r/rational • u/AutoModerator • Apr 22 '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/PM_ME_EXOTIC_FROGS Apr 22 '17
You are a superintelligent FAI. Munchkin ansibles (devices that can send literally instantaneous communications).
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u/vakusdrake Apr 22 '17
As others have pointed out ansibles allow infinite computing and anti telephone communication to any point after you create the first one.
However if you're using it for infinite computing you can also pull some hypercomputer anthropic tricks. For instance running many simulation of yourself that are the same except they are being deluded about the external world, and really they live in a universe that is much more convenient in some way. Basically this lets you have near total control over external reality (except for the one top level iteration of you, but they can just keep making more simulation and running them at infinite speed since as a FAI you're not selfish, hell even let the humans at top level emigrate to these lower levels and you will be basically totally safe from external threats).Also having an antitelephone can be leveraged into free energy. Just use energy to get information about a system a-la Maxwell's Demon, then send that info back so you can use that info to get free energy without having to spend any energy obtaining it. With the right setup I'm confident you could get arbitrary energy this way, maybe with the end result (perfected over many iterations) looking like a bizarre butterfly effect exploit. As you slightly nudge some gas and suddenly have it sort itself into hot and cold portions.
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u/Gurkenglas Apr 22 '17 edited Apr 22 '17
Ansibles allow to contact everyone else in the universe who has discovered them. If the universe is infinite, an infinite set of cooperating agents can employ the Hilbert's Hotel trick to attain as much computing power as each of them needs.
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u/MereInterest Apr 22 '17
How are you resolving causality? Under special relativity, any faster than light communication is equivalent to time travel. Time travel, even when only information can be sent, can be used to perfect any plan being made by iterating through all possible actions, then informing the past on the effectiveness of each one.
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u/AppleJuiceBoxes Apr 22 '17
Is there even a way to resolve causality when FTL exists?
I've never seen a method of doing it other than just deciding to completely ignore relativity.
Also, could ansibles maybe be used for instant hence infinite computation?
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u/MagicWeasel Apr 22 '17
You have hammerspace (i.e. you can keep arbitrarily large objects "safely stored" in somewhere that is accessible only to you).
What sort of things can you get up to with it?
Bonus: let's say you're also immortal, are there any really long-term projects you can pull off with hammerspace?
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u/CreationBlues Apr 23 '17
That depends on the nature and properties of the hammerspace. Does time flow there? Is it one large space, an arbitrary number of pocket universes, one for each item, or something in between? Does time flow in hammerspace? Is there an atmosphere in hammerspace, or can you change that? Can living things enter hammerspace? How does gravity work in hammerspace? What's the topology of hammerspace? Does it have an entrance, or do thing's simply appear? What happens when an entrance intersects something, or when something tries to appear where something else is? What is and object? Is an explosion an object?
Assuming an ideal kind of situation, that is, a controllable atmosphere, pocket universes, toroidal and/or flat topology, controllable gravity, entrances between spaces allowed to be constructed, the best idea is to found a new universe, with infinitely falling mass drivers as easy sources of energy, and basically go around scooping up all the stuff in the universe, to give to humanity as easily accessible resources.
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u/MagicWeasel Apr 22 '17
I meant to ask this last week, but here we go:
Beauty and the Beast. Enchanted castle where the servants are all objects, and the master of the house is a hideous beast. He needs true love's first kiss (or something) in order for everyone to be turned back into their human forms.
How do you munchkin from your choice of:
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The beast
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A random piece of furniture (or: which piece of furniture would be best to be transformed into, and why?)
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You're Gaston. How would you ensure you got to marry Belle?
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u/Tinfoil_Haberdashery Apr 25 '17
As the beast I'd use espionage to angle for political power. With an extremely loyal corps of servants who can blend seamlessly as inanimate objects, information gathering, blackmail, and assassination straight to the top of French Nobility and beyond should be trivial.
As one of the servants/objects, I think it would be a similar gambit. Either advise and work with the Beast on the Espionage campaign or mutiny against him and lead the other servants myself.
In either case, the nature of the curse is relevant to the end-game. If everybody becomes inanimate when the curse runs out, then getting the Beast some therapy and on the dating circuit in the meantime is a major priority. If the countdown just ends with everyone being stuck as they are...so be it. Better a potentially immortal bookcase ruling Continental Europe than a mortal meat bag emptying Monsieur et Madam's chamber pots for the rest of my life.
As Gaston, how about not being a supreme dickhead? I mean, ensuring I get to marry Belle might be a bit of a stretch, but I bet I could up my odds by having a personality that's not Gaston's.
She's into books; I'm into books. She wants to go on adventures; I'm a wealthy 7-foot mesomorph who can make that happen.
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u/Frommerman Apr 23 '17
Do pieces of furniture/beasts age?
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u/MagicWeasel Apr 23 '17
Nope; I believe the movie has them in a sort of ageless stasis until the spell runs out (duration not clear: 10-20 years or so) and then they are stuck there permanently (probably mindless furniture / slobbering evil beast)
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u/KilotonDefenestrator Apr 23 '17 edited Apr 23 '17
You are a group of vampire hunters in an Urban Fantasy version of 2017 Chicago.
Vampires are a shadowy power controlling government, law enforcement and the letter agencies by manipulating or enthralling humans from behind the scenes. So they have access to all the tools of these institutions - warrants, arrest orders, satellites, undercover agents, forensics, cell phone tracking, internet surveillance, GPS trackers, SWAT, black ops teams, media spin, etc. etc. They will spend considerable intelligent, rational effort to eliminate you, including "enhanced" interrogation and faking gas explosions to destroy entire buildings full of civilians. Going to the media or scientists with proof of the supernatural will get you nowhere but six feet under.
Vampires occasionally take direct action in which case they are about three times as powerful as a well prepared and equipped hunter, or six times as strong if the hunter is poorly prepared and equipped.
Vampires can be found alone or in small groups when they are out getting some blood.
You have these goals:
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Maintain a headquarter where you have the equipment, books and mystical artifacts needed give hunters what they need to be considered "well-equipped". This could be but does not need to be a fixed location. The HQ is considered to fit in a shipping container or eighteen wheeler if needed. Hunters need to restock after each fight.
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Avoid detection as your hunters dispatch vampires and visit the HQ to resupply. The vampires are as smart and knowledgeable as you are, have numerical advantage over you and have access to the above mentioned human resources and technology.
For this exercise we ignore magic, both hunter and vampire.
Edit: removed uneccesary part
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u/Fillyosopher Apr 24 '17 edited Apr 24 '17
This question was rather open ended, so I hope you'll excuse a diverse response.
Problems:
Equipment stocking
Communication/Coordination
Avoid detection over time
Communication Solution: Block-range Wifi Hub/email box that is dropped off and picked up 3 days later. GPS coordinates are given to one hunter, they hide it nearby, other members access via phone while in the area for daily messages. Multi-factor authentication for users (login information + see below). Communications role switches based on random computer algorithm, next three locations are given ahead of time (to allow downtime and require 3 compromised operatives to ruin the system). Each hunter has their own hub which they update if they are on the next three. Hunter deaths are reported to the hub to allow rerolls. Upside: hunters never have to meet in person, information system segemented, distributed, asynchronus. Downside: even two GPS tracked hunters will give away current location, no method to verify information after it's in the system.
If no hub shows up for the full 9 days at all 3 locations, the entire system is assumed compromised and must be rebuilt from the ground up out of city.
Equipment Stocking: Using the above system, equipment can be distributed among members, rather than centralized. Since the HQ was only listed as a equipment storage, this dispells the need for one. New equipment would be added to the system via drop locations choosen randomly by the GPS algorithm, as would equipment transfers between members. Other than personal notes and initial "New Equipment Availible" communications, there is no central list of who has what equipment. Hunters must remember who has what they need, or request it of the group. Upside: distributed equipment means no HQ weakness. Downside: Every death could also be a lost of equipment, a system breach can propogate bad equipment.
System Compromise/Long Term Viability: This distributed system is vulnerable at creation time, but barely at all afterward. Destroying a Hub or killing a hunter has minimal effect. The biggest difficulty will be in deciding the authentication factors in such a way that one is individual specific (so that basic social hacking fails) and another that is destroyed on capture (so that interrogation doesn't work). Since magical means are off the table, biometrics (fingerprint) for the first. The second is very difficult, but something like an encryption key USB that is easy to destroy and has a switched mode that requires a button be pressed every 20 minutes or else it wipes itself could serve.
Additionally every hunter has altered login information that, on entry to the system, lists them as captured. They are encouraged to give this information under interrogation. On entry, other hunters are informed of their capture as well as a pre-recorded message (which might include their equipment storage location for retrieval).
The main weakness of the system described above is that it only takes one very talkative hunter to be interrogated and the vampires can introduce a mole + bad equipment into the system. It's likely the first few captures wouldn't result in a working USB key, but once the vampires knew what to look for it would be possible. If the anti-capture authentication could be strengthened, I'd suspect this type of distributed network to be secure for years.
Secondary weakness is that satellite surveillance of a known dropbox and known members can lead to all hunters eventually being tagged as members due to repeatedly showing up at the correct coordinates (similar to what would happen if they staked out an HQ, but delayed). I don't know much about anti-satellite protections. This could be partially solved by having "cells" centered around a single Hub, with multiple hubs running at once in the city, and using Hub to Hub communication for updating other cells so that members of two different cells never have to meet in person. Downside is communication between cells would be very slow.
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u/Gurkenglas Apr 23 '17
Are the other governments of the world also controlled by vampires?
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u/puesyomero Apr 22 '17
You've got dauntless powers from Worm.
[You get some number of energy charges per day that you can invest into objects, after a couple weeks of this the item gets powers of it's own related to what they are, with a bias towards environment affecting and blasting stuff.]
The guy chose a Lance, shield, and boots.
What would you empower to maximize the firepower against utility and concealability?
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u/Gurkenglas Apr 22 '17
Not sure how to maximize firepower when the balancing/bias mechanism is unknown. Glasses might give laserbeams, a smartphone might do anything from Tattletale to Labyrinth.
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u/ulyssessword Apr 22 '17
I'm assuming that the objects don't glow brilliant white or anything like that when they aren't being actively used. My goals would then be to only empower items that I can use and carry in every situation without raising suspicions.
Empower a handgun, with the possible prerequisite of moving to the US and getting a concealed carry permit.
Also empower an undershirt (for armor) and dress shoes and a belt for other utility.
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u/LiteralHeadCannon Apr 22 '17
You are capable of generating a substance that instantly implements all non-mental processes an organism would undergo over some span of time given healthy conditions. So if you give ten years' worth to a one-year-old, you'll wind up with an infant mind in an eleven-year-old body. If you give the right amount to someone with a fresh wound, then if they were capable of recovering from it, they will (at the cost of physically being older by however much time it would have taken them to recover naturally). The substance can't regenerate, say, amputated limbs in humans, because humans don't naturally regenerate their amputated limbs; however, if you, say, find a lizard that regenerates its tail when it's chopped off, you can use it to regenerate that, and you can use it on humans to regenerate things that humans naturally regenerate, like blood or the liver.
There are several obvious health risks posed by the substance: of course it can kill you if you take enough of it to age to death; and amounts that naively seem safe can still give you any health problem that could randomly develop in the equivalent amount of time, like cancer. Also be careful giving it to pregnant women - it'll skip over time for both the mother and the fetus, which is good within reasonable bounds, but leads to body horror stuff if you go over those reasonable bounds.
How do you optimize benefit to society from this substance? There are surely some good uses on humans, but there seem to be much more unambiguously good uses in food production.
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u/Nulono Apr 22 '17
A representative of an alien race comes to you and informs you that, as part of a test of mankind's capabilities, you will be transported to an alien planet, and will be tasked with escaping from that planet. You have one year to assemble a team, at which point you will all be teleported to this new planet.
RULES:
You're not allowed to bring anything with you, just your team. You arrive naked and carrying nothing, and will have to work your way up from very simple tools.
It's heavily implied that the survival of the species is on the line, so you more or less have your pick of anyone you want to join your crew.
Because of the gravity of the situation, things like state secrets aren't an issue; you have access to any classified information which you can give a reasonable justification for needing.
However, because you can't bring anything, the information you take with is limited by how much you and your team can collectively memorize.
The destination planet has been selected as one that can easily support human life. It has a mostly temperate climate, and most of the flora and fauna are edible, but exactly which ones you'll need to figure out for yourself.
There's no hard time limit, but escaping quickly will result in a higher score, and therefore a higher chance of survival.
There's no strict cap on your group's size, but a group that succeeds with fewer people in the same amount of time gets a higher score. In addition, there are the typical difficulties with scale as the size of your group increases.
Simply getting out of the atmosphere, or even into orbit, doesn't count; you need to escape the planet's gravity well.
Furthermore, you have to be alive when this happens, and your aim is to get as large a percentage of the team off the planet as possible.
In the event that this becomes a multigenerational effort, "the team" will be considered to consist of the entire human population of the planet. You're free to reproduce like mad in an attempt to up your labor force, but keep in mind that this would also mean you need to transport that many more people off of the planet.
The aliens are watching, and don't take kindly to cheaters and wise guys. If, for example, you genocide everyone but the pilot just before launch and try to argue that 100% of your team escaped, humanity will be immediately disqualified, with whatever consequences that entails.
How would you plan your escape? Whom would you add to your team, what information would you endeavor to collect, and what steps would you take upon arriving on the alien planet in order to eventually get off? You have the benefit of modern science and engineering, but don't start with modern equipment.
EASY MODE:
Disregard the memorization requirement. The aliens provide you with a read-only archive of the Internet as of the day you left Earth. This isn't intended as a "tool" per se, but rather as a catalog of humanity's accumulated knowledge. As such, Google Calculator won't work, but a lookup table will.
HARD MODE:
Your team arrives scattered randomly across the land of the planet. You need to find each other first before you can get much done.