You have an all-powerful genie at your disposal who may or may not act like Robin Williams. The genie says you can wish for anything with the following three exceptions:

1) You can't wish for more wishes.
2) You can't force someone to fall in love/lust.
3) You can't bring people back from the dead.

This genie is not of the monkey's paw variety; the genie will make the intent of the wish come true, and the intent of the exceptions are what are enforced (ex. "I wish to have another genie" or "I wish to have a spell of forgetfulness that I can use on the genie to forget the wishes already granted to me" or "I wish to have the powers of a genie" to find a loophole in gaining more wishes).

What are your wishes?

For me:

1) I'd wish everyone to have perfect mastery in any and all languages (this includes things such as programming languages and body language).

2) I'd wish for nobody to have to live in poverty.

3) I'd wish for everybody to be able to easily travel anywhere in the universe/existence.

i'm a selfish *******

1. money... as in full on "**** you" money

2. time travel... but not in the traditional sense of travelling to a time and physically being in that time period... but more an out of body observation mode... ever wondered exactly what [historical figure from before the time of photography] looked like? or if that **** happened the way they history books say it happened?

3. the ability to smack or choke people through the internet

1) To crush my enemies,
2) To see them driven before me,
3) And to hear the lamentations of their women.

1) See wish 2
2) See wish 3
3) See wish 1

1) TWODOA
2) THREEDOA
3) INFRASEPSIS

They're wishes. The only reasons mine weren't super selfish were because 1) I'd be happier with those wishes if it didn't just apply to me and 2) I'm very skeptical about gaining power of any sort.


I think we all wish to be Conan the Barbarian.


Trolling a genie at your own expense - that's dedication to the trolling craft!


I do not understand your last one.

Oh, but you will...

1. I wish all of Gebohq's wishes do not come true.

2. No more Finland.

3. A coke.

1. Death to all spammers, scammers and smokers
2. An end to all organized, televised sports
3. Abolishment of all religion

1. Ability to grant my own wishes
2. Freedom for said genie
3. if contractually obligated to spend 3rd wish then i guess a nice sandwich

I honestly cannot think of a single one.

1.) The power to control probabilities.

This is why, if you're with a group of people with wishes, you always go last.


It seems you didn't read my first post very well.


Admittedly, if I was in this situation for real, I'd be doing a hell of a lot more thinking and questioning and the like, so I don't blame you for not thinking of one that you'd feel wasn't good enough.


Are you counting things that, for argument's sake, would be 100% or 0% probable? If so, I'd argue that's the same as wishing to be a genie/god/someone with infinite wishes, since you could literally make anything happen then. If you're not counting the impossible probabilities, then that seems to be the equivalent of "I wish to be the most powerful sorcerer ever" which, while a boring answer, would at least be a valid answer.

Whoops! Forgot to reply to GBK's.



I could definitely go for #2.

1. ability to selectively violate special relativity in order to travel through time
2. ability to selectively violate the second law of thermodynamics in order to live forever
3. ability to make the star wars prequels go away

no don't make them go away... just replace most of the actors, the vast majority of the writing, get rid of midichlorians, and get a director who isn't a lazy old man

i'd like to change one of my wishes... actual time travel so i can go back in time, get the original camera negatives for the OT, high res scan of the unmolested (by age or george lucas) original elements, return negatives to their proper time... theatrical OT in HD for everyone!

maybe do similar things for other films that have been lost to the years

There actually shouldn't have been any need for time travel. If only the world had listened to the wise words of one man, speaking out here against colorization:

Question: will it be possible for me to travel back and time, in order to avoid derailing this thread by starting yet another 'teh prequals suck, george lucas = satan" orgy of nerd tantrum?

the only one derailing the thread with an orgy of nerd tantrum is you...

one man orgy? i guess if you use both hands

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1. I wanna be able to fly.
2. I want fast-travel to be a real thing, god dammit.
3. Snow is never a thing again.

Give it about fifty years and you'll have that wish, courtesy of Al Gore.

Can you steal the source code to JKDF2, and related projects, in your time travelling adventures? Or travel into the future when Jon'C has finished Sith2 and bring that back? That would be sweet.

Ironically, the opposite will most likely be true.

1) infinite money. That'll take care of a lot by itself
2) The ability to break the laws of physics at will. This includes ignoring gravity (flight!), phasing through solid objects, breathing in hostile environments (for high altitude flights or underwater), turning invisible, teleportation, etc, etc.
Shoot, after that I don't know if I need a third...

I always thought it'd be interesting to abuse the genie's implied unlimited power. Have the genie use his power to decipher what the true BEST wish would be for a certain set of circumstances:

Grant whatever three wishes are necessary to make the entire world eternally happy, healthy, and remain free.


(I don't think Happy would be the best choice of words there, since obviously sadness is a good emotion but I'm not actually asking a genie here, so I couldn't care less)

What's not to say that the genie will apply his/her own interpretation to subjective words like happiness? Without precise language, this could result in the genie doing almost anything.

Maybe first wish for the spontaneous creation of a team of individuals and capital goods to be created (all privy to your sole command) whose exact function is to draw out the precise documents which specify the exact demands of your next wish.

Whatever your second wish, your final wish might similarly have to be for a team of experts, but this time to help you make use of whatever the second wish granted you. So, for example, if it was to understand some secret about the universe, depending on the answer, your last wish might be for a team of academics to teach it to you.

(You could also just use your first wish to directly plug your brain into an all powerful and all seeing supercomputer that orbits the earth and is equipped with a superlaser, and be done with it)

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This makes me wonder not just what you look like, but what you would look like dressed as the Scarlet Witch.

I can't say this is the first time I've wondered that.

1. candy
2. candy
3. candy

Well heres the thing about rules lawyering genie wishes.

Rule #1 effectively rules out any sort of special ability or productive wish, since it's really just wishing for more wishes. You expressly can't have omnipotence, but with a large enough amount of wealth, and a small enough imagination, you can always get whatever you want. You'll also never run out of money because above a certain level of wealth it accumulates forever with no need for economic participation. Combined it's basically saying "infinity wishes forever". The same thing applies to supernatural powers or even something as modest as wishing for a productive farm, because eventually you'll reach a similar situation.

Rule #2 rules out any form of personal advancement, even just "to be happy". Being a better person is more attractive, which means people are being compelled to feel love/lust as a direct result of that wish. Even if the advantage is applied uniformly over all people - such as wishing for world peace or an end to poverty, greater personal security will inspire people to enter into relationships they otherwise might not have pursued. So the only legal wishes are those which cause harm. However, life is a fixed sum game, so harming any subset of people would directly or indirectly benefit the remaining people, which means any harm must be spread uniformly across all people.

Rule #3 rules out any wish which would change the intelligence or knowledge of any person, because the state of 'death' is not universal or well-defined. Any wish which made any person more stupid or ignorant would affect their philosophical and biological understanding of death, and create a reality for those people where doctors are able to resurrect some of their patients. On the other hand, thanks to the compounding benefits of knowledge and intelligence any wish which improved those would eventually lead to a world where doctors are able to cure death by our current understanding. Note that this also means people cannot be made aware of your wish, since a sudden change would likely inspire investigation and the subsequent creation of new knowledge.


So by these rules, here are the only legal wishes:

1.) Wishing for the death of all things.

2.) Wishing for damage to the abstract concept of existence. For example, wishing that all people would be subtly unfulfilled regardless of what they do in life, or that all people and all things will eventually be forgotten.

3.) Wishing for a worldwide benefit which is perfectly countered by reactionaries, precluding any actual benefit. For example, wishing for there to be a lot of brilliant software developers, but forcing them to spend all of their time selling ads.


Note that all of those wishes have already come true.

Jon`C, whose side are you on--ours, or the genie's?!

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Well, if I were on your side

Logically, any wish must be made for the personal benefit of the wisher. Even a wish which harms all people equally must satisfy some goal of the wisher, even if basic misanthropy, so the wisher personally benefits from the wish. Therefore, since any sort of personal advancement is illegal by Gebohq's rules, we have to conclude that any wish is illegal.

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