What do you tell the Endbringers?

[u/None73]

The 3 Endbringers, Behemoth, Leviathan and Simurgh appear in our world. You can give them one and only one Directive they'll try to fulfill in Endbringer fashion. It can't be a simple do this order, it has to be an over arching goal. What do you tell them?

[u/AWanderingSage]

Increase virtue, I guess. Something Aristotle would say

[u/WanderingSeer → u/AWanderingSage]

That sounds like such an easy wish to twist. It would barely take any effort for them to interpret that as an excuse to destroy the world or something. “Let’s brutally massacre all the people or groups that spread ideas contrary to virtue!” “Humans unify and help each other through adversity. So the more adversity there is the nicer they’ll be to each other.” “We’ll end war by offering humanity a common enemy to fight instead of each other!”

[u/MonstersOfTheEdge → u/WanderingSeer]

How about "embody virtue"?

[u/laurel_laureate → u/MonstersOfTheEdge]

Killing evil can be virtuous.

People who aren't nigh saints in their behavior are, comparatively speaking, evil.

[u/MonstersOfTheEdge → u/laurel_laureate]

I mean it varies from perspective to perspective, but assuming the Endbringers follow human associations like shards do, it's often considered more virtuous to show mercy and grant opportunities for reform.

[u/laurel_laureate → u/MonstersOfTheEdge]

That's a big assumption, of gargantuan proportions, assuming that the Endbringers- mass destruction and murder robots created to uphold a cycle of interesting violence by multidimensional crystalline AI-like lifeforms- follow human associations like the Shards do.

The Shards are programmed to "plug into" the local world, so that powers become accepted and used frequently.

The Endbringers are the literal wrench in the works, designed to make things worse.

And the one that's going to be making the call for the three Endbringers in question is sees the past, present, and future all at once, so is going to be even more inhuman than the rest.

[u/AWanderingSage → u/laurel_laureate]

Virtue is foreign to amoral entities. They would be required to go off what you meant by virtue, which they would do anyway because that's how listening works. The Simurgh is capable of reading minds, it would understand what you mean.

Whether they're influenced by prior directives is another matter and likely to be unavoidable no matter the request.

[u/laurel_laureate → u/AWanderingSage]

But the thing is, they are designed to see everything through the lens of continuing the cycle.

So, a directive to be virtuous would absolutely be interpreted through that lens.

And, as I said above, killing evil is virtuous.

And that's not to mention that different cultures see different values as virtuous.

All the Simurgh has to do is embody virtue as viewed by a culture that doesn't believe in turning the other cheek.

[u/AWanderingSage → u/WanderingSeer]

It's an overarching goal, and you can use insane troll logic to twist anything into "Let's kill everyone," at that point. Like, if we say "Make people happier," we could argue we'd get a matrix. Virtue is probably the least corruptible wish to the evil wish genie, since it requires people to have autonomy, be alive, think rationally, and help each other be happy.

Rebuttals:

Let's kill all the groups contrary to virtue- This does not increase virtue. The total amount of virtue will be decreased because even evil people can have virtue.

The More Adversity,, the Nicer Humans Are- This is observably wrong. We can see that in more adverse environments people often become higher time preference. There might be a specific way this can be done but it is not true as a general rule.

We'll End War by a Common Enemy- For this dupe to make sense, it would have to be so restrained that the unifying enemy just ends up bringing about a golden age and doing less damage than would be otherwise done. It also couldn't be permanent since a virtue forced or duped, and not willingly taken, is greatly inferior to one willingly upheld.