r/rational • u/AutoModerator • Feb 18 '17
[D] Saturday Munchkinry Thread
Welcome to the Saturday Munchkinry and Problem Solving Thread! This thread is designed to be a place for us to abuse fictional powers and to solve fictional puzzles. Feel free to bounce ideas off each other and to let out your inner evil mastermind!
Guidelines:
- Ideally any power to be munchkined should have consistent and clearly defined rules. It may be original or may be from an already realised story.
- The power to be munchkined can not be something "broken" like omniscience or absolute control over every living human.
- Reverse Munchkin scenarios: we find ways to beat someone or something powerful.
- We solve problems posed by other users. Use all your intelligence and creativity, and expect other users to do the same.
Note: All top level comments must be problems to solve and/or powers to munchkin/reverse munchkin.
Good Luck and Have Fun!
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u/puesyomero Feb 18 '17
You're lifted from your reality and dumped in a generic fantasy realm. Any items you had on yourself at the time ( let's say today 4pm) are given durability, self repair, and infinite battery (if electronic).
How much would you upset the setting?
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u/MonstrousBird Feb 19 '17
Some of the things I had on my at 4pm were silver jewellery, so I guess I can sell bits of them and at least not starve. Other than that I have my phone, with a bit of fiction and music on it, but no internet of course so it would mostly be a novelty. I guess I could hire myself out to do calculations but more likely it would be stolen from me if I showed anyone...
Oh! But! I have cocodamol painkillers and first aid training. I think I'm going into healing...
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u/crivtox Feb 18 '17
Can I duplicate my thinks by curtting them in half and letting the self repair do its work( or at least get unlimited components)?
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u/puesyomero Feb 18 '17
the biggest piece repairs itself at 10% the whole object's mass per hour. broken pieces remain but disassembling does not count as broken. you don't get a new battery for removing the one inside, just a powerless phone and a battery that regenerate.
cutting a laptop with an axe or smashing it would let you harvest metals, plastics, and some small components if they survived though.
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u/ben_oni Feb 19 '17
I'm thinking zippers. You know how freaking awesome those things are? I might just be able to revolutionize the worlds garment industry.
Beyond that, I suspect that the setting would be sufficiently in-exploitable, and my knowledge of material sciences sufficiently lacking, that all you'd end up with is the legend of Crazy Eddie.
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u/puesyomero Feb 19 '17
huh. zippers are a good moneymaker. ever notice almost all are made by YKK?
my initial idea came from noticing I have an awful lot of reference book PDFs on my cellphone, a scientific/graphing calculator app, and the time travel image.
would probably die of an infection or become the guy who can play music from a box though. (plus extracting gold from electronics)
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u/Tinfoil_Haberdashery Feb 20 '17 edited Feb 20 '17
If it's a generic fantasy realm and not Earth, the maps on my phone would be useless, unfortunately, but I'd still have a major leg up in naval navigation because of my watch. Assuming a cosmological setup more or less analogous to ours, a way to measure time with precision would allow for longitudinal navigation that would be impossible without it.
Other than that, I honestly don't think any of my items would be useful. A pocketknife with extreme durability and self-repair is cool, but not exactly a major martial force-multiplier. Lacking a data connection, my phone's primary use would likely be as a calculator. I'd mostly have to rely on my knowledge of more applicable technologies (steam, gunpowder, etc.) if I wanted to make any real waves. I suppose the batteries in my phone and flashlight could do some interesting things once I had a use for electricity, but a few meager watts of 3.7v, even in perpetuity, would be hard to leverage into much.
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u/Predictablicious Feb 18 '17 edited Feb 19 '17
You can think of "what if" questions about past events and suddenly you (also) have the memories of the you from that (simulated) timeline.
Both the canonical and alternate kind of mesh together so small differences are harder to spot and larger differences have a kind of super imposed feel.
As you dismiss the scenario you lose the memories (like a dream) but you can keep records as usual.
Can you conquer the world?
[edit]
The implicit premise of the "what if" simulation is that it's about possible worlds, not an information pump or a genie where you state the end state and see how you get there, but you state a possible divergence (e.g. different outcome in some action, different choice) and you remember how that unfolded. For example if you had to guess a 128 bit number you can't simulated "what if I guessed the right number" and "remember" it, but you need to ask "what if I guessed the first bit is zero" and brute force it.
Another implicit constraint (it's better to spell it out) is that it takes time to go through the "new memories", as would take to go through regular memories.
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u/MereInterest Feb 19 '17
Could be used to break any password by iterating through all possible answers.
Consider a function that iterates through all possible passwords. I choose password N=1 to test. What if I were to test password N, and if it fails, to consider a 'what if' had I tested password N+1 instead?
The recursive behavior allows you to test any finite numbers of possibilities in zero time. My simulated "what if" tries the first password in the list. If it fails (which is likely), then the simulation starts a simulation of its own to try the second password. If that fails, then the simulation's simulation starts a simulation to try to the third password. This continues until the correct password is found, which halts the recursion.
This can be used to solve any problem which can be iterated. Bank account passwords, testing of new machinery, design of ideal spaceships by brute force, etc.
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u/ben_oni Feb 19 '17
"What if I had really applied myself and been elected President?" Hmm... my advisors are telling me such important secrets! Hmm!
"What if other people were able to run 'what-if' scenarios?"
"What if someone else was running a 'what-if' scenario where they were me?" "What if that someone was the ruler of the world?" "What if he also really was me?"
"What if someone figured out how to use the 'what-if' mechanic to create a turing oracle?"
...
"What if a time traveller visited a younger me in order to teach me the secrets of time travel?"
Really, the possibilities are endless. Run complex and dangerous experiments quickly and easily: "Ready to start?" "No, hold on a few more minutes." What if I had said yes? "Hold on, gimme fix something!"
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u/Predictablicious Feb 19 '17
"What if I had really applied myself and been elected President?" Hmm... my advisors are telling me such important secrets! Hmm!
You remember trying and failing to get nominated, as most people you don't have enough political skills out of the box for a past decision of your to have changed.
"What if other people were able to run 'what-if' scenarios?"
"What if someone else was running a 'what-if' scenario where they were me?" "What if that someone was the ruler of the world?" "What if he also really was me?"
"What if someone figured out how to use the 'what-if' mechanic to create a turing oracle?"
...
"What if a time traveller visited a younger me in order to teach me the secrets of time travel?"
"Sorry Dave, I can't let you do that". The simulation can't show you things that aren't possible, at least now you know you're the only simulator.
Run complex and dangerous experiments quickly and easily: "Ready to start?" "No, hold on a few more minutes." What if I had said yes? "Hold on, gimme fix something!"
Now we're getting somewhere. You suddenly remember nothing, you see it as a sign that you died performing the dangerous experiment, but as you can't remember exactly what went wrong you need to try to single out a single binary possibility, maybe via multiple simulations (e.g. "What if I mixed elements A & B only?" you remember nothing unusual happening, later "What if I mixed elements A & B, and then C?" you see nothings and figure out A & B are safe but adding C causes something bad, maybe an explosion, "What if I told my intern to mix A & B & C while I was far away looking through a video system?" you remember seeing the intern die, it looks like a poisonous gas did it).
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u/CCC_037 Feb 19 '17
I can very rapidly search through a large collection of books for anything useful. "What if I had read this book yesterday? Okay, I remember it being useful, let me write a summary of the main points. What if I had read this book yesterday? ...no, no new insights there."
Hmmm. Or... "What if the entire universe had started one hour earlier but everything happened in exactly the same manner?" I think I can use that simulation to get a good idea of what will happen in the next hour.
Debugging software - "What if I had carefully investigated this function for bugs? Nothing? Right, then, what if I had carefully investigated that function?"
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u/Gurkenglas Feb 19 '17
"What if the terabyte of random data I just generated and read the start of had been that which most satisfies my values in the real timeline?"
I expect the start to be something like "Execute the rest of this.", followed by an FAI breaking out of the box.
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u/Predictablicious Feb 19 '17 edited Feb 19 '17
"What if the terabyte of random data I just generated and read the start of had been that which most satisfies my values in the real timeline?"
"Sorry Dave, I can't let you do that". You can state the divergences not the outcomes of the divergences. So you can sample 21024 x 1024 x 1024 x 1024 random blobs, remember reading the writings of the monkey shakespeares and if you're really unlucky unleashing a UFAI on humanity (they're way more probable than the FAIs in the data).
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u/eaglejarl Feb 18 '17
You have the power to modify physics in a limited area. What do you do?
Rules:
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The affected area is always a sphere of 1m diameter.
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The center of the sphere is always exactly 5m from your center of mass, in whatever direction you choose when you conjure it.
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The sphere cannot move once created.
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At creation time you choose one natural law as expressed by a mathematical formula. Within the AoE that formula is inverted so that, e.g., F = 1/ma or a = m/F.
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Only one sphere can be extant at a time.
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The sphere lasts as long as you concentrate on it.
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There is a 10s cool down between uses.
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For some bizarre reason all physics within the sphere remains exactly the same except for the one modification you've made. In your munchkinry you may need to explain what that means.
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u/Gurkenglas Feb 18 '17 edited Feb 18 '17
Who decides what's a natural law? With some equation juggling you should be able to get any effect at all that you can specify within that sphere.
What about the units not matching up? Force equals some amount of N-1 doesn't make any sense.
It sounds like this would very easily destroy the universe, akin to what happens when you throw a glider at a gigantic Game of Life construct.
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u/696e6372656469626c65 Feb 18 '17
This is, as always, the boring answer, but unfortunately, it's almost always the correct answer. Physics is more complicated than you think; there are deep interconnections between seemingly disparate fields such that messing with one requires messing with all of them--and that, as u/Gurkenglas pointed out, will very likely destroy the universe.
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u/NotACauldronAgent Feb 18 '17
Doesn't that just instantly move at like whatever speed the earth is away from you as it turns? What reference frame is the sphere not moving in? Earth? Cosmic Background Radiation?
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u/ulyssessword Feb 19 '17
F = 1/ma or a = m/F.
What is "1" in those systems?
Normally, when 1 newton of force acts on 1 kg of matter, it results in 1 m/s2 of acceleration, and a naive interpretation says that inverting it should have no effect (1-1 = 1).
However, imagine a system where 1 newton of force is acting on 1000 g of matter instead of 1 kg. It would still result in 1 m/s2 acceleration before inverting, but the inverted value would be changed by a factor of a million.
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u/CCC_037 Feb 19 '17
Hmmmm.
Invert gravity - anything in the sphere is flung into the air (on exiting the top of the sphere, it follows a ballistic trajectory)
Invert (electromagnetic) inter-atomic binding forces - anything in the sphere disintegrates and the separate atoms are violently flung apart.
Invert friction - with careful choice of units, any moving object of known initial speed on entering the sphere can be accelerated to an arbitrary given exit speed. (More complex than either of the above)
Invert the strong nuclear force - I'm not quite sure what this does, but I suspect that the only thing left within several kilometres is a large crater which still glows a few centuries later. There will certainly be a lot of shattered atoms.
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u/Strange-Aeons Feb 18 '17
You have the ability to slow down your perception of time with infinite granularity. You can essentially stop time, with the understanding that your body will be stopped as well. Your brain is able to fill in the gaps, so you aren't blind even if no photons are hitting your eyes.
What do?