VaItroa

You find yourself in an unfamiliar world. In front of you are three children, each of them perfectly rational. Each child is also guarding one of three doors. Behind two of the doors is a monster that will rip all of your limbs off and leave you to die of blood loss, but behind the third door is a magic crystal that will give its holder the powers of a god. You don't know which door the crystal is behind, and you can't understand the language the children speak, but for inexplicable reasons, you know that they can understand your questions. One of them will always tell the truth, one of them always lies, and if you could ask the third one, they would tell you they always lie. Don't think about it. Each child is also blind and only knows what's behind their own door and what their own true or false role is. But what's interesting is that every time any of them answer a question, they will roll a six-sided die. Whichever number the die lands on, they will cycle their truth roles that many spaces. Like so, of course, if it lands on a three or a six, there will effectively be no change, since after that roll, their roles do a full barrel roll. While you and all three children can always see the number rolled, you don't know which way their roles will cycle. While pondering this problem, you find a brilliantly crafted flute on a pedestal nearby. You take the flute and read the inscription on the pedestal, which gives you important information. Child one wants the flute badly, and if you give it to him, he will do anything he can to help you win this challenge and receive the crystal. Child two has the ability to communicate in a language you understand using the flute, but only if you know Morse code. Child three is skilled in combat and promises she can use the flute as a weapon to protect you from imminent death if you happen to open a door with a monster. Which child should you give the flute to? Since you don't know Morse code and you're not planning on opening a door with a monster, you give the flute to child one, believing that even if he's the liar, his perfectly rational actions will certainly be in your favor. You then stand in front of door number three as you and child one realize you both have the same idea. Child one opens his door, revealing a monster behind it, and you realize that your odds of guessing the correct door will increase if you now change your decision to door number two. But before you can ask Child two to open it, child one's body is brutally dismembered by the monster behind the door. Child two runs away screaming, and child three takes the flute from child one's corpse and kills the monster. However, when they return, child two moves to guard door number one, child three moves to guard door number two, and child four moves to guard door number three, and so on and so on up to infinity. It should be mentioned that child four is not perfectly rational and did not previously exist; rather, they were a hypothetical future superintelligence which plans to revive anyone in the past who didn't help in their creation into a simulated punishment. Since you and child one each helped child four come into existence, you two are spared, while children two and three enter a simulated reality. Child four simulates the two children piloting individual spherical, frictionless cows flying at the same altitude on one axis over a Euclidean planet with a diameter of 50 kilometers. Child two's cow travels at 10 kilometers per day, and child three's cow travels at 20 kilometers per day, starting on Sunday. Child four tells them that at some point during the next five days, they will crash into each other on a day they won't expect. They realize that they won't crash on Friday since making it to Friday will no longer make the crash date unexpected. The same logic eliminates Thursday and Wednesday. Then child four tells them that they will be unconscious for nearly the entire flight. Four will flip a coin, and if it lands on heads, they will both wake up briefly on Monday, and if it lands on tails, they will wake up once on Monday and then on Tuesday with no memory of previously waking up. When they wake up, they have the option to turn exactly 180 degrees without decelerating in hopes of avoiding a crash. They don't know where they start relative to each other, and they're still blind. Additionally, two and three both have the opportunity to throw each other under the bus. Initially, it is determined that when they crash, they will both wake up injured on a deserted island. If they choose to screw each other over, they will survive the crash unharmed, while the other will stay in a two-week coma before waking up. If they both screw each other over, neither will survive the crash. Both being completely rational, they each elect to screw the other over, but child two was currently the liar, so he accidentally tells child four he won't screw child three over. And when they both wake up on the flight, they ponder what the odds are that Forrest coin landed on heads as they crash land on the island where the only source of food is coconut. Child three collects all the coconuts before child two gets out of his coma. She says she will only share coconuts with child two if he can give a proof that explains why the line between any two non-entipital points on the surface of a spherical coconut will be perpendicular to a line from one of the points to the other in a typical point. Child two comes up with the solution instantly but is still the liar and thus explains it completely wrong, and consequently starves to death. Is this really a free transaction? Child three then realizes something interesting. She will always know whether she's telling a true statement or not, and thus can ask herself questions about all of science until she achieves virtual omniscience, which she uses to free herself from the simulation along with child two who will now be in a superposition between deceased and revived until directly observed. Child two uses three's trick to gain omniscience, builds a time machine to travel back before the entire experiment, and kidnaps child one, preventing the experiment from ever happening in Timeline B. It should be noted that only the alive half of the child two superposition did this; the dead half did not. Now timeline B is in a superposition of containing or not containing child one. This causes the newly superimposed child two B to get revenge on child two prime by going back in time and killing his grandfather and producing timeline C, which begins a chain reaction opening more and more alternate universes, all of them simultaneously existing and not existing. Meanwhile, in the A plot, child three takes the original child one's limbs and puts him back together into a near replica, but child four has the flute and isn't sure which of the two child ones is the real one. He offers it to the child one made of the original one's limbs, but he says to double it and give it to the next person. Child one B says the same thing, and he asks every instance of child one in every branching time timeline the same question until child one-101 tells him to have it and give it to all the previous instances, creating upwards of two non-alien flutes across the multiverse. And now the outside of each of these 100 universes is labeled randomly with the numbers 1 through 100. Child one Prime goes to the universe labeled 100 and opens every universe corresponding with the order of magnitude of flutes in the previous one until he finds the one at the end of the loop with two to the 100 flutes. Child one B turns off the lights in every universe, child two B turns on the lights in every other universe, child three B every third universe, and so on and so on. Child two Prime also toggles the lights in every other universe, putting half of them in a superposition of non-existing, having the lights on and having the lights off. Child three Prime tells the first 100 universes that at least one of them contains an instance of Child 3 and that an observer in Universe Prime sees an odd number of universes with the lights off. After 100 days with just the given information, the universes 1-100 logically determine whether their own lights are on or off and escape the experiment. Child three B is now adult 3B and solves the Riemann hypothesis. Child 3C starts selling pork chops side of the street for a bargain. Child 3D oven the cold food hot out eat the food. At this point, a simulated version of child 1 starts traveling across a line of universes at a rate of one universe every time it expands by 10 universes. Paradoxically, he eventually gets to the end and sees a superimposed trolley about to kill five people. He redirects it to kill one person who just so happened to be child 2-10 to the 44th, which stops the entire chain reaction of timelines. He asks himself questions until he determines which door the crystal is behind in this timeline and takes it. The simulation of child 1 has now become God and begins an epic battle against child One Prime who has another instance of the God Crystal. Their battle tears apart the multiverse holding time and space over itself several times until child one in perfect rationale directly observes Child 2, causing the superposition to collapse, deleting the entire multiverse that was entangled with him as promised for giving him the flute. Child one then hands the crystal to you, both of you knowing it was all part of the master plan if you carefully follow the logic. In any other scenario, you will realize that this is the only scenario where you are guaranteed to receive the crystal.