Skip to content
Tags

, ,

The Infinite Genies Paradox

by Qard on July 15th, 2010

There’s not many people out there who haven’t heard the story of Aladdin–it’s a story with quite a bit of history and has got recognition in many forms, including a cartoon rendition created by Disney. It’s a creative and interesting story, but it’s also quite flawed and most people don’t even notice that.

After finding the genie, Aladdin is told he can wish for anything except “more wishes”. This is obviously an attempt to prevent infinite wishes, but a loophole surfaces later in the story that went largely unnoticed. Jafar wishes to be a genie himself, and the original genie grants that wish, thus genies can create other genies.

Herein lies the paradox; a genie offers me 3 wishes–first I wish for something ridiculous like a trillion dollars, then I wish for someone else to become a genie, and spend my last wish to free the original genie. I now have a second genie with no wishes spent. I make another extravagant wish, make a new genie and then free the old one. Wash, rinse repeat–we have our Infinite Genies Paradox.

Were there only two wishes, the infinite loop could still be done if you chose not free the genies after, but that would have fit better with the moral dilemma at the core of the story. So why three wishes, and not two?

Anyone else have any weird observations like this on popular media? Feel free to post whatever comes to mind. It’s always interesting to see what you might not have seen without someone else pointing it out.

From → Uncategorized

  • Blop386

    “For my third wish, I ask that you not grant my third wish.”
    This could be used, even if you are only given 1 wish. Less intricate, more impossible than the model above.

  • http://www.stephenbelanger.com Stephen Belanger

    Impossible, yes. But what I’m demonstrating is what SHOULD have been impossible but isn’t.

  • picko

    The disney’s genie is a little different from some of the other genies. Unlike the genie from aladdin, most genies seem to be tricky.  From what I remember when you wish a genie free, in exchange of that genie you are trapped and become a genie to take his/her place.(Or if the genie said a genie can only grant you three wishes would mean that it didn’t matter which genie you asked the wish for. Kind of like an ATM machine where it doesn’t matter which ATM you go to, you would still have the same amount of money) Also wishes can be interpreted differently, like I wish I had trillion dollars and the genie would give you trillion dollars worth of coin which crushes on top of you. As for the wishing the third wish to not be granted. The genie could simply vanish your existence from the beginning. By doing so, your wish would come true because you would have never wished for the wish and so there is no wish to come true. At the same time your wish didn’t come true because although you never wished it the wish was granted. So it’s kind of answering a paradox with a paradox. haha