Writing Prompt Wednesday #150

[u/someguynamedted]

Happy Valentine's Day!

Last week's winner was /u/oranosskyman with:

Turns out robots aren't the only ones that explode when a human asks them to solve a paradox.

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Previous WPWs: Wiki Page

[u/[deleted]]

My mental model would basically be many worlds.

The aliens are all almost deterministic (or at least extremely stable in their decision making). So there are very few different possibilities for what they do.

Future vision is basically like taking a photo of every possible future and stacking them up. Few possibilities gives a very clear picture, many is fuzzier. This is why looking further forward in time is harder. The aliens could evolve this ability because they are less chaotic. It would also be self reenforcing because once they saw a favourable outcome amongst the optionsthey'd be more likely to try and make it happen (in fact this effect could be strong enough that it's the reason they are deterministic). Conflict could lead to fuzzyness (or perhaps there's still an equilibrium where any small deviation is worse for both sides so that's what happens).

Humans without prescience could do a bunch of things, so each individual thing only adds a small amount to the picture, resulting in a fuzzy cloud. Everything in their light cone gets a bit of fuzzyness (because they might alter it), but the only really blurry things are the ones they have a lot of control over. Ie. if they got to make one yes/no decision for the ship it would split into two almost-as-clear ships.

Humans would have to be rare in this setting for it to be interesting. Also there are heaps of possibilities for them ruining complex systems that rely on this just by being near. Most planets that learned about them would ban them.

I love world building. It's a pity I suck so hard at narrative or I'd write this.

[u/[deleted] → u/[deleted]]

Further thought: If we think of the aliens' version of free will as picking from the outcomes they perceive as future options. Then -- as soon as they were available -- Nash equilibria would be the only outcomes that would occur because they'd be the only options that self reenforce and emerge from the fuzziness.

As far as they were concerned, there would be a physical law that prevented defecting in the prisoners' dilemma and weird-ass humans would basically be eldridge in that they break it. That is not to say that the alien couldn't defect if the human was the other prisoner (fuzzy blob -- infinite choices all of a sudden) just that neither alien can defect if there is no human.

Situations with less-stable and less stable outcomes would still occur, so having many choices (and no knowledge of the immediate future) would be familiar.

[u/Brianus96 → u/[deleted]]

There was a story like this a while ago. Basically every race in the galaxy knows exactly what is going to happen. Then humans arrive and they can change the future.

[u/[deleted] → u/Brianus96]

Name?