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[TheFerrett]

The goal of the Open-Source Wish Project is to create perfectly-worded wishes, so that when the genie comes and grants us our wish we can get precisely what we want. The genie, of course, will attempt to interpret the wish in the most malicious way possible, using any loophole to turn our wish into a living hell. The Open-Source Wish Project hopes to use the collective wisdom of all humanity to create wishes with no loopholes whatsoever.

The Open-Source Wish Project was inspired by this comic on Home on the Strange.

This particular wish covers:

This wish’s intent is to allow someone to live for as long as they want to. (Living through the heat death of the universe could get a little, you know, boring.)

And this is how what we would tell the genie to get it:

“I wish to live for as long as I desire in a completely physically healthy and attractive version of this body that I have now, and be unable to be injured or restricted in my motions or thoughts, until such a time as I mouth the words ‘I wish to be dead’ five times in a row.”

1) If you think you have found a loophole (or "bug") in the current Wish wording that could backfire significantly, cut-and-copy the precise phrase you have issues with and post your suggested fix thusly:

BUGGED PHRASE:
…the erroneous part of the phrase.

POTENTIAL MISINTERPRETATION:
An explanation of how the phrase could be twisted to serve that genie's evil ends.

SUGGESTED FIX:
…the reworded phrase.

2) If you think the current Wish wording is lacking something that could be disastrous, then post it thusly:

WORDING OMISSION:
…the suggested phrase you think should be in the wish.

POTENTIAL MISINTERPRETATION:
An explanation of how, without this added clause, our wish could come to ruin.

3) If you think the entire Wish wording is so hopelessly botched that you would need to wish for something else entirely to get what you'd actually want, post it this way:

BUGGED WISH WORDING:
Your new wording, rewritten from the ground up

REASON FOR NEW VERSION:
An explanation of why the foundations of the current Wish wording are so frotzed that it'd be better to start over, with a list of why your changes are better.

Periodically, all of the changes will be looked over by the moderators, and the most reasonable of the suggested changes will be incorporated into the official Wish text, at which point this thread will be closed and the new Wish version will be put open for discussion.

There are other Wish wordings for different goals, which you can see here. If you want to suggest a new Wish goal, go here. You may cut-and-copy the wish with attribution to its original source on Home on the Strange.

That said, let's wishulate!

[ShadoStahker]

Change:

"five times in a row"

To:

"five consecutive times"


"in a row" is just poor wording, and can have meanings that have nothing to do with time.


Remove:

"for as long as I desire"


It is extraneous, considering the caveat at the end, and may be interpreted such that at your first desire of death, you die, bypassing the final caveat.


Add:
"and mentally"

To:
"in a completely physically healthy"


Revised Version:
“I wish to live in a completely physically and mentally healthy and attractive version of this body that I have now, and be unable to be injured or restricted in my motions or thoughts, until such a time as I mouth the words ‘I wish to be dead’ five consecutive times.”

[phase cactus]

I dunno what to say but that this will be a very tricky wish to perfect.

Sorry I've got no solutions, only problems, but here are some things I can't figure out how to address.

POTENTIAL MISINTERPRETATION:

"unable to be injured or restricted in my motions or thoughts"


This just calls up a million issues. Start with "unable to be injured." Can you ever give blood again? Will dead skin cells still be scraped off? Are you allowed to clip your toenails ever after? I can't think of an injury definition without loopholes.
"unable to be [...] restricted in my motions" is a bigger problem. The only way to completely unrestrict someone's motion is to make them immaterial. Only without a physical presence can your motion be unrestricted.
"unable to be [...] restricted in my [...] thoughts" is just wild, it would probably mean comprehending the entirety of existence and thinking every possible thought (infinite, no?) at once, after which, since you are necessarily still alive, things might be boring.


CONTRADICTION:

"unable to be [...] restricted in my [...] thoughts"
and
"live in a completely [...] mentally healthy [...] version of this body"


Not being mentally restricted means having the option of going the crazy route, which is disallowed by the other condition. As long, anyway, as we are defining mental health by our society's standards.


POTENTIAL MISINTERPRETATION:

"physically and mentally healthy and attractive version of this body that I have now"


"Attractive" to whom? How "healthy?" How much change is allowed if the "body that I have now" doesn't fit one or more of these criteria? This is very worrisome in the hands of an evil or even impartial genie.
Define what can and can't still change (as time passes) about the body we apparently want to freeze as it is. Maybe we want, I dunno, circulation still? Are we allowed to eat and defecate after this wish, or do we maintain homeostasis? Can the brain keep wrinkling to create memories? What happens when it has wrinkled all it can wrinkle?


PROBLEM ASSUMING REVISION:
"unable to be [...] restricted in my motions"
"I mouth the words ‘I wish to be dead’ five consecutive times"


Assuming we stop the unrestricted motion to avoid floating out into space (as fast as we want,not even restricted by our own shape or the light speed barrier), we are back to being restricted, which means if someone pours molten lead all over you and lets it cool, assuming you don't kill yourself very quickly before it hardens (wouldn't you be busy at the edge of shock [can't actually go into shock, that'd be unhealthy] anyway?) you will be frozen and unable to mouth the words. But hell, if your mind's unrestricted you'll just use telekinesis or something anyways.

Revised Version: sorry for the lack of changes
“I wish to live in a completely physically and mentally healthy and attractive version of this body that I have now, and be unable to be injured or restricted in my motions or thoughts, until such a time as I mouth the words ‘I wish to be dead’ five consecutive times.”
_________________

[miss_cryptic]

OK. I've got a problem with:

BUGGED PHRASE

...mouth the words 'I wish to be dead' five times in a row...

POTENTIAL MISINTERPRETATION

The issue here is that you could technically mouth the words 'I' and 'wish' and 'to' and 'be' and 'dead' five times in a row over any extended period of time without completing them as a phrase. They're not uncommon words, and we're talking about a potentially lengthy period of time here. Unless you take a vow of silence or change the wording of the wish, it's at least possible. The suggested 'consecutive' doesn't fix it either.

SUGGESTED FIX

'...mouth the specific phrase 'I wish to be dead' five times in a row without interruption of the phrase by mouthing other words'.

There's also an omission here. You've failed to mention that you should mouth the words of your own free will. You talk about desire but not free will. If someone is say, holding your family hostage and threatening them with torture and rape unless you end your life, you'd strongly desire to do so but it wouldn't be of your own free will.

Then there's our old friend consent. If you're someone who talks in their sleep, or you decide you want to revert back to a child-state for a bit as one of your wishes, or you get high on drugs, you could possibly say the phrase five times over with complete free will but without knowing consent.

So my edited version of that section of the wish would read:

'... mouth the specific phrase 'I wish to be dead' five times in a row without interruption by mouthing other words and with free will and full knowing consent.'

[b414213562]

Bugged Phrase:
"... until such a time as I mouth the words ‘I wish to be dead’ five times in a row."

Potential Misinterpretation:
As miss_cryptic pointed out, the genie might connect otherwise unconnected words. Since we're not talking about a lot of words here, let's just spell it out for the genie so there's no misunderstanding.

Suggested Fix:
"... until such a time as I mouth the phrase 'I wish to be dead, I wish to be dead, I wish to be dead, I wish to be dead, I wish to be dead.'

Potential Misinterpretation:
miss_cryptic also pointed out that talking in ones sleep, etc. could prove very unfortunate.

Suggested Fix:

"... until such a time as I consciously and willingly mouth the phrase 'I wish to be dead, I wish to be dead, I wish to be dead, I wish to be dead, I wish to be dead.'

Wish alteration suggestion:
This would alter the nature of the wish substantially, but much of the flavor in human life comes from the knowledge of our mortality. The wish might be more useful if we phrased is such that only the immortality is lost. At that point, you can step in front of a truck if you actually want to die then, or you can (try to) live a long, but mortal, life if you so chose.

[TheFerrett]

[TheFerrett]

[Aliza]

Some gotchas:

1. The classic failure mode of the wish for eternal life is to forget to couple it with the wish for eternal youth. The normal healthy body of a 90-year-old is not what most people want to inhabit forever when they wish for eternal life.

2. I could live for a very long time if I got on a spaceship going close to the speed of light, but that's not what this wish is for, either.

3. A number of SF authors, such as Kim Stanley Robinson, have suggested that extreme longevity might carry the risk of not being able to remember more than 100 years into one's own past. It's not clear whether this would be a bug or a feature.

4. Most people want to live among other people. Immortality might be unpopular in many social circles

5. By the same token, never getting sick or injured might be suspicious.

A workaround for #1 and #4 might be to have the ability to periodically choose your apparent age, from which you will then age normally until you choose the next rejuvenation.

Revised Version:

“I wish to live in a completely physically and mentally healthy and attractive version of this body that I have now, and be unable to be injured or restricted in my motions or thoughts, until such a time as I mouth the words ‘I wish to be dead’ five consecutive times.”

"I wish to live in the locations of my choice, in a physically and mentally healthy, uninjured, and apparently normal version of my current body, which will heal from all injuries at a rate three sigmas faster than the average given the medical technology available to me, and which will be protected from any diseases, injuries or illnesses causing disability, pain, or degraded functionality or any sense, organ, or bodily function for more than ten days consecutively or fifteen days in any year. At any time I may rejuvenate my body to a younger age, by saying five times without interruption, and with conscious intent, 'I wish to be age [number]', at which point my body will revert to a younger age and I will commence to age normally from that stage, with all of my memories intact. At any time I may die, by saying five times without interruption, and with conscious intent, 'I wish to be dead.' The terms 'year' and 'day' in this wish shall be interpreted as the ISO standard definitions of the Earth year and day as of 2006."

(Wow, that got long!)

[Aliza]

"[...]at which point my body will revert to that younger age[...]

[Aliza]

You also need to keep an open mind if you're going to live forever. Don't know how to phrase that, though.

[Aliza]

I posted this in my LJ, and got a few bugs pointed out.

'I wish to be age [number] years' [Thanks to feste-sylvain ]

"[...] standard definitions of the Earth year and day current as of the stating of this wish." [Thanks to mrf-arch ]

[Jacob Orlove]

Another workaround would be a temporal constant, like the half-life of cesium, rather than the more nebulous "day".

[TheFerrett]

You may find Version 1.1 in this thread