Character Scramble II Sign Up Thread

[u/mrcelophane]

Welcome to the sign up thread for the second Character Scramble!

Don't know what the Character Scramble is? Well, aren't you in for a fun time?! To play, all you have to do is pick 5 of your favorite characters that fit this season's theme and enter them into the tournament. Then, the characters will be scrambled, and you will receive 5 random characters that will become your team for the remainder of the tournament.

Not enough description? Well here is the hub post from last season!. That contains every post for season 1.

Now, onto the rules for this season and how to sign up.

The Grand Champion of Season 1, /u/xahhfink6, has decreed that the teme for season 2 shall be Mid Tier Heroes. This has been defined as somewhere between the power level of Spiderman (last season's upper limit) and Aquaman. Only characters that are/would beat Spiderman and are/would lose to Aquaman should be submitted.

Rules:

• Each entrant will list 5 characters. Each character should have a link or two with information on them. These links should include Fan-wiki pages, Respect Threads, and anything else you think would help them out in learning all about them.

• Submissions are player policed. If you see someone outside the bounds of the power limits and caps, please explain to the entrant your views as to why they should not submit that character.

• Please be as specific as you can in terms of iteration of the character you are choosing, any modifiers (we had Deadpool without healing factor last season), and anything else you think is relevant.

• It is not against the rules to submit a character that has already been entered by someone else. It is encouraged, however, to make that person a different version of the character to make it interesting.

• After posting your character to this post, you will then go to this google form and fill it out. After that you are officially in the tournament.

• Please keep the link that lets you edit your post. Someone may convince you that one of your characters is too underpowered/overpowered and therefore needs to be changed. It is much easier for you to edit your post than for me to do it. This will save everyone time.

• Rosters will be rerolled until no one has more than one character that they suggested on their roster.

• Participants will receive the permalink to your post if they receive your character. That is why it is important to have a lot of information on it. They will be encouraged to reply to that comment to ask questions.

• Brackets/Pairings are randomly decided.

• Every week, you will have to explain, either through role play or arguments, why your team would beat the other one.

• Every week, the scenario may be different. It may change the way the fight is structured, or it may make it not a fight at all.

• The Scenario topic will be posted, and players are expected to argue why there characters would defeat there opponents.

• At least 48 hours later, the voting topic will be posted.

• Entrants must vote on all fights, and there votes count double. Not voting results in forfeiture. If you cannot vote due to time constraints, msg me and we can work around that.

• Voting will be done using Google forms

• The grand champion is allowed to pick the theme of the next tournament

And that is just about it! Lets have a ton of fun, guys! Sign ups close on Sunday sometime after NFL football, so tell your friends! If you have any questions, please ask away.

TO MAKE IT CLEAR, YOU ARE NOT IN THE TOURNAMENT IF YOU DO NOT FILL OUT THE GOOGLE FORM. DON'T KNOW WHAT I'M TALKING ABOUT? THEN YOU DIDN'T READ THE RULES

[u/TimTravel]

I see what you are saying now. How about we don't allow explicit Catch 22's? For example, Hermione can't generate the password Via time loop, but lets say the password will be told to her in 6 hours time regardless of weather or not she uses the computer. She could then go back and tell herself the password to open the computer.

Lets say she knows the password is written down in a document in the computer, but she needs to log in to get it. in this situation, she would not be able to get the password or open the computer because this is an explicit Catch 22.

I like that restriction a lot but I'm not sure it covers everything. Mild catch 22s seem fair. If you can't do anything with time travel that you can't do without then it's unclear how it's useful.

Suppose before the battle she decides to fight the battle six times with time-copies of herself. She would witness at the beginning of the fight that all six are present. Does this mean that she can do anything she wants and survive no matter what, because of time-destiny? In the model I describe it's technically true but timelines in which she does risky things in earlier iterations are unlikely, so by the anthropic principle she's unlikely to be in a timeline in which she'll survive risky actions.

A different example that comes up a lot in Doctor Who and Homestuck. Suppose you see yourself in the future shooting yourself in the foot. What should you do? If the model I described is in effect, you should have a policy of doing your very best to prevent it, even though if you see it it's inevitable. This is because if you have a policy of not going along with prophesies of you shooting yourself in the foot, timelines in which you see a prophesy of you shooting yourself in the foot are unlikely, so by the anthropic principle you are unlikely to be in one. Suppose for simplicity that ignoring paradox prevention you are nearly 100% capable of not shooting yourself in the foot after being warned of that happening in the future. Your brain melts instantly when you hear such a prophesy. Then seeing such a prophesy would already be a paradox. As I described earlier, if you keep following this line of reasoning, it leads to the universe conspiring to prevent time travel because any time travel requires a lot of atom-by-atom consistency which is unlikely in the prior physics distribution of timelines.

If what you're saying is true, then I think that means that there's nothing you can do to prevent the universe from giving you a prophesy of you shooting yourself in the foot in the future. That seems strange, especially in cases where it would be highly out of character for you to do it if you weren't time-destined.

---

I've been trying to avoid linking to this massive wall of text I wrote on the nature of fiction but we've discussed it enough that summaries aren't really sufficient. It's written sort of like a lesswrong sequence in that it's extremely detailed and it's ok to skip sections you understand. It should cover most of the questions we've been discussing that don't directly relate to time travel.

As a quick possible patch depending on what you mean: it seems reasonable that there is such thing as an objectively well-crafted hammer, separate from popularity, affordability, or usefulness to a particular person. In the same way, it seems reasonable that there is such thing as an objectively well-crafted story, separate from popularity, difficulty to achieve, or appeal to a particular person. A hammer that weighs 10 tons designed for superhumans could be well-crafted even though I couldn't use it. A story could be well-crafted even though I don't like it. I cannot state a complete objective definition of a well-crafted hammer or a well-crafted story but that doesn't mean they are meaningless terms. I claim that believability is a property of a well-crafted story. Someone might like an unbelievable story, but that doesn't make it more well-crafted. Someone might like a hammer with a handle made out of feathers and might find it more useful because it works for dusting too but that doesn't mean that feathers make a hammer more well-crafted: they would make the handle more slippery, taking away from the utility of the hammer for the purpose of hammering.

Believability is arguably the only matter of discussion on this subreddit: we debate whether it is more believable that X beats Y or that Y beats X. The rules of the fictional universe are in effect. We appropriately account for story lens things like authors forgetting superpowers, luck, excessive boasting that can't be backed up, etc. When writing an explanation of what happens when your team fights another, the central question for the voters is whose victory is more believable.

Suppose I have a policy of attempting to cause a paradox unless my lucky coin comes up heads. The model I described, which was implied by EY (remove all paradoxical timelines from the set of possible timelines) makes it so that the coin becomes more likely to be heads.

[u/angelsrallyon → u/TimTravel]

I like that restriction a lot but I'm not sure it covers everything. Mild catch 22s seem fair. If you can't do anything with time travel that you can't do without then it's unclear how it's useful.

Time travel allows you to do many things you could not already do in this situation. Lets use another situation.

Hermione wants to get to the other side of a door. in 6 hours time she will be given a key, regardless of wether or not she enters.

With a time turner she can enter. Without a time turner, she cannot.

If the key is on the other side of the door, meaning, the door must be opened before she can get the key, she will be unable to get it even with a time turner.

This gives her a buff, something she would not have otherwise, as well as limitations.

Suppose before the battle she decides to fight the battle six times with time-copies of herself. She would witness at the beginning of the fight that all six are present. Does this mean that she can do anything she wants and survive no matter what, because of time-destiny? In the model I describe it's technically true but timelines in which she does risky things in earlier iterations are unlikely, so by the anthropic principle she's unlikely to be in a timeline in which she'll survive risky actions.

In this situation, if there are six of her, it doesn't mean she can do anything she wants and still survive. It means it has already happened. Granted, it may seem pedantic to separate the two, but the connotation is different. if she was unable to create 6 copies, they would not be there.

If she decides, "i am going to use 6 copies of myself" and no copies show up, it might tell her she will die soon, or something else will interrupt her, or she will think of a better plan. In this situation, her NOT seeing copies of herself, can also tell her something about the future.

I suppose she could get herself killed by doing something stupid, and it turns out that the other 6 copies were just illusions, or clones, or something. but if they truly are her, it means she has already survived. or perhaps she was wounded, but hid her wounds to the original would not see.

A different example that comes up a lot in Doctor Who and Homestuck. Suppose you see yourself in the future shooting yourself in the foot. What should you do? If the model I described is in effect, you should have a policy of doing your very best to prevent it, even though if you see it it's inevitable. This is because if you have a policy of not going along with prophesies of you shooting yourself in the foot, timelines in which you see a prophesy of you shooting yourself in the foot are unlikely, so by the anthropic principle you are unlikely to be in one. Suppose for simplicity that ignoring paradox prevention you are nearly 100% capable of not shooting yourself in the foot after being warned of that happening in the future. Your brain melts instantly when you hear such a prophesy. Then seeing such a prophesy would already be a paradox. As I described earlier, if you keep following this line of reasoning, it leads to the universe conspiring to prevent time travel because any time travel requires a lot of atom-by-atom consistency which is unlikely in the prior physics distribution of timelines.

I think you are trying to rationalise this Theory with other Theories. Dr. who and Homestuck have a different Brand of Time Travel. Atom-by-atom consistency is not unlikely in this system of time travel, it is a universal law.

In the Situation you have proposed, IF there was 100% chance that you could have prevented it, you would not have seen it happen. The fact that you saw it happen in the first place means that it is not only possible, but inevitable. In the same way that you can't go back and change the past, your future cannot be changed either.

The Paradoxes would not occur in this system because it's the law. if you want an explanation that includes multiple timelines, you could call it "The most stable time loop" but calling it that i believe misses the point.

In essence, if you shot your left foot yesterday, and you see yourself shooting your right foot tomorrow, each event is just as real. And each event cannot be "prevented" because, in essence, both have already happened.

If what you're saying is true, then I think that means that there's nothing you can do to prevent the universe from giving you a prophesy of you shooting yourself in the foot in the future.

In the system that we are proposing, The future is just as immovable as the past. The universe it not an active participant. If you shot yourself in the foot, you shot yourself in the foot. i may not know why, you may not know why, but you did. Don't blame the universe. I'm sure you had/will have a good reason.

That seems strange, especially in cases where it would be highly out of character for you to do it if you weren't time-destined.

If it is out of character, or strange, then it would not be "time destined" in the first place.

To your next argument... i guess i will keep going, cause i like this discussion. Tangent here i come.

I don't believe in objective good i guess. You could say that there is rhyme and rhythm to some arrangement of words, or that something took a lot of effort, or is symbolic, or that it appeals to a wide readership, but a man/woman who can't read has no value is such a story, an assortment of words, markings on paper. The story, the words, the marks, are given power by those who read it.

Even with the hammer. What makes a good hammer? Does it hammer in nails well? Shape metal well? Crush skulls well?

You were judging a hammer based off of what you were going to use it for. Who says a hammer should be used on nails? who says a hammer should be used for Hammering? Philosophically, all you are doing is writing yourself into a corner, giving names objects and an arbitrary restriction on how to use it. A tool is only as good as the one who wields it.

And then we come back to the book. A hammer can only be deemed "good" or "bad" once you name it, because you have a mental image of what a hammer does, and what a hammer means. A hammer is suposed to hammer things. But that's not true. A piece of wood with a heavy piece of metal on it with a tag that says "Hammer" it not destined to do anything. It has no hidden potential or objective use. It may be more suited to do one thing than another, but if you say something is a better "hammer" than another, what you mean is that it fits your mental definition of what a "hammer" is better. The only objective power a hammer has is the same you give to a book. A man can see the first hammer he has ever seen in his life and have literally no use for it, it has no meaning to him. It could be made "well" whatever that means(time put into it, being good at it's job, lasting a long time, easy to make/replace, ect) but that doesn't change the fact that a "Hammer" is just a concept we have placed upon a shape of a certain object. to quote Shakespear, "a Rose by any other name would smell as sweet." if you called a Rose a Hammer you could say it was objectively a bad hammer. But only if you personally put power and meaning into the word and name "Hammer".

Believability is arguably the only matter of discussion on this subreddit: we debate whether it is more believable that X beats Y or that Y beats X. The rules of the fictional universe are in effect. We appropriately account for story lens things like authors forgetting superpowers, luck, excessive boasting that can't be backed up, etc. When writing an explanation of what happens when your team fights another, the central question for the voters is whose victory is more believable

Just because someone likes a story does not make it believable, or vice versa. I could like a story for comedic value, or fanservice, and it still might sell like hotcakes.

However, i do agree with you that this community values believability(or in better words, "consistency") above other values.

But the point i am trying to make here is that Believability is not what people are going for here. it may help, and they probably will try, but in essence, they want votes in the context. Consistency may help them to that endgame, but it is not an inherent goal here.

That being said, my point was that it will be the Writers job, not Mine, to make it believable. My job is to limit the power(like i have). they may interpret believability on their own, since that is the writers job. if they chose not to be believable, it's their fault, and their choice.

Suppose I have a policy of attempting to cause a paradox unless my lucky coin comes up heads. The model I described, which was implied by EY (remove all paradoxical timelines from the set of possible timelines) makes it so that the coin becomes more likely to be heads.

If attempting to make a paradox would lead to one happening (an assumption, since you could fail) Then it would inherently always land heads.

However, more likely, since there are infinite probabilities when you don't attempt, and infinite when you do, an infinite(but a small infinity) amount of options would be taken away because of paradoxical probabilities. however, because we are dealing with infinite numbers, it wont affect your chances very much, if at all. If you attempt to make a paradox, than one of the many infinite worlds in witch you fail becomes a reality.

Again, i don't like that way of explaining it since it misses the point that there is only one true world in the system the Time Turner works in.

[u/TimTravel → u/angelsrallyon]

Again, i don't like that way of explaining it since it misses the point that there is only one true world in the system the Time Turner works in.

I think this is the central confusing issue. What implications are you drawing from this? Just because only one universe got sampled from the probability distribution of universes and was made to exist in some meaningful way doesn't meant that the probability distribution itself doesn't exist.

I think you might be implicitly assuming that the thing that ticks the clock and makes the next instant happen is doing computation based on the current state of the universe to determine the next state, instead of there just being one timeline and there's some thing that makes it Real in some meaningful way. This is a strange way to think of it and it leads to bad things I'm too tired to explain clearly. If you read the first thing I pasted it should cover it.

[u/angelsrallyon → u/TimTravel]

Just because only one universe got sampled from the probability distribution of universes and was made to exist in some meaningful way doesn't meant that the probability distribution itself doesn't exist.

The assumption of a Time Turner based system is that there is no probability distribution, and that the world is deterministic instead of probability based. There are not multiple worlds, only one. In Einstein's words, "God does not play dice". I believe Rowling herself, as a Christian, does not believe in chance or multiple worlds either and has stated that many of her plot lines were based off of her religious beliefs.

Curent Quantum Physics vehemently disagrees with this, asserting that God does in fact play dice and fuck you Einstein. Neither viewpoint can be PROVEN per se, but Quantum physics has far more evidence and is the "simpler" and better theory for predicting the results of experiments.

I am in no way saying that the Real world works that way, i agree with Quantum physics here since they have the empirical evidence at the moment. But in a Time Turner based system, in this context, when you flip a coin, the trajectory of the coin can be measured, all variables can be accounted for, and a perfect system could calculate how it would land, and in fact, the coin is destined to land in that way unless you have not accounted for some variable. It is all Very Newtonian.

In the context of balancing an online debate with characters fighting eatchother, This system should not have any contradictions unless she has to face other time Travelers that have powers that work in dirent ways. in that instance, i think it would be safe to let the writer have leeway and artistic licence.

[u/TimTravel → u/angelsrallyon]

Quick answer is determinism is not falsifiable so it can't matter here. More when not on phone.

[u/TimTravel → u/angelsrallyon]

Consider Newcomb's problem. Even if only one timeline happens, it is important to consider the other possibilities. Those who do not get less utility. If you are in a universe, you are a part of it, so you can change its probability distribution of possible timelines. Certain policies will do just that. Technically every policy will, but certain ones will do it in an interesting way when time travel is a possibility.

[u/angelsrallyon → u/TimTravel]

determinism is not falsifiable

Yes, but let me put it this way,

In a certain Fictional world being made, The world is assumed to be made by intelligent design. A Christian god made it. In this world, their are angels. these angels can fly, cannot die, and have other seemingly magical powers. It makes sense because they are made by this god, who exists in this world.

You could argue that the original assumption for this fiction world is false, and that "having an almighty god is not falsifiable" but then you would need to justify the existence of angels with other terms. You would need to make a system of explaining the origins, and range of powers, with some of theory of the universe. Newtonian laws would have trouble, but with enough work you may be able to work out a quantum explanation.

You would make something like Ptolmeys system of the universe, where it functionally works because of all the math envolved, but the answer is not as simplistic as the assumed answer.

This is why in the REAL world, Scientists assume the age of the earth is millions of years and not thousands, not because it is IMPOSSIBLE for a god to have made the earth the way it is right now, but because it assumes far too many variables and you would have to make a crazy math system to explain simple phenomena(like evolution, Aspects of Geology, ect). So in this sense, Science gives the better theory.

In the same way, Time Turners work very simply from a Deterministic perspective. You CAN make Multiple world Theory apply to it, but then you have to deal with a lot of tricky problems that we have been discussing at length for quite some time. All these problems(or at least, most) go away when assuming a deterministic universe.

[u/TimTravel → u/angelsrallyon]

I don't think they do go away with a deterministic universe. Can you elaborate on that?

Regardless, there still has to mathematically exist a graph of universe configurations following the laws of physics in effect with out-degree one on every vertex if it's deterministic. Given complete knowledge of the laws of physics you could walk the graph from some initial state. The important issue is that there is doubt on both the initial state and on the laws of physics. The most reasonable interpretation of the laws of physics in a story is some sort of Solomonoff induction on its laws of physics or some heuristic to it.

edit: Not sure how relevant that paragraph is. I want to hear your answer first.

[u/angelsrallyon → u/TimTravel]

You keep asking about the infinite possibilities brought out by probability, as if the system works on probability. If the universe being explained is not probabilistic, but deterministic, all of those arguments are irrelevant since probability, in essence, does not truly exist(in this system). As you say, this is not provable, since you can have the same results in a probabilistic universe, but it is much simpler.

For example, in a probabilistic universe, you could know EVERYTHING and still be unsure about the future, because truly random occurrences can happen.

In a deterministic world, the universe is a kind of Finite State Machine, as you say in your crossed out text. In a deterministic world, someone who knows everything about an initial state can predict with impunity what will happen forever onwards. However, if this being is part of the universe, he still cannot change anything. This may led to a Dr. Manhattan type senario, where he can see the future coming but cannot change it. "We are all puppets, but I can see the strings"

Here is an example of why it is simpler,

Lets say Hermione wants to go back in time and have a conversation with herself.

In Determinism, one of two things will happen. Either, Something stops her from doing this, or not. If she does have this conversation, then in the future, Hermione is bound to go back in time and have a conversation with herself again. And it is going to be the same one, because it has already happened, and it is just as adamant a fact as anything else that has already happend.

With a Probabilistic universe, this gets scary. Every possible universe where Hermione makes a mistake, gets something wrong, changes something important, breaths wrong, trips, anything, has to somehow be accounted for and removed as a possibility. Then you have to remove all possibilities of other types of Paradoxes. There would have to be some strange laws put into place to disallow such actions, and I can't even begin to describe how convoluted they would have to be in order to disallow so many different possibilities. It isn't just an infinite amount, I would say the laws would have to outlaw a majority of the infinite possibilities in a seemingly arbitrary fashion.

SO in this way, a Deterministic View solves most of the problems in a much simpler way(with the exception of Catch 22's. Which we have disallowed.)

[u/TimTravel → u/angelsrallyon]

I find it strange how your concerns about probabilistic universes with time travel are so similar to my concerns about deterministic universes with time travel. It is likely there is some sort of miscommunication.

If the universe is deterministic then there must be a successor function which gives the next universe configuration given the current one, and for understandable laws it should be computable by a Turing machine whose source code has low Kolmogorov complexity. The only way I can see such a successor function even mathematically existing in a deterministic universe is by declaring that certain physical configurations of the particles in the universe are simply not physically possible. If, according to the "prior" laws of physics (where paradoxes are sort of allowed but if they happen the timeline just stops) there would be a paradox following from a particular universe configuration then that universe configuration cannot be physically possible, even as an initial configuration. This seems very strange. It ought to be that you can take any arrangement of particles that exist under a particular set of laws of physics then apply the laws and see what happens without contradiction. I cannot imagine a way of defining a deterministic prior successor function without doing something like this. Do you just "guess" sometimes that someone is going to arrive from the future? As you compute this timeline, how do you guarantee that you satisfy this prophesy?

The way to resolve it with probabilistic universes is to say that there is no successor function, even a probabilistic one (technically there will be a probabilistic one but don't think of it that way). There is, instead, a probability distribution over entire timelines. Take some prior (probabilistic) Markov chain set of laws of physics that allows time travel but if a paradox happens the timeline simply stops and that universe ends. If (with the prior laws of physics) someone arrives from a certain time in the future but does not depart in exactly the right configuration, or if someone departs from the future and does not arrive in the past in exactly the right configuration then the timeline is paradoxical.

This yields a perfectly valid distribution of timelines, but it's not the one we want. To get the one we want, all we have to do is condition this distribution on not getting a paradoxical timeline. Probability is necessary in case the universe starts in a configuration which, according to the prior laws of physics, is likely to cause a paradoxical timeline. Probabilities will be skewed in precisely the right way to prevent this from happening.

Technically this will yield a probabilistic successor function if you do something like "pick a random nonparadoxical timeline that is identical to the timeline we've determined so far: the next configuration of the universe is the next configuration of that timeline after the time that is Now". It's more helpful to think of a computer computing an entire timeline at once wholistically.

This system allows any configuration of particles to be physically possible and intuitively allows time travel. Catch-22s are possible but unlikely. They can only happen if you are in a configuration which is likely to cause a paradoxical timeline according to the prior laws of physics.

[u/angelsrallyon → u/TimTravel]

I still think we are nitpicking here. We get the same results either way.

Let put it this way, in harry potter there is a spell for making water. you say a word, and water is made. It does not come from a reservoir somewhere, it is made. There are spells that ignore laws of momentum, conversations of energy and matter, the whole lot of it.

You could come up with explanations, like the water is coming from somewhere, the momentum is being transfered to a far away object, ect. But the simpler anser is to say that in this world, with these rules, it simply happens. It is a world where the laws are different.

If Hermione Transfigures something, she can change a lead into gold No problem. Under realistic laws, this may cause exessive radiation. it should give wizards the power of causing nuclear(or, in HPMOR, wave function) reactions.

In the same way, Time Travel simply works. To rationalise that it must be a likely timeline in multiple worlds theory would be something akin to a "Fan Calc". It is not cannon because it is assuming our real world physics when the world of the Harry potter has no indication of working by those laws.

As another metaphor, let me bring up superman. He can fly many times faster than the speed of light. Our laws do not allow this.

You could say he is bending space time around him, making the space infront of him smaller and the space behind him longer. You could say he is instantly teleporting multiple times at a set rate and distance. You could say he is quantumly entangled in the universe and may apear anywhere.

All of these explanations are moot. First of all, since IMP's are a thing he needs to slow down for, and he can "close" black holes with his hands(whatever that means) The only explanation that matters is that the DC universe allows this. We go by feats, not by theories.

Do you just "guess" sometimes that someone is going to arrive from the future?

Hermiones use of the Time Turner and what she can do with it should be dictated by Feats. There was arguably one Catch 22 from the book(Harry saves himself) but that was a weak one, since his doom wasn't really certain.

how do you guarantee that you satisfy this prophesy? Tautologically. It has already happened.

The only way I can see such a successor function even mathematically existing in a deterministic universe is by declaring that certain physical configurations of the particles in the universe are simply not physically possible

In this universe, an all knowing being(or successor function) would have no need of the word "possible". Something either happened or it did not. Or, something either will happen, or not. There is no "possible".

The system works less like a function an more like a novel. You can go backwards a few pages and see things from a new perspective knowing what you know now, but you can't change what happens. The book is already written as law. If a character dies, it was already written before you even read about it(it sucks, or perhaps it is extremely apt, that read is how you spell both the present and the past tense of the word.). no amount of re-reading will bring the character back. There is no "possible" there is only what happened, or will happen.

[u/TimTravel → u/angelsrallyon]

More detail on the rules in fiction later, but conditioned on there needing to be laws of physics does what I say make sense? I'd like to avoid increasing the stack depth of the discussion too much.

[u/angelsrallyon → u/TimTravel]

I think it comes down to you using a Rationalist approach and me taking a Empirical one, or you using Quantum while I am using Newtonian. Your system makes sense, and it works, but it assumes too much in my opinion and it is not nearly as simple. In the end, for all functional reasons, it really doesn't matter.

[u/TimTravel → u/angelsrallyon]

It is not about realism, it is about internal consistency. Even absurd laws like a magic word creating water from nothing are fine. All that matters for believability is that the story follow its own rules. The mechanism through which the rules are different is largely unimportant. This is why midichlorians are so cringe-inducing. Jedi force powers until that point were simply part of the premise: there was no need to reduce the complexity of the premise of the story.

It seems like what you're saying is that the author determines all the events in the story by arbitrarily choosing what they want to have happen. That is not a story. That is a series of suppositions. A series of suppositions does not have rules or believability or anything like that: it just asks the reader to iteratively assume new facts arbitrarily without pattern.

I read a philosophy paper on this a few years back and lost track of the name and author but the main idea is that you understand something proportional to how much you can compress it. If you have a long table of values, and you don't understand it at all, you can just write down the entire table as is. This does not demonstrate any understanding. If you observe that f(x) = -f(-x) then you can compress this table by half and add a small note saying "f(x) = -f(-x)".

By looking for patterns in what is and is not possible in a fictional universe you can achieve a greater understanding of what is going on. When we say X vs Y here, we mean take the fictional universe of X, deduce its laws of physics as supported by the narrative, and do the same thing for Y, decide which laws are "fair" to preserve and which ones are not, then decide whether X beats Y is more likely than Y beats X.

There's no meaningful way to say that one interpretation of the story is more fitting to the established facts of the narrative than any other if we look at it as a series of suppositions.

I propose a precise way of doing this.

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A story has two parts. There's the premise, then there's the elaboration. The premise is always of the form "Suppose the reality were like the real world, except [list of facts].". The elaboration is, "Then [list of events] might happen.". A premise cannot be wrong. It can be silly, or boring, or arbitrary, but since the story supposes that, we assume it is true when reading the elaboration. Once the premise is assumed, the elaboration must follow from the premise in order for the story to be believable. The believability of a story the probability of the elaboration happening conditioned on the premise being true. When the premise includes a sufficiently whimsical omnipotent character, then literally anything logically possible can be believable, and when anything is possible, then nothing is interesting. If the premise of the story is that there's a guy who can make lawnmowers impervious to gravity on Wednesdays, then it does not follow that he'd forget his mother's name.

The premise is always "Suppose reality were like the real world, except [blah]" instead of just "Suppose [blah]" because it is not necessary to suppose something that is already true. If we didn't look at it this way, then every author would have to establish a ridiculously long list of basic assumptions, like that the characters are made out of atoms, that consistent laws of physics exist in their universe, that humans typically have exactly two arms, that humans do not spontaneously explode when thinking about prime numbers between 15 and 97, and so on, and so on.

When writing the story, you have to have a premise, and then write the elaboration based on that premise. When reading a story, you see part of the elaboration and premise in the text, and deduce the rest of the premise and the rest of the elaboration. The interpretation of the story is the extra stuff you see as the premise and elaboration that is not explicitly stated in the story.

The entire premise does not have to be explicitly spelled out anywhere, even by the end. It certainly shouldn't be explained until the end in a mystery. The premise is made up of the explicit premise and the implicit premise. The explicit premise is that which is stated about the initial state of the world and its rules in the text, on panel, on screen, etc. The explicit elaboration is the set of events that are explicitly stated in the text, on panel, on screen, etc. The implicit elaboration is the rest of what the reader thinks of as happening beyond the explicit elaboration. The implicit premise is what the reader thinks of as being part of the rules and initial state of the world beyond the explicit premise.

It is necessary to have an implicit elaboration. Suppose that we did not. Then comic book stories would have no events in between panels. They would exist purely as a discrete list of frames. It would be (mostly) meaningless to discuss notions of "speed" except in relation to the "frame rate". Written stories would be lists of atomic facts about the in-story universe. Consider this story: "Once upon a time, Wonder Woman went to the grocery store and bought an apple.". Without an implicit elaboration, we couldn't even say "Wonder Woman payed some positive amount of money for the apple she bought at the grocery store.". We cannot insert any facts into the story beyond what is explicitly stated. This is extremely strange and clearly a weird/bad way of thinking about stories, so we include the concept of the implicit elaboration.

The implicit premise is also necessary. Suppose that we didn't include it. Then any story that leaves out any detail of what the author supposes would get a massive and unfair impact to its believability. If it's never the case that a narrator states "Superman has the ability to fly." then every single time Superman flies, the story takes an incredibly large hit to believability. It's also impossible to close many plot holes without an implicit premise.

Together, the implicit elaboration and implicit premise form the interpretation of the reader. Not all interpretations are equally good. There is no evidence that Superman regularly eats hobo brains off panel, even though it is never explictly stated that he does not. It is unlikely given the explicit premise and explicit elaboration. The believability of a story with a given interpretation is the probability of its entire elaboration given its entire premise. The satisfyingness of an interpretation is inversely proportional to how large/complicated the implicit premise is. The quality of an interpretation is determined by its believability and satisfyingness. For the moment, ignore factors like how entertaining the story actually is. The relative importance of satisfyingness and believability is a matter of opinion, but when believability is (somehow) held constant, quality decreases as satisfyingness decreases, and when satisfyingness is (somehow) held constant, quality decreases as believability decreases. "It was all a dream / drug trip / hallucination / Descartes' demon / inside the Matrix." is unsatisfying, even though it makes any implicit elaboration entirely believable. If anything is possible, then nothing is interesting. If you assume the entire elaboration, then you're just looking at the story like a list of fictional events with no patterns, rules, or structure. If you assume none of the premise, then anything that is not explicitly stated to be possible before it happens is a breach of believability. Both of these are silly ways to look at stories.

Note that believability requires that the entire interpretation be believable, whereas satisfyingness only requires that the implicit premise be satisfying. I think it's reasonable to put a complexity penalty on the explicit premise also, but if you do, it should be a much, much smaller one. It is reasonable to tell a story about a large, complicated premise. It's not reasonable to suppose an auxilliary large complicated premise when a small one will do.

Consider Tolkien's collected works. They have a very large premise and implicit interpretation. It is a good thing that it is such a well-developed world with an elaborate history. A historical fiction where the only significant premise is that Socrates was a woman is not necessarily better than LOTR just because it has a smaller implicit premise. There are a few ways to resolve this. First of all, for fantasy novels, it's expected that there will be a large premise, so one should weight the complexity penalty lower. Second of all, believability and satisfyingness are not the only aspects of quality of a story. Personally, if a story is funny enough, then I don't care at all how believable or satisfying it is. I will note, of course, that humor has its own rules and you can't just write whatever you want and expect it to be funny. A lot of it is about subverting expectations, and without consistent rules, there are no expectations to subvert.