Okay, this was by far the hardest one yet, and I certainly didn’t do it in just 1h. Very rewarding though—especially as I tried introspecting on my cognition as I was doing it. (I learnt some new things, though I’ve redacted those notes here.) I also found it helpful to answer the nearby question of “do things that cause the world to end up in a state where the candle is lit”, as well as just reaching the subgoal “create fire”.
I also wrote some I didn’t feel counted, but included them anyway just to keep the babble going, and so overshot the target a bit.
1 rubbing your hands against each other
2 one of those handheld candle lighting machines we have in the kitchen
3 matches
4 gather some wood and make a fire, dip candle into fire
5 bribe or persuade a dragon to help you
6 find a volcano, lower candle down with a rope and dip it in the lava
7 break out of the simulation and edit the source code for the candle to be lit
8 Make a great beat and play it to the candle. “It’s lit”.
9 Become really good at rationality and display your skills in public, such that you become a beacon of Science and light a metaphorical candle for young rationalists
10 Fire a gun next to it such that a spark hits the candle
11 Launching a nuke at such a distance that the candle is lit without being destroyed
12 Leave it outside during a thunderous evening
13 Wire a wire through it and turn on the electricity
14 Post bounty online asking for best ways to light a candle
15 Go to a restaurant where they’re serving burning souffle or some drink which is initially on fire, sneak in candle and light it
16 Masquerade the candle as a log, sell it to someone and get them to put it in the fireplace, then activate the built in robotics equipment to have it walk back to you
17 Find a neighborhood barbecue
18 Find one of those churches where passers-by can pick up candles and light them and think of something profound. Strategically leave candle there until it gets lit.
19 Find some place that’s really dark and where lots of people have strong incentives to get more light.
20 Find a vampire in need of a more evil aesthetic but who’s a bit short on candles. Figure out way of doing this without getting hurt.
21 Place it at SpaceX launch station
22 In a cool ritual, have 100 hundred scientists throw little cotton-balls-set-on-fire toward it. Hope one hits.
23 Flamethrower.
24 (Do not try at home.) Fill room with gas. Turn on stove. Escape.
25 Find some place where a fire is already burning, and carve the object that holds the fire into a candle. Perhaps cover it entirely in stearic.
26 That fire spell from The Witcher
27 Hold it close to something that gets really hot. Maybe a car wheel spinning idly in the same location over and over.
28 Find somewhere where a movie is being filmed (with real special effects), wait for opportune moment
29 At a crematorium
30 Dwarwen mine where metals are melded. Pay in gold coins.
31 Blowtorch
32 Midsommer bonfire
33 Place it on a friend’s dinner table. Just wait for an important occasion.
34 Invent a new ritual holiday that involves the lighting of candles. Wait.
35 Explode a bomb near it
36 write a simulation of universe, place candle immovably in the middle of Africa, wait for humans civilisation to discover fire and light it
37 by sending it on a rocket close enough to a star (while making sure to maintain some sort of oxygen container for it to burn through)
38 by twiddling the wick between my fingers really quickly
39 by having a computer charger that is too… strong(??) for the current computer, as well as some old, non-safe plug sockets, such that there’s some kind of overheat/explosion accident
40 Somewhere inside a car, somehow, I think sparks are being formed (or something similar happens?? man I don’t know anything about engineering). Try to leverage that.
41 study the origins of fire and build a new sort of fire device that has never existed
42 jump up and down on the same spot until it gets very warm
43 I once tried banging a hammer into a surface a lot to see if it got hotter. It did… slowly. Could repeat that and see if the thing catches fire.
44 Dig a tunnel into center of the earth, which is allegedly filled with hot stuff.
45 Find a heat exhaust, build some filter that turns it from a wide opening into a super thin one. Place the candle there, and then block of the other end, such that all the heat builds up in a very small space.
46 Convince a large group of internet people that it would be inspiring if we formed a “mini olympic torch lighting chain” where everyone lit and carried forwards a torch until it reached This Candle Symbolising the Light of Science
47 Medieval fiery arrow shot from top of castle by master archer.
48 Find Elon Musk, and just have the candle be lit by the ceaseless fire in his soul.
49 Fireworks! Would look cool as well.
50 Lighter.
(The Roam template I use only goes up to 50, so at this point the numbering restarts)
1 Laser.
2 Destroy a bunch of other light sources in the world, thereby strongly increasing the incentive for others to light this candle.
3 Find a nearby school, find some smoking teenagers, light it with the tip of their cigarettes
4 Just build a candle replica that just uses a lamp and no fire. Just press the button.
5 Go to a circus or other place where you have some of these “fire acrobatics” people who’ll swing little jars of fire in cool motions. Get close enough and sneak a flame from them.
6 Wait for the apocalypse, will probably be lots of fire and flame around
7 Read Dante or the Orpheus/Eurydicee story and try to find the road to hell, obtain flames from there
8 Leave it in the oven on high temperature
9 Magnifying glass
10 Get someone to play a guitar solo so epic it set everything around it on fire
11 Make a major political party have a lit candle be their symbol, strongly increasing demand and incentives for other to help
12 Cause their to be a major local vigil, also increasing demand (either by causing something really bad to happen, or by encouraging people to commemorate something really bad that has happened)
13 Light with tiki torch in Minecraft
14 Increase the oxygen level a lot in some room, such that the people in there will want to burn candles to decrease it (is that how it works??)
15 “Commoditise the complement” of candles to increase demand. What is that? Rituals, occasions, wine, romance, darkness, …
16 Find a jet pack enthusiasts club, quickly sneak by and light it while one of them is starting up their pack.
17 Closed the time loop where the candle is just always lit but by no one in particular (i.e. you find a lighter on your door step which you then go back in time and put there).
18 Make a strong incentive for people to act as if though the candle is lit, for example by having lots people claim that unlit candles are discriminatory, and punish anyone who voices dissent.
19 Place it in front of exhaust pipe of fighter jet?
20 One of those cinematic, long trails of gunpowder on the ground, leading to the candle.
21 Get help from superman or that x-men mutant who shoots laser through his eyes
22 Study forgotten ancient lore and obtain power of sorcery. Use it to light candle.
23 Somehow increase temperature of earth’s surface to cause everything to catch on fire/melt
24 Finally a practical use case for California wildfires!
25 Go back in time and convince Jim Morrison to rewrite his famous song to “Come on baby light my candle” instead
(Shoot at it from a cannon)
26 Leverage a malfunctioning MRI machine somehow(???)
27 By slamming rocks together in the way they did it in the old times
28 Hide it inside of the torch that will be used for olympic games
29 Go around the neighbourhood, finding a bunch of lit candles, place them next to you in a beautiful pattern EXCEPT that in a symmtery-breaking place is your candle. Wait until someone fixes it.
30 Find a lazy person who urgently needs to do something romantic for their partner, but never does such things so they don’t know what to do, and rent the candle to them but promise they must give it back while it’s still lit.
31 Become landlord of a house that has a long, dark hallway between residential units. Leave this candle as the only available one in the middle of the hallway. Wait.
32 Just ask a stranger kindly to help you.
33 Fiverr.
34 Get David Blaine to pull his kerosene and water trick to light it. (Seriously go check it out, it’s unbelievable.)
35 Find someone who has a hot air balloon, use the fire mechanism that they use to fill it with hot air.
36 Teaching some monkeys to invent fire, and then have them do it for you.
37 Catch some flaming ash from a volcanic eruption? (Different from the previous volcano point, which as about going inside to get the lava)
38 Build a Zoom add-on that render flames on candles using AI. Everything’s remote anyway, no one will notice!
39 Realise that the true candle was the friends we made along the way.
40 Build a tiny candle small enough that can be lit by the firing of neurons (obtained from the brain of an animal where it’s morally more fine to use it’s brain to solve babble challenges...)
43 disassemble and short-circuit phone in order to get a spark
44 Just plug in a device and try to harvest the spark (you sometimes see it right before you plug something in or right after you’ve unplugged it)
45 Get a lot of people to come around, have them all breathe into a single thing that traps and the air, keep doing this until the air gets hot enough to light the candle.
46 Gaslighting a friend by writing in their daily notes “Gah, I know I can light Jacob’s candle, but why doesn’t it work? Surely there’s a way, there must be a trick… I can’t let Jacob win… let me just go to him right now and show him that it’s possible to light this candle”
47 Obtain all the infinity stones.
48 Maybe if you used one of those electric mosquito swatters?
49 Maybe if you drill a tiny hole and then stick it inside of a lightbulb? (There was no constraint that we then need to take it out! Candle burning inside of lightbulb should count!)
50 Cause simulation maintainers to be gaslit and really believe that that candle ought to be lit and they’re sure they actually pushed that feature and oh no, seems they were mistaken well let’s just commit it again now before lunch.
TNT/dynamite
Gurren Lagann drill
51 Kame-hame-ha.
52 Drill into something very hard. Utilise the sparks.
53 At a local foundry.
54 Buy some unsafe, crappy electronics from Amazon. Disassemble and destroy in a way that causes fire as byproduct.
Okay, this was by far the hardest one yet, and I certainly didn’t do it in just 1h. Very rewarding though—especially as I tried introspecting on my cognition as I was doing it. (I learnt some new things, though I’ve redacted those notes here.) I also found it helpful to answer the nearby question of “do things that cause the world to end up in a state where the candle is lit”, as well as just reaching the subgoal “create fire”.
I also wrote some I didn’t feel counted, but included them anyway just to keep the babble going, and so overshot the target a bit.
1 rubbing your hands against each other
2 one of those handheld candle lighting machines we have in the kitchen
3 matches
4 gather some wood and make a fire, dip candle into fire
5 bribe or persuade a dragon to help you
6 find a volcano, lower candle down with a rope and dip it in the lava
7 break out of the simulation and edit the source code for the candle to be lit
8 Make a great beat and play it to the candle. “It’s lit”.
9 Become really good at rationality and display your skills in public, such that you become a beacon of Science and light a metaphorical candle for young rationalists
10 Fire a gun next to it such that a spark hits the candle
11 Launching a nuke at such a distance that the candle is lit without being destroyed
12 Leave it outside during a thunderous evening
13 Wire a wire through it and turn on the electricity
14 Post bounty online asking for best ways to light a candle
15 Go to a restaurant where they’re serving burning souffle or some drink which is initially on fire, sneak in candle and light it
16 Masquerade the candle as a log, sell it to someone and get them to put it in the fireplace, then activate the built in robotics equipment to have it walk back to you
17 Find a neighborhood barbecue
18 Find one of those churches where passers-by can pick up candles and light them and think of something profound. Strategically leave candle there until it gets lit.
19 Find some place that’s really dark and where lots of people have strong incentives to get more light.
20 Find a vampire in need of a more evil aesthetic but who’s a bit short on candles. Figure out way of doing this without getting hurt.
21 Place it at SpaceX launch station
22 In a cool ritual, have 100 hundred scientists throw little cotton-balls-set-on-fire toward it. Hope one hits.
23 Flamethrower.
24 (Do not try at home.) Fill room with gas. Turn on stove. Escape.
25 Find some place where a fire is already burning, and carve the object that holds the fire into a candle. Perhaps cover it entirely in stearic.
26 That fire spell from The Witcher
27 Hold it close to something that gets really hot. Maybe a car wheel spinning idly in the same location over and over.
28 Find somewhere where a movie is being filmed (with real special effects), wait for opportune moment
29 At a crematorium
30 Dwarwen mine where metals are melded. Pay in gold coins.
31 Blowtorch
32 Midsommer bonfire
33 Place it on a friend’s dinner table. Just wait for an important occasion.
34 Invent a new ritual holiday that involves the lighting of candles. Wait.
35 Explode a bomb near it
36 write a simulation of universe, place candle immovably in the middle of Africa, wait for humans civilisation to discover fire and light it
37 by sending it on a rocket close enough to a star (while making sure to maintain some sort of oxygen container for it to burn through)
38 by twiddling the wick between my fingers really quickly
39 by having a computer charger that is too… strong(??) for the current computer, as well as some old, non-safe plug sockets, such that there’s some kind of overheat/explosion accident
40 Somewhere inside a car, somehow, I think sparks are being formed (or something similar happens?? man I don’t know anything about engineering). Try to leverage that.
41 study the origins of fire and build a new sort of fire device that has never existed
42 jump up and down on the same spot until it gets very warm
43 I once tried banging a hammer into a surface a lot to see if it got hotter. It did… slowly. Could repeat that and see if the thing catches fire.
44 Dig a tunnel into center of the earth, which is allegedly filled with hot stuff.
45 Find a heat exhaust, build some filter that turns it from a wide opening into a super thin one. Place the candle there, and then block of the other end, such that all the heat builds up in a very small space.
46 Convince a large group of internet people that it would be inspiring if we formed a “mini olympic torch lighting chain” where everyone lit and carried forwards a torch until it reached This Candle Symbolising the Light of Science
47 Medieval fiery arrow shot from top of castle by master archer.
48 Find Elon Musk, and just have the candle be lit by the ceaseless fire in his soul.
49 Fireworks! Would look cool as well.
50 Lighter.
(The Roam template I use only goes up to 50, so at this point the numbering restarts)
1 Laser.
2 Destroy a bunch of other light sources in the world, thereby strongly increasing the incentive for others to light this candle.
3 Find a nearby school, find some smoking teenagers, light it with the tip of their cigarettes
4 Just build a candle replica that just uses a lamp and no fire. Just press the button.
5 Go to a circus or other place where you have some of these “fire acrobatics” people who’ll swing little jars of fire in cool motions. Get close enough and sneak a flame from them.
6 Wait for the apocalypse, will probably be lots of fire and flame around
7 Read Dante or the Orpheus/Eurydicee story and try to find the road to hell, obtain flames from there
8 Leave it in the oven on high temperature
9 Magnifying glass
10 Get someone to play a guitar solo so epic it set everything around it on fire
11 Make a major political party have a lit candle be their symbol, strongly increasing demand and incentives for other to help
12 Cause their to be a major local vigil, also increasing demand (either by causing something really bad to happen, or by encouraging people to commemorate something really bad that has happened)
13 Light with tiki torch in Minecraft
14 Increase the oxygen level a lot in some room, such that the people in there will want to burn candles to decrease it (is that how it works??)
15 “Commoditise the complement” of candles to increase demand. What is that? Rituals, occasions, wine, romance, darkness, …
16 Find a jet pack enthusiasts club, quickly sneak by and light it while one of them is starting up their pack.
17 Closed the time loop where the candle is just always lit but by no one in particular (i.e. you find a lighter on your door step which you then go back in time and put there).
18 Make a strong incentive for people to act as if though the candle is lit, for example by having lots people claim that unlit candles are discriminatory, and punish anyone who voices dissent.
19 Place it in front of exhaust pipe of fighter jet?
20 One of those cinematic, long trails of gunpowder on the ground, leading to the candle.
21 Get help from superman or that x-men mutant who shoots laser through his eyes
22 Study forgotten ancient lore and obtain power of sorcery. Use it to light candle.
23 Somehow increase temperature of earth’s surface to cause everything to catch on fire/melt
24 Finally a practical use case for California wildfires!
25 Go back in time and convince Jim Morrison to rewrite his famous song to “Come on baby light my candle” instead
(Shoot at it from a cannon)
26 Leverage a malfunctioning MRI machine somehow(???)
27 By slamming rocks together in the way they did it in the old times
28 Hide it inside of the torch that will be used for olympic games
29 Go around the neighbourhood, finding a bunch of lit candles, place them next to you in a beautiful pattern EXCEPT that in a symmtery-breaking place is your candle. Wait until someone fixes it.
30 Find a lazy person who urgently needs to do something romantic for their partner, but never does such things so they don’t know what to do, and rent the candle to them but promise they must give it back while it’s still lit.
31 Become landlord of a house that has a long, dark hallway between residential units. Leave this candle as the only available one in the middle of the hallway. Wait.
32 Just ask a stranger kindly to help you.
33 Fiverr.
34 Get David Blaine to pull his kerosene and water trick to light it. (Seriously go check it out, it’s unbelievable.)
35 Find someone who has a hot air balloon, use the fire mechanism that they use to fill it with hot air.
36 Teaching some monkeys to invent fire, and then have them do it for you.
37 Catch some flaming ash from a volcanic eruption? (Different from the previous volcano point, which as about going inside to get the lava)
38 Build a Zoom add-on that render flames on candles using AI. Everything’s remote anyway, no one will notice!
39 Realise that the true candle was the friends we made along the way.
40 Build a tiny candle small enough that can be lit by the firing of neurons (obtained from the brain of an animal where it’s morally more fine to use it’s brain to solve babble challenges...)
41 Probably if you microwave it long enough...?
42 Learn to build one of Nikola Tesla’s massive electricity rooms, and just hold up the candle to light it from those.
43 disassemble and short-circuit phone in order to get a spark
44 Just plug in a device and try to harvest the spark (you sometimes see it right before you plug something in or right after you’ve unplugged it)
45 Get a lot of people to come around, have them all breathe into a single thing that traps and the air, keep doing this until the air gets hot enough to light the candle.
46 Gaslighting a friend by writing in their daily notes “Gah, I know I can light Jacob’s candle, but why doesn’t it work? Surely there’s a way, there must be a trick… I can’t let Jacob win… let me just go to him right now and show him that it’s possible to light this candle”
47 Obtain all the infinity stones.
48 Maybe if you used one of those electric mosquito swatters?
49 Maybe if you drill a tiny hole and then stick it inside of a lightbulb? (There was no constraint that we then need to take it out! Candle burning inside of lightbulb should count!)
50 Cause simulation maintainers to be gaslit and really believe that that candle ought to be lit and they’re sure they actually pushed that feature and oh no, seems they were mistaken well let’s just commit it again now before lunch.
TNT/dynamite
Gurren Lagann drill
51 Kame-hame-ha.
52 Drill into something very hard. Utilise the sparks.
53 At a local foundry.
54 Buy some unsafe, crappy electronics from Amazon. Disassemble and destroy in a way that causes fire as byproduct.