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Post by basser on Mar 23, 2022 16:11:57 GMT
Aside from all the technical debate I find it amusing how this explains why the Court cares so much about weather data. Literal cloud-watching soothsayers.
Also probably why they put tracking devices in all the students. Or that's a cover story to hide the fact that they can just predict where everyone is gonna be at all times.
I imagine they want to get rid of unpredictable forces like Coyote. Would be funny too if they're not exactly good at interpreting the output of their Omega thingy and have been working towards what they think is an end goal of ascending to godhood but it's actually been predicting their downfall via robot-golem enlightenment.
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Post by atteSmythe on Mar 23, 2022 16:56:20 GMT
Forget quantum physics, basic logic says you can't make a perfect prediction machine. All you need is a second universe of equal or greater complexity to create the simulation. It's simple! :nods: |
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Post by Runningflame on Mar 23, 2022 18:07:55 GMT
Hmm. Omega said... something... that made the Shadow Men think their plan to steal Coyote's powers would work. But it didn't. Is that a hint that Knowledge of Everything doesn't extend to things Coyote does? Also, Annie... "You were a robot, so you understand computers, right?" has the same vibe as "You have a human body, so you understand biochemistry, right?" Jerrek, if he were a real boy bot, would mostly know about pipes, not computers. |
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Post by maxptc on Mar 23, 2022 18:38:28 GMT
To quote Luck Lawless: Whenever you notice something like that, a wizard did it.
Jokes aside, I'm not nearly knowledgeable enough to say quantum theory is definitely different in GK universe, but from my understanding for at least half of the magic and technology to work as it does, wouldn't it have to be? Regardless, a quantum prediction machine ranks a little worse then a full blown immersive holodeck on my realism scale, but much better then magic or a tax free community.
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Post by bedinsis on Mar 23, 2022 19:08:52 GMT
Forget quantum physics, basic logic says you can't make a perfect prediction machine. How do you figure? |
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ffkonoko
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Post by ffkonoko on Mar 23, 2022 20:04:29 GMT
Forget quantum physics, basic logic says you can't make a perfect prediction machine. How do you figure? I'm assuming they consider not believing in determinism to be basic logic. Either way, the premise of Laplace's Demon predates quantum mechanics and the uncertainty of that throws a spanner in the works...at first glance. But when the initial premise is already a fanciful hypothetical, one that requires a demon... IF the universe is deterministic and there was something able to know the position and momentum of every single atom, of every single chemical interaction right down to the ones inside peoples brain, every single aspect of the universe is known...something equally able to comprehend all of that and where it is all going, would in theory be able to predict the universe. When you hit apparent contradictions with uncertainty principle or chaos theory or when the observance of something is said to alter it, it can seem to fall apart. But our understanding of such things is speculative and fuzzy. It doesn't seem beyond the ether to say "well, the hypothetical demon can also account for the effect of its own observing", then rejecting chaos theory and the uncertainty principle as being beneath it. It certainly doesn't help that Chaos Theory had Ian Malcom presenting it with droplets on the hand, an example that Laplace's Demon would absolutely be able to predict perfectly. I'm sure someone with a masters degree could either destroy or more eloquently say what I'm saying here, but such a device is essentially approaching omnipotent godhood. |
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Post by Nnelg on Mar 23, 2022 21:03:17 GMT
Forget quantum physics, basic logic says you can't make a perfect prediction machine. As far as we know, basic logic also says time travel is impossible, yet here we are. Logic says nothing of the sort, these are assumptions. "Common Sense" assumptions, true, but assumptions none the less. When you discard common sense in favor of abstract concepts like infinities and infitessimals, logic starts to say a lot of unusual things are possible... |
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Post by Per on Mar 23, 2022 21:44:40 GMT
Forget quantum physics, basic logic says you can't make a perfect prediction machine. How do you figure? Basically because its output is recursively part of its input. Imagine a negation machine which will flip up a flag at some point in time if it gets the input 0/no flag and does not if it gets the input 1/flag. Use your prediction machine's output ahead of time for the event (0/no flag or 1/flag) as input in the negation machine. If the world runs on voodoo magics it can of course arbitrarily cause the negation machine to fail every time you happen to run it with the prediction machine, but then all bets are kind of off anyway. (Determinism is not part of this argument. You can imagine a deterministic world where the prediction machine says flag and the negation machine then goes no flag and this was what was going to happen, but you don't have a working prediction machine.) |
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Post by drmemory on Mar 23, 2022 23:56:31 GMT
Welp at least we know now how the court predicted slug sex, and why they wanted Tony to verify their prediction.
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Post by pyradonis on Mar 24, 2022 8:59:13 GMT
Hmm. Omega said... something... that made the Shadow Men think their plan to steal Coyote's powers would work. But it didn't. Is that a hint that Knowledge of Everything doesn't extend to things Coyote does? Also, Annie... "You were a robot, so you understand computers, right?" has the same vibe as "You have a human body, so you understand biochemistry, right?" Jerrek, if he were a real boy bot, would mostly know about pipes, not computers. Likely because our dear Annie doesn't know much about computers or robots herself. Have we even seen her use any device more advanced or powerful than a (non-smart) cellphone? |
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Post by drmemory on Mar 24, 2022 15:45:29 GMT
Interesting but Robot goddess uses the etheric tech, to the best of my reading that's antithetical to what the Court wants. ...and yet the Court apparently needs a large supply of etheric-energy to accomplish its current plans of... moving? setting up the new Court? finishing Omega? The Court seems to have a love-hate-need-reject relationship with the Ether... it needs lots of etheric energy to... get away from the Ether? Contradictions abound.... Powering Omega? If they are trying to keep track of ALL the atoms, even in a limited area, they are going to need an awful lot of memory and computing power. This is very roughly analogous to the "Bitcoin mining effect on environment" issue. Not politically, but in the sense that you need a lot of power to get seemingly small results.
The thing is, this wouldn't work in the real world due to Quantum Physics, unless I'm deeply confused. You can't know both the power and momentum of an individual subatomic particle at the same time, because if you measure one of those it affects the other. Apparently it works in Tom's world, which is fair enough, it's his world!
Still. I can only see two real use cases here, if we assume that Omega is the one who needs the energy.
1. The energy is needed to power Omega's computations. 2. The energy is needed to do something that Omega wants them to do - perhaps change something it has predicted. Or make something come to pass that it has predicted. In other words, affect reality due to an Omega prediction.
Number 2 seems more likely. Consider this. The Court had Tony running all over the world, validating Omega's predictions. Oh, side note - given that we now know that Tony knows about Omega and was helping to debug is, I wonder how involved he was in creating it? Anyway, I suggest that this activity was done in order to debug Omega, to verify and validate Omega's predictions.
So... if the ethereal power is needed due to Omega, which seems likely - it really feels like this is where we've been heading all along - then the question becomes, what is that energy for. See use cases above. 
I've posted previously about my suspicions that Omega is sentient and basically has the Court doing his (its?) bidding, working for him. I'm gonna use the male pronoun for no particular reason, until we are told that there is no person there, or informed of Omega's gender. I just don't want to deal with it. Anyway. We've learned a lot recently, and hopefully will learn still more, but I still have seen nothing that makes me think Omega is our friend.
I have a horrible feeling that this post may start a pronoun war, but that is NOT my point. Please resist? |
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Post by drmemory on Mar 24, 2022 15:55:39 GMT
Hmm. Omega said... something... that made the Shadow Men think their plan to steal Coyote's powers would work. But it didn't. Is that a hint that Knowledge of Everything doesn't extend to things Coyote does? I think you are on to something here. If beings (such as Coyote) who use the ether to do things can't be explained by scientific means, then they couldn't be predicted by Omega, and thus couldn't be controlled. Perhaps wrangled or manipulated is a better term here?
Anyway, Shell specifically complained about this, and called it unfair that entities like Renard can just do things without dealing with science and physics and such. I bet this attitude is coming from Omega, or is the attitude of the Court that led to the creation of Omega. Either Omega (if sentient) is unhappy that Coyote and Renard and the like break his ability to predict things, or the Court is unhappy that their (non-sentient) tool Omega can't predict such activities properly.
I think I might see where this is all going.
The Court is going to move somewhere else and not take any non-humans along. Especially anyone that can use the ether. They have Omega, who can predict things quite accurately, as long as they don't have any of those pesky ether-users clouding things up.
So if they move somewhere and block out all the non-humans, they will have a controlled environment where they can predict what will happen, and thus control what will happen absolutely. With no ether-users or other uncontrolled factors, Omega will allow them to predict the consequences of their actions perfectly, and thus select actions that will produce exactly the results they want.
The Court is not nice. They want to establish a perfectly controlled totalitarian state. |
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Post by zbeeblebrox on Mar 24, 2022 17:00:03 GMT
"DEVS" has entered the chat All of this can be handwaved by the Court saying: "Yes, yes, of course we're aware of the impossibility. That's why the Omega Device comes equipped with (technobabble) and Heisenberg compensators. Duh." Well, it's equipped with aether, which is even better than technobabble |
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Post by rabbit on Mar 24, 2022 19:49:57 GMT
Ignoring quantum indeterminacy for the moment, Background Loup is all "F'ing magents, how do they work?". Now, I can't stop thinking of Loup as a Juggalo. The face paint would fit him. A ... Juggaloup? From the ICP (Insane Canis Posse)? (I really hope someone gives us Juggaloup on the fanart thread) |
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Post by abbomeister on Mar 24, 2022 20:38:34 GMT
There may be a flaw in the Court's plan to leave the Ether behind. Humans produce actual ghosts (or whatever) when they die.
I'm pretty sure those ghost things qualify as Ether-Users. Little by little they'll introduce errors into Omega's program unless they are taken into 'the white door' and converted back into raw Ether energy.
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Post by justcurious on Mar 24, 2022 23:49:02 GMT
There may be a flaw in the Court's plan to leave the Ether behind. Humans produce actual ghosts (or whatever) when they die. I'm pretty sure those ghost things qualify as Ether-Users. Little by little they'll introduce errors into Omega's program unless they are taken into 'the white door' and converted back into raw Ether energy. What does the court know about the psychopomps and the Realm of the Dead? Tony's actions after Surma's death suggest that they don't know much. |
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Post by justcurious on Mar 25, 2022 5:47:16 GMT
But from the damage that the arrow did in the Realm of the Dead Diego probably did understand what happened after death quite well. Well enough to deliberately trap and twist two ghosts.
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Post by bicarbonat on Mar 25, 2022 15:52:10 GMT
100%. As well as the "highly coincidental" search for Britain's Next Top Medium back in Chapter 17. Also worth remembering that, in the same chapter, we learn that Parley senior was/is a high-level, certified psychic. Very predictable (NPI) that the Court would seek out a higher-powered, nonliving/scientific analogue to George Parley, Sr. That's their whole thing – uncontrollable, unreliable life is never good enough. It must be pinned down and made to earn its keep. |
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