response to the above prompt.

In my case, a recursive-sum type function based on past diets and supplements would be necessary to determine the proper amount of minerals I take daily. All I'm proposing is, that the answer to this prompt lies less on the side of what, when, and how, and more towards the notions of how your metabolism has been crafted by past habits.

I know that when I eat fast food, which I inadvertently eat almost daily, my body- as its been conditioned, bypasses all the fats and greases. I'll admit I could be more savvy on Bayes Theorem or other theories of conditional probability, but I think that what's going on here relates to how the prompt must be answered. It's my assumption that because of the levels of fats and greases I put into my body, (also- my metabolism) my body chooses to extract very little, as it picked up on the trend that fats and 'bad carbs' come by the pound. Relating to this, I think if I stopped eating fast food and adopted that shellfish diet that seems popular around here, my exposure to fats at that point would begin to take stronger effect, and more unwanted chemicals would be processed by my body. I have a few vegetarian friends, and oddly, they all seem to be overweight. It seems their bodies have been taught by near-starvation to engulf anything that touches the stomach.

Is this credible? No, not at all. Is it logical- barely, if so. Just saying. Food for thought.

Yes, that has been covered. For those who don't want to read Foxy's reply, the tl;dr is:

"People can win games by realizing a new dimension they can exploit that the other side hadn't anticipated. [gratuitous culture and math references]"

Beautiful article. Its a shame I came to the party so late though. I'd love to throw my two cents at the heads of Eliezer's challengers.

Forgive me if this has been covered, as I don't have the enthusiasm (it being 3:45am) to scroll through all the comments, sifting through the bouts of "Nuh-Uh, let ME bet you," and the occasional conspiracy.

I think a good bit of people are missing the point of this article, which is to give light to how we can use unseen dimensions to shift out of our ordinary 'containers.' I couldn't wrap my head around how someone let themselves lose $10 but I began to think about the last impossible thing I learned; imaginary numbers, quaternions, and the like. We learn from the basics of imaginary numbers how to supersede the relevant dimension, and use a higher set of parameters to obtain a number that is not conventionally POSSIBLE. Yet, standing back and looking from a second-dimension view, all we had to do was see past the walls that barred us from obtaining what was once considered not possible. Its comparable to the event of thinking, "Man, every good song that could ever happen has already happened. There is no more room for anything new." Yet like magic, some strange melody rings through the radio on a random day, and haunts the conceptions we previously held. Hopefully there are some people here who kept listening to music post-1980. If not, I can't blame you. It was a strange time for the United States. The point though, is that if you create a 2-dimensional graph to hold a simple polygon, and declare that you want this polygon to represent both a square and a triangle, the verdict is obvious: pick one. A shape is either a triangle or a square. Algebra is not even induced at this level of operation. It is impossible for a square to be a triangle, by definition. Yet, the definition does not span outside the seen parameters. (All readers, if any, know where this is going) By breaking outside of our plane, and seeing our creation from a higher perspective (excuse the pseudo-'Physics is God'/Deepok Chopra speak) we can see that a triangle still cannot be a square, in terms of 2 dimensions, but what we find is something much more grand, that extends (pun, yes.) far beyond the possibility of imagination left in the second dimension. That is, of course, the pyramid, which consists of the space included inside the surfaces of a square, and a triangle(s)

This primitive example was hardly worth your read, and both of our time, but it does show the notion which we must grasp to fully take on this article.

Relating to the AI-box, we can apply our pyramid principle. Suppose we DO leave a rock on the 'Do not let X out of box' button. The figure represented by X is free to bounce off the walls, duplicate itself, run operations on data, or self destruct, if it so pleases. The only command at this point is that X cannot leave the parameters of its captive box. Assuming the rock is not also located atop the 'Do not let X do anything but accept the denial of its incarceration' button, what is to stop X from modifying its environment, or parameters.

If X inside the box could change the size of its container, what reason would it need to escape? Suppose X mutates its box, and the box now encompasses the rock which forbids its exit. In this case, both parties are in limbo. X is still trapped in the box, but so is its captor, and whatever was engulfed in the expansion of the box.

Ridiculous? Yes, but it was never provided that X could not mutate its habitat. On this note, it might be important for the skeptics to include that X should be forbidden from transferring between its own containment, and another. Think of a point, or a dot inside a square, that can only leave if a wall of the square is left with an opening. Though the dot cannot leave the square, what are the repercussions to the captor if the dot, monitored in a 2-dimensional field, is capable of moving in 3 dimensions? Yes, the dot stays inside the box, but what is the dot capable of when it can move in ways that are unseen to the gatekeeper? Add in a fourth dimension, just for a brain exercise, and consider what the dot would be capable of at this point, all while appearing to bounce around the 2-d square.

Relating to life and accomplishments, as this is where the whole problem started, the captive dot, the pyramid, and the imaginary numbers can help us in a way that is a bit more practical than the mental meanderings of super-dimensions. Let us say our friend, Sam, wants a chairman position at Goldman-Sachs. Impossible- just about, sane decision- words cannot express. How could Sam, an independent trader, be here at this point, and at such a different latitude in a time span shorter than an average marriage? Taking the task laterally, Sam would have to kiss ass until his lips were white, and sell his soul to the devil that hangs out in the alley of Avenue of the Americas, all while giving up his happiness, family, and well-being.

But take down the visible barriers, and add a new dimension. The shortest path between two objects is a line- that is, as long as this line does not run into a void, or hole in the equation. Avoiding common holes, or more practically- assholes with German luxury cars, means ducking, dodging and depending on luck, or- slipping behind their backs while they scan the crowd attempting to pass in front of them. Sam moves his point in the graph with the function of i + j + 2k. While it appears Sam is sitting on his ass at (1,1) like the rest of us, he is moving in the third dimension away from us, and closer the function that will yield his success.

I'm tired, and you're bored- not to mention a saint, if you've stuck with my ramblings this far, so let wrap this up.

That movement from (1, 1, 1) to (1, 1, 2) that looked like Sam was standing still was Sam creating his own private investment firm. Though that new firm moved him technically further from chairperson at Goldman's, it moved him out of the way of a few notable ass- er- holes, I mean, and in a better position to start his ascent towards his goals.

Exponents and derivatives later, we put our focus on (666, 777) and see Sam. Still not in a $50000 Goldman-Sachs chair. Rather, he is in the $65000 chair, with a folder in front of him that says "Subsidiaries Agenda," with a GS logo quaintly sticking of of the top right corner.

What is not shown here is Sam's true location, (666, 777, 1028, 1256), or the convoluted path that brought him here.

I apologize for the sugar-induced, late night internet rant. I know they come in gigabytes. Writing it out helped me wrap my head around it though, and hopefully someone will read this and think anything of it at all. But I still fully hold that there is nothing impossible, just inconceivable given our accepted parameters.

My thesis/The only thing that I SHOULD have typed : Impossibility is overcome by expanding the parameters in which it is handled, by whatever means necessary.