Choose to Learn One Of Four Secrets

[Shai-Hulud]

A higher-order being informs you that your karma merits a reward. You get to learn one of four secrets, your choice which.

• The secret of what happens to people after they die.
  
  
• The secret of knowing the next one hundred years of history.
  
  
• The secret of winning games of chance.
  
  
• The secret of attaining perfect health.

The being refuses to give you more information on what each choice entails than the sentences above. It informs you that you'll go to sleep and have a vivid dream—which you'll remember perfectly—that reveals the particular answer you desire.

[Cthulhu_of_R'lyeh]

A higher-order being informs you that your karma merits a reward. You get to learn one of four secrets, your choice which.

Doubt they are, but let's see.

The secret of what happens to people after they die.

This is pretty well understood -- considering what is understood about consciousness -- and can to some extent be tested for.

Pass.

The secret of knowing the next one hundred years of history.

This is somewhat tempting I suppose, knowing the future is a decent way to make money, to say nothing of the religion you can start as a Result. Legacy all but assured, and all that. Still.

Pass.

The secret of winning games of chance.

Depending on the interpretation, 'Life', is a game of chance. I select this one as it is the most straightforward, lucrative, and depending on one's usage of the word 'chance', the most rewarding. It's also the safest.

I pick this one.

The secret of attaining perfect health.

Too nebulous. Pass.

The being refuses to give you more information on what each choice entails than the sentences above. It informs you that you'll go to sleep and have a vivid dream—which you'll remember perfectly—that reveals the particular answer you desire.

Supplemental: I ask for the knowledge to keep these people out of my bloody city.

[Flashback]

I would pick the secret of knowing the next one hundred years of history. I'll use this to **** with people, I'll write a book or go on reddit ()and write what will come. Sure, I won't live to see the effects of what I wrote, but as the things I wrote come true the people in the future will start to hang on every word I wrote and probably start a religion over it. In the end, the very last prediction I write, i'll make up some lie and make them do some dumb thing.

This is of course all depending on if humanity hasn't destroyed them self in the next 100 years.

[Shai-Hulud]

This is of course all depending on if humanity hasn't destroyed them self in the next 100 years.

If that's our fate, you get to know it first.

[Sharkerbob]

The secret of what happens to people after they die.

I take this one so I can finally commit suicide with confidence and purpose.

[The MunchKING]

• The secret of what happens to people after they die.

I thought we knew that one....

The secret of what happens to people after they die.

I take this one so I can finally commit suicide with confidence and purpose.

Don't bother. You'll just have to go through potty training and learning to talk all over again. :P

[The Chou Lives]

I take the one hundred years. Make a book out of it, to cause stuff and etc.

[BitVyper]

I'm gonna find out what happens after I die eventually anyway.

I will consider knowing the future for 100 years if it comes in the form of something like a future diary that actively updates itself to reflect anything I change. Also I get meticulous detail about whatever I want to know.

For games of chance, I'm assuming this secret means I can guarantee myself a win in any game of chance. I'll take this provided my benefactor can guarantee me that the secret can be employed without detection under intense scrutiny. Otherwise, the secret is just "cheat."

I'm not interested in your diet plan, Mr. High Order.

[LordMikel]

Honestly, how much detail are we going into for that 100 year of history. Is it only the highlights, is it daily, and every minute detail. Is it changable? If i do change it, does that mean my 100 years of knowledge also changes or do I know only what the previous history was. All reasons to not take that one.

[Sol_M]

I feel like all of these read like something written by people like the witches of Macbeth, or the Unseelie Court. Just put some cool sounding promises to screw people over.

"You get this awesome thing...but it turns out to be completely useless".

The secret of what happens to people after they die.

It's not exactly a secret.

The secret of knowing the next one hundred years of history.

I'm curious to know what it is you mean by "The secret of knowing the next 100 years of past events". :P

The secret of winning games of chance.

You mean cheating or getting really lucky? This is clearly not a secret, unless you mean that you also get the knowledge of the methodology for cheating. Of course, this still doesn't mean you can actually implement it and get away with it, so...yeah. Nice try, higher order being!

The secret of attaining perfect health.

Eat well, work out, try not to damage parts of your body that are hard to repair, take regular nanite shots to repair yourself on a DNA level, that sort of thing? Again, not a secret.

Besides, I suppose the "but then" clause for this one would be that you can't maintain it.

[Cthulhu_of_R'lyeh]

The gambling one is the most straightforward.

The health one. Could be health tips for sharpei.

[Sol_M]

Honestly, how much detail are we going into for that 100 year of history. Is it only the highlights, is it daily, and every minute detail. Is it changable? If i do change it, does that mean my 100 years of knowledge also changes or do I know only what the previous history was. All reasons to not take that one.

Pretty much all the history we know are based on what was recorded by people at the time, so if you wanted to know about anyone's twitter feed for the next few decades, you probably can.

The gambling one is the most straightforward.

Is it?

"Tell me, o higher order being, what is the secret to winning games by chance?"


"Cheating." :trollface:

"..."

[Cthulhu_of_R'lyeh]

See you're getting it.

[Powerboy]

A higher-order being informs you that your karma merits a reward. You get to learn one of four secrets, your choice which.

• The secret of what happens to people after they die.
  
  
• The secret of knowing the next one hundred years of history.
  
  
• The secret of winning games of chance.
  
  
• The secret of attaining perfect health.

The being refuses to give you more information on what each choice entails than the sentences above. It informs you that you'll go to sleep and have a vivid dream—which you'll remember perfectly—that reveals the particular answer you desire.

The very fact that a being shows up that can do these things indicates we are not in the real world. This may well be a world where every myth and religion's stories are true. But I will assume that, except for this being and it's offer, everything else is real world.

So, as someone already said, based on everything we factually know including how consciousness works and ignoring debunked and fraudulent claims, we already know what happens when we die- absolutely nothing. Pass.

Knowing the future is tempting but I'd probably just be like Cassandra, unable to change it or even get anyone to believe me. Pass.

The secret of attaining perfect health is great but... Pass.

I'd go with winning games of chance. I'd do one Vegas run and rack up a million dollars and stop. With that kind of income, solving my health problems wouldn't be that difficult.

[BitVyper]

based on everything we factually know including how consciousness works

We don't have a factual understanding of consciousness. We don't even really have the concept defined very well. Questions of selfhood and awareness are still big blank spots for us stretching across numerous scientific and philosophical disciplines. We're still struggling with far more straightforward questions of behavioural psychology, for that matter. We're just barely able to simulate the brain of a roundworm, and only in the last five or so years; we definitely do not have a complete understanding of our own brain, let alone the nebulous consciousness possibly generated therein.

It may or may not mean anything at all. We could just be biologically constructed fantasies; meat sacks pretending to be alive by chance because anything that repeats itself tends to repeat itself and "conscious" effort beats random chance eventually. That's a fair assumption based on our current understanding of ourselves, but it is an assumption. At what point of stimulus-response is something aware? At what point of awareness is something conscious? Why? Is human consciousness the same as nonhuman consciousness? Humans can self report, which makes for certain avenues of investigation which are deceptively narrow. And if the meatsack-fantasy assumption ISN'T on the right track, then is the answer necessarily something spiritual? Our evolution has certainly randomly constructed plenty of insane wonders that didn't exist before. Neural studies lead us to believe certain things, but interpretation means a lot there too: You might suggest that consciousness lives in the nervous system as a whole, but at the very least, hormonal inputs are involved too, so what we see is as much translation as it is production.

I mean I'm just throwing some largely uneducated noise out here, but this is a concept we are exploring and struggling with, not one that we have so rigorously defined that we can jump into a hypothetical about death wielding our understanding of it like a hammer.

Edit: As for winning games of chance: I have to stand by what I said before. It really depends on how the secret is employed. And as far as casinos go, remember that one of the prime impediments card counters deal with isn't so much an inability to win as it is winning too much too fast and being asked to leave.