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The Taste of Peaches (Worm AU)

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ForestGardener said:
A) looks to the future without simulating anything to predict which path he will choose and then simulates the other in real time,
B) simulates both paths to their conclusion immediately, then sets him on the path he chose while showing him the other, or
C) simulates both paths to their conclusion immediately, then puppets him to the end.
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I always thought it was kinda weird that people got so hung up on simulations with coil's shard- it seemed like a very straightforward application of the philosophy behind quantum mechanics to me. Both actions happen, both timelines play out, and then when the decision is made the other timeline never existed at all. Like the way a double-slit experiment, where you'll get the interference pattern as long as you don't measure which slit any given photon travels through, and once you do it doesn't show up.

Yes, it's counter intuitive for both to be real and then only one to be real. But that's the alternative to many-worlds theory, right?
 
Glau said:
I always thought it was kinda weird that people got so hung up on simulations with coil's shard- it seemed like a very straightforward application of the philosophy behind quantum mechanics to me.
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That would make sense... except Wildbow explicitly said it was precognition. So.

But I'm much less interested in how Coil will cope or fail to cope than I am how Sophia's nearly inevitable next meeting with Taylor will go. Sophia was judged ("hero or thug"), found wanting, has come to agree with the assessment, and is even willing to admit it out loud. She's done a lot of introspection over the last few days, is calmer and glad for it, and is actively taking steps to be better.

I'm curious: will Sophia actually be willing to apologize to Taylor?
And will the cat prompt her a second time to warn the Queen of the Sea once in the same room?
 
FaerieKnight79 said:
The merchants are known for abducting and forcefully addicting people to the crap they peddle. They aren't "unimportant", it just means that the Protectorate and PRT don't see taking down the druggies who serve as a useful buffer between the other 2 (known) major gangs as a high priority.
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FaerieKnight79 said:
They're known for abducting people to addict them to their products. They
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Ah, no they're not, not yet anyway. They didn't get that rep until after Leviathan did his one night stand.

(Had this discussion on another thread; there was no mention of that activity until after Levi.)
 
Glau said:
I always thought it was kinda weird that people got so hung up on simulations with coil's shard- it seemed like a very straightforward application of the philosophy behind quantum mechanics to me. Both actions happen, both timelines play out, and then when the decision is made the other timeline never existed at all. Like the way a double-slit experiment, where you'll get the interference pattern as long as you don't measure which slit any given photon travels through, and once you do it doesn't show up.

Yes, it's counter intuitive for both to be real and then only one to be real. But that's the alternative to many-worlds theory, right?
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This has been discussed into oblivion in multiple threads, but here's a summary since you seem to have missed all of them:

It's not counter-intuitive, it's just absolutely insanely energy intensive. As in literally, if Coil's power - an undeployed, limited energy levels cauldron vial power with less "fuel" in the tank than the average properly deployed shard, and no way to gain more - had the ability to create and destroy entire universes at a whim (which is what your "application of the philosophy behind quantum mechanics" would involve in this case) then the Entities problem of "find how to create infinite energy and infinite space to expand into" is already solved, multiple times over in this one incompletely deployed shard with a quarter-full gas tank and the gas cap welded shut.

The problems with this also include:
1) Quantum Mechanics doesn't work that way. It specifies things like that happening on a quantum scale while unobserved - "quantum scale" in this case is "size of a photon or electron", not "size of a large city".
2) Quantum physics does not operate on scales larger than an atom, and
3) Coil is always observing his power's operation - that's kind of the whole point of it: from his perspective, he observes both timelines and then drops the one he doesn't like. This means that even if QM operated on macro-scales (it does not) the timelines being observed means they are resolved according to QM, and thus only one state can happen.

The double-slit experiment operates on the scale of a single photon at a time, which can go in one of two directions at random. You see two beams of light hitting (the observation that resolves the photon's state) because there are billions of photons streaming through that slit and randomly (ie: 50/50 chance) picking one direction or the other when you observe them. (A light meter or electronic device or even paper absorbing the impacting photon still counts as an observer to QM.) If you could limit it to a single photon passing through at a time, you would have a good random number generator on the level of the Lavarand setup at Cloudflare.

On the other hand, as a simulation/precognition power, it's actually very low on the energy intensity scale.
Step one: Do a rough, low detail rapid simulation of the two choices to see which one Coil would be most likely to choose
Step two: Begin simulation in enough detail for Coil's observations of the un-chosen timeline, while low-level self-mastering Coil to pick the "chosen" timeline. Provide Coil with details from the un-chosen timeline in real time, and if necessary fudge things a bit so he definitely won't think he would have chosen it.
Step three: stop self-mastering when Coil reaches the "end" state, or when something not pathable (ie: a blindspot) occurs that makes the results wrong.

Step 3 is optional, depending on interpretation.

It's not that Wildbow's WOG hasn't met sense in this case, it's a "broken clocks can still occasionally display the correct time" situation.
 
Reply to me on IM if you want to continue past this? Gonna reply but I don't want to clog the thread past that.

poit123 said:
had the ability to create and destroy entire universes at a whim (which is what your "application of the philosophy behind quantum mechanics" would involve in this case) then the Entities problem of "find how to create infinite energy and infinite space to expand into" is already solved,
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Well sure, but no universe is created or destroyed, that's just a failure of imagination. It's the same universe just in superposition with itself. Not determinablly one or the other and thus both.

poit123 said:
2) Quantum physics does not operate on scales larger than an atom, and
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Sure it does. You can calculate the wave form of any arbitrarily sized object. It's just that past the tiny bits it's so steep of a curve on it that it approximates the point of a particle. The tail distributions still exist even if they are vanishingly small.

poit123 said:
3) Coil is always observing his power's operation -
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And thus his power could just be to observe without causing a collapse until his shard lets the world know it has been observed one way or the other.
 
As far as I can tell, Wildbow designed the universe of Worm by saying "How can it get worse?" and then implementing them and anytime he could think of another thing to make everything worse he'd retroactively put it in place. He'd never ask himself "Would a regular human tolerate this?"

Take Bakuda, I know, personally, several people who, if given an ultimatum like a bomb in their body she controls would simply rush her and choke her out the instant they got free from their restraints.
 
Otritzi said:
As far as I can tell, Wildbow designed the universe of Worm by saying "How can it get worse?" and then implementing them and anytime he could think of another thing to make everything worse he'd retroactively put it in place. He'd never ask himself "Would a regular human tolerate this?"

Take Bakuda, I know, personally, several people who, if given an ultimatum like a bomb in their body she controls would simply rush her and choke her out the instant they got free from their restraints.
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...yeah...

and she is *NOT* capable of the remote-surgury capabilities required to offset herself from doing the surgury.

and then theres all the people who would just break down mentally and stop responding regardless of threats (and those bombs aren't free!)

edit: I suppose it woulden't be hard to make the bombs simple to insert and then have someone else do it--its not like she cares about mitigating infection risk afterall.
 
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Otritzi said:
He'd never ask himself "Would a regular human tolerate this?"
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Now, I admit freely that I've never read Canon Worm, but from everything I've picked up about it and how Wildbow wrote it whenever this point comes up, I always think back to this conversation from Trailblazer by 3ndless over on SB during Taylor's first meeting with Piggot.

"Have you considered that the Empire has never been this vulnerable?"

"Don't overestimate yourself. The damage you've inflicted is hardly a mere flesh wound, but Kaiser has endured worse. He'll get Victor and Alabaster back or replace them with any of the dozens of other Nazi capes around the country."

"Maybe. But he'll have to use some of his own capes to try and break them out. My bet? He'll send Hookwolf, Stormtiger, and Cricket to do it. Maybe Krieg and Rune. In either scenario, for a few days the Empire won't be down two capes. They'll be down four or five."

Piggot raised her brow. Surprise? At me, her herself?

It's what I continually didn't get about the PRT. They focused so much on the capes, but they lost the forest for the trees.

The capes needed their unpowered henchmen. They needed their fronts. Their drugs. Their guns. Lung might be able to hold onto his territory through raw power and reputation, but he still had the ABB. Without them, what is Lung?

A giant dragon man in a china shop. Not remotely the kind of danger on par with a major criminal organization with an agenda.
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(for context for those who haven't read it: Taylor spends the first chunk of the fic undermining the gangs infrastructure and manpower while trying to avoid direct confrontation with their capes. The conversation is following the first time she deliberately targets other capes and captures Alabaster and Victor.)

Because Worm isn't about "regular people". It's about the capes.

Now, this getting into derail territory, so maybe we should find something more fluffy to talk about or let the thread go into hibernation again.
 
I think after Taylor's debut, Lung's response was to assume the fetal position.

Kyuubi? Check. Likes to eat liver? Check. Hydrokinetic, meaning trigger for Leviathan PTSD? Double check. She pushes several of his buttons.
 
Almech_Alfarion said:
(for context for those who haven't read it: Taylor spends the first chunk of the fic undermining the gangs infrastructure and manpower while trying to avoid direct confrontation with their capes. The conversation is following the first time she deliberately targets other capes and captures Alabaster and Victor.)
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To be fair that is a lot easier for a vigilante to do than a governmental entity. Vigilantes don't need to follow the 4th Amendment, they don't need warrants, they don't need to follow the process. And it is also a LOT harder to dismantle a gang and keep it dismantled without it rising up again or keeping another from taking its place (We don't want a repeat of The Boston Games. Plus, the normal gang members ate the BBPD's job not the PRT's job. Most make it seem easy but that's also because they give Taylor a REALLY strong power that the makes it easy for her. I love this quote from a Worm Reddit Post
In a lot of powerwank fanfic, I see the Taylor of the Day play out this scene with whatever authority figure the author has cast as an antagonist:

Taylor: Why haven't you fixed the Bay yet?

PRT / Protectorate: We totally could if we tried hard enough, but we don't care!

Taylor: Fine, lamers, I'll use my author-gifted Mary Sue powers and convenient plot contrivances to do it myself!

PRT / Protectorate: HOW DARE YOU DISRESPECT MAH AUTHORITAH!

--

It never goes like this:

Taylor: Why haven't you fixed the Bay yet?

PRT / Protectorate: Oh, geez, where do I begin? Well first let's start with how we're hilariously outgunned and outnumbered. Like, we tried to take out the leader of ONE of the five gangs (six, if you count Uber & Leet, and I refuse to on principle) running around and he turned into a fucking dragon and kicked all our asses. That day was a nightmare for the PR department. Hell, you could remove every gang except for the Empire Eighty-Eight and we would still be doubled in the number of active, trained capes we could field. We're so strapped for manpower that sometimes we have to field the Wards, who range from ages 17 to 12.

And speaking of the Wards, oh my god, the Wards. I get that dealing with puberty is hard enough without superpowers added to the mix, but raising and training the heroes of the next generation is still a big drain on time and resources. Somehow I doubt that the E88 has to have a budget set aside for teenage counseling. And if you thought that us getting our shit kicked in by Lung was bad PR, then you have no idea how terrified we are of the potential PR snafu the Wards as a whole represent. We're already dangerously skirting the 'child soldier' line, one we only get away with by presenting a squeaky-clean public image, which none of the Wards understand the importance of. Good PR keeps the populace from being as terrified of our superpowered primadonnas as they are of the ones belonging to the gangs, and all the Wards say are "less photoshoots, more field training!" Like, what the fuck am I supposed to say to the press if - hypothetically - Vista fought Hookwolf and got herself injured? Thankfully she's too mature to do something that stupid, but you get what I mean.

Anyway, we're pretty well-fucked here. Brockton Bay has one of the higher concentration of parahumans in the US but our requests for additional support are always denied. Chief Director must hate us or something. Theoretically, we could go all-in on one of the gangs, and maaaaybe bring them to heel by burning a ton of manpower and a good amount of political capital, and after that we've still got all the other gangs to deal with. They wouldn't even need to band together to deal with us - we'd be too busy licking our wounds to do much to prevent the inevitable gang war caused by the power vacuum. Lots of innocent civilians would get hurt and we would take the blame - and rightfully so. And if some of the older gangs like the Teeth sense blood in the water and come back, we might end up with more gangs than we had before we removed one. Shitty as it is, until we get more manpower and resources, the best we're capable of doing is playing the gangs against each other and keeping the tenuous status quo as it is. If they don't stick their heads out too much, we're not forced to hit back too badly, and vice versa. It's an issue that keeps me up at night, but the Bay is better stagnant than on fire.

Taylor: Wow, that sounds complicated. I understand your plight, but believe that I have the power necessary to change this status quo for the better, and so I must act. Also, I'm young and all my other authority figures have failed me, so it's hardwired into me to be skeptical of them.

PRT / Protectorate: Your ideas seem dangerous, and could lead to getting people hurt, and are against the law to begin with, so logically I am going to oppose them. You may end up being right - or at least end up being a beneficial actor in the clusterfuck that is Brockton Bay - but it doesn't change the fact that my reaction to your actions and intentions are rational.
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Otritzi said:
Take Bakuda, I know, personally, several people who, if given an ultimatum like a bomb in their body she controls would simply rush her and choke her out the instant they got free from their restraints.
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I mean, yes, people will obviously do this. That's why you have a bunch of victims in the room so you can have them see the ones who try die messily.

Two or three in a row will sink the message in regardless of the person.
 
Glau said:
I mean, yes, people will obviously do this. That's why you have a bunch of victims in the room so you can have them see the ones who try die messily.

Two or three in a row will sink the message in regardless of the person.
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Except Bakuda's ego meant that she didn't even consider that a possibility. Instead Wildbow had all of the people she implanted completely cowed. It's basically the Loki at the gala scene from Avengers where he screams at people to kneel, except that his rather dim view of humanity meant that no one was willing to stand. Not some old man who knew his life was over anyway, not a mother with a child to save, not a single normal person is given any actual influence or impact in the entirety of the whole web serial.
 
X9Killbot said:
To be fair . . . .
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I can't speak for Canon Worm, but all of these points are addressed to one degree or another in Trailblazer for why they are either somewhat valid or total BS. Some of them in the same conversation I quoted even. But this isn't the thread for discussing Trailblazer, and that isn't even the point I was making with that post. That point being that the lack of "common person" behavior in Worm is due to Worm not being about "Common People", but about the capes in all their inherent mental instability.
 
I'm honestly kinda surprised that one of the ABB gangers didn't just dome Bakuda before she really got going. There's no way everyone agreed to that. Get her early enough and you avoid most of the problems and consequences.
 
Baka-uda hasn't triggered yet, or possibly even entered Cornell. Not that her canon rampage is likely to be able to happen...
 
You know, I was doing a re-read and I had a thought. How much do you guys think Lung actually knows about the mystical being real? Like, I could completely see him having some iron-clad rules like "You do not mess with Mrs. Nakamura or her daughter. If you do, on your heads be it, I will not save you."
 
TempestK said:
You know, I was doing a re-read and I had a thought. How much do you guys think Lung actually knows about the mystical being real? Like, I could completely see him having some iron-clad rules like "You do not mess with Mrs. Nakamura or her daughter. If you do, on your heads be it, I will not save you."
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I could see it. Especially if my suspicion of him being Pagoda King is right. On the other hand, I can also somewhat see this as being a non issue for the most part, since the Nakamuras live and have their business on the Boardwalk, which puts them mostly out of the way of regular ABB operations.
 
Almech_Alfarion said:
I could see it. Especially if my suspicion of him being Pagoda King is right. On the other hand, I can also somewhat see this as being a non issue for the most part, since the Nakamuras live and have their business on the Boardwalk, which puts them mostly out of the way of regular ABB operations.
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If he is Pagodaking, then that makes his posts all the more hilarious.
 
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