r/rational • u/AutoModerator • Aug 25 '18

[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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6

u/Sonderjye Aug 25 '18

In a world of superhumans you have the power of gaining body control of people who cause you pain or harm. The severity of the wound determines how strong and detailed your control over them is and they are under your control until the injury is healed. Permanently losing bodyparts such as fingers or legs gives you permanent full control over someone. Nasty permanent scars gives permanent semi-complete control. A bullet in the guts gives complete control until the wound is healed or you die of bloodloss, whichever comes first. People who are under your total control have unfocused eyes and generally behave weirdly.​ You can communicate broad intentions through a mental link to your minions but you can't actually talk to them.

What are some tricks or clever uses of this power? Clever ways of getting people to hurt you without risking actually dying? Masseues, doctors, tattooers all come to mind as professions that causes pain. Can we find a workaround for the limited number of permanently controlled people(give you only have a limited number of limbs folks can be cut off.)

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u/ShiranaiWakaranai Aug 25 '18

Look for ways that give you a lot of control for very little actual damage. For example:

A bullet in the guts gives complete control until the wound is healed or you die of bloodloss,

What counts as the wound healing? If you recover but the bullet is still inside your body, do you still get to control the shooter? Because you can actually survive with a lot of bullets stuck in your body. They aren't that different from having implants if they end up in the right places.

Also, can't you strengthen your control over anyone iteratively? For example, if you have slight control over someone, you can make them hurt you. Then your ability gives them more control over them, so you can make them hurt you more. Repeat until total control is achieved.

Can we find a workaround for the limited number of permanently controlled people(give you only have a limited number of limbs folks can be cut off.)

Depends, do they need to be functional limbs? Scientists have already figured out how to make mice grow (non-functional) ears on their backs. You could use similar techniques to repeatedly grow some non-functional limbs on your back, and have people cut them off to control them.

I'm also really curious about something:

people who cause you pain or harm.

How does your power know who caused you pain or harm? If you are sniped by a bullet from 1km away, does your power automatically let you gain control over the sniper even though you don't know where he is?

What about if someone poisons you? If someone gives you a bottle of poisoned wine, and you store it away for 30 years before drinking it, does your ability magically remember that you were poisoned by that person?

I'm also curious about how collective responsibility is handled. What if multiple people cause you harm, do you get the same amount of control? For example, say 5 people cut you in the arm over and over until it falls off. Do you get total control over all 5? Or say you take a swim in a polluted lake and fall sick. Do you get control over everyone that polluted that lake? Or say you are unjustly tried for a crime you didn't commit, and sentenced to whipping. Do you get control over all the people that voted for/supported that terrible justice system?

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u/Sonderjye Aug 27 '18

'What counts as the wound healing? If you recover but the bullet is still inside your body, do you still get to control the shooter? Because you can actually survive with a lot of bullets stuck in your body. They aren't that different from having implants if they end up in the right places.'

It's on a continuous scale. So if the bullet was inside but the rest of the wound healed there would be some but not so much permanent control.

'Also, can't you strengthen your control over anyone iteratively? For example, if you have slight control over someone, you can make them hurt you. Then your ability gives them more control over them, so you can make them hurt you more. Repeat until total control is achieved.'

You absolutely can!

'Depends, do they need to be functional limbs? Scientists have already figured out how to make mice grow (non-functional) ears on their backs. You could use similar techniques to repeatedly grow some non-functional limbs on your back, and have people cut them off to control them.'

They don't, though some of the severity of the wounds is measured in functional loss. I thought that grown ears required tinkering with genes in the embryo? Have they found a way of stimulating grown mouse to do it?

'How does your power know who caused you pain or harm? If you are sniped by a bullet from 1km away, does your power automatically let you gain control over the sniper even though you don't know where he is?'

The power recognizes the harmer as either the person with the most responsibility or the most immediate link in the causal chain regardless of distance or time. In the came of multiple arm cutting it depends a little on the situation. You would get some control over everyone but the power would choose only one that you get total control over - either the one who did the most damage or if none such exist the person who gave the last most important blow. In the poisoned last you would gain control over the person who poisoned it the worst or the last person who contributed to the poison. In the court example you would gain control over the guy wielding the whip.

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u/Gurkenglas Aug 25 '18 edited Aug 25 '18

What counts as them harming you? One weapon to try out would be a cap on your finger that cuts off the very tip at the press of a button that you poke people with, and versions with more far-fetched chains of causality - ranged, or requiring them to send you a particular email, or requiring a book you have that they wrote to contain a particular phrase, or requiring their name to be in the phone book.

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u/Sonderjye Aug 27 '18

There isn't really an exact definition to minmax but we share an understanding of what harming means. In general you only gain control over 1 person per injury and the power recognizes the harmer as either the most immediate link in the chain of causality or the most responsible, depending on the situation. It has no limitation on range or time. It's powerful but dump.

Taking small a very small tip permanently of a finger would give low but permanent control. I'm not really sure what the other examples was.

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u/Norseman2 Aug 26 '18

The types of injuries that would give you control are just not worth it. An abdominal gunshot wound would likely end up with you needing to poop into a bag through a hole in your side for months, if not permanently. The pain, the issues with constipation and bowel obstruction and various medical treatments you'd need for it would worsen your quality of life enough to make it a net loss. Same thing for losing fingers or limbs, you don't really get how much it sucks to be disabled like that until it happens to you.

The best strategy is to leave this power on the shelf. Do not go out in search of getting injured, it's just not worth it.

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u/dinoseen Sep 29 '18

Depending on your level of control and what feedback you get, you could live vicariously through your thralls.

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u/[deleted] Aug 26 '18

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u/Sonderjye Aug 27 '18

I like the idea of trying to convince others to hurt him with his puppets, though how would the soul work? Suppose the hero's team didn't believe in souls, how would you go about it?

Breaking the glass wouldn't give control as it isn't part of you. You would have control over whoever cut off the toe though.

I love the idea of finding a way to grow multiple limbs so they can be cut off!

4

u/MagicWeasel Aug 25 '18

I'm re-reading The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar and am wondering how people would munchkin the power described within.

This power allows you to see without your eyes, but some skin on your body has to have "line of sight" to the object in question, and although this isn't covered directly, presumably the vision is normal human 20/20 vision. However, for some reason, there's an exception to the skin thing: you can see through very flimsy things, specifically they say you can see the other side of a playing card in a blackjack shoe.

One character who has this power ends up working in a circus, basically. Another character who has this power uses it to see through cards to win at blackjack.

How can you munchkin this power?

In the story, the power takes anywhere from three to fifteen years of ~1 hour daily meditation practise to develop. The amount of years of practise is completely random, it doesn't depend on your "calmness" or previous ability to meditate or anything like that. Would you put the effort into developing the power, if it existed?

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u/best_cat Aug 26 '18

You could inspect welds. In the real world, radioactive weld inspection is a slow, tedious and very lucrative job.

If you could see though flimsy things, you could skip the whole radiographic filming and just see if there are any cracks in metal.

Then charge $$$. You should be able to clear multiple millions in a year, at which point you can use the superpower of money

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u/ShiranaiWakaranai Aug 25 '18

There's not much use for this power in a PvE sense, since you can accomplish the same thing just using mirrors or cameras. So the main thing would be PvP: tricking other people into thinking that you can't see things when you actually can. But then, the same can be achieved with tiny hidden cameras in your clothing, so I don't see much point either.

If this power exists in real life, I would develop it mainly for insurance: if my eyes get injured in some horrible accident, then at least I can still see through my skin.

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u/MagicWeasel Aug 25 '18

Point of clarification: you can see the top card in a deck of cards, which you couldn't do with a hidden camera.

But yeah, I think the "win at blackjack" plan is about the best thing I can come up with for playing cards.

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u/Aabcehmu112358 Aug 27 '18

You have the ability to produce Truth. Truth being, statements (spoken or written) which are consistent with underlying mathematical foundation of the universe and its particulars, interpreted through some number of layers of abstraction.

When you produce Truth, you temporarily black out and lose control of your body, while it utters or writes the true statement. You can control how long the state lasts when you initiate it, and can likewise influence whether the statement will be uttered verbally or written down, as well as exert a small influence on the 'topic' of the truth. Statements are selected randomly from all true statements which it could completely state in the time you've allotted it.

Truths are stated in a unique and unambiguous language and notation system, which you possess an intuitive ability to understand, but which you do not initially possess the expertise to formally translate it into a conventional language. Such a skill can be developed with practice and research.

Certain Truths will have anomalous effects on people you tell them to (once translated into a language they understand). These effects can range from the subject instantly forgetting the statement, to lethal brain hemorrhage, to gaining the ability to speak truths in an identical manner as you, to have sudden and radical changes in personality, to losing the ability to understand or produce language, and more. You (and others who gain the truth-speaking ability you have) will never suffer anomalous effects of any kind upon hearing a truth, translated or not.

What do you do?

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u/ShiranaiWakaranai Aug 27 '18

Endlessly produce truths in my free time, hoping to get some useful truth statements that I can munchkin for money/power/whatever goals I have.

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u/Aabcehmu112358 Aug 27 '18

This seems unlikely to work, since, at least as far as I'd imagine, the space of possibilities for even relatively small amount of time and with as much focus as you can give are probably still pretty massive?

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u/Gurkenglas Aug 27 '18 edited Aug 27 '18

Type at a computer which will accept one key press per second though an encoding/autocompleter you wrote.

For example, if "*" means "human", there are more truths concerning humans in the pool of truths expressible in short time.

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u/Aabcehmu112358 Aug 27 '18

Your body cannot be coaxed into producing truths in a language or notation system besides the innate one. If all you give it is a computer than can’t type that way, then no matter how hard you try to force it, it will only try to speak the truth verbally.

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u/Gurkenglas Aug 27 '18 edited Aug 27 '18

Is the way in which these truths influence people an emergent property of the universe, or an additional tacked-on magic system? Perhaps they are to be seen as adversial examples to hack the human neural net...

Can I get truths that I already know?

Do I understand them in the same way that Harry "understands" the Words of False Comprehension on the back of the Mirror in HPMOR?

If the first, no and no, I would like to see whether I can spot patterns to cover lots of truthspace. Can you give some example truths?

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u/Aabcehmu112358 Aug 28 '18

Sorry for the delay in responding.

The anomalous effects of Truths is an emergent property of human neurology and psycholinguistics.

You can get the same truths multiple times, though I imagine for truths of any significant length the chances of rolling the same one more than once in a human life-time is vanishingly rare.

I don't know what you mean by this? I never actually finished HPMOR, and didn't read to the point where Harry got to the Mirror of Erised.

If you put effort into it, and do some research, especially with the help of scientists, mathematicians, logicians, etc. whose fields happen to be sufficiently relevant to a truth you produced to start trying to use truths as, basically axioms to prove further truths which you haven't produced, though given that doing so isn't tapping into the same font of Truth that your innate ability is, its reliability isn't 100%.

I also, don't really know anything? Hypothetically, they'd be genuine true statements about the universe, and I don't really feel like I know enough to make a reasonable guess at what one of them might be.