8.6 KiB
Thoughts on the natural laws of fictional universes (like Adwellia in "the Study of Anglophysics")
-
Author: u/Sailor_Vulcan Champion of Justice and Reason*
-
URL: https://www.reddit.com/r/rational/comments/2vb94e/thoughts_on_the_natural_laws_of_fictional/
-
Score: 10
-
Created: 2015-02-09T16:29:39
Post:
-the real universe runs on math -Adwelia (from the Study of Anglophysics) runs on english anagrams -the World of "the Two Year Emperor" runs on DnD rulebook
One thought I had was a universe that runs on something like monopoly, as in the board game, except that there is no limit to the amount of money in the bank, or the number of players, and the number of properties is much, MUCH larger.
Another idea would be a universe made of legos, like in the Lego Movie. Also, if anyone wants to make a rational story about a lego universe and mini-fig civilization and wants to have any kind of realistic combat in it, it might be a good idea to look into the game "Brikwars". It looks really fun and I've never had a chance to play it before because no one else is interested. (And unfortunately the Brikwars community doesn't have a competitive scene because they don't understand the concept of being competitive without being a poor sport and still having fun, but I digress)
Any other ideas?
Comments:
u/CopperZirconium [+12] (an hour later)
How about a universe literally built out of the four elements: water, earth, fire, air. Everything would be built out of combinations of elements like in the game "Alchemy" where combinations of the primary elements lead to secondary elements, which can be combined to form tertiary elements, and so on. Water, Earth, fire and air are like quarks which combine to form mud, alcohol, cloud, lava, dust and plasma particles which then form larger particles by combining with primary elements or other elements.
u/xamueljones [+7] My arch-enemy is entropy (5 hours later)
That sounds exactly like the game Doodle God where you make everything necessary for human civilization to function starting from the four elements. Some combinations of the elements don't really make sense, but it's a good time-killer.
u/CopperZirconium [+7] (7 hours later)
Yes. Doodle God is a copy cat of Alchemy, or the other way around. There are a few other games like those too, the app store and free internet game sites are full of them.
u/BT_Uytya [+10] The Laundry (2 hours later)
Also, Erfworld runs on rules of strategy board game.
u/MugaSofer [+8] (5 hours later)
The universe of "Three Parts Dead", by Max Gladstone, runs on contract law.
Discworld, famously, runs on "narrativium" - or something. I think it's supposed to be a regular physical universe with atoms and such, and magical consciousness-reactive physics enforcing storybook logic on the world; it's mostly an excuse for the setting to run on every narrative cliche simultaneously.
The setting of "Mage: The Ascension" runs on whatever the majority of people think it runs on, for as long as they think that. I'm not sure if this is possible, or exactly how it works, though (there seems to be a range limit?) Some people can temporarily mess with the laws of physics in their immediate area by believing hard enough or coming up with an on-the-fly explanation for why an effect should happen, that they know to be false but is convincing to everyone else.
The Keys to the Kingdom series, by Garth Nix, take place in a world that mostly seems to run on regular physics (complete with alien races;) but with bits added by God for administrative overhead. It's been a while since I read it, but IIRC, people have a little XML tag listing their official rank in the universe's hierarchy, and people with higher ranks can create magic items in a sort of do-what-I-mean visualization (as well as getting a bunch of physical bonuses to their bodies, and some sort of mental compulsion.) Also, there are a bunch of pocket dimensions and teleporters and stuff that can be reconfigured to resemble mundane technology, but actually work because their functioning is specified directly in the laws of physics.
u/CopperZirconium [+5] (7 hours later)
I think in "Color of Magic" it is stated that light in Discworld travels slower than sound, at least around the light-falls or light-gates or whatever.
u/Rhamni [+3] Aspiring author (9 hours later)
Yeah, but it's also stated that you can see the light coming. Somehow.
u/Rouninscholar [+3] (a day later)
Light and sight are two different things. Light determines how well we see, but not if we see. Obviously.
u/catno [+7] (4 hours later)
Ted Chiang's "Exhalation" has a world running on air pressure and steampunk. That's usual physics, but it's done with style.
u/BadGoyWithAGun [+4] (7 hours later)
I don't think that one requires special rules - it could as well just be a very tightly sealed and insulated chamber in this universe, at least there doesn't seem to be anything directly contradicting it.
u/None [+3] (19 hours later)
Many of Ted Chiang's stories have interesting, well thought out, alternative laws of nature. For example in 72 letters Chiang takes the idea of "rabbis animating golems to demonstrate mastery of the art of permutating letters" and takes it to its logical conclusion and builds a dna like concept for animating matter and describes how evolution and biology would work out in that kind of scenario.
Or Hell is the Absence of God, where Chiang presents God exactly as he is depicted in the Bible and similar monotheist works: inscrutable, all-powerful, beyond any human comprehensions of good or evil. Then he set out to explore the actual consequences of that idea.
u/Transfuturist [+3] Carthago delenda est. (an hour later)
The monopoly one sounds more like a toy universe microdomain to train sadist-level capitalists.
u/alexanderwales [+3] Time flies like an arrow (7 hours later)
The Thursday Next series runs on literary conventions (among other things).
u/OffColorCommentary [+2] (a day later)
In this post in LessWrong, Eliezer defines the supernatural as having "ontologically basic mental things, mental entities that cannot be reduced to nonmental entities." (Also giving credit to Richard Carrier, though that exact wording is Elizer.)
That struck me as a really useful concept for writing fiction with magic. How do we make magic something other than alt-physics in a funny hat? We make sure it's supernatural, by the above definition - so a wizard can't summon "fire," the visual cue that combustion is happening; she can only summon fire, the contagious manifestation of anger, which will get distracted and chase you down if you splash water at it.
If we want that second kind of fire, that implies ontologically basic anger, because it makes no sense for summoning fire to drag in a kind of anger that requires a substantial portion of a human mind to run on.
It's okay to have ontologically basic anger, so long as the rest of the world behaves that way too. It would be too bizarre a coincidence for you to have anger in your head as a product of brain chemistry and for it to also be an atom of its own right, so human anger has to be made of that same atom, not neurons and hormones.
That applies for the rest of the stuff in a human head too; there can still be an organ that looks like a brain that holds all of the thought-atoms, but it can't behave like a brain. Brain damage in this world has to behave differently. Maybe brain damage means gradually losing the capacity for different feelings and thoughts, then coma and death. For changes to human physiology, we might actually be able to limit it there.
There's also the side effect of having ontologically basic mental building blocks where it's easier to create something that can think. Human evolution was probably shorter, if we even evolved (and skipping evolution might be a good idea). But it also means that more and more varied ones of these blocks are available elsewhere. I'm pretty sure that the answer there is just a generous helping of animism. (Though I'm falling asleep faster than I can expound on that thought.)
u/RMcD94 [+0] (19 hours later)
Game reviewer Yahtzee's Mogworld is set inside an MMO, though it has been a while since I read it.