One week later:
“Man found dead in Las Vegas desert with forty seven gunshot wounds in his back. Police say no foul play is suspected.”
That could still be handy… What’s the specific gravity of quartz… Who’s the Member of Parliament from Tunbridge Wells… Recite the color-code list for resistors…
There’s a lot of rote knowledge that would be mighty useful to know!
Wouldn’t surprise me – Brown wrote quite a few deal-with-the-devil stories, although I don’t recall this one.
Brown also did one about wishing that, with no change in himself, he’d be the world’s stupidest and most selfish and most miserable person.
Buddhism* believes that complete detachment makes your life better, so everyone you love, and everything you like is now gone.
*[sub]May not resemble actual Buddhism.[/sub]
Not a good wish if you play role-playing games. Or for that matter, many board games.
The Infobahn already provides at least 98% of that. It would come in useful if it included stuff that hasn’t been discovered yet, but there’s no guarantee you’d get that.
There was a short story of the enemy-gets-twice type where the guy asks for a woman who’s the perfect mate for him. The implication (it wasn’t shown) being that the enemy gets two such women, who promptly start fighting over him or something like that.
My favorite movie with this theme is the original Bedazzled with Dudley Moore trying to come up with the perfect wish to have his love interest and Peter Cooke as the devil. Here’s Stanley Moon’s (Dudley) 7th and final specific wish. Needless to see it didn’t work out.
I’ve never done a spoiler before so I apologize in advance if it doesn’t work. 
And I hope the quoted part isn’t so long as to run afoul of the rules.
So the devil turns them both into nuns who have taken a vow of silence.
brossa: sorry for the late reply.
To be sure, this is a known problem in game theory/philosophy, called “Newcomb’s Paradox.”
The issue is that from the predictor’s point of view, your thought processes are simple enough so that your subsequent choice is essentially determined in advance. The ultimate answer is that it is best to avoid messing with freaky prophets.
Footnote: in theology the issue of free will arises in the doctrine of predestination.
In the original short story, the monkey’s paw was set up by an old fakir as a trap for suckers, and the answer is to properly de-curse before using.
In addition to your story, its part of the theme of the Wishmaster films: Wishmaster (film) - Wikipedia
You can ask for information, or just the see “wonders.” But the demon’s just going to give you an object lesson – horribly mutating your courtiers, or trapping you in the demon world, or just killing people at random – then you have to waste a wish to get it to cut this crap out. Three wishes, and its free.
“Instead of Three Wishes” is a short story by Megan Turner, in a collection by that title. Selene does a favor for someone who turns out to be a wish-granter. She’s genre savvy and knows how this kind of thing turns out, and refuses. He makes a pest of himself trying to talk her into it. I don’t remember the ending, but I do remember it’s happy for Selene.
That totally sounds like something you’d do.
OTOH, once our stoner gets un-stoned enough to count to 4 I bet he’ll notice that his second joint (or access to it) can be sold for a *very *nice price.