Will you press the button? 0% chance of getting $1 million. 100% chance of becoming a girl
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[–] 3 points 3 days ago (2 children)

I don't trust genies. If I ever meet one, my wishes will be:

"For my first wish, locate a black hole at least one hundred billion light years from Earth. Find a particle like a stray proton that is about to fall into that black hole. Make it fall in a nanosecond faster than it otherwise would."

"For the second and third wishes, just do that two more times."

If genue lore is anything to go on, simply not wishing for anything is a bad move. Otherwise, the genie might just magically pop up one day to grant your wish when you accidentally say "I wish...." at an inopportune moment. Best to exhaust the wishes on the most inconsequential and trivial thing I can imagine. Find a black hole that's literally outside our light cone. Find a particle that was already about to fall behind an event horizon and be unable to have any affect on the outside universe. Simply give it a little push and make it fall in a trivial bit faster. It's a wish that's both utterly trivial but also incredibly specific, thus minimizing the ability of the genie to twist it.

Also, meta-gaming a bit, this type of wish protects you from certain kinds of genies. If you're dealing with one of the truly evil ones, like from the Wishmaster series, they're still going to do everything they can to fuck you over. But some genies just like to punish mortals more for the hubris of it, a human daring to meddle with forces beyond their understanding, usually for their own greed. But make a wish like this? The genie will instantly get what you're trying to do and hopefully be less likely to actively seek to ruin your life in some horrifying way.

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