The most interesting stories come from a power in Exalted called “Wise Choice”. Basically, you give it a situation and a finite list of actions you could take and it tells you the one that will have the best outcome for you within the next month. It also requires a moderate expenditure of mana, so it can’t be used over and over without cost.
When I read what the charm did, I thought of Harry’s time-experiment with prime numbers. It was immediately obvious that Wise Choice could factorize any number easily, although perhaps not cheaply if it has a large number of factors. From there, it also expanded to finding literally anything in the world either with one big question (if low on mana) or a quick series of smaller ones (if low on time) by dividing the world into a grid and either listing every square or doing a basic binary search via asking the power “Given that I’m going to keep divind the world in half and asking a similar question to this one, which half of the world should I focus on to get within 10 feet of Item/Person X’s location at exactly 7PM tomorrow evening”
I also figured out that you can beat the one month time limit by pre-committing to asking the same question in 27 days and having someone else promise to give you a reward if you state the same thing each month, with the caveat that you have to give it all back if you’re proven wrong in the end or change your answer. This can be shown to work (assuming I haven’t made a mistake) by taking a simple case of there being two boxes, one containing ten million dollars and the other being empty. By choosing a box now, it will be opened in six months and you will be given what is inside. Without the trick, Wise Choice looks forward one month, sees no difference and tells you “it doesn’t matter”. With the trick, Wise Choice looks forward a month, and tells you to say what it sees future you saying, even though it doesn’t “understand” why. However, future you can see an additional month forward, and uses it to see future you+2, etc. Therefore, the first instance gives you the true box, even though it can’t see to when the box opens.
Of course, it’s possible that I’ve missed a possible case that makes those tricks invalid. I don’t have access to an actual infinite-knowledge superpower to check my work, but I figure telling other people about it so they can see things I missed is almost as good.
We’re curious how you’ve used information theory in RPGs. It sounds like there are some interesting stories there.
The most interesting stories come from a power in Exalted called “Wise Choice”. Basically, you give it a situation and a finite list of actions you could take and it tells you the one that will have the best outcome for you within the next month. It also requires a moderate expenditure of mana, so it can’t be used over and over without cost. When I read what the charm did, I thought of Harry’s time-experiment with prime numbers. It was immediately obvious that Wise Choice could factorize any number easily, although perhaps not cheaply if it has a large number of factors. From there, it also expanded to finding literally anything in the world either with one big question (if low on mana) or a quick series of smaller ones (if low on time) by dividing the world into a grid and either listing every square or doing a basic binary search via asking the power “Given that I’m going to keep divind the world in half and asking a similar question to this one, which half of the world should I focus on to get within 10 feet of Item/Person X’s location at exactly 7PM tomorrow evening” I also figured out that you can beat the one month time limit by pre-committing to asking the same question in 27 days and having someone else promise to give you a reward if you state the same thing each month, with the caveat that you have to give it all back if you’re proven wrong in the end or change your answer. This can be shown to work (assuming I haven’t made a mistake) by taking a simple case of there being two boxes, one containing ten million dollars and the other being empty. By choosing a box now, it will be opened in six months and you will be given what is inside. Without the trick, Wise Choice looks forward one month, sees no difference and tells you “it doesn’t matter”. With the trick, Wise Choice looks forward a month, and tells you to say what it sees future you saying, even though it doesn’t “understand” why. However, future you can see an additional month forward, and uses it to see future you+2, etc. Therefore, the first instance gives you the true box, even though it can’t see to when the box opens.
Of course, it’s possible that I’ve missed a possible case that makes those tricks invalid. I don’t have access to an actual infinite-knowledge superpower to check my work, but I figure telling other people about it so they can see things I missed is almost as good.