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/angelsrallyon]

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]

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.

---

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.