Yup, I remember working through it the first time I saw this comic and there’s no paradox here.

I think that it is more that they need to be conditionally applied simultaneously, but are contradictory conditions that cannot be met.

Imprisoning a powerful being in an oil lamp that can be released simply by someone rubbing it is a pretty shitty setup!

Trick it into obedience?

Just as likely anything that lives in a lamp for hundreds of years and manifests as a holographic vapor from a spout is indeed a computer.

Wasted?

To fulfill the third wish, the genie must ignore the first wish made. The first wish was to do the opposite of the second, so to fulfill the third wish, the genie must now ignore that command, and do not the opposite not the actual second wish. The second wish, now primed to be fulfilled in earnest, not opposite, was to not fulfill the third. But fulfilling the third is how we got into this situation in the first place, so if it’s not fulfilled anymore, we shouldn’t be in the state we’re in.

It basically boils down to “do nothing”, right?

Sort of due to a flaw in the syntax; it (almost) boils down to an infinite loop (we’ll fix the syntax to specify “I wish for you to” and use the wish flags ‘!’ = opposite, ‘~’ = ignore/skip (we’ll assume this exhausts a wish still even though it shouldn’t since it doesn’t matter anyway), and for clarity, we’ll make ‘+’ mean no flags/execute normally; all 3 wishes are ‘+’ at the start of the first loop):

• “I wish for you to do the opposite of my next wish.” (flag set to do !wish2)
• “I wish for you not to fulfill my third wish.” (flag set for +wish3)
• “I wish for you to [have ignored] my first wish.” (now ~wish1 was set before you made wish 2; notably, this needs to be retroactive for the loop to start, so the syntax in the OP is wrong).

Now +wish2 was set. But then the flag for ~wish3 was set. But then +wish1 was set (i.e. it was never ignored; this is flawed, however, but author’s logic). Now !wish2 was set. Now ~wish3 was set. Etc.

Every even loop (0-indexed) will be (+, !, +) while every odd one will be (~, +, ~).

That said, a flaw in this logic is that it should actually stop after Loop 1, since wish3 is no longer an active wish; the genie doesn’t have to go back and change anything. You need the wish to be active, not ignored, to break the genie into an infinite loop.

“I wish for you to do the opposite of my first wish.” as wish3 should break 'em.

If the wishes are prioritized from more to less recent, yeah. -which I guess is the trope’s tradition. But it’s an attempt at a self-referential paradox akin to the liars’ paradox (this statement is false). I think a shorter, but more valid version, would be ‘don’t fulfil this wish’.

How djinns grant wishes varies wildly in stories. Some are actively malicious, some try to grant the wish along the spirit of the wish, some are strictly literal with no actual malice intended. If the djinn is imprisoned and forced to grant wishes it does makes sense that they would “Monkey’s Paw” them if they’re able.

I’d argue the Monkey’s Paw is a bad example because I don’t think the Monkey’s Paw is actively malicious like a djinn.

I think Monkey’s Paw just works off of path of least resistance. What’s the fastest way to randomly get rich? Workplace accident causing life insurance payout. What’s the least effort way to revive the dead? Just make the corpse start moving again. What’s the easiest way to give a shambling corpse peace? Undo the last wish.

I feel like a Djinn wouldn’t let you undo the reviving wish. They’d probably just put them in a coma so your son is now in a half dead comatose state forever.

Yeah, even stories of “benevolent” djinn who want to help still backfire and those are the minority. Most are tricksters who want to fuck with you, so giving them some sort of logic loop is more likely that they break logic/causality than you’ll have them blue screen of death and poof away in a cloud of smoke

Yeah I could see the genie undoing the first wish he ever asked for and significantly altering his life.

I feel people here have the Disney idea of a genie rather than the true Middle Eastern idea of a djin.

oooh that makes sense… I had a friend in cybersecurity who was always using the term “evil genie” to characterize how attackers would take any system you developed, and look for a way to use it against you.