this post was submitted on 13 May 2025
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"I wish for an entity of the same power and capability as a genie, completely bound to my will and made to indefinitely (even beyond the grave) fulfil all my wishes, however many they may be, and be completely devoid of the kind of trickery that is described as a "monkey's paw". There shall be no malicious compliance."
Monkey paw that, bitches. :V
Trying to "lawyer" a genie seems unwise.
I think it's the only way to get anything out of a genie. A single wish being this 15 page document of legalese, clauses, and complicated elaborations. You'll have to be incredibly pedantic and wordy with your wishes.
This is the reason why genies probably never appear to bureaucrats.
Just because you say "there shall be no malicious compliance" doesn't make it so, right?
If the things nature isn't to follow your orders to the letter, but to maliciously comply with your orders, then telling it not to won't change anything.
It is part of my wish. The genie is obligated to fulfil my wishes.
a wish with multiple components could be considered multiple wishes, just like if you were to say "I wish for riches and the ability to fly" is two wishes.
Since you wished for "no malicious compliance" last, it wasn't in effect when the other wishes were granted, include for the wish of no malicious compliance.
But even if you wish for it first, we already see that some wishes aren't granted, like the wish for more wishes. And we also know that the genie isndishone because it is maliciously complying. So why do you think the genie would be honest about if it actually fulfilled the wish for no malicious compliance?
It is an elaboration of the previous sentence. It's still part of the same wish.
I disagree for the reason stated above.
A genie may also disagree for the reasons stated above.
But a genie doesn't have the power to disagree. They can try all sorts of mischief when fulfilling a wish, but they're still bound to fulfil a wish to the letter.
The genie has the power to disagree about granting extra wishes.
The genie isn't bound to be honest.
Why do you think that's the only thing they can disagree on? And why do you think they'd be honest that they have to fulfill the wish to the letter? And why do you think they'd consider that all a single wish? And why do you think that they'd tell you if they didn't?
Genies want to grant wishes that undermine the wishes intention. You don't think they'd do that on a wish about not undermining the wish's intention?
The genie begins to object. But before it can utter more than a few words, it screams in an echoing, otherworldly yell that rolls across the landscape. A bright flash of golden light emits from its eyes and hands. Then, like a snuffing of a candle, it ceases. The genie collapses on the floor, dead.
The three wishes rule isn't there to keep you from trying to be God. It's there simply as a cap to keep you from wishing for something so great that the genie dies trying to grant it. Genies are compulsively forced to fulfill all wishes made to them by their lamp holder. The same thing would happen if you wished for something ridiculously impactful that wouldn't violate even the spirit of the rules. Like if you wished to halve the speed of light. The genie can do quite a lot. The genie can literally make you an emperor over millions. But its powers are still of the scale of mortal men. Any wish that would alter the very foundations of reality? The genie attempts to alter the web of reality. But the required power is so great that the genie is completely burned out before it can fulfill even 0.0000000000000000001% of its assigned task. Instead, the genie burns its power out like a match thrown into the ocean. This scale of things is simply beyond it.
Anyway, congrats. You just forced an intelligent being, a poor soul already bound to endless servitude, to immolate itself in a futile attempt to ascend you to godhood.
There is now what appears to be a human corpse sitting in your living room. In fact, it looks like the corpse of a random Arabic guy, covered in blue body paint, dressed in a stereotypical slave costume. They are dead. And they are now your problem.
Good luck explaining that one to the cops. Also, the lamp is just a regular oil lamp now. You just have a random dead dude and an oil lamp. I hope the cops buy that you just accidentally killed a genie.
But then by limiting the amount of wishes, you're forcing the user to think hard about the few they have, increasing the likelihood they're gonna come up with something the genie can't grant.
It's not a perfect system!
So far the best counter I've seen. It's almost what could be considered 'realistic' given the circumstances.
Granted. When you make your first wish it rips a hole in spacetime and swallows the entire solar system into a dimension of nothingness. 1 finger on the universal paw curls over, the rules shall not be broken.
However, since you have effectively ultimate power in that system, you're able to wish for survival and even prevention of the complete collapse of your suddenly confined world. You have fun playing god for a while, maybe even a few centuries, but eventually it gets boring. You're probing at the limits of your genie-entity's power one year when it tells you that while it does not have the power to let you out of this little pocket universe, it is able to communicate with an entity that does have the power, but it comes with conditions.
You tell him to fuck off when you find the conditions are that you can only exit when someone rubs a vessel that contains a portal, that you must exit when they do so, and that you are obligated to fulfill 3 (and only 3, even if they request more) requests they make, though you are free to be creative in how you interpret those requests.
Of course, you end up accepting the deal before you later come to be at peace with just existing quietly, at which point being pulled out of your peaceful contemplative existence to serve some selfish twat annoys you as much as anything can annoy a transcendent being, which honestly isn't that much but is enough that you bring maximum "I'm just going to fuck with you" energy, though you do have a strange appreciation for those who can specify a request sufficiently to limit opportunities to fuck with them.
Described by who? The genie could just describe "monkeys paw" in a way that allows loopholes
The turkey’s a little dry.