10 KiB
[RST] Mathemagical Chapter 2: Local Optimization
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Author: u/None *
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Score: 19
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Created: 2017-03-03T14:58:30
Post:
Comments:
u/PenultimatePresence [+4] I shall make a promisement to not perform malice (6 hours later)
Wait, "e meters"? Meters? Why not e yards, or e kilometers, or e atomic units, or e astronomical units, or e planck lengths? Unless it's another thing like only being able to move 'objects' from a human perspective, e meters is about as physically/mathematically significant as 3/14 being pi day.
Personal hang-ups aside, I am enjoying this story.
u/None [+5] (7 hours later)
Yes, your point about the meters is true. I agree this was not a good choice on my part and any suggestions to pick something more fundamental would be good too.
u/PenultimatePresence [+3] I shall make a promisement to not perform malice (13 hours later)
You could have the ratio between a person's height (or some other measurement/quality, maybe related to their mind's extraphysicality) and the distance at which they can apply mathemagic be the e or the golden ratio or pi or 1 or something, although if you choose some measurement other than distance you're back to the problem of non-fundamental units (because the physical meaning of meters/flerg = 1 is entirely dependent on how much length one meter is or how much florp one flerg is (basically, changing your unit system should not cause the actual physical amount of whatever to change)).
Although... in a similar way as that one story where humanity had latent magical ability that shaped their culture (I forget the name, sorry), you could have it be that humanity chose the SI units to be the way they are because of the influence of their undiscovered mathemagicality, like meters being what they are just felt right because of this e-meters range result.
u/None [+3] (15 hours later)
I think the story was The Awakeners (was that what it was called?).
I like the second idea about having a subconscious influence, which might tie well into where the story is headed. Thanks for the suggestions!
u/Gurkenglas [+1] (a day later)
I assumed their nonplussed reaction was just them realizing that the simulation's GM was actively fucking with them.
u/None [+3] (11 minutes later)
Hey everyone, The second chapter of Mathemagical is out, and I hope you enjoy reading it!
[Story notes / thoughts below, feel free to skip unless interested.]
In total, this chapter took me about 15 hours to write and edit. That seems like a long time, and if any writers want to chime in about their writing speed, I'd be interested. (My speed would be approximately 400 words per hour at this rate.)
When writing rationalist fiction, I'm always unsure what the ratio of actual rationality knowledge to fiction is, and I may have erred on the side of too much with this chapter.
I'm a big fan of people like Alexander Wales, who can write stories that seamlessly integrate good thinking processes into their characters. That's really awesome.
A lot of the inspiration for Mathemagical comes from HPMOR and Unsong, and there will likely be more nods and similarities as we move forward.
A lot of things happened this chapter, and I had somewhat considered breaking it into several chapters. But I personally like reading for plot, so I hope people are okay with the slightly faster pace (compared to other fics). Also as a result, I don't think that the entire story will total longer than 7-10 ish chapters at this rate.
We meet two new characters this time around. Mei Fong was a hard character to write; I'm still unsure about her characterization 100%, but I do think she's quite interesting.
If anyone wants to further some speculation about where this story is headed, I'd love to see some crazy/plausible things in the suggestions. I have a direction, but I suspect the hive mind here could give me some great ideas!
u/noggin-scratcher [+1] I am a happy tree (21 days later)
Has the first chapter been through a rewrite?
Could swear I remember reading it a while back, but with a different ending where Dokan's response to "there's another level to this" was (paraphrasing) "yeah, I know, this was all a test to find more people who can figure that out".
u/None [+1] (21 days later)
Yep! The original ending was a secret research group thing, which seemed less realistic and fun, so I ended up changing it.
u/noggin-scratcher [+2] I am a happy tree (21 days later)
Good to know; do like to keep tabs to make sure I haven't fallen through any temporospatial vortices.
u/Prezombie [+3] (11 hours later)
Reminds me a lot of Saga of Soul, which is an awesome webfic you might want to check out. Sadly it hasn't updated in a few years due to author being busy with other things, but it's a similar setup.
I agree that the e meters thing is a little silly.
Something you might like to know for adjusting things. 10 nanolightseconds is 2.998 meters.
u/oliwhail [+3] Omake-Maximizing AGI (a day later)
10 nanolightseconds is still based on the human unit of seconds, though, which has exactly the same issue as meters.
u/None [+1] (11 hours later)
Ah, cool. Thanks for the additional information! Haven't checked out Sage of Soul, so I'll give it a look!
u/Ristridin1 [+2] (a day later)
Based on the risk of magic (and potential cosmic destruction) becoming more widely known, is Sarah really sure it's a wise idea to try to use her powers for something (and if the risks are more limited, is it even such a bad idea to have knowledge of magic spread)?
Then things folded in on themselves rather neatly.
Sure they did. No reason to feel suspicious about this whatsoever.
But the point remained that for the vast majority of the time, the distance between me and the object I was affecting was e.
The main issues with the unit meter have already been pointed out, but I'm sort of wondering why they get something that precise. 2.7 meters seems ok, but anything more precise is suspicious, and e could just be a number close to that that seems reasonable (rather like the golden ratio; any ratio close to 1.6 is often argued to be the golden ratio).
How is distance to Sarah even measured anyway? Closest point on her body in three dimensions? Distance to center of mass? Brain? Eyes? Likewise, how did they decide on how to measure the distance to Sarah. It seems odd to find e on their first guess of what range means. Did they do tests like having Sarah stand, having Sarah stand with one leg stretched towards the object, and measuring how that affected distance (that one should allow one to distinguish between distance to closest point on body and center of mass/brain at least, possibly between center of mass and brain as well)?
"Sounds good. Except that if we become a battery, we'll probably be locked up somewhere, forced to do the same thing over and over until we die," my brain said.
Nah, they'd just force/persuade you to teach others to do it as well. It's known that people can learn to do this, so it'd be far more efficient to train many people. And the moment one of them figures out it's all math... well... let's just hope that cosmic destruction remains impossible. I'd be so tempted to apply more interesting transformations than mere translations... Just a little function f(x) = 1/x. How bad can it get?
"I can assure you that I'm not working with the US government or anyone else but myself," Mei Fong said, as if reading my mind.
The rest of the conversation does little to disabuse us of that final notion. That or more likely spying on everything that has gone on so far, including the meeting with Andre. Really, mentioning the e thing the day Sarah found out about it? Very, very suspicious. Spying (possibly by magical/mathematical means, assuming Mei is indeed not working with anyone else) seems rather more plausible than mind-reading, since a mind-reader would have a lot more options to prove themselves.
u/None [+1] (a day later)
Hey, thanks for pointing out things in the story that aren't working! I'm lowering my confidence in my ability to pull off a strong story; a lot of your questions are things I agree are not well thought out, like the weird unit being unclear, and how more interesting functions exist. I myself am admittedly not good at this whole "try to munchkin the universe" thing.
u/Zephyr1011 [+1] Potentially Unfriendly Aspiring Divinity (22 hours later)
Interesting beginning! I'm curious to see where this is going
Agreed with the other commenters on e meters being extremely weird, although there are plausibly justifiable explanations.
The whole Mei Fong interaction was extremely weird, eg. terminology like "the outside view" is not common parlance, so it seems odd that Mei Fong would use it naturally and Sarah treat it as an entirely normal and unremarkable phrase. There are again plausible explanations for that though, like mind reading or just different linguistic evolution in this universe.
Typos:
It looked like I'd be lucking out on this gamble.
In the context, this seems to be the exact opposite of what you intend
My guess was on Dokan's surprised being genuine.
Also, that whole section seems odd, since Dokan doesn't seem surprised at all. "a small smile" seems more smug/knowing than surprised
u/None [+1] (23 hours later)
Thanks for catching the typos.
There are again plausible explanations for that though, like mind reading or just different linguistic evolution in this universe.
You may be onto something here... :)