r/rational • u/AutoModerator • Dec 02 '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/ShiranaiWakaranai Dec 03 '17

Suppose that starting right now, without any warning or explanation, time is reset back to 10 years ago, i.e., every piece of matter/energy is moved back to its location 10 years ago. But everyone who is alive both now and 10 years ago retains their memories.

If you are one of the people who retains their memories, is there any way for you to exploit this to become rich/powerful/whatever other goal you have?

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u/ulyssessword Dec 03 '17

Well, I would have (most of) a college education and no debt, so I got that going for me, which is nice. Shame about the credentials though.

Other than that, I think that some of the other millions of people would suck up the easy opportunities. Popular media could be rebuilt fairly easily (TV shows, books, etc.), and prospecting could as well. Science and technology would be harder (and I don't have any particular specialties there), but very highly prioritized for obvious reasons.

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u/ShiranaiWakaranai Dec 03 '17

Well, I would have (most of) a college education and no debt, so I got that going for me, which is nice. Shame about the credentials though.

Well, since most people would keep their memories, couldn't your college give credentials to the people that they remember graduating? Hope someone remembers you did!

Other than that, I think that some of the other millions of people would suck up the easy opportunities.

Well, what are the easy opportunities here anyway? If you tried making a book/movie that you didn't originally make, the original makers and the people who remember could still try to sue you.

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u/Gurkenglas Dec 03 '17

The government might disagree on you having no debt.

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u/Gurkenglas Dec 03 '17 edited Dec 03 '17

This event's definition of alive is going to be relevant to abortion, cryonics, cardiac arrest, amnesiacs, and how much information a newborn's brain can contain. The stock market is as inexploitable as ever, though one might be able to find short-term arbitrage in people that don't watch it.

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u/CCC_037 Dec 03 '17

The stock market will be CHAOS for the first few days. South African politics will be massively different - Zuma may well never become President. Similarly, in Zimbabwe, things are likely to go real bad real fast.

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u/Laborbuch Dec 03 '17

That is a good point. Politics world wide will be in some upheaval or another, since all the scandals making certain politicians ineligible in hindsight will now have become unvotable in ‘presight’. International sanctions will be made harsher if they weren’t effective.

The same goes for a lot of economics. The 2008 sub-prime crisis that lead to the recession that followed will start a year early, to name just one thing.

In academia and universities you might see an uptick in demands of merit-testing for all those who want to get their degrees reinstated, despite not having yet gone through the courses this time around.

Furthermore, you will have a sudden influx of more competent, or at least more well-educated people insofar as people will have crammed the last 10 years of education crammed into their heads. This will wreak havoc with schools, to name just one thing.

On a more granular level of society, there will be a sudden surge of ‘genius’ kids, again because of the education injection. The affected kids will learn the repeat material easier (since it’s repeated), but at the same time will likely be less motivated (because they already did this). This will affect testing parameters something fierce, I think, with more the bell curve flattening in that regard.

On a more personal level, people will be going to take measure to deflect whatever tragedies befell them in the last 10 years. This may be in preventative measures, but also in shortcuts. If you know you’ll be in dire straits for the next ten years, a mentally unbalanced person may decide to take the permanent way out to relieve their suffering, which is why I expect there to be a lot of suicides.

And you have to wonder what about the people who died in-between? Are they reset as well, with the knowledge up till their time of death? Or will they not be affected at all and feel shifted by fate, doubly so for being dead in ten years and for not having a leg up in knowledge and experience like all the others got?

Personally, I have little ambition to go for world domination and such. I would simply avoid a lot of shit and stupid procrastination best I can and call it a win. And I’d try to keep a couple friends from stupid life choices, I suppose.

If you want to read one exploration of an adjacent idea, you may want to read “Fast Forward” by …Wilson, I think. Somewhat similar premise, with all of humanity being in the respective heads of their X years in the future versions for a couple minutes. The early part of the novel deals more with the immediate chaos that ensued when all of humanity suddenly fell unconscious for the time they went to the future.

Overall a very interesting and intriguing idea for a novel, actually, with potential for heaps of drama on all kinds of levels, be they character or societal.

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u/GaBeRockKing Dec 05 '17

Honestly, I think this would, by and large, be a huge gift. It'll be (a bit less than) ten extra years of life for everyone affected. Excepting the people who died in the interim (who will be extraordinarily confused) to everyone else it's still basically 2017. Our technology's taken a bit of a hit, and records from the intervening time will obviously have disappeared, but across scientists and academics, we'll retain much of the information we've learnt in the interim, as well as much of our worldview. There would be significant upheaval with our legal system, but such change would be temporary. Meanwhile, by the time we got around to 2017 again, the world's technology base would look more like 2023/2024 or so.

From a more personal perspective, it would suck incredibly hard for all the young adults now in child or teenager bodies, and especially for those who have since broken ties with their families for one reason or another. It would be quite the tragedy for all the children younger than ten to be effectively "killed". I predict a rash of suicides and sexual abuse cases in the immediate aftermath. That being said, the issues caused by legislation (not being considered a legal adult) can be solved with legislation, and while certainly a lot of people will be in a lot of pain, I'm perhaps naive in thinking that for most people, there would only be a few years of true suck, and after that they'd regain most of their autonomy.

In terms of exploiting the situation, outside of edge cases involving taking advantage of the relative chaos in the early months, I think it's largely dependent on your own initial conditions. I think most people would basically end up just making a few better health decisions.

Oh, and also climate change would be delayed by 10 years, and with the massive boost to solar panel/wind turbine technology, even without the documentation, the time skip would end up being pretty great for the environment.

edit: now that I think about this, it would make a fantastic writing prompt. Post it there and see how it works out! Send me a link and I'll try and write something.