Sorry about the pedantry, it’s just that as a professional specialist in genies I have a tendency to notice that sort of thing.
Rather than a technical correction you seem just to be substituting a different meaning of ‘feedback’. The author would certainly not agree that “You get 0 feedback from 1 wish”.
Mind you I am wary of the the fundamental message of the quote. Feedback? One of the most obviously important purposes of getting feedback is to avoid catastrophic failure. Yet catastrophic failures are exactly the kind of thing that will prevent you from using the next wish. So this is “Just Feedback” that can Kill You Off For Real despite the miraculous intervention you have access to.
I’d say “What the genie is really offering is a wish and two chances to change your mind—assuming you happen to be still alive and capable of constructing corrective wishes”.
“What the genie is really offering is a wish and two chances to change your mind—assuming you happen to be still alive and capable of constructing corrective wishes”.
One well-known folk tale is based on precisely this interpretation. Probably more than one.
0 feedback is exactly what you get from 1 wish. “Feedback” isn’t just information, it’s something that can control a system’s future behavior—so unless you expect to find another genie bottle later, “Finding out how your wish worked” isn’t the same as feedback at all.
so unless you expect to find another genie bottle later
...or unless genies granting wishes is actually part of the same system as the larger world, such that what I learn from the results of a wish can be applied (by me or some other observer) to better calibrate expectations from other actions in that system besides wishing-from-genies.
0 feedback is exactly what you get from 1 wish. “Feedback” isn’t just information, it’s something that can control a system’s future behavior—so unless you expect to find another genie bottle later, “Finding out how your wish worked” isn’t the same as feedback at all.
I think it was clear that I inferred this as the new definition you were trying to substitute. I was very nearly as impressed as if you ‘corrected’ him by telling him that it isn’t “feedback” if nobody is around to hear it, or perhaps told him that oxygen is a metal.
Rather than a technical correction you seem just to be substituting a different meaning of ‘feedback’. The author would certainly not agree that “You get 0 feedback from 1 wish”.
Mind you I am wary of the the fundamental message of the quote. Feedback? One of the most obviously important purposes of getting feedback is to avoid catastrophic failure. Yet catastrophic failures are exactly the kind of thing that will prevent you from using the next wish. So this is “Just Feedback” that can Kill You Off For Real despite the miraculous intervention you have access to.
I’d say “What the genie is really offering is a wish and two chances to change your mind—assuming you happen to be still alive and capable of constructing corrective wishes”.
One well-known folk tale is based on precisely this interpretation. Probably more than one.
0 feedback is exactly what you get from 1 wish. “Feedback” isn’t just information, it’s something that can control a system’s future behavior—so unless you expect to find another genie bottle later, “Finding out how your wish worked” isn’t the same as feedback at all.
...or unless genies granting wishes is actually part of the same system as the larger world, such that what I learn from the results of a wish can be applied (by me or some other observer) to better calibrate expectations from other actions in that system besides wishing-from-genies.
I think it was clear that I inferred this as the new definition you were trying to substitute. I was very nearly as impressed as if you ‘corrected’ him by telling him that it isn’t “feedback” if nobody is around to hear it, or perhaps told him that oxygen is a metal.