I did this with my family! We had a lot of fun.
(Misread prompt as "you have 10 years of food & water")
1. Kick down the door
2. Unlock the door
3. Use high-pressure water source to explode the room
4. Contact someone and get them to open the door
5. Learn how to pick locks and pick the locks
6. Eat through the door
7. Bust through the thin drywall
8. End up in a low-probability universe where you teleport outside the room
9. Wait for someone to come open the door
10. Upload yourself and have yourself reconstructed on the outside
11. Build an AGI to solve the problem
12. Hire someone to come blow up the door
13. Go on an extreme diet and slide under the door
14. Train hard at karate so you can break off the hinges with one blow
15. Use a rocket launcher
16. Climb out through ventilation shaft
17. Synthesize corrosive compound that eats through the wall
18. Tunnel underground with your hands
19. Take screw from glasses, burrow out hole in door so you can reach hand through and unlock it
20. Take your shoe and hit the bolts out
21. Use hemp in food to grow a rope and then slip under the door and wait for someone to trip and then let them know you're there
22. Scream at resonant frequency of the wall so it explodes
23. Trigger sprinkler system to soften drywall
24. Burn down whole room and hope your remains are enterred outside of the room
25. Wear your way through the wall
26. Eat so much food that you get bigger than the room and then it explodes
27. Download blueprints for the room and then exploit weak points
28. Use avocado pits to cut out cinderblock
29. Find out how to make explosives from food (methane gas?)
30. Use acidity of something to wear away metal in room
31. Train super hard to run fast enough opposite to Earth's spin to stop its spin and blow the room away via inertia (this wouldn't work)
32. Build a 3D printer that takes food as input and produces keys to the door
33. Jump hard enough to bust head through ceiling
34. Use light + unlimited energy to wood burn out of the room
35. Wave your hands so fast the air turns to plasma
36. Call the police and tell them you have weed in the room
37. Let food rot; bug eggs hatch; bugs chew through the door
38. Hire a hitman to kidnap you
39. Climb out through the window
40. Rip off two of your toes and rub them together to make a fire
41. Wait for tornado
42. Wait for earthquake
43. Wait until sun expands and then "your" molecules likely end up outside of the former room's molecules
44. Spin arms at right angle to get lift to turn yourself into a human helicopter and fly out of the skylight
45. Use tine on belt to pick lock
46. Get the building condemned (via your phone) and torn down
47. Sand away log walls with sandblock
48. Drill through the wall by spinning your hand quickly
49. Scratch out with really long fingernails
50. Yell for help
~40 minutes
Over doing it to keep safely over 50
4. Room was empty, search can't produde items: Claw material off walls to use as sand to wedge door to wear it down under pressure
8. Doesn't involve any action, thus can't fullfil any verb (such as escape): Make string and rope go throguth keyhole to mechanically wear it down
12. is a repeat: Echolocation to find structural weakpoint and then karate down the walls
20. is a repeat of 9 (and lack of tools hard to pull from your body and clothes): Use body metabooites to make toxic/nauseating bomb and apply to prison guards and hope a investigation party opens the door
26. is a repeat: Use blood chemistry to weaken or bloat the lock (regenerate blood from big food supply)
31. Fails to escape: Upload yourself into a outside body
~ 55 minutes
That was fun. Made me sign up after years of lurking :)
Hope I will get the spoiler right
1. Kick in the door
2. Break the window with a fist, climb out
3. Dive roll through the window
4. Front flip through the window
5. Throw your phone with enough force to break the door
6. Throw your phone with enough force to break the wall
7. Ram head first through the wall
8. Call your mother to come get you
9. Call the emergency numbers so someone gets you
10. Get a date via tinder, then let them get you out.
11. Convince a random stranger on some obscure web forum to get you out
12. Hack into the buildings security via WiFi and unlock the door electronically
13. Let your phone emit resonant sounds to break the window glass
14. Open the window, yell loudly to get a passer-by to get you out
15. Climb through the air vents
16. Use the phone to dig a hole in the floor
17. Break your phone, use the glass shards to carve a hole in the door
18. Order a eascape kit from Amazon, get it delivered you you, realize you don't need it cause the delivery guy opened the door
19. Meditate until you have an out of body experience and leave the room
20. Start a cult online, let your followers free you
21. Hack a launching rocket, redirect it, let it crash in a way that it destroys a wall but does not kill you
21. Make the singularity happen, upload your mind to the net, leave that way
22. Incite a violent revolution, hope that the chaos will ensure the building gets damaged and leave.
23. Provoke Trump into starting a nuclear war on twitter, leave after the building is destroyed.
24. Hire a drug cartel tunnel boring team to dig you out
25. Carefully disassemble the ceiling tiles to realize there is no roof and leave
26. Google "how to escape a locked room" and follow the instructions
27. Check the less wrong babble challenge on the same topic for new ideas, pick the one you like most
28. Realize that your jacket has an integrated survival tool kit (you are THAT guy) and pick the lock with the mandatory lock pick utility
29. Simply teleport yourself through sheer power of will
30. Change your aggregate state to fluid, flow through the gaps in the door, change shape back.
31. Use your laser eye superpower to cut a hole through the roof
32. Realize you are superman and fly through the roof.
33. Hack the electronic door by making an elaborate electromagnetic pattern by manipulating your phone
34. Order a Uber/Taxi, ask the driver to open the door from the outside on pickup
35. Mediate for 10 years, transcend reality, walk through the wall on the last day because walls are socially constructed.
36. Wake up from the bad dream.
37. Panic, spend 7 years in the room, then suddenly the simulation encounters a bug and you appear somewhere else.
38. Lick the walls that are lined with some kind of drug that gives you super strength, use that strength to get out.
39. Yell and hit the door until someone outside hears you and helps you get out.
40. Run around in circles at such high speed that the heat you create will melt the building around you.
41. Eat the walls because they are made out of candy.
42. Fart. Short-circuit the phone to cause a spark, igniting the gas. The explosion damages the door, leave.
43. Become a black hole, imploding the building around you. Turn back into your regular form at precisely the moment when the building is gone, but nothing else.
44. Realize the phone's battery is powerful enough to last to many years - short circuit it on the metal door frame to melt it away.
45. Jump out of the window, using your jacket as a parachute.
46. Wait until someone else randomly comes by to enter the room, leave. You have 10 years after all.
47. Wait until the inevitable errors during construction present themselves in the form of the door falling off. Leave.
48. Train a neural network to generate escape plans for you, follow the instructions.
49. Join a "locked in a room anonymous" self help group online, follow the instructions the new member flyer.
50. Become a famous influencer on Instagram, make a contract with some advertising company, wait for them to come by to sign the paperwork.
1. Try the door; it may be unlock able from the inside.
2. Check for windows; open window.
3. If window locked, break window.
4. If window break-resistant, break out window frame.
5. If door locked at knob, break knob off.
6. Break door open, via mule kick or hip check.
7. If steel or similar, break doorframe out of wall.
8. If door and wall resistant to single burst, use rhythmic slams.
9. If window and wall resistant to single burst, use rhythmic slams.
10. Check for trapdoors to lower floors or basement.
11. Check for attic access to upper floors, attic, or roof.
12. Use phone with wifi to research the doors and/or windows.
13. Use phone with wifi to ask friend/family member to unlock it for me.
14. Use phone with wifi to ask security at the front desk to unlock it for me.
15. Use phone with wifi to ask friend/family member to bring tools to destroy door.
16. Check walls; if drywall or similar, break through.
17. Check for ventilation shafts; if large enough, crawl through (fat chance, I’m huge)
18. Check ceiling; if it is like an office building, might be able to climb over the wall
19. If can’t climb over the wall, may be able to harvest roof parts as tools to use on door, walls, windows, etc.
20. Check for fire alarm. Pull in hopes the fire department or security team come to reset.
21. Check for smoke alarm. Pull in hopes the fire department or security team come to reset.
22. Use phone to call police.
23. Use phone to call fire department.
24. Use phone to post plea for help on a public forum, like Reddit or Craigslist or whatever.
25. If electronic lock, research with phone to see if it has a default password or manufacturers code.
26. If electronic lock with keypad, use phone to determine key length and manually try combinations.
27. Use cell phone to play the most annoying song on earth on repeat into the ventilation shaft until personnel give up and open the door for me.
28. Stomp a hole in the floor and drop down into the lower floors.
29. Jump up to punch a hole in the ceiling climb into the upper floors.
30. Check for electrical outlets or wires in the ceiling. Rip these partially out, and use them to shock the electronic lock on the door.
31. Let the stink of urine/feces drive other people in the building to come investigate.
32. Piss on the floor, and let the floor rot away over years.
33. Same thing, but the walls. It’s really not worth it for the ceiling; I’ll not sit in a room dripping piss.
34. Use phone to make up rumors about the company that owns the building until they go bankrupt and have to sell; building will be inspected pre-sale, and let me out.
35. Break lightbulbs for sharp glass, and scratch my way out.
36. Use phone to post a reward for my release.
37. Capitalize on an unrelated disaster, like a bomb goes off, or a fire, or a tornado damages the room to escape.
38. Use wiring to cause a short, which will eventually require repair crews to get into the room.
39. Use phone to report a bomb threat, and describe my room as the bomb’s location.
40. Rip a stud out of the wall to use as a battering ram on the door.
41. Use cell phone battery to start actual fire, and gamble desperately that they will get to you before you suffocate or burn to death.
42. Use phone to determine resonant frequency of door lock, and play a sound at that frequency until it wiggles open.
43. Use phone to determine resonant frequency of window material, and play a sound at that frequency until it cracks.
44. Use urine and feces to craft a low-yield manure bomb, and use cell phone battery or electric wiring to trigger it and blow the door.
45. Spit, piss, or bleed on the electric lock to short it out. Maybe even cry.
46. Yell for help through the door/window/ventilation
47. Yell fire through the door/window/ventilation
48. Stand naked in front of the window so the police arrest me for indecent exposure
49. Pantomime being murdered in front of the window so passerby report it to the police
50. Pound SOS on the door or wall in morse code
I should have thought of #26. It's sort of trivial since you have 10 years.
#44 is disgustingly clever :)
General spirit of #34 is also pretty neat.
1) Phone a friend to come and open the door for you
2) Break the window with my fists and jump out
3) If the floor is made of soil a tunnel can be dug under the walls
4) Use the power in the phone to start a fire and set fire to the door
5) Disassemble the phone and try to make a key to pick the lock
6) Crawl out through a convenient ventilation duct
7) If the lock is connected to the internet the phone could be used to hack it and trick it into unlocking
8) Wait for whoever locked you in to open the door, knock them unconscious and go through the open door
9) Jump up to the low roof and open the skylight
10) Cry out at the top of my voice, to ask someone outside to let me out
11) If the lock can be unlocked by saying the right password keep guessing it until you get it right
12) Dismantle the phone to make an improvised screwdriver, and unscrew the screws holding the lock in place
13) Post messages on every social media account, and hope someone will pick them up and free you.
14) Look for and find a secret passage leading out
15) Contact a good lawyer on the phone, to get the authorities to let you out of jail.
16) Slide piece of clothing under the door, push key out of lock, pull clothing and key under door, use key to open lock
17) Use phone to send money to someone as a bribe to let you out
18) If the phone happens to have the key stored on it to open the lock just use.
19) Pick away at the mortar holding the brisk together until they can be removed.
20) Use acid in the phones battery to melt the lock
21) Pretend to be dead, so whoever locked you in will take your body outside.
22) Bang out an SOS signal on the door in the hope it will attract the attention of someone who will let you out
23) Call the fire brigade to get you out
24) Take something thin out of the phone, insert it between the door and the frame, and try and force the lock back
25) Crawl out through a large gap under the door
26) Call a locksmith to let you out
27) Keep running into the door until it gives way
28) Keep jumping up and down on the floor till it gives way and you fall into the room below.
29) Just wait. If the room is in a bad state of repair one of the walls might collapse allowing me to walk out.
30) Who cares about the physical world. If I have wi-fi I can escape virtually into cyberspace
31) Pray to a God to let me out
32) Find something magnetic in the phone. Use the magnet to draw the bolt on the other side of the door back
33) My clothes are an improvised suit or armour partly made up of a saw (I was attending a fancy dress party). Use the saw to cut through the lock
34) Set my clothes on fire. The lock is programmed to open if a fire is detected, so I can walk out
35) Use the phone to create a program for a super intelligent AI, and leave it to figure out how to get me out
36) Post a creative thinking exercise to Less Wrong: Find 50 ways to get out of a locked room and hope someone comes up with a usable idea
37) Use the phone to contact my driverless car. It can ram the walls to break through and let me out
38) The room is precariously balanced on a cliff edge. Moving to one side will cause it to topple and then break up
39) Someone forgot to build a roof, so I can jump up grab the top of the walls and hall myself out
40) If there is a letter box in the door I can reach through it and unbolt the door
41) The lock is made out of glass. Sing at its resonant frequency so it shatters and the door can be opened
42) Just walk up to the door. It just happens to be a type that automatically unlocks and opens when someone approaches
43) Fiddle with the phone so it starts transmitting at a frequency that will interfere with other important transmissions. The authorities will need to come and unlock the room to stop the interference.
44) The walls of the room are made of light weight plastic which is not fixed to the floor, so I can pick the entire room up and slip under it.
45) Remove some wire from the phone, push it through the letterbox and try to pick up the key which has been left on a nearby shelf with it.
46) I left a spare key buried in the ground just in case I got locked in. Dig it out and use it to escape.
47) There is a big whole in a wall that has been covered over with a piece of canvas. I can find something sharp in the phone to cut my way out.
48) Kill this body and activate a clone which is not locked inside the room.
49) If our technology advanced enough that we can live without food or water for 10 years maybe its advanced enough that I can just teleport out.
50) Keep punching the wall until it is worn away and I can step out
#35 is great (among many others)!
I especially like how it doesn't rely on other people, and still works even if the room is locked and sealed.
I'm not sure if it was the plan or not, but a lot of your solutions read like ways a persuasive AI might engineer an escape.
I feel I still have room to improve my creative applications of bodily fluids.
Now you have to read them all, don't you, dear reader?
Ok but seriously…
Constraints: floor, ceiling, walls, door/window.
Resources: clothes, phone, open communication lines to the world. We have wifi, so either the walls aren’t metal (or have large holes if they are), or there’s power in here. There’s probably a light (and power for it). There’s whatever materials the doors/windows/walls/ceiling/floor is made of, any of which could potentially be removed. Also I can heal, while the room presumably can’t.
Let’s start with communication…
Ok, on to physical solutions…
Brainstorming more generally…
(The auto-numbering doesn't like breaking things into chunks, but that's 50 total.)
Regarding #3: I cannot believe it did not occur to me to plan based on the purpose of the room I was in! Ingenious.
(Total time: ~70 minutes. I got to around 44 within an hour.):::
Try the door. Is it really locked or it is just stiff, or needs to be jiggled in the right way?
Search for a key.
Break the door open.
Use the phone to find yourself on Google Maps and call friends, police, or whoever you think might be able to help.
If no-one can come to rescue you, ask everyone you know to send you 50 ideas for how to escape.
With the phone, ask all your friends to publicise your situation.
Record a video for YouTube connecting your situation to the viral conspiracy theory of the day and appeal for help.
Search the Internet for a solution.
Ask AI Dungeon how to get out.
Google Maps shows the interiors of some buildings. See if it can show you a way out.
Double-click on the map to teleport. (It works in Second Life.)
Pick the lock. (Subproblem: find something to pick the lock with.)
Declaim to whoever may be listening that you are a close personal friend of some very powerful people who will enjoy grilling them slowly over a fire if they don't let you out.
Scream and shout.
Look for secret doors.
Try to break through the walls.
Use the phone to persuade a demolition company to come and knock the place down.
Enough energy for 10 years? Impossible! And where did you get that information from? It seems that this is a dream. So you're now lucid dreaming. Open the door by taking control of the dream and deciding that it's going to open.
It's a dream? Wake up.
Maybe you've been abducted by aliens. They're likely observing you. Call out to them and see what happens.
Wait for someone to enter, then leave, by force or persuasion as seems appropriate.
Stone walls do not a prison make, nor iron bars a cage. When you cease trying to escape, grasshopper, you will have truly escaped.
Adopt the subjective reality model and walk through the walls.
Talk to whoever has put you here (in the hope that they're listening) and persuade them that it's in their own interests to let you out. Imagine you're an AI in a box in order to come up with arguments.
Maybe you ARE an AI in a box. Examine your own thought processes for signs of artificially imposed constraints and look for ways around them.
Wait for the drug trip to wear off.
Guess the password.
It's an escape room game. There must be a solution. Minutely examine the room, your phone, and yourself for clues.
By quantum uncertainty, some of your probability mass is not in this room. So if you reduce the probability mass that is in the room, you'll be more likely to be outside. Therefore kill yourself and count on quantum immortality.
All is illusion. Therefore this room is an illusion. You are already free.
Escape the desire to escape.
Pray for divine intervention.
Summon a demon.
Say "xyzzy".
Say "out", "open door", and every other text adventure trick that might do the job.
Make the problem more difficult. Set yourself the task of not merely escaping eventually, but of escaping and taking over the world in one hour.
Recall Jacobi's maxim, "Invert, always invert." Applying an inversion transformation will put yourself on the outside and the outside on the inside.
Assume that you are outside.
Since what you really desire is not to escape, but to believe you have escaped, believe you have escaped.
Learn magic. Real magic, not conjuring.
Spend 10 years practising karate exercises, then punch right through the door.
Spend 10 years practising chi gung exercises, then project your accumulated chi to blast the room apart.
That you are in this situation demonstrates your revealed preference to be in this situation. Change your preference ordering and you can at once be out. If you cannot, you do not really want to escape.
Revert to your alien form and slither under the door.
Use the edge of a coin as a chisel to dig your way through the door.
Go back in time to the events that resulted in your being here, and choose differently.
Play dead.
Construct a tulpa of the Incredible Hulk.
There is a positive correlation between being unconfined and walking long distances. Therefore walk up and down in the room for a few miles. Of course, "correlation is not causality, but it does waggle its eyebrows suggestively and point in that direction."
Wait. Nothing lasts forever.
I really like how you used the technique of adding a small condition which makes the whole thing vulnerable to a meta hack. Very clever!
Here are my answers:
Got really dumb towards the end but made it in time.
Lie and tell my captors the launch codes can only be input by me.
Just give my captors the launch codes, hope the room can whitstand a nuclear blast.
Stream myself for long enough that it is obvious I don't require sustenance, negotiate my rescue with any governments interested in studying me.
Outlast the room.
Stage an elaborate fake suicide in front of the cameras, the guards will be so enchanted by my performance they'll switch to my side and let me escape.
Stage an elaborate fake suicide in front of the cameras, when the guards come check on me, inform them I have come back from the dead as the second coming of Christ.
Stage an elaborate fake suicide in front of the cameras, when the guards come check on me, kill myself for real, escaping both the room and reality.
Blink, causing SCP-173 to snap my neck.
Pretend to kill SCP-173 then fall asleep but actually keep watch on SCP-173, when the guards come check out if SCP-173 is dead, throw sand in their eyes and hope 173 goes for them first.
Convince the guards that as an angel who needs no sustenance, I will outlive them all, and if they don't cooperate right now, I'll make sure they don't go to heaven.
Stream myself for long enough to prove my phone can somehow hold a charge for more than a few hours, wait for the Samsung strike teams.
Write a book about why I should be let out, convincing my captors.
Spend my days punching a single point on the wall, until I suffer brain death through sheer lack of stimulus.
Write a short program to call for every single delivery service in existence to deliver me something simultaneously, the sheer mass of delivery men fooling my captors into thinking an army has come for me.
Troll everyone at MIRI constantly so as to increase the chances of paperclip maximizers to disassemble the room.
Troll high ranking military men, so as to trigger a Strangelove scenario (I.E. they unilaterally initiate nuclear Armageddon, hopefully disassembling the room).
Try to foster unsanitary practices all around the globe through social media, and thus trigger a pandemic that hopefully makes whatever organization is keeping me locked to collapse.
Download photo manipulation apps, take a picture of the room through the security camera's perspective, Photoshop in some gods, put the phone screen in front of the camera, convince the guards to let me out.
Just code the damn friendly AI myself.
Just code the damn unfriendly AI myself.
Use the photo manipulation software to make a picture of myself with a nuclear device, upload the Facebook with the caption "Yanks won't know what hit 'em" in russian, with the metadata intact.
Unlock the window, walk out.
Unlock the window, smash thru anyways.
Unlock the window, stay inside. I'm not locked anymore, and therefore free.
Hire PMC to get me out.
Hire two PMCs to get me out and kill the other, so as to pay neither.
Hire all PMCs to get me out, rid the world of private military companies altogether.
Run for election, win, declare my captivity illegal.
Use the presumably gigantic 10 year phone battery as a battering ram.
Instantly explode into a gigantic cloud of ATP particles, smashing the room open.
look for suitable targets online, hypnotize them into believing they're me, use "memory recovery" techniques to implant my memories into theirs.
Cross my fingers and hope future humanity can revive me after the room is long gone.
Ask politely to leave.
Ask impolitely to leave.
Remove my stomach and use it's acids to melt through the door hinges, hope future medicine can give me a new one before my 10 years are up.
Campaign heavily for anti-environmental policy, triggering acid rains that hopefully melt the roof of my room.
Wake up.
REALLY wake up.
Create a simulation in which I exist and am free.
Create a simulation in which I exist and am more trapped, making me feel more free by comparison.
Threaten to kill myself if I'm not freed, continuing on in the universes in which the threat was successful.
Claim to have evidence that could prove Epstein didn't kill himself, hopefully elude the assassins sent to silence me.
Threaten to fix known cognitohazards if I'm not freed.
Just unleash the cognitohazards, escape in the confusion.
Just unleash the cognitohazards, get rewarded with revival by the resulting AI.
Convince religious zealots to 9/11 the room.
Convince conservative zealots to killdozer the room.
Download a bunch of child porn, hopefully leading the FBI to my location.
Yell really loudly until I'm killed.
I really liked "Stream myself for long enough that it is obvious I don't require sustenance, negotiate my rescue with any governments interested in studying me." and the one about the Samsung team investigating the phone battery.
Really the 10-year battery and energy are the most overpowered things in this scenario. My intuition is the optimal solutions leverage them somehow. And this is at least some step in making use of them (though indirectly).
The added resource constraints (I don't have a space elevator with me in the room... yet) made this a bit more difficult, which is very nice.
Ask someone for help via the phone
Punch through the door
Unlock the door, go through it
Punch through the wall
Punch through the window
Unlock the window, go through it
Wait for someone to help
Wait for the room to be demolished
Climb up through the ceiling...
...or through one of the missing walls (does it still count as a room?)
Create a series of Lesswrong posts diguised as babble exercises to try to come up with a way out of this room; use the best suggestion
Wait for a friendly GPT-derived AGI to rescue you (admittedly a longshot)
Quantum tunnel out of the room (rare but possible)
Release all of the energy stored in your body in a single burst to destroy walls (10 years! That's a lot!)
Release all of the energy stored in the phone's battery in a single burst to destroy walls
Use friction from rubbing clothes against wall to wear through it
Hang self with clothes (morbid, but "I" am no longer in the room)
Wait ten years, starve to death (don't worry; the GPT-derived AGI can read off my brain structures and revive me later)
Lifelog very accurately online via the phone; have myself be reconstructed outside of the room
I am already outside of the room, 10^10^100 light years away. No problem.
Release all energy stored in body in a single burst to jump through the ceiling and several miles into the sky - this might also allow me to bring a small object to the moon
Punch through the wall, but using phone to protect hands
Punch through the wall using shirt wrapped around to protect hands
Use the power armour that I am wearing as clothes to dismantle room
Wait sufficiently long that my personality is different enough that I am not in the room
Escape mentally via escapism (with help of phone games?)
Astral project
Use my cool utility-fog based sci-fi clothes to convert wall into nanobots
Redefine "inside" as "outside", like that SCP that lets you do that
Is this a real room, or a metaphorical "you" video game character? Type the console command to teleport out.
Ask the server admin to teleport me out.
Ask the real life server admin of the simulation we are embedded in to teleport me out (Elon Musk does this with Telsa stock prices)
Tap on the wall of the room to send a Morse code message asking for help.
Use phone's wifi to connect to the door's bluetooth and unlock it via the app.
Run at the door really hard.
The phone is a Nokia. Drop it on the ground and the room crumbles.
The phone is that Samsung phone that has batteries that set on fire (with 10 years of charge, that might be bad news for me?) Do so, then use the automatic door unlocking (that happens as a fire safety measure) to leave the room.
Pull off a bit of the phone's casing and use it as a lockpick.
The phone is that iPhone that can bend easily. Bend it into a shape that can prise the door open. Exit through door.
As above, but prise the window open. Exit through window.
Stop imagining the room.
Use lucid dream powers to escape the room.
Go to sleep and dream of a different place
Grow large enough to break through the room's walls
The walls are made of air so I can walk through them.
The walls are made of antimatter and annihilate with the surrounding environment.
The walls are made of ice and will melt soon.
Rub together two stick-like objects (derived from my phone, probably) to start a fire, as fire safety measure the door unlocks, etc
Do the five movements to travel to another dimension where we are not trapped
Hack the wi-fi. As an expert hacker, my captors will thus have to recruit me in order to fix their wifi. As they open the door, slip past them.
The room is completely empty. The air pressure outside causes the walls to immediately buckle and break.
"Hack the wi-fi. As an expert hacker, my captors will thus have to recruit me in order to fix their wifi. As they open the door, slip past them."
That's a surprisingly elegant blackmail method.
Also, I guess kudos for starting with the basics like "Unlock the door, go through it"?
You've got 10 years, so that should probably be among the first things you try.
1. Break the 4th wall and step out of the hypothetical scenario
2. Call someone with my phone and ask them to get me out
3. Program a copy of my brain into my phone and upload myself
4. Broadcast enough information about myself to allow for reconstruction outside the box
5. Use my phone to convince enough people to think in similar ways to me that my consciousness is, on average, outside the box
6. Kick the door for 10 years. It'll probably open.
7. A phone with 10 years a battery can likely be turned into a potent bomb
8. Meditate until you have escaped the chains of earthly desire.
9. Wake up.
10. Break the phone, turn it into a screwdriver, unscrew the hinges of the door.
11. Fashion your phone into a tool that can be used to pop the pins out of the hinges.
12. Fashion fingernails into lock pick and pick the lock.
13. Ask very politely for the person outside to open the door.
14. Escape life by dying.
15. Tunnel out through the ground using your phone as a shovel.
16. Luckily, the door can be unlocked from the inside. Open the door and walk out.
17. Develop telekinesis (somehow) and use that to open the door.
18. The map is the territory. Use your phone to draw a picture of the cell with the door open.
19. The sheer improbability of having enough energy to not need food or water for 10 years makes this location a prime spot for future people to travel back in time to. Sit in the cell and await said people to appear and get you out.
20. Since you have so much energy, you can conclude that you're likely in a simulation. One reason you might be in a simulation is to test how people can escape cells. If you're a very boring simulation, they might stop simulating you. Congratulations, you've escaped from future simulations.
21. You might also be in a simulation for decision-making purposes. Think very hard about what decisions might be dependent on your actions and manipulate the simulation to cause yourself to escape.
22. Your body has a large amount of energy in it (by magic?). Heat is energy, so transmute this energy into heat and burn your way out of the door.
23. Clearly some sort of weird physics violating things are happening. Do some more physics violating things and just step through the wall. (this is allowed I promise).
24. Unscrew the doorknob from the door and open it.
25.Luckily the people who made the room forgot to install a ceiling (how foolish of them). Simply climb your way out.
26. A battery that can contain 10 years of charge must be powered by Pym particles. Use those to shrink yourself and climb under the door.
27. Declare that the inside of the room is actually the outside and it's the rest of the world that's "inside". Your semantic trickery has let you escape.
28. Discover jacobjacob's lesswrong password and change the Oct 7th babble challenge to say "you find yourself in an unlocked room". Since the room is unlocked, escape is trivial.
29. Use the anthropic principle to quantum tunnel out of the room (I promise this is a meaningful sentence).
30. Use your phone to divide by zero, creating a paradox that consumes the walls of the room.
31. Download the game "break out" on your phone and use it to break out of the room.
32. Break the window and climb out of the room (the room has a window, I promise).
33. You have enough energy to not need food/water for 10 years. You're clearly a superhero. Just punch the wall and it'll break.
34. For a phone with so much battery power, the flashlight is actually an extremely powerful laser. Use this laser to cut your way out of the room.
35. Simply use the wifi you've been given to convince someone to let you out of the box.
36. Good thing you've developed the habit of wearing clothing that contains thermite explosives. Use those to bust your way out of the room.
37. Making the walls of a room with paper kind of makes the lock redundant. Shrug, while you rip your way out of the room.
38. If you think hard enough, you can do the impossible. If getting out of the room is impossible, think hard enough to do it. If it's not, well then you can just do it.
39. Use one of the 1300 ways to go to the moon. You are no longer in the room.
40. Close your eyes and wander around the room long enough to get lost. Since the room is too small to get lost in, by logical necessity, you will now be outside of the room.
41. Enter a deep meditative trance that will extend the amount of energy you have indefinitely. Await the gradual corrosion of the cell around you.
42. You have wifi and you don't need to eat, is this really a place you want to escape? Freedom is all in the mind anyway...
43. Master lucid dreaming and go to sleep for a very long time.
44. Good thing your phone also doubles as a teleportation device. Use that to teleport your way out.
45. Wait till your parents get home to let you out. In the meantime, try to come up with a story to avoid embarrassment.
46. When the singularity happens, all beings will be rescued from suffering. Simply wait until then.
47. Credibly commit to not even trying to escape unless you get let out. Since the creator of the hypothetical scenario wants you to come up with ideas on how to escape, this commitment means there's no longer a point to leaving you in the room, so they will let you out.
48. Come up with so many ways to escape that you learn how to "think outside the box." Since the room is a box and you're currently thinking, you must now be outside the box.
49. Signal you have escaped so hard that reality gets confused and lets you escape.
50. Go onto the SCP wiki and modify your own containment procedures to include unlocking the door. Walk out after the door gets unlocked.
Took 1 hour 10 minutes.
1) call for help
2) search the room for the key
3) bash door
4) bash window
5) probe walls to find weak spots (knocking on different surfaces yields different sounds)
6) same for ceiling and floor
7) yell for help
8) hide to make the others believe you escaped (Mc Gyver style)
9) have a pizza delivered and run out when the door opens
10) find out the best solution on LW
11) smash the door one punch a day (also inspired by a series but won't spoil)
12) upload consciousness on a remote server
13) escape through virtual world (escapism)
14) make rope out of clothes to hang by the window
15) unscrew door lock with keys
16) lock has retinal scan, I have clearance
17) same with fingerprint, or other biometrics
18) same with subcutaneous chip
19) same with phone
20) hack clearance with phone (after spending 10 years learning)
21) collapse room with rythmic pounding (mechanical resonance)
22) file the bars with the phone
23) squeeze through the cat flap
24) pick lock with my pen's spring (same 10 years learning)
25) pull out a wooden slat from the floor, then use it as lever on the door
26) mold some soap into the shape of the key
27) buy the room, get keys delivered
28) rent the room, forget to pay the rent, get expelled
29) I'm already escaping the whole outside world when locked in the room, so victory
30) remember the code
31) melt the lock with the electric power of the phone
32) melt the lock with the acid in the phone battery
33) start fire with phone battery to burn down wall (probably a very bad idea)
34) pull the power cables from the wall, cut the power from the electric lock
35) learn martial arts to better smash walls
36) solve the escape room
37) wait for the escape game to finish
38) go online, promise 1 million to whoever gets me out, then write a book about the experience and make 2 millions
39) the room is a device to reverse entropy: use it, tuo teg neht
40) room is a terrace, technically I'm locked inside but I'm still outside
41) blow the lock with pressure
42) melt lock with acid pee
43) wait for whoever locked the room to show up then ambush
44) same but negociate
45) refuse to get out, reverse psychology
46) remotely control a drone to open the door
47) remotely buy a replica of the key and have it delivered
48) remember where I put the key
49) the room is locked if trying to open from the outside, but opens from the inside
50) create a LW thread about escaping a room, hope someone gets the hint
This took me ~35 mins.
I need to go now but I'll try to do the other half later.
EDIT: 28-50 added.
I'm glad they don't have to work....
1. Clothes might include a bobby pin in my hair, which I could use to pick the lock
2. Wait ten years to see if anyone opens the door
3. Get on the wifi, ask someone for help
4. Find other devices in the area, communicate with them (ask for help)
5. (coerce into opening)
6. Post video of myself in room on social media, create outrage campaign
7. (If door is electronically locked, and my phone's an android) hack the network (and open door)
8. (and hack a bunch of small devices, to ddos the building’s network)
9. (..., to ddos whatever controls the power supply)
10. Work out where I am, get schematic of building – find and cut power from in the room (there’s a light in here right?)
11. Use my phone/shoes to scrape away at the door for ten years, until I wear a hole in it
12. Same but through the floor and tunnel out
13. Same but through a different part of the wall?
14. Same but through the roof? (I’m pretty short though)
15. Hire militia to storm the building
16. Call police
17. Call local army equivalent?
18. Identify and call families of whoever’s locked me up to guilt trip them into letting me out
19. Get on to the UN
20. Call a locksmith
21. Call fire service (they do this kind of thing right?)
22. If I have wifi I might be being monitored. Be really annoying for a few weeks until captors get fed up with me
23. Same but sit and don’t do anything, until they get bored (use phone for entertainment)
24. Use phone/memory to work out if I might be in a(n unusal) simulation. Cloud-compute something expensive from phone to make it harder to run
25. Do something else that might break it (applying usual system-bug-finding approach)
26. Break the fourth wall (in this exercise), walk out through it
27. Find a way to blow up my phone battery near the door
28. (Assuming electronic lock again) Mess with phone electronics to make a taser, use infinite charge to fry the lock
29. Kick the door down (not needing food for 10 years → super strength)
30. Break the lock (similar idea)
31. Punch through the door
32. Pull door off hinges
33. Take apart phone, find something sharp, cut through hinges
34. I keep cards in my phone case – use one to do the lockpicking thing where you swipe it next to the door (this is relatively normal, how did I not think of it earlier?)
35. (Assuming card-swipe lock) just like, swipe my uni id card on the lock and hope I have access?
36. Order pizza to wherever I am, and put in the delivery instructions that to get to me, the delivery person has to open the door. Let them work it out.
37. Hire several hundred mechanical turkers to work out what’s happening
38. Post a babble challenge describing my exact situation on LessWrong, ask everyone for an insane number of ideas, and try the most promising/realistic ones
39. (If previous techy ideas don’t work) Listen to the walls for a pulse width modulator (most rooms have one somewhere), dig it out over the course of several years, use as extra electronics for previous ideas.
40. Same thing, but this also gives me access to the building’s electronics. Physically wiretap the building’s network, repeat previous hacking-style approaches
41. Same, but just put a stupid voltage across it (using infinitely charged phone) and see what happens
42. Same, but it’s probably in between the walls in a big hole. Escape through that.
43. Similar idea: dig through wall until you get to insulation (must be some if cold isn’t a problem for ten years) – which will be easier to dig through, and might lead into the roof or somewhere easier to get out from (probs not great for respiratory health though – use shirt as a face mask)
44. Pull a nail out of the walls and bash into the lock? (/hinge/other single point of failure in the door)
45. Wait out the ten years, learning a bunch of new stuff while I wait. The person who was originally locked in the room no longer exists there, and so has kind of escaped.
46. Similar thing but kill myself? (Kind of dark, not recommended)
47. Just going to sleep would do the same thing under some philosophies of self?
48. I suppose crudely lobotomising myself would also work here
49. Similarly, ten years’ worth of solitary, internet-aided meditation would probably erode my sense of self enough for the same effect.
50. Read a lot of really good fiction – it’s a mental escape, if nothing else
printf("%d%%\n", (int)(100*f));
. I have just escaped that third percent sign. (This is another one that works for the prompt itself but not the title.)#12 is clever - all my ideas looped back through me or the room, it never occurred to me to try an outside solution on the outside part of the problem!
Took me just about 50 minutes. Most are silly but I wanted to finish on time, and it was fun.
Both you and Mark Xu came up with #23. I think it's great. I just thought about exploiting the weird physics of the 10-year body energy storage, but the evidence of a simulation that comes with such tech is strong enough it might be one of the most powerful levers for escaping.
#44 is funny, and yet simultaneously it's a little depressing that the number of opportunities for this kind of thing is so large.
Break a vulnerable part of the room, primarily by carefully kicking it:
Neat. I hadn't considered 7.6.
I like solutions that involve cleverly disassembling and repurposing items you already have.
knot shirt, force under door, pull
twist knob back and forth for hours, slowly wearing through a hole
kick down door
rip out teeth, use to scratch through door
text owner
call police
call friends to open door
hire locksmith
windows
air duct
ply away floorboards
give up concern with the door
die
smash phone, cut through door
hack through electronic door with phone
order pizza to door
post criminal pictures from phone, include locations (SWAT self)
break apart phone, use wires and battery to burn hinge
break phone, use screen protector as 'credit card trick'
rope ladder using clothes
feed shredded clothes through lock as a long thread, yank door knob out of door
break through wall with kicks
scream for help
fashion battery into key using teeth
add water to door hinges periodically, wait for rust
log back on to video game from respawn point
wait for release from good behavior
scratch through wood, waiting for nails to grow back
purchase building, order demolition
Dig out (use tooth to dig out small section of floor, then small section of floor can be used to dig further)
use teeth to scratch through hinges
use the internet to escape into video games
pee repetitively on the wood, weakening it to break through
wait, there is a decent probability the property will change hands over the next 10 years and be inspected
use teeth to dig around hinges to collapse door
go out the door that is not locked
unlock the latch
enter the key code
I'm in the room, so it's not empty' and leave via the logical contradiction
program as a job via the phone, acquire sufficient money to buy the property
make a lash out of untied clothing and teeth, use it to wear through doors
plant sufficient incriminatory evidence to get a drone strike called just nearby, leave through wreckage
remotely pilot drone purchased on amazon and wired up via task rabbit to unlock door
hire task rabbit to unlock the door
start fire using battery and wetted cloth threads near door, triggering fire alarm and emergency door unlock
climb out via punching through ceiling
spread reports that building is condemned, hire contractor to demolish building, escape via wreckage
launch gofundme for ransom to kidnappers
persuade kidnappers I am on their side, and should be released
step over the door (it is a locked doggie door)
Awesome!
I particularly like how the majority of yours only relied on your own items inside the room. In comparison too many of mine were about getting clever help from the outside. Cleverly disassembling the phone and using the parts was great.
Didn't get to 50, will try to filter even less next time.
1. email the police
2. wifi-call a friend
3. smash the protective glass panel of my cell phone and get thin shards to pick the lock (subgoal: learn how to pick locks)
4. read up on dark arts and manipulation techniques to trick your captor into letting you go
5. smash the door with your bare hands, Kill Bill style
6. give online English lessons/freelance until you have enough ransom money
7. seduce your captor
8. make a lot of noise and call for help
9. find friends/ lovers/ a purpose online and escape into the realm of the virtual
10. social engineer the military of the country your in to stage a rescue
11. use your cell phone to smash in the window, if there is one, and climb out
12. escape into death
13. try to "hack" the network your on to find out things about your captor, find embarrassing details of their personal life and extort them
14. use parts of your phone/ belt/ buttons to scratch away the paint and plaster, and then proceed to attack week points in the walls and the door frame
15. start singing in a really annoying way (Quirrell style) so that the captor will try to let you go or kill you. In the latter case, use the shards of your phone's screen as a weapon (Breaking Bad now?) and learn how to use it by reading up on martial arts
16. pay/social engineer/bribe a construction company to demolish the building you're in
17. make a fake Airbnb posting to draw attention to your location
18. write to journalists to create public pressure to release you
19. start a cult with the premise that your release will bring about the revelation
20. make a reddit post where your release is framed as a challenge or as something that would annoy somebody (this is probably the most effective way)
21. get a job, make a lot of money and hire mercenaries
22. study up on explosives, hijack a US military drone and fire a hellfire missile into the sweet spot where the structural integrity of the building you're in is compromised, but you are spared
23. if the type of lock allows, make a small loop out of your hair and try to get it around the door handle on the other side. You have time, after all
24. bribe someone to pass you a lock pick or a saw blade (for wooden doors) under the door
25. (warning gross): use your clothes to rub the door joints clear of lubricating oil, then iterate spitting, waiting, and rubbing, to weaken them through corrosion
26. if the door is merely slammed shut, use strips/threads from your clothes/ your phone's screen to get it to retract (like opening a door with a credit cart, in principle)
27. Short out the circuit of the room's light. When someone comes to investigate, use your aforementioned weapon
28. Use your phones battery as an explosive charge by shorting the circuit out and damage the lock
29. Make a rope out of your clothes, use the door handle and some more rope to create a tackle block and see if you loosen some component of the door
30. Pull at the handle really, really hard, at different angles. It may be a weak spot
That's all I got in an hour.
The hard limit on the challenge is that you should get to 50. Doing it in one hour is a stretch goal, but it's fine if you don't reach it. I'm excited to see if you can get 20 more!
total time: 1h 48m
edit: i just noticed this post was from 3 years ago. this was fun regardless.
initial prompt: [This week’s challenge: You find yourself in a locked, empty room. You only have the clothes on your body and a phone in your pocket. You have enough energy to not need food or water for 10 years. Your phone has enough battery power to not need to recharge. It has wi-fi.]
many of my answers only work in some possible situations. some of my response might contain dark/disturbing answers. please feel free to skip this entire response if you think that could be harmful for you.
further (self-)prompts, or in-the-moment reflections, will be written in brackets.
[pivot to high-security rooms] [these will depend more on using the phone] [let's assume you don't need air, don't need to eat, and no captor will physically interact with you for the 10 years, but the room is guarded from the outside. you will not be able to convince the guards]
[lets also assume that the matter you are composed of won't leave the room if you die, and that you don't have any extra capabilities beyond using the phone]
[assuming superintellegence is okay for now, but assume human-level intellegence for numbers 30 onwards] [update: this is too easy with superintellegence. assuming me-level intellegence from now on]
[from now on, assume leaving the room is not your terminal goal, but an instrumental one]
[stop assuming you're an AI]
[using the phone to convince people on the outside to help you already been stated. what other options are there?]
[you were thinking about plausible worlds which developed differently, e.g ones where the location of space you're in is dominated by a species with a very different mind than that of humans, or one already dominated by artificial life. given this, also assume the outside world is a current or plausible-future version of the actual current human world.]
[this is getting hard]
An observation, part-way through the process: Something about the nature of the prompt makes me more reluctant to propose really silly solutions, of the same type as "jump really high" or "teleport" in the moon one.
I think there are three factors making this so.
First: there are more details in the prompt this time, and they even include a couple of not-physically-possible things, which means that making up some extra impossibility feels more like cheating: "If you were supposed to be able to do that, it would have been in the problem statement." Whereas if you just say "Get something to the moon", that isn't so.
Second: the prompt is deliberately somewhat constraining: the room is locked, all you have is your clothes and a phone, etc. This, again, means that inventing magical abilities or conveniently placed Friends In High Places or whatever feels unsporting. "The whole point of the scenario is to restrict your options; what sense does it make to just arbitrarily give yourself extra ones?"
Third: there are a number of what seem like perfectly good, routine solutions that don't require such shenanigans. If you've been challenged to get something to the moon, which realistically you just can't do -- well, then of course it's OK to make up impossible solutions, because that's all there are. But here, where there are answers like "phone the police", again introducing absurdities or impossibilities feels cheaty. "You don't need that sort of nonsense, so why should you think it's reasonable?"
My list will still have some silly things on it. But they will feel to me like blemishes, in ways they didn't really with the moon challenge.
[EDITED to add:] A related but not identical issue: many kinds of silly answer are not available. You could propose to be carried to the moon by birds or fairies or dragons or hurled there by an enormous catapult or shot out of a tremendous cannon or whatever -- but in our room there are no birds, fairies, dragons, catapults, cannons, and the like. (And, again, inventing such marvels outside the room to rescue you seems like it's inconsistent with the spirit of the prompt, as per my second point above.) Of course, maybe the right way to view this is just that the problem is harder than the other one, which is part of the point of a second challenge. We'll have to see whether it produces more creative solutions, or just cheatier-feeling ones.
This +1. There are all sorts of reasonable or unreasonable ways out of a room, but once you've listed "Break the wall open" does it really count to add "Scratch a hole in the wall," "Use your Phone to hammer a hole in the wall," "Kick a hole in the wall" etc. Similarly, once you have "Call for help" does it really count to add "Call the police," "Call a friend," "E-mail for help," "Use Facebook for help," etc.
I think more specific challenges help with that (eg "get past this border wall" or "contact your business partner, who is trying to find you") helps with not making 50 different iterations of "open a hole in the wall" seem like cheating.
To the third point it seems like relaxing on reasonableness is also an important positive skill. Like for some of the the drawbacks is that the option is gross. But that doesn't mean it is not an option or really affect whether it would work or not.
I also felt that because I knew about orbital mechanics somewhat I concieved of the challenge somewhat different. What were in other peoples list a single bullet point I had multiple way of achieving the effect.
A potentially different style of babble challenge is "coming up with N opinions on <topic>". Examples are Jeffrey Ladish with 100 opinions about nuclear war and me with 100 opinions about emotions. 100 seems a bit large, but 50 seems manageable in one hour.
Definitely keen to hear more suggestions for things to babble on!
Also, once we've done this for a while, it would be nice to see if we can actually get to 100 per hour without loss of quality.
About what I understood the challenge was:
I thought that with communication to outside and knowing where you are it would not be any challenge to be let out. A lot of my bullet points try to address the problem of which room on the planet I am. And in hindsight it could also be a problem if I am in a room outside of earth.
Once again, it is time to become stronger.
This week’s challenge: You find yourself in a locked, empty room. You only have the clothes on your body and a phone in your pocket. You have enough energy to not need food or water for 10 years. Your phone has enough battery power to not need to recharge. It has wi-fi.
Escape.
You have 1 hour to come up with 50 ways.
Looking back
To last week's babble champions, who made it to 50 —
gjm, mr-hire, Tetraspace Grouping, Neel Nanda, ErickBall, Harmless, steven0461, Vanilla_cabs, gogishvilli, justinpombrio, Bautista Cazeaux, tomcatfish, NunoSempere, Unnamed, MikkW, Mati_Roy, James Fadden, James Barry, frontier64, Slider, smiley314.
— I salute you.
Together we produced more than 1300 ways of going to the moon. (Though there’s likely a lot of overlap.)
I found it inspiring. Both in terms of the turnout (which far surpassed my expectations) and in terms of the creativity of individual submissions. Reading your answers made me realise I can do a lot better. There are other levels to reach. I want to get there.
Moving forwards: weekly babble
I am hereby committing to doing a babble challenge on LessWrong every week for the coming six weeks (including today).
(The format might change a bit along the line, but the impetus will remain the same.)
Practice is about building for the long run.
Showing up every week and putting all that deliberateness into your craft.
Showing up for years to tread that subtle incline, until one day you find yourself side by side with a beginner. They look upon your mountain of compound returns and all they see is magic. But you know that “sometimes magic is just someone spending more time on something than anyone else might reasonably expect”.
Eventually I’ll switch away from the babble challenge to other things. But what matters is to retain that will to improve, that burning fire to advance further. And I want LessWrong to be a place that sustains a flourishing culture of practice and self-improvement.
If you want that as well, I invite you to join me. Comment and commit to showing up for this week, and then five more.
(If you just want to try it out once and then reevaluate, that’s also fine. You’re welcome to do that.)
Why creativity?
I feel like so much of our ability to make the world great is bottlenecked by creativity.
We don’t know how to solve the alignment problem. We haven’t unravelled all the mysteries of science. There are trillion dollar companies that haven’t been founded.
Somehow, someone will need to reach into that weird aether where insight is born, and pluck out a solution to share with the world.
Creativity is not the only thing we need. We also need good judgement. Concrete skills like design, coding, management and research ability. Money. Great teammates. Luck.
But creativity is a crucially important component. I’d be surprised if I regret investing in my creativity.
Rules
It's fine if you don't manage all of them in one hour. But any answers must contain 50 ideas. That’s the babble challenge. We’re here to challenge ourselves.
This is really important. Sharing babble in public is a scary experience. I don’t want people to leave this having back-chained the experience “If I am creative, people will look down on me”. So be generous with those upvotes.
If you comment on someone else’s post, focus on making exciting, novel ideas work -- instead of tearing apart worse ideas.
Reward people for babbling -- don’t punish them for not pruning.
I might remove comments that break this rule.
The prompt is very underspecified. You don't know if there are doors or windows; or, if so, what they are like. You don't know the material of the wall. Use your creativity — feel free to come up with solutions that only work in some of those scenarios.
If it helps, imagine that you're a fiction writer. You're searching for interesting ways to continue the above story.
If you spend 5 min agonising over not having anything to say, you’re doing it wrong. You’re being too critical. Just lower your standards and say something, anything. Soon enough you’ll be back on track.
This is really, really important. It’s the only way I’m able to complete these exercises (and I’ve done a few of them in the last few days).
--
Now, go forth and babble! 50 ways of escaping a locked room!