Talk:2741: Wish Interpretation

To all you people reading the discussion, why can't I add my own person page? I mean, is a year too new? I think I know, (but I'm not completely sure.) (talk) 23:29, 22 February 2023 (UTC)

Oh, you have to have an old enough account to make one? I had been wondering how to. Thexkcdnerd (talk) 00:02, 23 February 2023 (UTC)

Ironically, a banknote created by a genie would be counterfeit, although the odds of legal trouble over $20 are nonetheless low. 23:43, 22 February 2023 (UTC)

It doesn't have to be. The genie could take one away from someone, or just get one that's been lost. Also, the sentence for counterfeiting is the same regardless of the denomination. SDSpivey (talk) 00:31, 23 February 2023 (UTC)

The sentence for counterfeiting may be the same but the probability someone would actually go through the trouble of prosecuting you for $20 is much less than say $10,000 172.70.214.151 03:04, 23 February 2023 (UTC)

The US Treasury Dept. prosecutes every case it can prove. SDSpivey (talk) 04:06, 23 February 2023 (UTC)

So 2 things: First of all they need to prove it. For that someone has to notice. Not every 20-Dollar-note will be scanned, and I guess the genie could make a pretty good copy (if he needs to copy it). Also noone said US-Dollar. The Genie could make a twist and use one of over 20 other currencies called dollar. Not sure if US Treasury Dept. would be interested in that :D by the way, the eastern caribean dollar has the short "XCD" - does anyone think that a thousand of those would be labeled XkCD? --Lupo (talk) 13:13, 23 February 2023 (UTC)

Or he could use Monopoly money. Or Geniedollars. He never said it would be legal tender, after all.172.70.86.148 14:42, 23 February 2023 (UTC)

For me, Monopoly Money has always been in £s (the board I always used going from Old Kent Road to Mayfair, naturally), though I've noticed that online (hyperinternational) representations, that I see in game-ads, now seem to use a special "barred-M" currency symbol (to copy how £, €, ¥ and $ are variously barred versions of L, E, Y and S).

What Cueball-genie would use is an interesting phosophical question. I suspect he just gets whatever he needs (for personal use) out of petty cash and settles it up later. 172.70.91.152 15:47, 23 February 2023 (UTC)

Yes, I've read some story where a wish-granting entity generated money by re-printing money lost in some catastrophe (like, burned down, sunk in ship or something). Technically, such banknote is counterfeit, but it's impossible to prove it. -- Hkmaly (talk) 00:58, 24 February 2023 (UTC)

That's cool. Try https://what-if.xkcd.com/23/. Part 1. I need a new signature. (but I'm not completely sure.) (talk) 23:46, 22 February 2023 (UTC)

I would (as the genie) just teleport Black Hat to the desert. No other trickery or devastation needed. SDSpivey (talk) 00:34, 23 February 2023 (UTC)

The oldest "Wish that I wish I didn't wish" I am personally aware of is Midas turning everything he touched into gold, including the food he tried to eat and his beloved daughter. Personally, I'd wish that the genie teach me a lesson. Nitpicking (talk) 03:16, 23 February 2023 (UTC)

It's kinda funny how a citation is needed for claiming that wishing rain doesn't exist is bad because Randall will just cover it in "What If 3" 20:59, 22 February 2023 (UTC)

He already replaced the rain with candy in What If 2. --162.158.129.151 07:28, 23 February 2023 (UTC)

The proper way of teaching Black Hat a lesson would be twisting his wish to make it beneficial to humanity. Tkopec (talk) 08:20, 23 February 2023 (UTC)

"And I want you to put it in my house." / [POOF!] - "Here, I turned your house into a Klein bottle." 172.71.160.39 08:25, 23 February 2023 (UTC)

That would better satisfy "And I want my house to contain it", from one single-step literalist perspective... Wishes-gone-strange usually work on the basis of the 'laziest' misinterpretation (with or without the intention of mallice) that doesn't require too much reinterpretation.

But how to misinterpret "put it in my house"? Hmmm... Nothing to suggest that it must stay there. Perhaps everything is going to be squeezed in through the front door and (Niagra Straw-like) eventually pushes most out of the back door. The house structure (but not fixtures and fittings) magically strengthened to continue being houselike, even as whatever the back yard is like (before it gets its own turn of being sequentially transported through) fills up with mountains (literally!) of the resulting wreckage/mishmash.

But not sure if the house itself is not already "in the house", i.e. its structure, to be exempt by prior "in"ness (if not ownership)... I'm not a genie, and have not gone through the rather extensive training/job-orientation that they clearly go through. 172.70.90.34 14:56, 23 February 2023 (UTC)

Wouldn't the simplest thing be to just turn the house inside-out?172.70.91.151 16:48, 23 February 2023 (UTC)

"I've turned your house inside-out, and we redefine 'inside' and 'outside'. Everything, including the house itself, is within the 'outside' surface of the house." Except the small amount of air 'outside', of course. See also the "Asylum" in Douglas Adams's So Long, and Thanks for all the Fish. BunsenH (talk) 16:55, 23 February 2023 (UTC)

I had a good laugh when I saw one of these 'corrections'. US English mandates "fulfill", where the UK/etc English version is "fulfil", yet it also goes the other way and uses words like "reveler" where most (all?) other versions of English would prefer "reveller".
And would hope that, whenever words get USified, the editor involved realises (or "realizes", yet surprisingly not ever "realizez"!) that they aren't actually correcting typos (like they sometimes comment), merely relocalising the wordz.. sorry.. words! :P 172.71.178.65 15:21, 23 February 2023 (UTC)

In https://xkcd.com/1086/, it's shown that Black Hat gained the ability to wish on his eyelashes via wish; and if his wish on February 6th is anything to go by it's likely that whichever entity granted that wish deliberately misinterprets wishes in much the same way as this genie wants to. Should this be mentioned in the explanation? --A Stingray (talk) 19:47, 23 February 2023 (UTC)

Curious - if you put all the objects of the world's surface into Black Hat's house, would that be a neutron star, or would it get to a micro black hole? 172.70.85.56 (talk) 19:49, 23 February 2023 (please sign your comments with ~~~~)

The Schwarzschild radius of the whole Earth is less than 1cm, so we can say for sure that an accumulation of 'just' all things upon its surface into a volume the size of any house would be far short of gravitational collapse into a singularity.

I don't offhand know how much stuff there actually will be, thoug. We could start by extrapolating from something like this to work out how dense a packing you'd need in any given volume of house.

Likely still not anywhere near neutronium level, I'm guessing, because a tablespoon of neutron star apparently is the mass of Mt Everest, and you could fit a lot of tablespoons (or pour a lot of tablespoons'-worth of stuff into, though the distinction itself hardly matters) into even the smallest "bedsit" living space. 172.70.86.128 21:01, 23 February 2023 (UTC)