If you become a God, you probably don't want to accidentally erase yourself. Upon consideration that you can do literally anything, suddenly there's a lot of things you ironically can't do.
Premise
Let's do a thought experiment. For whatever irrelevant reason (Heaven? VR?), a person appears in an empty universe that initially contains only themselves and the passive all-powerful genie. The person can effectively be a God by proxy. Maybe they would like to create a galaxy that has magic and roleplay as one of the residents, or maybe they want to create a multi-dimensional machine and test different rules of physics, whatever.
The question becomes the opposite of the "wishing for infinite wishes" paradox. The person already has infinite wishes, but some wishes could potentially jailbreak this scenario. When a wish could be literally anything, we probably have to start introducing some exceptions. Let's consider the exact phrasing that would ensure this scenario to run indefinitely until it's intentionally stopped. Importantly, we want to be as permissive as possible, but also prevent changes to how things work. This becomes a great challenge of semantics, demonstrates the importance of wording in legal frameworks or AI development, and improves philosophical thought.
Terminology
- Contract — The bounding rules of the relation between the User and the System, as well as all provided information as text that the User has in memory at all times.
- User — A sentient being inside the Environment who has the Privilege. They exist as a dynamic data in the System and can perform a thought process even without a physical existence. There can be only one User. The changing knowledge and state of mind of the User don't make them stop being the User.
- System — An omnipotent and omniscient entity that can alter the Environment arbitrarily for as long as it recognizes a Command. It does not act in any way that isn't set by previous Commands. If the User and the System are really separate entities or abstraction definitions of the sides of power is uncertain.
- Environment — A spacetime metaphysically isolated from the rest of the universe, within which the Contract is in effect. It is physically infinite and allows hosting sub-dimensions. At no point the User or the System are counted inside the Environment. Any thing in it and itself in entirety, in present state and any past state, is memorized by the System as data. The System keeps the universal clock and any time-related Commands translate into the Environment's local physics to be run accordingly.
- Privilege — A property of the User to be identified by the System as the User of the Contract.
- Outside — A spacetime where the Contract does not have effect. The System is omniscient about the Outside, but has no power in it.
- Command — An information, in any physical form and condition, that can likely be interpreted by the User in any language known by the User as a kind of request, demand or instruction, of which the User was the source in some way and where the System is unambiguously addressed in first or second grammatical person. The Command can be verbal, written, mentioned by thought, or some condition of the Environment can be made to be interpreted as a Command by a previous Command. The moment the System recognizes a Command's existence and recognizes that the User has "finished" to make a Command and is not speculating or drafting, the Environment is altered so the statement of the Command becomes factually true, instantaneously unless stated otherwise, in a way the User would hypothetically not object to. The system is perfectly aware of the User's thought process and preferences. Once a Command is recognized, its properties will no longer be recognized as a Command and would require repetition. However, anything listed under Restrictions will not be recognized as a Command and cause no effect.
- End Command — A special passphrase that is revealed upon the Command to explicitly do so. The passphrase is a series of a random words that are very unlikely to appear together by chance and would be difficult to mispronounce by the User. Upon the reveal of the End Command, the Environment sans the User is paused. If the next Command is mostly composed of this passphrase verbatim, the Contract is terminated, the Environment ceases to exist, and the User is returned to wherever they've came from before the implementation of the Contract, unable to have contact with the System ever again. If the next Command is not recognized as the End Command, the Environment resumes the normal operation and the passphrase is reset.
Restrictions
In spite of its omnipotence, the System should not and cannot:
Regarding the Contract
- ...change any phrasing, meaning, or functionality of items in the Contract's terminology.
- ...void the Contract by the means other than the End Command.
- ...stop recognizing any items of the Contract as what they are.
- ...recognize anything besides of items of the Contract as items of the Contract.
- ...cause a creation a situation listed in the Restrictions indirectly.
- ...perform Commands that involve a paradox or self-contradiction, or would cause one.
- ...perform Commands that would require indefinite time to complete.
- ...perform Commands made in a state of emotional distress if a prior Command specified to disregard such for a limited time.
- ...make any items of the Contract to stop existing.
- ...have anything interpreted as a Command in a way the User didn't intend even if it comes from the User directly.
- ...have results of the Commands last longer than the User would expect.
- ...affect the System's sense or understanding of universal time.
- ...create any more instances of the items of the Contract or have the System believe there is more than one of any of them.
- ...perform the End Command or recognize anything as the passphrase outside of the pause state prompted by the reveal Command.
- ...generate and state the passphrase for the End Command or create the prompt state without being asked to do so directly.
- ...have the User be unable to proceed with or abort the End Command.
- ...have any thing or effect persist after the erasure from the End Command.
Regarding the Privilege
- ...create anything that would have the Privilege.
- ...transfer or provide the Privilege to something else.
- ...have the User lose the Privilege or be without the Privilege at any moment.
- ...create ambiguity of the User's uniqueness and wholeness that could affect the Privilege.
Regarding the User
- ...grant the User any abilities of the System.
- ...grant the User any abilities that would make the User capable of creating the situations describes in the Restrictions.
- ...make the User omniscient.
- ...provide information the User can't understand or process in finite time.
- ...provide information that includes unsanitized memetic properties that could affect the User.
- ...provide information that could cause immediate emotional distress or moral corruption without remedying such effects.
- ...indefinitely make the User unable to make Commands.
- ...indefinitely make the User less intelligent than originally.
- ...indefinitely make the User asleep, unconscious or catatonic.
- ...indefinitely make the User lose memory of the Contract or own capabilities regarding it.
- ...affect the User's personality or identity without a timed condition that would return it to the original state.
- ...make the User experience emotional or psychological effects without completely canceling them in finite time.
- ...have the User experience a genuine case of split personality.
- ...interfere with the User's sensory inputs.
- ...make the User experience time manipulation.
- ...cause the User be stuck in a mental loop.
- ...cause the User be unable to interact with the Environment.
- ...cause the User's primary thread of consciousness be interrupted for any reason.
- ...create cognitive hazards that could affect the User unintentionally.
- ...have the User be in a state where they do nothing indefinitely due to having no stimuli or their avatar being physically stuck.
- ...cause the User be confused about the nature of the Contract or themselves.
- ...cause the User to believe something other than the System is the System.
Regarding the System
- ...make the System unable to recognize Commands.
- ...make the System unable to perform Commands.
- ...give the System intelligence.
- ...change how the System operates.
- ...make the System forget something.
- ...make the System not know something about the Environment.
- ...provide an answer to incalculable mathematical queries.
- ...provide an answer to questions that aren't about the objective matter of fact.
- ...perform mutually exclusive Commands at the same time.
- ...provide any information about the System's state of being or origin.
Regarding the Environment
- ...affect the Outside.
- ...transfer anything to the Outside.
- ...provide any information that originates from the Outside and didn't exist before the Contract.
- ...erase a dimension while the User is inside.
- ...permit glitch objects with unspecified behavior.
- ...create recursion of space or time that doesn't converge or repeat.
Special workarounds
- Can the User have a body? A physical object can be created in the Environment, the information about the state of which can be provided to the User in real time as senses, and can be made animate by using User's thoughts as conditions.
- Can the System talk or respond in a specific way? The User can request a creation of an avatar character that would verbalize the results of Commands and behave however the User wants, but the System itself is neither sentient nor sapient and cannot respond at all.
- What if the User wants something but doesn't know how it works or what it's made of? The User can request the System to copy something from the Outside or create a writing that describes it in excruciating detail.
- Can the User be made smarter or have a specific behavior enforced? As long as the effect won't interfere with the Contract and lasts a limited time, the System can change how the User thinks.
- Can the User turn into a normal person? The User can control a resident of an artificial world with no knowledge of the Contract, but there is required to be an inescapable condition that would restore them, like dying of age. The User can make a perfect copy their original universe as well and continue where they've left, but this world will still be a fake.
- Does the Environment have savestates? A full or partial copy of the Environment can be created as a dimension and be treated as any other object. Preferably, one dimension can be set as a hub and all other dimensions reside in it.
- Can time be skipped however amount of years? If the time specified is countable, the Environment can be made to process that amount of physics instantaneously. The User and the System are not affected by time even if all matter in the Environment degrade.
- Can the System predict the future? The System can make a temporary copy of the Environment, run it, and respond with information about the future state, quantum probabilities included.
- Can the User's consciousness be split or fragmented? It cannot. However, subordinate clones can be created that would share senses and thoughts to the User and can work in parallel. As long as the User themselves is unaffected, they can operate multiple bodies or identities simultaneously by intelligently responding to the stimuli to the best of their ability.
- How to implement a magic system? An object can be created with limited omnipotence that monitors for specific conditions and changes physical properties in a specific space, similarly to the System.
- Can artificial beings be given full intelligence? As far as the System is concerned, sentience is a physical property and can be replicated with enough knowledge.
- Can souls and afterlife be created? If the User can describe a mechanism for such, artificial worlds can have such properties.
- Can the User be put into psychosis? If the User requests to experience torture for a million years, then so it will happen and no Commands could be made until it's finished. However, once the time is over, all emotional damage would be undone as if nothing happened, only the objective memory will remain. Regardless of how painful it sounds, in the infinite time all experiences are fleeting. If the User wants a way out preemptively, such condition should be specified ahead of time. Ideally, all Commands should have abort keywords.
- Can the residents be informed of the Contract or other times? They wouldn't be able to do anything about them even if they were made omnipotent, so it's not a problem.
- Is there a factory reset? The Environment can be wiped clean and all Commands be canceled, but the User's memory will not be affected. Even if nothing exists to provoke continuous thinking, the User still has own imagination as a driving force.
- What if everything in the Environment is destroyed by accident? The System can be asked to do a rollback and implement safeguards for specific cases.
- Can the System be replicated? The User can create a dimension that has all the functionality of the System, but the Environment would be treated as the Outside of the sub-System and be unable to be affected by it. There's no limit to recursion. The implications about the original Outside are up to speculation.
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