Can the genie allow us to break the laws of physics in ways even a superintelligence would never be capable of as long as they don't interfere in the wish granting business as mentioned in the description? E.g. faster than light travel, entropy reversal, time travel, perpetual motion machines etc?

My head canon is that you've somehow come across an actual genie lamp and are trying to figure out what to ask it lol

I wish for you to maximize my utility without breaking the genie rules

 I stewed on this for a while longer and I've come to believe that my initial gut reaction probably did not identify the main issue. I think the bigger issue is that a wish like "Maximize my utility" runs afoul of the *overly* complex wish prohibition, much in the same way as "I wish that you would bring about all of the outcomes that I would prompt you to bring about if I had unlimited wishes instead of three wishes". It is a rather modest linguistic construction that smuggles in an unreasonable amount of wish-granting.

 The genie isn't actively looking to Monkey's Paw you, but this might offend him. Part of the genie business is that the wishers are supposed to choose, with all of the deliberation and risk that comes with that. I suspect that what happens here is that the genie rewrites your utility function such that it is maximized by the actual state of affairs.

You could, of course, stipulate that you want the genie to maximize your utility according to your current utility function, in such a way that it conforms with your intentions, but the genie would just rescind his offer as punishment for your laziness.

 arguably you could try using words without standard definition ambiguity, or clarify the ambiguity with further phrases

I said "my utility", utility indexed to me. the genie could always have a definition of any words that is proprietary, if OP asked this question and had their own solution it means they assume the words will be taken as what they usually mean or something like that

 nice try... The genie uses his own definition of utility. You spend your life finding appropriate people for the genie to grant wishes to.

Btw which sort of yudkowskian genie is this? Perfect, dangerous, weak etc? 

https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/4ARaTpNX62uaL86j6/the-hidden-complexity-of-wishes

Not automatically. You can wish for the genie to read your mind, such that he will understand your intentions perfectly. But as we saw with another commenter, if you do this and then follow up with "Now I wish for whatever you understand will maximize my utility," then the genie will object on principle and rescind his offer. The intention of the offer is clearly that you, as the wisher, ought to have to formulate your own wishes, rather than having the genie infer them entirely through mind reading. 

If you want to spend a whole wish to ask the genie to not screw you over based on a careless oversight or misphrasing, he might be amenable to that, provided that you make an earnest effort on the remaining wishes to play the game. All things considered, I don't consider this a bad first wish, provided you can get everything else you want out of two other wishes; otherwise, it seems like a lot to give up. I suppose it really depends on how likely you think any wish is to go awry, even if granted by a non-malevolent genie. If you think it's literally impossible for an unsafe genie to get any wish right, then perhaps even some properly worded form of "I wish that you would get all my future wishes right" would be pointless anyway. That's not how I imagine this genie, though.

He seems at least as smart as a smart human, but he does not invoke any magic to divine your intentions (unless you wish it so).

 If I'm understanding the classifications correctly, then dangerous. He's not actively out to Monkey's Paw you, but he will not go out of his way to prevent you from making ill-advised wishes. 

For example, if you were to naively wish to stay young and live forever, he would do nothing to alleviate your suffering leading up to the end of the universe after all other life had burnt out. 

However, if you perhaps wished to stay young and healthy -- both mentally and physically -- until such a time or circumstance that it was not feasible for you to ever again interact with intelligent life, at which point you would pass away peacefully, then you would probably get something close to what you hoped for. The genie would not, in such a case, change the course of the future such that the aforementioned time or circumstance comes about much sooner than it otherwise would have. 

Furthermore, he would likely do you the courtesy of increasing your regenerative functions such that you would never become a scar-ridden blob, despite you not explicitly asking for as much, as it can be reasonably inferred from your wording that you would desire as much.

First wish - ask for a maximally aligned superintelligence

Other wishes - ask the superintelligence what to do

 I like the idea! The one major drawback is that it is essentially a one-wish handicap (putting aside the obvious but comparatively mundane benefit of having a maximally aligned superintelligence), and that puts you at a significant disadvantage relative to others who are spending none of their wishes on optimally formulating the other two wishes. 

I will disclose, however, that my first wish is also dedicated to optimally formulating the other two wishes, so I can't maintain that your plan is inferior on that basis. 

Unfortunately, it would beg the question for me to assume that your superintelligence's final two wishes would be better than mine (they could be the same, after all!). So I can't yet declare your solution superior to mine. If you want to receive the bounty, I'm afraid you'll need to do some speculation as to the kind of wishes your superintelligence might propose, which I realize unfortunately:

1) defeats the purpose of your first wish.

2) solidifies your defeat at the hands of anyone answering after you.

If you want to seriously pursue the endeavour despite issue 1, you can privately message me your last two wishes, and I won't publicly disclose them until you are determined to be the winner.

The genie is not malevolent, but he is indifferent to you (and so will not caution you against ill-advised wishes).

Wishes do not need to be simple, e.g. "I wish to be the strongest and fastest athlete in history" may be interpreted as one wish, rather than a sneaky attempt to combine two wishes into one. 

, if you attempt to push the envelope too far (whether in the aforementioned way or any other way), the genie may take offence, at which point he may rescind his offer and grant you no further wishes (though he will not revoke wishes he has already granted).

The genie is capable of granting any wish, but he is not obligated to do so. He will not grant any wish that (among other things) might interfere with his genie business. For example, he will not give you the power to destroy the universe or the power to grant wishes yourself.

Traditional genie rules need not apply: he 

 kill people, revive the dead, or cause people to fall in love. He is 

 of granting more than three wishes to a particular person, but he is not generally inclined to do so, and attempts to trick him into doing so will likely offend him. Attempts to curry the genie's favour (e.g. "I wish for both of us to get a goth baddie gf") are overwhelmingly likely to fail.

I reserve the right to modify/expand the above details if an exploit 

which goes against the spirit of the question

 is discovered. I may allow some exploits, provided that I regard them as satisfying the spirit of the question.

I have in mind a set of three wishes that I believe to be optimal, but I want to see if anyone can suggest a better set. For the time being, I will not reveal my set of wishes, as I do not want to influence the direction of people's answers. If a sufficient number of people feel that they need to first hear my answer before they submit their own (to see what they're "up against", for example), then I'll provide it.

If someone suggests a set of wishes that I recognize to be better than my set of wishes, I will announce as much (as well as stating my initial set, if I have not already). I will then allow some period of time for someone else to improve upon that set of wishes, and so on until a set is proposed and not improved upon, at which point I will award the bounty to that person.

Related questions

Related questions