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You are given a small machine that spits out a single chocolate chip cookie every two seconds. The machine will never stop producing cookies. How do you save the world?
If the cookies never stop being produced, then it is logical to assume that, if unchecked, uneaten cookies will eventually choke the earth, leaving us uninhabitable. What is your plan, and how long do you think we'll last in this cookie apocalypse?
As for some general rules, the machine is impossible to break, and it can inexplicably produce cookies infinitely without having to refill on ingredients.
Your machine produces 1 cookie every 2 seconds, which is 30 cookies per minute, or 1,800 cookies per hour, or 43,200 cookies per day. I therefore have to dispose of 43,200 cookies every day.
I would go to my nearest large city, set the cookie machine up in the town square, and tell people to help themselves. In a city of millions of people, it shouldn't be hard to find 43,200 people who want 1 cookie every day. In fact, I might find myself unable to keep up with demand!
Problem solved: free cookies for anyone who wants them!
How fast do these cookies fly out? Could be a new propulsion system. Even if not very quickly, NASA still can buy the thing and send it to space as a low power, long operating time engine.
Hmmm... who is to say that it can't create matter? The hypothetical doesn't specify how the machine makes cookies after all.
But yes, I think you're right, if the machine is transporting or making the cookies it's using some underlying mechanism which you could perhaps use to other ends.
Not as big a problem as you'd think, planets are massive. I've never weighed a cookie, but I'll guess it's a bigger one that weighs about 100g. That's only a billion grams of mass a year. Sounds like a lot, but it would take 14 trillion years for the mass of cookies on earth to equal the mass of the oceans, and if you burned the cookies, it would take a hundred million years for them to even double atmospheric carbon if the whole mass of the cookie gets turned into carbon.
So I'd start a bakery. Well, a cookie shop. Hopefully they actually taste good.
Our machine would end up producing about 15.7 million cookies per year. That's less than 4% of the number of Oreo cookies produced annually (approximately 40 billion). Add in all the other brands of cookies that are produced in the billions or millions every year, and our cookie machine isn't looking like too much of a problem. The world has more than enough capacity to eat all of our cookies. Just give Nabisco a call and I'm sure they'll be able to package and sell whatever our machine is pumping out.
edit: I'm off by a couple of decimal places. Our machine actually equals .04% of the annual Oreo production. So this is really a non-issue.
I would use the cookies to fuel several massive incinerators, thus powering the world. I would have filtration systems for the incinerators to collect massive amounts of carbon for conversion into graphene for electronics and synthetic concretes, thus providing limitless conductive and building material.
As the cookies continue to be manufactured, I would be investing my new found energy sector and graphene money in research for building a spacecraft capable of transporting an entire building. I would then have this cookie factory lifted up in one single piece and delivered to low Earth orbit, where the resources would then be used as a limitless supply for food, space energy, and manufacturing, eventually enabling us to inhabit other planets within our solar system and also travel beyond.
If the cookies were made of coal, you would be generating about 800kw, about the same as a small twin engine plane.
This was my first thought, too, but if it's a typical 50kcal chocolate chip cookie every 2 seconds, that's only about 100kW. That's enough to power a small neighbourhood. Your "limitless" supply of carbon for graphene is more of a trickle, unfortunately.
It's probably more beneficial to just have people eat the cookies.
Enlist the Girl Scouts to sell the cookies at their usual premium and donate the proceeds to climate change initiatives worldwide.
How tasty and delicious are these cookies?
Think costco cookies
I sell them.
I'd make sure it reaches the news so that a rich guy can throw it to space, but only after figuring out how to make money with it.
I wouldn't save the world. I'm not smart enough. But damn I'll die happy and full of cookies.
Hopefully someone else is smarter than I.
This reminds me of that SCP replicating cupcake.
Yeah, i was definitley inspired by it
This is actually in beta development...
http://orteil.dashnet.org/cookieclicker/
This is def not a huge issue in the shorterm as many people here have said, but if the machine is creating new matter then it could be in the long term, by increasing the mass of the planet. But the rate of creation is so slow that... actually I don't think that would be that big of an issue. The real issue would be if each cookie made it's only little cookie that made it's own little cookie. Then you'd have an exponential increase in cookies. But at a linear progression it actually probably wouldn't be that bad.
First, I would go to the James Randi foundation to claim my 1 million dollar prize for my obviously supernatural cookie machine. I would then use that money to create an organization to look into low-emissions cookie-based energy while stockpiling cookies for research, and selling others to fund this venture through Eternal Cookie, Inc.