Jake

Important If True 19: Pearls Before Slime

Recommended Posts

Hoisted. However, I think a good Djinn is concerned with a high irony factor and if I still existed I would make the Djinn admit that erasing all humans is basically a cop-out that can apply to most wishes, and probably only bad unclever Djinn ever go for it. It's like the fart joke of Djinn irony.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
2 hours ago, Patrick R said:

"I wish human beings didn't need to eat to live nor ever got hungry." is still a way shorter sentence than what we got going.

It's still open to the genie to say "okay, but you need nutrients somehow, so you can eat them if you want, or you can drink them. You don't need to eat them, but if you don't eat them, you'd better drink them, otherwise you'll die of malnutrition. Also you won't know when you need nutrients because you won't get hungry."

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
22 minutes ago, TychoCelchuuu said:

It's still open to the genie to say "okay, but you need nutrients somehow, so you can eat them if you want, or you can drink them. You don't need to eat them, but if you don't eat them, you'd better drink them, otherwise you'll die of malnutrition. Also you won't know when you need nutrients because you won't get hungry."

Fair enough! I still maintain trying to remove need for nutrients is an easier approach, but maybe the reader who sent in the e-mail has already walked that one all the way down to the point where he thinks giving human beings the magic ability to summon matter is somehow less complicated. 

 

On another note, I was born in 1987 and am nostalgic for early 90's nostalgia of the 60's (as seen in The Wonder Years and The Sandlot) and mid 90's nostalgia for the 40's (Rocketeer, Radioland Murders, The Shadow, swing dance revival, Tim Burton's Batman to a certain extent). Also I have an idea of being an adolescent in the early to mid 90's that is entirely informed by MTV programming of the time (both shows and music videos) that I find endlessly appealing though I cannot begin to define a single thing that would have been better if I was born 10 years earlier.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

OMG my head explodes every time the Thumbs crew tries to talk about biology or chemistry or some other science that isn't computers. It's like listening to my dad explain what he thinks is going on inside his computer when it has a problem.


Nick definitely did not have chicken pox on a few spots of his body that were supposedly the spots he touched the infected slime.  Chicken pox gets in your body through your nose or mouth when an infected person sneezes near you or when you touch their bodily fluids and then touch your nose or mouth.  So yes, he could have got it from some snotty slime, but it wouldn't give him a localized rash like poison ivy.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

When nostalgia comes up, it reminds me that the 2000s have been a golden age for nostalgia, but what is the tenor of the culture of the 2000s that people in the future will be nostalgic for? early memes? chillwave (which is just 80s nostalgia)?

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

@Patrick R My issue with your version of the wish is I enjoy the experience of eating and would rather have infinite perfect food over not eating at all.  One could argue that not requiring food to live doesn't mean you couldn't still eat but my counter-argument to that would be that food would become even unhealthier than it currently is because it would then provide no nutritional value whatsoever and only serve to add mass to a body resulting in decreased overall health.  I'd rather have nutritionally perfect food so I can enjoy eating with no downsides.

 

Having said that, the original wish presents a whole host of other questions.  At first I thought that Jake's creating poop from nothing scenario wouldn't be true since the food provides only the nutritional amount required to maintain perfect health so in theory the waste excrement would be minimal.  But then I started thinking about the rest of the food mass itself.  If I were to eat a whole pizza but only required an insignificant amount of nutrition at the moment, that means the rest of that pizza is waste and I would in fact be producing MORE poop than normal.  Given the ability to eat anything you want with no negative effects on your health and have it taste exactly as you want, I have to imagine humanity would consume an excessive amount of this perfect food and generate equally excessive amounts of poo.

 

From another angle, this wish changes the very definition of food.  If what I wish for causes no harm to me from ingesting it, that means I could wish for a cup of mercury that tastes like root beer and drink it with no ill effects.  You could conceivably eat anything since none of it would cause you harm.  It also expands the murder possibilities beyond what was posited on the cast because I could wish for a nice, healthy cheesecake flavored dagger that again would cause me no harm if I ate it but would easily be inserted into a back and disappear minutes later.

 

From a power generation standpoint, using current technology, it would mean that each power generation station would require several people who are near perpetual malnourishment to constantly wish for foods that would be high in fat content standing as close as possible to an incinerator to heat water into steam and power a turbine.  A healthy person would theoretically generate less efficient fuel since their fat requirements would be very low and subsequently their wished food would have less fat.  If we exploit the loophole above, then we could wish for some tasty coal or other combustible substance (assuming all the waste products such as CO2 would cease to exist twenty minutes later as they were part of the original food wish substance; this also assumes the energy created in the process remains but that's an entirely different can of worms).  Other possibilities include wishing for tons of water to power hydro processes or utilizing Jake's falling coconut scenario as a source of essentially perpetual motion.  It also scales down to wishing for gas (or some consumable form of fuel like cooking oil) for your car.

 

I could go on but that'll do for now.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Yeah I think the real lesson of this thought experiment is that the genie doesn't have to twist anything. Basically, giving humans superpowers will end badly, for at least some people. Same with any technology that expands our capabilities. Still, it's a net positive, probably.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

That's a good point! And what qualifies as eating? Like, could we create an army of child super-soldiers if we resigned ourselves to licking 10,000 babies, or maybe biting off a toe?

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
On 6/23/2017 at 11:37 AM, RubixsQube said:

If Jake is worried about power generated from genie food, you don't need to burn the food to generate the energy. If you have a series of people generating their allotment of food at some point where that food has potential energy, then it can be used to power turbines and still disappear entirely. Hell, it can even be dropped down the power chute and then collected at the bottom and eaten, thus providing unlimited free energy and still working within the spirit of the wish. 

 

I came here to post this. This is just basic science guys...

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
1 hour ago, Professor Video Games said:

 

I came here to post this. This is just basic science guys...

 

You know what rules? When someone is passively condescending to you for no reason.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Burning the food as a source of fuel is still a FAR more efficient method of power generation.  Operating within the 10 lb 20 minute constraint severely limits any gravity fed method.  Without going into too much detail, there would also be reliability issues as you would be hard pressed to maintain steady output.  Wishing for water as a substitute for a dammed lake might work but even then I still think a fuel source would be much more effective.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
4 hours ago, SecretAsianMan said:

Burning the food as a source of fuel is still a FAR more efficient method of power generation.  Operating within the 10 lb 20 minute constraint severely limits any gravity fed method.  Without going into too much detail, there would also be reliability issues as you would be hard pressed to maintain steady output.  Wishing for water as a substitute for a dammed lake might work but even then I still think a fuel source would be much more effective.

 

I agree, but also I sided with Jake that burning the food for energy would probably annoy the genie and the energy would just (makes the noise Jake made at 43:10 in the episode, "booo"). The version where the food is placed in a flat surface that then falls to power flywheels or whatever, that could just be one step in a food delivery system, keeping with the spirit of the whole enterprise. 

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Considering the entire language of the wish is designed to avoid as much magical trickery as possible, I'm much more amused that the loopholes come from the humans instead.  Violating the spirit of the wish to exploit infinite free energy strikes me as great irony if we assume that the genie is out to screw us in the first place.

 

Also this is one of the first times a subject has been brought up that borders on something I have expertise in so I had to come be a smarty pants.  This must be how Gormongous feels like all the time.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I just have to say the title of this episode is out of control! Love it!

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now