Re: When something impossible happens

From: Robin Lee Powell (rlpowell@digitalkingdom.org)
Date: Tue Jan 22 2008 - 14:22:25 MST


On Tue, Jan 22, 2008 at 04:11:40PM -0500, Gordon Worley wrote:
>
> On Jan 22, 2008, at 2:42 PM, justin corwin wrote:
>
>> I hate to rain on a story, but given the proposed forum I wanted
>> to point out that there are much more more likely explanations
>> than suddenly jumping to 'the whole world is fake'.
>
>
> If someone came up to you and told you that something impossible
> happened, you'd be right to suppose the much simpler conclusion
> that this person is lying or that they may be insane or something
> similar. My hope, however, was to construct the story in such a
> way as to negate these possibilities as well as address them
> through the changing responses of the characters.
>
> If, however, you have some other, simpler explanation than a
> simulation, I'd be glad to hear it. I'd love it if I had to
> rewrite the story because someone reasoned out a more likely
> situation.

I consider "our physics is wrong" as substantially more likely than
that we're living in a simulation, for reasons outlined in my other
response.

The fact that we *know* our physics has holes is relevant here, of
course.

For purposes of your story, however, you should point out that the
chances of every particle in your body simultaneously tunnelling are
far, *FAR* higher than the chances of them doing so and all doing it
in the same direction in such a way that you reform on the other
side.

-Robin

-- 
Lojban Reason #17: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buffalo_buffalo
Proud Supporter of the Singularity Institute - http://intelligence.org/
http://www.digitalkingdom.org/~rlpowell/ *** http://www.lojban.org/


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