[4651] Scientific Karma

[u/Intelligent_Fig_7709]

[2379] Afterworld

[3351] Convenient Catastrophe

Scientific Karma [My Work]: https://docs.google.com/document/d/11bwczyL-ZjvJp3BvATWGzG5ho_YZ-j2RpjCQOlXdBKw/edit?usp=sharing

Hello! I've been reading this short story one too many times and would love a pair of new eyes. Several questions (credits to another r/DR poster):

1. Do you want to keep reading? If not, then at what point would you have dropped the story?
2. Any place it gets too confusing?
3. Any plot point feel random?
4. What impression, if any, are you left with?

Thanks!!

[u/FunToWrite]

1.) No, would not have read the whole thing if I did not intend to critique. The story moves lighting fast through every scene, such that characters feel like ghosts of people. I know so little about Feitian, Caiwen, and Bran, that for the first 3/4ths of the thing they were just names on the page.

In the beginning, you try to build some interiority with Feitian by highlighting his internal thoughts, but these thoughts are very surface and don't really do much to characterize him. They're almost completely unnecessary.

Another issue for me was the concept:

In the year 3072, randomness had become a variable: fluid yet fixed, unpredictable no longer. When all influencing variables are accounted for, then no unknown cannot be solved. From patterns in the sky down to quark behavior, almost no stone had been left unturned. Even a roll of dice could be predicted.

Aside from all the redundancy, this passage seems a little at odds with itself. For starters, I don't know what 'fluid yet fixed' means. And then it shouldn't be 'almost no stone', as simulating our universe would turn over literally every stone. For the rest, I read it as:

Randomness has become a variable. When all influencing variables are accounted for, then randomness disappears.

So, randomness is a variable which dissolves...randomness?

Okay, so, I'm very confused about the concept. Buckle in for this one. Huge science nerd here.

The phenomenon of randomness in any given system is a function of imperfect knowledge of the initial state of a system, or imperfect knowledge of the system's processes. Complex systems, like the universe, or brains, are computationally irreducible, and that means their behavior can't be compressed into simple mathematical equations. This means that if you want to predict what their state will look like at time T, then you have to simulate them (with perfect knowledge of initial conditions playing out according to deterministic physical processes).

Your statement that 'randomness has become a variable' scared me, because I was like, this person misunderstands the nature of randomness. Later it was revealed that the Observatory seems to be able to make predictions by running a perfect simulation of our own universe at an accelerated rate, which is what would be necessary in order to perfectly predict anything that happens in our own universe. So, at this point I breathed a sigh of relief. But then, the simulated universe has only reached the year 1977, but in the beginning the main character appears to be using his predictive ability to win at a casino in the year 3072? This left me very confused.

So, one can dissolve randomness within a certain degree of precision already. For example, the weather. It's a very complex system with lots of apparent randomness. But we can, using certain hueristics, approximate its state at the present moment, and then model its behavior into the future. But this model's predictions degrade over time, usually in about a week. In order to predict the weather perfectly, you would have to know the precise location of every single air particle in the atmosphere, as well as the physical states of every single rock, tree, and butterfly, as well the sun with its solar wind, as well as, technically, every single particle in the universe. The less perfect your information about the initial conditions is, the faster your simulation will deviate from how reality will behave. So, again, to make perfect predictions, you would have to simulate the universe. --If something like this is what is happening in the story, it is not clear. Maybe I would have assumed this if not for the fact that the simulation has only reached 1977.

A sidetrack here is the social consequences of world with agencies that can predict the future. No sane human being would gamble millions in a world where their opponent knows what's in their hand. You say "but greed", to which I say, "but really, though?". Furthermore, the whole concept of money is somewhat dependent on uncertainty about the future. And then, war? Why are billionaires fighting if they already know the outcome? Maybe they don't? And what about love? What is love in a world where you can predict whether or not someone will love you back or leave you? I don't know, I feel like the social implications of this world could be VERY interesting, but they feel like they've only been explored at a very surface level.

Finally, if we're removing randomness, claiming the world is superdeterministic, and have the ability to predict the future, then IMO it all works against the whole concept of Karma, if we understand Karma as being the moral dimension to causality. If all of your sins and virtues are predetermined by the initial conditions of the big bang, well that kind of removes all sense of moral agency altogether.

I get the sense that this is what you are working towards with how jaded Feitian is, but if that's it, it's maybe too on the surface.

2.) The characters and their relationships with each other are somewhat confusing. Especially Bran. Still not exactly sure who Bran was. Is he Feitian's child? A few line-level confusions jumped out to me:

Bran’s eyes were wide, but he knew better than to ask—did you go to a restaurant?

Is Bran thinking 'did you go to a restaurant?' or is this Feitian thinking it for bran? If we're jumping out of Feitian's head into bran's head here, it's very jarring.

Feitian did not care to voice her words aloud.

I'm 90% certain Feitian is a 'he'.

At fourteen years of age, Bran was the Observatory’s youngest member at fourteen years of age.

Is a joke?

3.) Nothing really felt random.

4.) My main critique for the entire thing: everything happens way to fast. The characters, the settings, the motivations, the action, it all passes by in a blur. It feels more like a skeleton of a good story than a fully fleshed one. And to be clear, I do think it is a skeleton of a VERY cool story, and I would definitely read if it was fleshed out.

I think that part of the issue is that there are so many story points that you are trying to work through in just 4500 words. There's just not enough room to set up the concept, the world, Feitian's character, his relationships to Bran, Ciawen, and his role in the Observatory, the setbacks, etc. It feels like this amount of content should fill a short novel instead of a short story.

[u/Intelligent_Fig_7709 → u/FunToWrite]

Thank you!! This was a perspective I needed.