EY posted this on reddit, I'd like to know what you'd do with it:

https://www.reddit.com/r/HPMOR/comments/2y56qg/precisely_bound_demons_and_their_behavior/

I can't promise this will turn into a sufficiently good environment for storytelling or that I'll write in it, but you never know unless you try, and worldbuilding can be fun regardless... One in X people (X ~ 10,000?) has the ability to summon demons, once per Y days, and bind them to arbitrary commands at will. Demons are malevolent and will interpret any instruction in such ways as to cause the most damage. Evil summoners can sometimes reach an accommodation of sorts by giving the demons orders which benefit themselves and hurt others more, in which case the demon will often go along with it, most of the time.

Most good people with the ability to summon demons were advised never to do so, unless it became necessary to defeat an evil demon-summoner creating horror on a mass scale.

This world's Industrial Revolution began when it was realized that mathematically precise and complete commands to demons apparently could not be misinterpreted. For example (this could perhaps be picked apart): A demon told to accelerate a vehicle along an exactly given vector for a specified time, applying the same added acceleration at any given time to all particles in the vehicle, and causing no other impact on the material universe, will do only that... if the language of the contract can be mathematically specified in an absolutely unambiguous way. (What exactly is the 'vehicle'? Maybe you'd better have the demon apply acceleration to a sphere to which the engine car is attached.)

Demon-summoners promptly began to use their powers in the most economically rewarding way, such as by summoning demons who would just accelerate particular train engine cars; and this occurred on a mass scale throughout society.

This is a point where I wouldn't mind help worldbuilding: given this basic setup, what industrially useful demonic bindings can be precisely specified? Suppose the world is such that electricity doesn't exist, but fire does, and steam. Demon summoners will end up being rare enough, whatever frequency is 'rare enough', that the society doesn't come apart as the result of whatever powers you invent.

Bindings can also tell demons to act based on the result of a calculation, if that calculation is precisely specified. There is no...

John Diaz

John Diaz

John Diaz

John Diaz