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Dragon Ball: After the End

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Simon_Jester said:
I'm not sure I buy that on a philosophical level, because it turns all utility calculations ("is this on net good or bad") into weird equations with 'infinity' as the inputs on both sides. Anything I do can be interpreted as creating the timeline in which that thing happened, and destroying the timeline in which it didn't. If altering a timeline and replacing it with one in which different events happened is universal genocide, everything is universal genocide.

The only ways to parse this are to not view a timeline alteration as being universal genocide in the first place, or to view it as such but then say that bringing a new timeline into being is an inherently good act just as undoing the old timeline is an evil act.
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That really depends on the mechanism behind stuff like time lines and time travel.

To use AGG:Rise as an example, timelines are singular, no branching from beginning to end. Making a choice isn't choosing between potential timelines, it's determining where the timeline is going. However, altering the past can be evil, depending on how far back and expansive it is. The PC has that ability, and usually uses it to either retroactively stop something that happened a few seconds ago(such as a attack destroying an inhabited city), but also has the ability to make more drastic changes to something by altering an events in it's past. The two times it's been used, he reset someone that had been driven insane back to right before that, and reversed a nasty case of possession. In both cases, he effectively killed his target, which can be seen in the first case by the previous version emerging from their insane self's corpse.

However, a big part of the setting is a character time travelled back to the past to change the future, and this killed all of reality and replaced it with a new one. And this isn't hyperbole, as this event, which is described as killing "infinite lives" ended up spawning being fueled by the wishes of those being to live, who seeks to erase the current timeline.

Or, to put it simply, the effects of altering the past are essentially identical to destroying something and transmuting it into a past version of itself.
 
Gore17 said:
That really depends on the mechanism behind stuff like time lines and time travel.

To use AGG:Rise as an example, timelines are singular, no branching from beginning to end. Making a choice isn't choosing between potential timelines, it's determining where the timeline is going. However, altering the past can be evil, depending on how far back and expansive it is. The PC has that ability, and usually uses it to either retroactively stop something that happened a few seconds ago(such as a attack destroying an inhabited city), but also has the ability to make more drastic changes to something by altering an events in it's past. The two times it's been used, he reset someone that had been driven insane back to right before that, and reversed a nasty case of possession. In both cases, he effectively killed his target, which can be seen in the first case by the previous version emerging from their insane self's corpse.

However, a big part of the setting is a character time travelled back to the past to change the future, and this killed all of reality and replaced it with a new one. And this isn't hyperbole, as this event, which is described as killing "infinite lives" ended up spawning being fueled by the wishes of those being to live, who seeks to erase the current timeline.

Or, to put it simply, the effects of altering the past are essentially identical to destroying something and transmuting it into a past version of itself.
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I think Jester's point is if you were acting on information from the future to change your own present, the idea that you've killed a future that hasn't yet is somewhat hard to swallow.

veekie said:
What Kakara would wish for...for nonlethal solutions to always be viable?
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Universal Peace and Harmony?
 
Simon_Jester said:
I'm not sure I buy that on a philosophical level, because it turns all utility calculations ("is this on net good or bad") into weird equations with 'infinity' as the inputs on both sides. Anything I do can be interpreted as creating the timeline in which that thing happened, and destroying the timeline in which it didn't. If altering a timeline and replacing it with one in which different events happened is universal genocide, everything is universal genocide.

The only ways to parse this are to not view a timeline alteration as being universal genocide in the first place, or to view it as such but then say that bringing a new timeline into being is an inherently good act just as undoing the old timeline is an evil act.
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Homestuck does this on an even greater scale.

Any alternation from the "Alpha Timeline" creates a doomed offshoot in which everyone in it dies. This is done a literal infinite of times by every small alteration.
It's later revealed that they are "rescued" from death to relive their memories for eternity or until they realize that they're dead.
And then most of them double die anyway.
 
Because it's based around the idea that because time, the universe, history, whatever, contains deaths, it's inherently a bad thing.

It's like, a lot of the arguments against timeline changes can also be used to say the universe coming into being in the first place was a bad thing. After all, the existence of the human species up to this point, all by itself, means that something like ninety billion people have died. The unthinkable horror!

Except no, that's stupid. You can't say that people dying is bad if you also say that people ever having existed at all is irrelevant, and that everything people do in their lives is somehow irrelevant, so that causing more people to live is unalloyed bad because the only thing that matters in the calculation is the fact that they will ultimately die.

...

So yes, if you split off or manipulate timelines, you bring into being entities that will live for a while, and then die. You know what else does that? Childbirth. We don't call new mothers murderers for having brought another mortal lifeform into the world.

...

And the 'gratuitous grimdark' comes into it because people then try to take this fundamentally flawed idea (that creating a universe in which people live for a while, then die, is morally evil because death matters and life doesn't) and start expanding on it. As with the "oh, then they all get stuck in limbo until they realize they're dead" and whatnot.

Meh. I don't know. I've never had any interest in Homestuck, so maybe i'm fundamentally misunderstanding what you're talking about. But it rings every alarm bell I have for 'gratuitous pointless edginess.'
 
Cariyaga said:
A memevote like wishing for a cupcake will win.
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Nah , the vote would find up being for something that ends up annoying Dandeer without actually having the ability to ruin her plans.


[x]I wish dancers underwear will always be filled with super poison ivy

Or

[x]I wish Dandeer always hear jaffur when he's laughing and happy, but never see it

Or
[x] I wish the misfits to gain Super Sentai powers

Or

[x] Obtain youth suit
 
Simon_Jester said:
Because it's based around the idea that because time, the universe, history, whatever, contains deaths, it's inherently a bad thing.

It's like, a lot of the arguments against timeline changes can also be used to say the universe coming into being in the first place was a bad thing. After all, the existence of the human species up to this point, all by itself, means that something like ninety billion people have died. The unthinkable horror!

Except no, that's stupid. You can't say that people dying is bad if you also say that people ever having existed at all is irrelevant, and that everything people do in their lives is somehow irrelevant, so that causing more people to live is unalloyed bad because the only thing that matters in the calculation is the fact that they will ultimately die.

...

So yes, if you split off or manipulate timelines, you bring into being entities that will live for a while, and then die. You know what else does that? Childbirth. We don't call new mothers murderers for having brought another mortal lifeform into the world.

...

And the 'gratuitous grimdark' comes into it because people then try to take this fundamentally flawed idea (that creating a universe in which people live for a while, then die, is morally evil because death matters and life doesn't) and start expanding on it. As with the "oh, then they all get stuck in limbo until they realize they're dead" and whatnot.

Meh. I don't know. I've never had any interest in Homestuck, so maybe i'm fundamentally misunderstanding what you're talking about. But it rings every alarm bell I have for 'gratuitous pointless edginess.'
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I don't follow. Your point is that the existence of other timelines/lives is a net good, because existing before dying is better than never existing at all. Why does that contradict the existence of a very large amount of "Doomed" timelines?
 
Deathbybunnies said:
I don't follow. Your point is that the existence of other timelines/lives is a net good, because existing before dying is better than never existing at all.
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I'd hesitate to say 'net good' without actually auditing conditions in each individual timeline. Say rather that more timelines is morally neutral in and of itself to me, as is turning one timeline into another.

Why does that contradict the existence of a very large amount of "Doomed" timelines?
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Strictly, what I want to contradict is the attitude of dwelling on mass creation of doomed timelines and so on as somehow a 'natural' side-effect of some action. I don't like it because it lends itself to 'lol causing infinite suffering who cares' or on the other hand, sanctimonious idiots giving poorly reasoned arguments why this is infinite suffering. I don't like it.

...I think it would be best to maybe drop it; I'm not having a good day today and it would be hard to explain my preferences for avoiding deliberate grimdark, I think.
 
Deathbybunnies said:
I don't follow. Your point is that the existence of other timelines/lives is a net good, because existing before dying is better than never existing at all. Why does that contradict the existence of a very large amount of "Doomed" timelines?
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I think Simon_Jester's point is that positing that even innocuous actions constitute massive levels of genocide is toxic to making normal moral judgements, because eg future us sending us on a different course via Seer advice now constitutes apocalyptic genocide even if everything is better entirely in our new timeline/course of events.

Like. When your conception of the world bars making the world a better place because actually ever doing anything except The Cosmic Original Path is multiple universes of mass-everything-dies, which is obviously worse than any improvement you could ever make, that conception seems kinda fucked.
 
@Terrabrand

Thanks, that captures it better than I could with my current level of headache.

You continue to slowly make up for discontinuing Even This Power Is Not Enough in my eyes. ;)

(That last line was basically a joke I want to be clear)
 
Of course it's kinda fucked. But if it's what actually happens... turning away from it doesn't really do any good.
 
Given that choosing not to make changes is also choosing not to create all the other possible futures, you would also be committing the equivalent of apocalyptic genocide anyway. In which case, it doesn't paralyze moral decision-making at all. If the best outcome is "one reality exists" and every other possible reality doesn't, choosing which reality exists has no real moral weight, beyond whether one is better than another (stopping the bomb from going off, etc.)


This has become a pretty lengthy derail though, so it's probably best to drop it anyway.
 
Cariyaga said:
Of course it's kinda fucked. But if it's what actually happens... turning away from it doesn't really do any good.
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That's not what happens.

Multiverse means there are multiple potential future paths, even if they aren't all Garenhild friendly.

Not all roads lead to Garenhild, and not all roads will depart from there.

Some paths might be more dangerous then others, but in the end if a mere seer could create and destroy universes, Zeno would have kicked the entire population in the nuts already.

For the minor changes, and the protection of peoples memories?

Thats why certain people have jobs.
 
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