13 KiB
[Biweekly Challenge] Precognition
Post:
Last Time
Last time, the prompt was "Mere Reality". /u/tennismaster2 is the winner with their story Sal Loves Food!. Go read it now! Congratulations to /u/tennismaster2! While you were the only contestant, you still have a special place in my heart (as well as some neat flair).
This Time
Exactly as I predicted last time, the challenge is "Precognition". Luckily, thanks to my ability to see the future and some research on this TVTropes page, you've had some chance to prepare.
The winner will be decided Wednesday, April 6th. You have until then to post your reply and start accumulating upvotes. It is strongly suggested that you get your entry in as quickly as possible once this thread goes up; this is part of the reason that prompts are given in advance. Like reading? It's suggested that you come back to the thread after a few days have passed to see what's popped up. The reddit "save" button is handy for this.
Rules
-
300 word minimum, no maximum. Post as a link to Google Docs, pastebin, Dropbox, etc. This is mandatory.
-
No plagiarism, but you're welcome to recycle and revamp your own ideas you've used in the past.
-
Think before you downvote.
-
Winner will be determined by "best" sorting.
-
Winner gets reddit gold, special winner flair, and bragging rights.
-
All top-level replies to this thread should be submissions. Non-submissions (including questions, comments, etc.) belong in the companion thread, and will be aggressively removed from here.
-
Top-level replies must be a link to Google Docs, a PDF, your personal website, etc. It is suggested that you include a word count and a title when you're linking to somewhere else.
-
In the interest of keeping the playing field level, please refrain from cross-posting to other places until after the winner has been decided.
-
No idea what rational fiction is? Read the wiki!
Meta
If you think you have a good prompt for a challenge, add it to the list (remember that a good prompt is not a recipe). Also, if you want a quick index of past challenges, I've posted them on the wiki.
Next Time
Next we're doing /u/kishoto's choice, "Anime/Manga". Any submission needs to be fanfiction of some anime and/or manga. I'm not going to be super-strict on definitions; manhwa or Korean webtoons are fine, as are OEL manga. Same goes for anime. If you're picking something really obscure, a description or link to the source might be welcome. Other than that, go nuts.
Next challenge's thread will go up on 4/6. Please private message me with any questions or comments, as the beloved meta thread is now archived. I foresee the companion thread being posted sometime in the near future. Edit: And I was right!
Comments:
-
u/Roxolan:
[The benefit of foresight](http://pastebin.com/vXNUSzry) 1986 words.-
u/MultipartiteMind:
<snerk> Amusing. Thirty minutes after a simulation begins, when the present catches up to the start of a simulation, is she able to split her awareness attention between her actions in the simulation and her actions in the present without both suffering? (Or do the simulations not last longer than 30min generally?) In the first place, how accurately is she able to remember her words from subjectively thirty minutes ago, boredom aside? Hmm. Why spend time playing poker and then bet the winnings on a single roulette number, rather than bring in money and make the same bet on the first winning number? Also, do the slot machines not require an external electricity supply? Are jackpots frequent enough that she can 'steal' a jackpot that someone else would have gotten, or does she have to tediously try every slot machine a certain number of times to see if one gives a jackpot? (The 'two times': coincidence, or did she come because she already knew from a news report that someone was going to win there? --But how could she hear a news report inside the bounded simulation?)-
u/Roxolan:
> Thirty minutes after a simulation begins, when the present catches up to the start of a simulation, is she able to split her awareness attention between her actions in the simulation and her actions in the present without both suffering? She cannot split her awareness, but she *can* "fast-forward" through a vision - which amounts to experiencing 30min in an (objective) instant. Which is a ridiculously broken power, but she kind of needs it to make the story work (otherwise she's just a Coil variant). > In the first place, how accurately is she able to remember her words from subjectively thirty minutes ago, boredom aside? Not very accurately. 1stVision!Mark was already dead by the point the story began. But on-screen!Mark didn't realize that, and Agatha doesn't really care. > Why spend time playing poker and then bet the winnings on a single roulette number, rather than bring in money and make the same bet on the first winning number? Roulette doesn't work very well with her power. The slightest perturbation could make the ball fall somewhere different. Poker is a more reliable money-maker (she can just look at the cards while the other players are freaking out about the dark void). But that day, she just happened to walk past the roulette when, for some reason (e.g. a debris on the wheel) the outcome became predictable. So she jumped at the chance to multiply her winnings. Same reasoning with the slot machines. Maybe she has a habit of trying out all the machines on her way in just in case. And yeah, this is a pretty tedious way to make money. I'm sure Agatha's power can be munchkined *much* more efficiently. Possibly she's just not very smart. > Also, do the slot machines not require an external electricity supply? Okay, you got me there. I did write this story at 4am.- u/MultipartiteMind:
Thank you for the reply! (This has also been fun to continue to think about.) A thought: In the Omega box-choosing thought experiment, by choosing a box you can effectively influence the well-informed prediction about which box you would pick. Here, however, if you're real then however much you try to wreck the conversation it will still end well for her. Trying to make the conversation end well only has the potential payoff of preventing a simulation after yours, if you're a simulation. By the same reasoning, it's arguably in his interests to make a try for intercourse whether or not he's a simulation--it will only happen in reality if she wants it to, but in a simulation it could make a difference to how you spend your last minutes (and for how long, and whether you could build a favourable(?) emotional connection). Going-well-for-her aside, it should set off warning bells when she's not telling both the simulation and the real that they're real from the beginning, as one would predict she'd try lots of different conversations and choose the one that gave the best results for her by, say, leaving the best impression (and not overly alarming the reporter). The lack of foreknowledge would seem to interfere with this, but that can mostly be handled by running a similar simulation (at least) twice: once for knowledge ('think of a number'), and once with knowledge ('I can tell you your number (and in reality copy how the rest of this conversation is going to go, if there are no problems)'). ((Expectations subject to insufficient-munchkining. Still, again, a conversation feeling.)) --Ah, right, the conversation feeling awkward with him mostly leading and her mostly responding is a warning sign in terms of flow, as the real version might be expected to have her in complete control of the conversation's direction, without unnecessary dead-ends. The 'threat of making and doing bad things to lots of simulations' is interesting to think about. If there are three people no way to tell which two are copies and which one is real, all three including the real one will choose to kill the real one instead of the two copies in order to raise the subjective likelihood that that one survives. However, if you're the real one and are about to scan your brain, knowing that hour later the scans will be embodied in different planets and (new paragraph--) A: The embodied copies will die after one day while the original continues living the whole time, or B: Before the copies are embodied, the original will be killed while fully conscious, but both copies will continue to live, then it looks as though the original, knowing it will continue to be the original after the brain scan, will prioritise its own survival over that of the copies who will only remember having been it. In that sense, threatening to make and torture copies of you is unwanted, but not as immediately frightening than if you didn't know whether you were real or a copy.
- u/MultipartiteMind:
-
-
u/DCarrier:
So it's not so much that she sees what cards she's about to be dealt, as that she sees herself looking through the deck while everyone else is freaking out about the void suddenly popping up five meters around them? -
u/RMcD94:
What happens if the void intersects with a person? Are they simulated to die and fall into the void? Or if it intersects with the roof, does it kill her?
-
-
u/Kishoto:
[RESET!](https://kishoto.wordpress.com/2016/03/26/reset-r-rational-challenge-precognition/) 1280 words -
u/TennisMaster2:
[Ｓｐａｃｅｓ](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1HjB9d4EalON9SdZjxxKRAg66VftDlnW9DtKFL59IGKM/edit?usp=sharing) ３，８５２ ｗｏｒｄｓ．- u/ZeroNihilist:
#Spoilers below: I really like this take on the theme. [](#s "John uses his visualistions to place repulsor nodes throughout the probability space, which then guide the course of events along the most likely route (factoring in the a priori probability and the repulsion effect). The cost is that he must experience those potential futures, and the magnitude of what he prevents can drastically influence how severe that actually is.") [](#s "If there were no such cost he could use this to massively reduce death counts on an enormous scale. The challenge, really, is finding a probability space that he can explore in a reasonable perceived time and without the emotional trauma of experiencing the thwarted futures.") [](#s "For example, if you give him an interface that simply prints the sum of the recorded deaths of a large subset of the world, then John can visualise many futures in which the display prints average or higher than average numbers. While this won't eliminate deaths (the probability that the system malfunctions is higher than the probability that the death rate drops to .01% of its current value), it will reduce them.") [](#s "Of course, the more pragmatic solution would be to build your utopia from the ground up. Identify key ways to reduce death and improve utility; increased funding for research and distribution of cures, ending of internecine conflicts, greater uptake of rational decision-making amongst people of high influence, etc. Then focus on each of those, breaking them down to their components recursively until the task of actualising them is manageable.") [](#s "If he and Katie do more research into it, it's possible that they will discover a way to use his power to imbue others with the power, and they could share the cognitive load (at the cost of potentially creating an extinction-level threat). If nothing else, inducting trustworthy people into the inner circle (possibly using his power to ensure they are trustworthy) gives many more brainstorming opportunities and a commensurate increase in effectiveness.")
- u/ZeroNihilist:
-
u/ZeroNihilist:
[The Traveller, the City, and the Road](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ZW-wsF8CDRCzS8NWm8IKAHjKtavF83_YJzHKarn5WKQ/edit?usp=sharing), 3475 words. Could easily have been twice as long if I explained everything, but I have to hope it stands on its own. Might go into more detail after this challenge is over.- u/MultipartiteMind:
That last paragraph is quite intriguing, in regards to the answer you've imagined. With the 'willingly given', what was going to happen was easy to predict. I was puzzled by the very first sentence; if Sam is inserting the Man into that common mental image (out of hatred), why is it 'a drowning Man clings' and not 'the drowning Man might cling'? 'a Man' (rather than 'the') implies others, and the lack of 'might' prompts the mistaken impression that Sam does not view himself as human.
- u/MultipartiteMind:
-
u/MultipartiteMind:
[Territory](http://pastebin.com/EszG0kXd), 2539 words. -
u/ILL_BE_WATCHING_YOU:
[A boring summer vacation.](http://pastebin.com/fJteDDVK) 786 words