1. Clothes might include a bobby pin in my hair, which I could use to pick the lock
2. Wait ten years to see if anyone opens the door
3. Get on the wifi, ask someone for help
4. Find other devices in the area, communicate with them (ask for help)
5. (coerce into opening)
6. Post video of myself in room on social media, create outrage campaign
7. (If door is electronically locked, and my phone’s an android) hack the network (and open door)
8. (and hack a bunch of small devices, to ddos the building’s network)
9. (..., to ddos whatever controls the power supply)
10. Work out where I am, get schematic of building – find and cut power from in the room (there’s a light in here right?)
11. Use my phone/shoes to scrape away at the door for ten years, until I wear a hole in it
12. Same but through the floor and tunnel out
13. Same but through a different part of the wall?
14. Same but through the roof? (I’m pretty short though)
15. Hire militia to storm the building
16. Call police
17. Call local army equivalent?
18. Identify and call families of whoever’s locked me up to guilt trip them into letting me out
19. Get on to the UN
20. Call a locksmith
21. Call fire service (they do this kind of thing right?)
22. If I have wifi I might be being monitored. Be really annoying for a few weeks until captors get fed up with me
23. Same but sit and don’t do anything, until they get bored (use phone for entertainment)
24. Use phone/memory to work out if I might be in a(n unusal) simulation. Cloud-compute something expensive from phone to make it harder to run
25. Do something else that might break it (applying usual system-bug-finding approach)
26. Break the fourth wall (in this exercise), walk out through it
27. Find a way to blow up my phone battery near the door
28. (Assuming electronic lock again) Mess with phone electronics to make a taser, use infinite charge to fry the lock
29. Kick the door down (not needing food for 10 years → super strength)
30. Break the lock (similar idea)
31. Punch through the door
32. Pull door off hinges
33. Take apart phone, find something sharp, cut through hinges
34. I keep cards in my phone case – use one to do the lockpicking thing where you swipe it next to the door (this is relatively normal, how did I not think of it earlier?)
35. (Assuming card-swipe lock) just like, swipe my uni id card on the lock and hope I have access?
36. Order pizza to wherever I am, and put in the delivery instructions that to get to me, the delivery person has to open the door. Let them work it out.
37. Hire several hundred mechanical turkers to work out what’s happening
38. Post a babble challenge describing my exact situation on LessWrong, ask everyone for an insane number of ideas, and try the most promising/realistic ones
39. (If previous techy ideas don’t work) Listen to the walls for a pulse width modulator (most rooms have one somewhere), dig it out over the course of several years, use as extra electronics for previous ideas.
40. Same thing, but this also gives me access to the building’s electronics. Physically wiretap the building’s network, repeat previous hacking-style approaches
41. Same, but just put a stupid voltage across it (using infinitely charged phone) and see what happens
42. Same, but it’s probably in between the walls in a big hole. Escape through that.
43. Similar idea: dig through wall until you get to insulation (must be some if cold isn’t a problem for ten years) – which will be easier to dig through, and might lead into the roof or somewhere easier to get out from (probs not great for respiratory health though – use shirt as a face mask)
44. Pull a nail out of the walls and bash into the lock? (/hinge/other single point of failure in the door)
45. Wait out the ten years, learning a bunch of new stuff while I wait. The person who was originally locked in the room no longer exists there, and so has kind of escaped.
46. Similar thing but kill myself? (Kind of dark, not recommended)
47. Just going to sleep would do the same thing under some philosophies of self?
48. I suppose crudely lobotomising myself would also work here
49. Similarly, ten years’ worth of solitary, internet-aided meditation would probably erode my sense of self enough for the same effect.
50. Read a lot of really good fiction – it’s a mental escape, if nothing else
I’m glad they don’t have to work....
1. Clothes might include a bobby pin in my hair, which I could use to pick the lock
2. Wait ten years to see if anyone opens the door
3. Get on the wifi, ask someone for help
4. Find other devices in the area, communicate with them (ask for help)
5. (coerce into opening)
6. Post video of myself in room on social media, create outrage campaign
7. (If door is electronically locked, and my phone’s an android) hack the network (and open door)
8. (and hack a bunch of small devices, to ddos the building’s network)
9. (..., to ddos whatever controls the power supply)
10. Work out where I am, get schematic of building – find and cut power from in the room (there’s a light in here right?)
11. Use my phone/shoes to scrape away at the door for ten years, until I wear a hole in it
12. Same but through the floor and tunnel out
13. Same but through a different part of the wall?
14. Same but through the roof? (I’m pretty short though)
15. Hire militia to storm the building
16. Call police
17. Call local army equivalent?
18. Identify and call families of whoever’s locked me up to guilt trip them into letting me out
19. Get on to the UN
20. Call a locksmith
21. Call fire service (they do this kind of thing right?)
22. If I have wifi I might be being monitored. Be really annoying for a few weeks until captors get fed up with me
23. Same but sit and don’t do anything, until they get bored (use phone for entertainment)
24. Use phone/memory to work out if I might be in a(n unusal) simulation. Cloud-compute something expensive from phone to make it harder to run
25. Do something else that might break it (applying usual system-bug-finding approach)
26. Break the fourth wall (in this exercise), walk out through it
27. Find a way to blow up my phone battery near the door
28. (Assuming electronic lock again) Mess with phone electronics to make a taser, use infinite charge to fry the lock
29. Kick the door down (not needing food for 10 years → super strength)
30. Break the lock (similar idea)
31. Punch through the door
32. Pull door off hinges
33. Take apart phone, find something sharp, cut through hinges
34. I keep cards in my phone case – use one to do the lockpicking thing where you swipe it next to the door (this is relatively normal, how did I not think of it earlier?)
35. (Assuming card-swipe lock) just like, swipe my uni id card on the lock and hope I have access?
36. Order pizza to wherever I am, and put in the delivery instructions that to get to me, the delivery person has to open the door. Let them work it out.
37. Hire several hundred mechanical turkers to work out what’s happening
38. Post a babble challenge describing my exact situation on LessWrong, ask everyone for an insane number of ideas, and try the most promising/realistic ones
39. (If previous techy ideas don’t work) Listen to the walls for a pulse width modulator (most rooms have one somewhere), dig it out over the course of several years, use as extra electronics for previous ideas.
40. Same thing, but this also gives me access to the building’s electronics. Physically wiretap the building’s network, repeat previous hacking-style approaches
41. Same, but just put a stupid voltage across it (using infinitely charged phone) and see what happens
42. Same, but it’s probably in between the walls in a big hole. Escape through that.
43. Similar idea: dig through wall until you get to insulation (must be some if cold isn’t a problem for ten years) – which will be easier to dig through, and might lead into the roof or somewhere easier to get out from (probs not great for respiratory health though – use shirt as a face mask)
44. Pull a nail out of the walls and bash into the lock? (/hinge/other single point of failure in the door)
45. Wait out the ten years, learning a bunch of new stuff while I wait. The person who was originally locked in the room no longer exists there, and so has kind of escaped.
46. Similar thing but kill myself? (Kind of dark, not recommended)
47. Just going to sleep would do the same thing under some philosophies of self?
48. I suppose crudely lobotomising myself would also work here
49. Similarly, ten years’ worth of solitary, internet-aided meditation would probably erode my sense of self enough for the same effect.
50. Read a lot of really good fiction – it’s a mental escape, if nothing else
#34 is a reasonable argument for changing some of my personal carry habits.