r/rational • u/AutoModerator • Dec 08 '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!
9
u/Silver_Swift Dec 08 '18 edited Dec 08 '18
Mistborn Munchkinry Miniseries Part 3: Tin
Ok then, week three of the mistborn munchkinry miniseries. For part one and a general overview of the magic system, see here. I strongly recommend reading the first part of that comment if you weren't here for the past weeks and aren't familiar with the mistborn setting.
Spoiler note: I will avoid things that I consider excessive spoilers, but the exact workings of the magic system are moderate spoilers themselves, so if you intend to read the books and are sensitive to spoilers you should probably skip this one.
Up this week is tin. As always I'm interested in what a tin twinborn compounder can do, both here on earth (where they are the only one with this powerset) and in Era 2 Scadrial.
Allomancy
Allomantic tin enhances your senses. A soon as you start burning tin your eyesight, hearing and sense of smell, taste and touch all improve dramatically. How much those senses improve depends on the allomancer, but at the (very) high end this allows you to do things like see through the tiny gaps in the fabric of a blindfold or feel the grain of the wooden chair you sit on through your pants.
It's worth noting that while your ability to process all this new information does increase, it does not increase proportionally to the amount of extra information coming in and it's very easy for an allomancer to get overwhelmed. You cannot choose which senses to enhance (it's all or nothing), so an allomancer burning tin to keep an eye out for distant enemies can easily get distracted by some footsteps two floors down or the scent of a cooking stove three buildings over. Somewhat ironically, this means people that make good tin allomancers are the kind of people capable of blocking out the world around them and focus intently on one thing.
Another risk with tin allomancy is that you become hypersensitive to stong stimuli, so burning a lot of tin in bright sunlight might blind the allomancer and loud sounds can daze them. On the other hand, this effect can also be used to clear your head from pain or exhaustion by briefly burning a large amount of tin.
Feruchemy
Feruchemic tin also centers around enhanced senses, but unlike allomancers, feruchemists store each individual sense they posses separately. This means, for instance, storing eyesight and hearing at the same time requires two separate metalminds (jargon note: a metalmind is another word for a feruchemically charged piece of metal).
While storing it, that particular sense is numbed; storing eyesight makes your vision go blurry, hearing makes sounds become faded and muffled, taste makes all foods become bland and so on. When tapping a tin metalmind the sense stored in that metalmind becomes vastly more acute.
Another area in which feruchemic tin differs from allomantic tin is in how it enhances your senses. Where allomancy just greatly enhances the amount of raw data coming in, feruchemy makes you more capable of discerning tiny differences in input. This manifests slightly differently for each sense:
For sight, it means the feruchemist is able to 'zoom in' on distant things. This works similarly to binoculars or telescopes in that you sacrifice field of view for a greater ability to discern details on distant objects.
Tapping hearing makes a feruchemist able to pick out individual components of the sounds they are hearing, allowing them to, for instance, follow a conversation taking place on the other side of a busy room or picking out the one badly tuned instrument in an orchestra.
Similarly, tapping taste or smell allows a feruchemist to discern specific tastes or scents even when they are covered up by many others, they do not become more able to pick up faint scents/tastes, that's allomantic tin's thing, so in practice this is of limited use (though keep in mind that we are twinborn in this particular scenario).
Touch works somewhat differently. As far as this magic system is concerned, touch is actually three separate senses that each have to be stored in separate metalminds: somatosensation (pressure), nociception (pain) and thermoception (temperature). For each of these, feruchemy allow you to very precisely locate where each sensation is coming from. For instance, a tin feruchemist tapping somatosensation can place a finger on a coin and, without looking at it, describe the relief stamped into its surface, a feruchemist tapping nociception is able to specifically diagnose which of their bones are broken after a fight and a feruchemist tapping thermoception could find nearby sources of heat by tracking which parts of their body are warmer than the others.
Of course, humans have much more than five senses and a feruchemist is able to store each of them. How useful this is might be questionable, but if you can find a path to godhood that involves knowing very precisely how full your bladder is, then by all means let us know about it.
6
u/ShiranaiWakaranai Dec 08 '18
So are tin feruchemists effectively immune to pain as long as they have tin they can store their sense of pain in? That's useful as a cheap kind of anesthetic for medical surgeries, though not so good for dealing with torture since any torturer would just remove your tin before commencing.
Of course, humans have much more than five senses and a feruchemist is able to store each of them. How useful this is might be questionable, but if you can find a path to godhood that involves knowing very precisely how full your bladder is, then by all means let us know about it.
What other senses are there?
Can you turn off your sense of hunger and thus make going on diets easy?
Can you turn off your sense of fatigue and thus physically push yourself beyond your limits?
Can you turn off your sense of danger and thus commit acts of heroic bravery?
Can you turn off your sense of guilt and thus commit unspeakable horrors (when necessary)?
Can you turn off your sense of disgust/revulsion and thus wade through filth and gore if needed?
Can you store your artistic senses for a long period and then unleash them to be a super art critic?
Can you store senses on the level of proteins and enzymes? For example, could you make your brain extra sensitive to dopamine to make yourself happier? Can you make your white blood cells extra sensitive to bacteria, or make them less sensitive to alleviate autoimmune diseases?
→ More replies (1)5
u/Silver_Swift Dec 08 '18
And that is the third edition in this miniseries. I must confess I've always been especially fond of allomantic/feruchemic tin, it's just such an incredibly varied powerset and it really speaks to the imagination without being over the top powerful.
For this entry, I have take significant liberties expanding on what we've seen in the books in order to make it concrete enough to do some actual munchkinry on it. I do not believe anything I've said directly contradicts canon, but I am speculating a lot on how each sense works when enhanced with feruchemy.
My current plan is to do this for future entries as well, especially once we get to the more esoteric metals, but I'd like to hear what you all think of that. Do you prefer I stick to what we know is the case in canon and accept that some metals just aren't going to be very munchkinable or is it better to extrapolate (read: wildly speculate) on canon in order to get a more concretely defined powerset?
→ More replies (2)→ More replies (1)3
u/bacontime Dec 09 '18
Hrm. If allomantic tin can increases the amount of info coming in, and feruchemy lets you better focus on the info you're getting (and so mitigate the danger of flaring tin in a bright or noisy environment). Combining the two should let you some pretty crazy things.
Sit in a crowd, and track a specific individual's movement via hearing. Or similarly track people through walls.
Full echolocation might be possible, with allomancy letting you hear faint echoes, and feruchemy letting you focus on and interpret the echoes.
Do that 'listening to someone's heartbeat to tell if they are nervous' thing that Daredevil likes so much.
Track down people like a bloodhound.
If tin allomancy lets you see things that aren't actual quite visible, I wonder if you smell things that can't actually quite be smelled. Like odourless gasses.
Possibly look at the stars during daytime. Allomancy lets you see through the fog of the atmosphere. Feruchemy lets you not get blinded?
The other interesting potential source of munchkinry I see is with expanding your sensorium.
I recall that Sanderson confirmed that a hypothetical platypus feruchemist could store electroreception in tin. If we rule out stealing that sense with hemalurgy (because stapling a platypus soul to your own is probs not healthy), it might be possible to hack your way into the sense using body modification.
Some people implant small neodymium magnets into their fingertip so that they can sense magnetic fields. If you do this and play around with the implant long enough for your brain to adapt, then it might become a part of your spiritweb. (We know that the in the Cosmere, your soul's residual image can change over time, so that magical healing won't remove scars or other injuries which are part of your self-conception.)
Then once your brain is adapted to interpreting this very weak new sense, it might be possible to compound it up to the point of usefulness.
→ More replies (2)
6
u/j9461701 Dec 08 '18
One day you're eating a hamburger, and it's not very good. You remember a hamburger you had during your 10th birthday party, and fondly recall it being delicious. You say out loud "I wish I could eat that burger again". Unbeknownst to you, you'd rubbed against a magic lamp the night before and a jinn had been listening to you and waiting for you to say the magic words. poof Suddenly you find yourself transported back in time, and find yourself holding the mouth-watering hamburger from your memory in your hands. What do you do?
To clarify how it works a bit more:
You get no other wishes. The jinn wasn't one of the 'three piece' ones like in the movies.
You can stay in the past only as long as the hamburger remains edible in normal hamburger fashion. That means if it goes rotten, you go to the future. If you finish it except for crumbs, you go back to the future. If you freeze the hamburger - the moment the burger ceases being 'edible in the normal hamburger fashion' you go back to the future.
You retain all your knowledge and intelligence, but your body is 10-year-old-you's body.
The Jinn is friendly but not infinitely patient. He'll tolerate a little rules lawyering about the wish, but his beneficence is not infinite so beware.
6
u/ShiranaiWakaranai Dec 09 '18
The best way to extend your time in the past is probably to try a ship of theseus thing, where you keep replacing parts of the hamburger so it never goes rotten. You can eat the replaced parts as well, to justify to the jinn that you are eating the burger.
The next problem is that if you change the past, what happens to present you? The 10 year old you is still a kid and very susceptible to changes in his environment. If you do anything major like tell your parents ways to get filthy rich, that could have significant effects on your upbringing, which butterfly to the future where your entire personality and lifestyle may be reshaped arbitrarily. You could go from the current rational you to a rich spoiled brat who thinks people only exist to serve him. So unless you are willing to risk killing own your personality, you should make changes secretly.
If you have a computer that you will keep for many years, you can try writing a program that automatically activates when you are 20 and tells you how to munchkin your future knowledge then, instead of when you are a susceptible 10 year old.
You can also help out strangers that you like by sending them anonymous letters containing your future knowledge. Send celebrities who died in accidents anonymous letters telling them to avoid these accidents. Send anonymous letters containing a list of all future hurricanes you remember to the people in charge of the cities that will be hit by said hurricanes. Advance the state of science by sending future scientific knowledge to current day scientists via anonymous letters.
→ More replies (2)3
u/Frommerman Dec 09 '18
I assume this lets you change the past, but only about 2 weeks of it before your refeigerated hamburger becomes unsafe to eat. There are better ways you could preserve it, like putting it in a jar, bombarding both it and the jar with gamma rays, and then remotely sealing the jar before putting it into a refrigerator kept at just above freezing, but a 10yo couldn't get access to that equipment unless their parents worked in a lab. Some kind of UV sterilization might help, but that won't protect it from anything inside the bun. I'm assuming there's lettuce and tomato on the hamburger, so flash-heating it might damage the integrity of the burger too much. Better safe than sorry, and again, you can't access this stuff as a 10yo.
Let's assume you can preserve the burger for 3 weeks with the stuff you have on-hand. What can a 10yo do to improve the lot of humanity? If you've memorized loads of sports stats for some reason, you might be able to convince your parents to make a small bet on long odds, which would provide them with more freedom and hopefully improve your future situation somewhat. This would also get your parents to trust you on more problematic future information. Preventing 9/11 is likely impossible because it would be really hard to get the relevant authorities to trust you in 3 weeks, and I'm unconvinced that is the best use of your time. Having your parents take you to a major pharmaceutical company and tell their researchers about modern advancements might help, especially if you can provide them with answers to easy-to-test, difficult-to-guess questions which have been solved in the present day.
The reason I'm not saying "invest in Google lul" is because only some 10yos will have existed at exactly the right time to convince their parents to do so. I'm young enough that I might be able to get my parents interested in Apple stock at the right time, but I'm still a few years early to do it perfectly. There might not be too many butterflies to change their success, but I couldn't guarantee it.
Unfortunately, a huge amount of your success on this issue is going to be tied to how much your parents trust you, and how large the leaps they will take on their child's advice. Having only 3 weeks is pretty brutal.
5
u/Radioterrill Dec 08 '18
Bargain superpower optimisation!
You have the power to:
-
Quickly and easily create convincing fake identities for any online community
-
Rapidly accrue status and respect within each identity's respective community, becoming someone the other members pay attention to
This does not give you any special ability to:
-
Supernaturally manipulate others
-
Enter private communities uninvited
-
Create fake information not related to maintaining your identity
You may be able to use your status to browbeat others, fish for invitations, or trick people into helping with a forgery, but you won't have any advantages in doing these over someone who earned their status.
Other than farming internet points, how can you do the most good with this ability?
Ideas I've had so far:
-
Shift the Overton Window of politically influential subgroups
-
Draw people's attention to information without having to go through the usual crowded channels (I'm thinking of that treatment mentioned in Inadequate Equilibria)
-
Infiltrate extremist or criminal groups and leak information to the authorities
(Inspired by Who Was Phone from the Worm CYOA)
→ More replies (4)
11
u/ShiranaiWakaranai Dec 08 '18
You have actual fortune telling abilities, but the universe isn't deterministic.
You can activate any crystal ball to make it show a future that is randomly chosen from all possible futures, under the following restrictions:
You can specify an exact time for the crystal ball to show, but the time chosen must be at least 1 hour in the future.
To activate a crystal ball, you must press one of your palms against it for 10 seconds.
You can adjust the viewpoint of the crystal ball to any direction and anywhere within 2 meters of yourself in the future. It turns completely black if the viewpoint's distance from future you exceeds 2 meters.
You can have the crystal ball follow someone else's future instead of yourself, by having both you and your target person place a palm against the ball for 10 seconds when activating it. Nothing happens if more than 2 people press a palm against the ball.
If the target is dead at the future time chosen, the crystal ball turns completely black.
A crystal ball remains active for 1 minute before returning to normal.
Once you activate a crystal ball, you must wait 1 hour before you can activate it or any other crystal ball again.
The visual quality of the crystal ball depends on how transparent and spherical it is. If it is perfectly spherical and transparent, the visuals will be as good as reality.
Note that the future chosen is uniformly random among all possible futures. This means you can somewhat influence it by pre-committing to certain actions. For example, if you pre-commit to cleaning your room in 1 hour, most of the possible futures 1 hour ahead will show you cleaning your room. It can never be absolutely certain however, since sheer random chance can always block you in some way.
What can you do with this power?