This is a special post for quick takes by Lorien Danger. Only they can create top-level comments. Comments here also appear on the Quick Takes page and All Posts page.
You wake up in an empty room. You are sitting at a table, there is some food and water in a kitchenette to the side and a plain cot and bathroom on the other. There is no windows or clock, however there is a door.
After a moment, you remember how you got here. You agreed to take part in a physiological experiment in exchange with the possibility of receiving a large sum of money in exchange. You remember meeting the people running the experiment. To the best of your knowledge they were genuine and had non-malicious intentions. Before the experiment, they assured you very clearly that you were free to leave the experiment at any time, you even remember them telling you about the experiment in depth. However, you cannot remember any details about the experiment itself, you just remember being told about it, and agreeing to participate.
The note in front of you reads:
Thanks for taking part in this experiment! You may be feeling a little disoriented, but rest assured, you are completely safe.
Let us remind you how the experiment works.
15 minutes after this experiment commences, we will add $1,000,000 to your total. Every 15 minutes after that, we will double your total. You are free to leave at any time. Doing so will end the experiment. At the end of the experiment, you will receive a bank transfer with your total earnings.
We will also be wiping your memory every 15 minutes. Only the memories related to this room will be erased, everything else pre-experiment is completely safe. As soon as you end the experiment, we will stop erasing your memories.
If you end the experiment and decide to restart you may do so, as many times as you like. However, we will wipe your memories as if you were starting the experiment for the first time before commencing again.
The wipe will be thorough, any secret notes, marks, or signals you leave will be reset while we wipe your memories. We will also ensure you eat, drink water and sleep if any noticeable bodily cues start to accumulate.
Take your time, leave whenever you like!
Now the question is, do you stay or do you leave?
Are they going to force me to stop working out if I'm way stronger than I remember? One decision tree is:
This might take a while but presumably some morning within 6 months or so I'd wake up (not remember sleeping) and be able to do 100 pushups. This could probably be optimized better, but the decision needs to be something obvious that I'd settle on the same every time.
If the room magically prevents my body from changing in any way, I need to find a source of randomness, then run an algorithm that on average gets me out in the time period I want. The tricky part would be picking something within 15 minutes but there's probably a method of turning my clothes or body into dice if necessary.