Three Wishes

[SckizoBoy]

See if anyone can't twist these somehow...

Overriding proviso: without moral, material or monetary cost to either myself or anyone/anything else -

1 - (Academic) tenure in a chemical ecology professorship
2 - Financial security for myself and my descendants in perpetuity
3 - A publishing contract

 

[Canadamus Prime]

1. To be in perfect physical and mental health
2. To always have enough money to live comfortably
3. To find a job that suits my skills.

 

[ADDmuse]

My three wishes would be:

1. to be in better shape than I am right now (such as being stronger, healthier, and more attractive)

2. more wishes (obligatory cliche wish)

3. and to have the same strength of personality in public as I have in private (pretty much to not be shy or scared of crowds while still being who I am)

And ha! I already know the genie is going to twist my wishes!
I'm curious to see how my wishes are twisted. Have fun.

 

[ChaplainOrion]

1. A super brain that would allow me to remember anything I want, keep working if I live to bea infinity, and learn super fast.

2. The ability to open a portal into a blank dimension where I am god and can do whatever I want. From throwing massive world wide parties, to recreating historical events so I'd know exactly what happened, and being able to learn and build whatever I want, like say an immortality potion. And for however long I'm over there time won't continue until I come back.

3. I would offer this wish to the genie to make sure that he doesn't betray me in the end.

 

[Akytalusia]

1. make me invisible.
2. make me incorporeal.
3. make me immortal.

 

[Da Orky Man]

That all now and future people around the world used common sense, logic and pacifism.

Granted. We develop advanced technology, contact alien civilizations, and get massacred by the arachnoid empire who then steal our advanced technology and wipe out half of the galaxy.

Fun times will be had.

Nah. He said pacifism. That means no repurposing engines for weapons, just getting genocided.

Also, the image doesn't show up, and I only know what you posted because I can see the link when I quote you.

No need to repurpose anything, just to run away. Multi-terrawatt fusion drives aren't good for ship hulls.
And I have no idea why it's not showing up. Works fine on my computer.

 

[A Satanic Panda]

The genie makes your wishes come true, and voids them by rewinding time, and only you can remember. The horrors you witness drive you painfully insane.

OT: I'd just wish I could remake some key decisions in my life. Give myself a rewinding ability, as it were.

Well, actually my first wish would be to have the genie be urged to please me, eliminating his backstabbery.

The final wish would be to make it very easy for myself to get in shape.

You rewind back to your birth, with no memory of the rewinding ability or your past life. You never said you could control it.

And the genie pleased you by giving you a blowjob and unknowingly giving you a flesh eating virus. The disease stays with you as you travel back in time.

You are also now born with no bones, so you can "get in shape" very easily.

 

[Rowan93]

That all now and future people around the world used common sense, logic and pacifism.

Granted. We develop advanced technology, contact alien civilizations, and get massacred by the arachnoid empire who then steal our advanced technology and wipe out half of the galaxy.

Fun times will be had.

Nah. He said pacifism. That means no repurposing engines for weapons, just getting genocided.

Also, the image doesn't show up, and I only know what you posted because I can see the link when I quote you.

No need to repurpose anything, just to run away. Multi-terrawatt fusion drives aren't good for ship hulls.
And I have no idea why it's not showing up. Works fine on my computer.

a) Engines are generally designed to not be weapons. An engine is only going to be able to cut through hull armour if the designers couldn't work out how to make that not happen. Just about every engine will still slice ships open like a knife through butter, but there are still consequences. One of which is that if you're not terrifyingly close to the enemy vessel, the engine exhaust won't be cohesive enough to do more damage than a warm breeze.

b) If running away will obliterate your enemies, you can't run away and still be a pacifist, because it would involve obliterating, which pacifists are against. So they wouldn't even accidentally snag the aliens when running away, they'd carefully point the engines so the aliens aren't toasted, and then they'd start fleeing.

That said, pacifism might just get wired in as a set of rules, with loopholes like "it's okay if it's an engine's exhaust". In which case, the problem with wishing for pacifism is much more short term, with the switchover to only loophole-abuse based weapons making mutually assured destruction completely void, and causing the world to descend into an extremely weird kind of barbarism where the marauding gangs can't hurt you, except if they close their eyes before shooting so that it counts as an accident.

 

[Lt._nefarious]

1) Get the woman of my dreams who will love me unconditionally for as long as I live and never do anything to harm me in a malicious way.
2) £3,000,000,000,000 deposited directly into my bank count tax free with no questions asked.
3) Get the man of my dreams who will love me unconditionally for as long as I live and never do anything to harm me in a malicious way. The powers that Alex Mercer has which I will obtain instantly in a non harmful or painful way that will have no adverse affects in the long run

Fuck you, Genie, I just beat the system.

 

[Sarah Kerrigan]

A release date for Prey 2
A Fucking Hawkeye movie with Jeremy Renner returning as Hawkeye
And world peace, cause ya know, it has to be there.

 

[Rowan93]

1) Get the woman of my dreams who will love me unconditionally for as long as I live and never do anything to harm me in a malicious way.
2) £3,000,000,000,000 deposited directly into my bank count tax free with no questions asked.
3) Get the man of my dreams who will love me unconditionally for as long as I live and never do anything to harm me in a malicious way. The powers that Alex Mercer has which I will obtain instantly in a non harmful or painful way that will have no adverse affects in the long run

Fuck you, Genie, I just beat the system.

You know that dream you had where the woman turned into a piece of stilton? It's that woman.

(Or, you know, whatever weird dream you've actually had that featured a woman you wouldn't consider attractive)

Alternately, "as long as I live" gets screwed with - the day she starts thinking about a divorce, you die in a car crash.

As for the "no questions asked"... the tax man tries to ask about the money, the words stop in his throat, and eventually the government works out you have something to do with it. You get taken away, and even if they let you out one day because they figure out it's nothing harmful, they're probably keeping the money.

I suppose I could abuse your grammar, and decide that you mean "either a non-harmful way, or a painful way", and you get the powers in a harmful, painful way. But I don't think I need to do that - you just don't have as good a control over the powers with your mind as you do with a controller. Enjoy about six months learning to do anything without hosing down an area with blood.

 

[Wintermoot]

1. infinite wishes
2.????
3. world domination

 

[Lt._nefarious]

1) Get the woman of my dreams who will love me unconditionally for as long as I live and never do anything to harm me in a malicious way.
2) £3,000,000,000,000 deposited directly into my bank count tax free with no questions asked.
3) Get the man of my dreams who will love me unconditionally for as long as I live and never do anything to harm me in a malicious way. The powers that Alex Mercer has which I will obtain instantly in a non harmful or painful way that will have no adverse affects in the long run

Fuck you, Genie, I just beat the system.

You know that dream you had where the woman turned into a piece of stilton? It's that woman.

(Or, you know, whatever weird dream you've actually had that featured a woman you wouldn't consider attractive)

Alternately, "as long as I live" gets screwed with - the day she starts thinking about a divorce, you die in a car crash.

As for the "no questions asked"... the tax man tries to ask about the money, the words stop in his throat, and eventually the government works out you have something to do with it. You get taken away, and even if they let you out one day because they figure out it's nothing harmful, they're probably keeping the money.

I suppose I could abuse your grammar, and decide that you mean "either a non-harmful way, or a painful way", and you get the powers in a harmful, painful way. But I don't think I need to do that - you just don't have as good a control over the powers with your mind as you do with a controller. Enjoy about six months learning to do anything without hosing down an area with blood.

I. Hate. You. So. Much.

(But thanks for pointing out the grammar error did not notice that...)

 

[Vicarious Reality]

I wish i had a house

And an education

And a job



Am i being too depressing

 

[Xaio30]

That all now and future people around the world used common sense, logic and pacifism.

Granted. We develop advanced technology, contact alien civilizations, and get massacred by the arachnoid empire who then steal our advanced technology and wipe out half of the galaxy.

Tst tsk. You forget the Peace Rays we'll develop instead of destructive weapons. Imagine the world's weapon budget focused on creating peace wherever we go. We'd also have the best shields possible if we were to go deeper into space.

But that's not something that common sense and logic gives you. We'd just have boring, practical technology.

For peace rays and energy shields, you need a humanity that does crazy shit, with no respect for logic or common sense. Seriously, why would you want to handicap humanity like this?

That does not make any sense. What would make sense is to protect humanity when searching for other advanced lifeforms in outer space. Not wanting to die makes perfect sense.

Sure, it might make sense to have a military budget of some kind despite being at peace. But if everyone has common sense, the only military r&d getting done will be improving on current, proven designs, forever. Doing new, inventive, adventurous things is not common sense, and is a violation of it. It requires the wonderful insanity of humanity to invent things, and making everyone have "common sense" would remove that spark of crazy.

Do you really have to be insane to invent new things? How about just being curious or interested?

To draw a parallel:
If an insane person wanted to fly, he would throw himself off a cliff with wings made to look like birds.
A person with common sense would refrain from something that might hurt him and try to get the theory right first, and then try it in a safe environment.

A person with common sense wouldn't waste his time on something so silly as flight, and would be an accountant instead.

I suspect we have different definitions of "Common Sense".

I use the following definition:
"sound and prudent judgment based on a simple perception of the situation or facts."
It can be applied in practically any situation and does not make you any more likely to be a accountant (in this definition).

What is your definition?

My definition is more to do with intuition. The common-sense option is the one that seems obvious to ordinary people. It's not necessarily sound or prudent, but usually it's what seems prudent.

I think I could have just started this discussion with "there are various definitions of common sense, and it's not necessarily a good thing", and saved a lot of time that way.

We still get the "Arguing on the internet without turning into assholes" achievement though.

Cheers!

 

[Fasckira]

1) Be exceptionally lucky.
2) Have a time machine.
3) Have a pet pseudo dragon familiar thing that proves to be my faithful companion in my time travels.