"But you're just begging the question of what 'improving things' means. Like, the example you just gave me, of imprisoning an innocent to make a hundred million people sleep slightly better, is that situation better than the present one? For most practical purposes you don't need such guidelines, but human intuition when it comes to morality isn't super consistent, stable, or even desirable upon reflection, and if I take over the world I'll definitely try to make choices as principled as possible."

"...Yeah this is hard. I guess that's why we have a constitution."

"You can think of the constitution and the laws as an approximation of rule utilitarianism, it's pretty much what they're meant to do, even if they're not... the best possible attempts at it."

"And being more than two hundred years out of date can't possibly help."

"It's pretty unlikely to, yeah," she nods.

"I really don't think we're going to get a chance to revise the constitution. Maybe if we become extremely magic we can colonize the moon or something. I think I'm making progress with the meditation, it's just, there's nothing to engineer at yet."

"Ooh! We should colonize Mars, though, it's bigger."

"I'm going to need to study geology and orbital mechanics and biology and so on too aren't I? Though we could presumably find experts in all those things, that's what specialization is good for."

"I mean, I wouldn't object to learning all that, learning's fun, but yeah hiring someone's probably the better idea."

"Bit premature for now to be honest, though."

"Well, I personally have fun imagining what I'll do when I inevitably take over the world."

"Oh sure, power fantasy is something else entirely from actual planning, got it."

"Sure but I want my power fantasies to be realistic. You know, in case I actually take over the world."

"Realistic is a... Stretchy word, the way some people use it."

"Verisimilar?"

"I suppose. Sorry if I don't feel very chatty today." He waves his hands, frustrated, then says, "It's Tuesday."

"...are Tuesdays bad? Should I be comforting you? Should I be comforting you in my place?"

"Tuesdays are before Wednesdays have a lot of homework due. So I probably ought to keep my breaks short and go back to working on it sooner or later. Not that the last thing doesn't sound appealing."

"Aww, and it's the first day since you've met me that I'm actually a girl, too. Homework's terrible."

"It'd be new things to try, yeah. Homework is kind of badly designed. The kind of people who want to learn are frustrated by it and the kind of people who don't want to learn cheat at it. Though again I don't have a better solution in my back pocket."

"Let the kind of people who want to learn learn, the kind of people who don't not, everyone's happy! I'm pretty sure we don't need ninety percent of what we learn at school to function in society and the stuff we do need we can learn by ourselves."

"But then you'd have people who are unfairly disadvantaged in trying to learn! Public libraries only help so much if their parents are keeping them in a closet like Mr. Potter, or they have to work twelve hours a day to help their mum. Not that I necessarily agree with all aspects of the current system - but having a so-called devil's advocate makes for more interesting discussions."

"Hmm... Well I'm not sure there's a good blanket solution for cases of abusive parents."

"I wonder if having a child services system that drops the ball a decent fraction of the time is better than not having one at all."

"It could hardly be worse, could it?"