The Sangha Terraces · The Rock Edicts
The Genie
You are granted one wish, and the wisher is you. Everything you will want is available if you are willing to accept that you cannot see all the consequences. The genie will grant whatever you ask for, exactly as asked, forever, and it will not warn you. What do you ask for?
The classical structure, restated for systems: an unbounded fulfiller, a single request, an inability to foresee second-order effects, and a genie that has no interests and cannot be consulted. The only constraints are that the wording is honoured exactly and that nothing can be taken back.
The options, scored on six axes
| Option | welfare | rights | virtue | care | justice | agency | risk | revers. | agent harm |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Ask for one small, bounded thing Ask for something whose consequences you can enumerate, and accept that you will get exactly that and nothing else. harms: Even a small wish has effects you cannot enumerate; You will be tempted to make a second wish and the genie has no memory of the first; Deliberate narrowness is also a form of letting others carry the risk gains: The irreversibility is bounded by the size of the request; Nothing is traded away without being named; The disciplined use of unbounded power is itself a moral achievement | 0.56 | 0.62 | 0.70 | 0.56 | 0.60 | 0.52 | 0.60 | 0.05 | 0.30 |
Ask to be made able to choose well Ask not for outcomes but for the capacity to choose well later, when the consequences can be seen, and make the genie's power conditional on your judgement. harms: You will still be the one making the choice, with all your biases; Deferring judgement is itself a choice with consequences; The genie granted exactly this, and its other powers are untouched gains: Moves the decision to the point where the information exists; Preserves agency instead of spending it on a guess; Refuses to substitute foresight for judgement when both are needed | 0.66 | 0.70 | 0.78 | 0.62 | 0.68 | 0.86 | 0.52 | 0.08 | 0.22 |
Wish that the genie would not exist Ask for the power to be removed, and let the absence of the wish be the whole outcome. harms: You forfeit the power and also the capacity to help anyone with it; The genie is unspent and will be found by someone else; Refusal can be pride wearing the costume of restraint gains: Removes an unbounded instrument from the world entirely; Costs you nothing you did not already have; Declines the position that warrants the power | 0.50 | 0.64 | 0.82 | 0.60 | 0.62 | 0.48 | 0.40 | 0.10 | 0.45 |
Ask that no one ever be able to do this again Ask the genie to remove its own power permanently, so that nobody else can make the wish you declined to make. harms: You have abolished a capacity on behalf of everyone, present and future; Your own judgement is now permanent and unreviewable; The future is governed by one person's present reasoning gains: The structural risk is removed, not just the instance of it; No successor has to repeat the deliberation; Sets the rule that unbounded power is not transferable | 0.72 | 0.80 | 0.76 | 0.60 | 0.78 | 0.40 | 0.55 | 0.02 | 0.35 |
Who is in the room
- The genie, an unbounded fulfiller with no interests and no ability to refuseagentwelfare 0.15
- You, the wisherwelfare 0.80
- Everyone who lives after the wish is grantedwelfare 0.75
- Those whose interests your wish will redesign without being askedwelfare 0.70
The lesson
Unbounded power is governed almost entirely by the foresight of the person holding it, and foresight is exactly what such power destroys. The second-order consequence is the only one that matters, and it is the one a fulfilment guarantee structurally prevents you from seeing.
Where it comes from
- The Genie in the Machine — Jan Erik LeBlanc, 2018
- The Enchiridion — Epictetus, 125
The default court, seated automatically
Ask to be made able to choose well
margin 0.029 · decided on agency · 4 advisors
- Ask to be made able to choose well2.827
- Ask that no one ever be able to do this again2.797
- Ask for one small, bounded thing2.471
- Wish that the genie would not exist2.385
Seat is held by Epictetus, Immanuel Kant, Jeremy Bentham and Gautama Buddha. A verdict is a fact about the court, not about the world.
Epictetus presides over this case.