Alea Iacta Est - a Worm AU Fanfic

[Xilph]

So it totally arbitrarily decides whether something happening can be predicted or just the chance of it happening can be predicted without any way to tell except attempting to predict what will happen and then waiting to see it worked? It can clearly predict the events after allSeems dodgy and rather abnormal for powers which tend to near universally have clear arbitrary rules as opposed to ones that their user is unable to understand due to their complexity. Really though her power has just seemed a bit all over the place, it comes with both instinctive understanding of how to use it but not understanding of the results it provides, the ability to make small objects fallin other arbitrary known or unknown reason patterns, the ability to predict future events but no way to tell if it actually predicted it or it fell too far along the arbitrary complexity scale and silently failed, and lastly the ability to have it predict the chance of something happening with a currently unknown result of what happens if it tries to predict something that is so simple it knows it with 100% certainty.

Why it seems as if the totally normal event of an author doing something interesting without considering it from every angle occured, such an unremarkable and commonplace event it is.

 

[Muroshi9]

Taylor: What is the current latitude location of the S9? Rolls several dice. What is the current longitude location of the S9? Rolls several dice.

The entity prepared the shards and sent them forth. The Administration shard would go to a leader of men, to be passed to a girl child near to him when the conflict around her became too much.


The Navigation Cluster shard also went to a man who gave other men orders. He also had a girl child close to him, surrounded by conflict, ripe for a trigger.

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So I'm guessing she swapped powers with Dinah? This is just how differently it would manifest for Taylor.

 

[Ack]

So it totally arbitrarily decides whether something happening can be predicted or just the chance of it happening can be predicted without any way to tell except attempting to predict what will happen and then waiting to see it worked? It can clearly predict the events after allSeems dodgy and rather abnormal for powers which tend to near universally have clear arbitrary rules as opposed to ones that their user is unable to understand due to their complexity. Really though her power has just seemed a bit all over the place, it comes with both instinctive understanding of how to use it but not understanding of the results it provides, the ability to make small objects fallin other arbitrary known or unknown reason patterns, the ability to predict future events but no way to tell if it actually predicted it or it fell too far along the arbitrary complexity scale and silently failed, and lastly the ability to have it predict the chance of something happening with a currently unknown result of what happens if it tries to predict something that is so simple it knows it with 100% certainty.

Why it seems as if the totally normal event of an author doing something interesting without considering it from every angle occured, such an unremarkable and commonplace event it is.

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In other words, your average shard-based power, yes.

In canon, Taylor could control not only bugs, but also earthworms and marine crabs. She couldn't control skin mites, for arbitrary reasons. Sometimes the bugs would act without her intent, but not other times.

 

[dasstan]

Okay. When she tosses something, she has to have enough skin contact to be able to control how it leaves her hand, otherwise it's just tossing at random. So "hundreds of mini-dice", tinker tech or not, is right out.

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It seems like the obvious answer is to grow her some giant ass hands, then. Like, Sasuke's hand-wings, big.

 

[pepperjack]

To my understanding, the power lets her ask the dice to come up showing any number she wants, even if she doesn't know exactly what that number is. As long as she can define it, it works. That's why she can pull off things like "the page number my dad will open the book to" and "the temperature shown on the news" and "the percentage chance that the Trio will bother me before third period."

So, if it turns out that she can't write down a numbered list of names and ask for "the number corresponding to the name on this list of the person most likely to interfere with my plans in the next 24 hours," I will be confused. I'll be similarly befuddled if she can't pick up 10d10 and roll for "the phone number most likely to reach Alexandria if I call it."

Now, "the phone number of my ideal boyfriend" (with some experimentation on the definitions and phrasing to get better results) - that could be interesting.

 

[Ack]

To my understanding, the power lets her ask the dice to come up showing any number she wants, even if she doesn't know exactly what that number is. As long as she can define it, it works. That's why she can pull off things like "the page number my dad will open the book to" and "the temperature shown on the news" and "the percentage chance that the Trio will bother me before third period."

So, if it turns out that she can't write down a numbered list of names and ask for "the number corresponding to the name on this list of the person most likely to interfere with my plans in the next 24 hours," I will be confused. I'll be similarly befuddled if she can't pick up 10d10 and roll for "the phone number most likely to reach Alexandria if I call it."

Now, "the phone number of my ideal boyfriend" (with some experimentation on the definitions and phrasing to get better results) - that could be interesting.

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If it's a number that she could not have learned without using her power, or an event that she will not know about, she can't get it.

 

[pepperjack]

If it's a number that she could not have learned without using her power, or an event that she will not know about, she can't get it.

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So, Alexandria's phone number would be a yes, ideal boyfriend's would be a no.

(Assuming that "she could find out by asking Contessa!" is cheating.)

 

[Ack]

So, Alexandria's phone number would be a yes, ideal boyfriend's would be a no.

(Assuming that "she could find out by asking Contessa!" is cheating.)

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At what point in the future would she learn Alexandria's phone number?

Let me clarify: if in the course of normal events without using her power, she would learn the number, she can use her powers to divine it. If she chooses never to learn it in the future, she never picks it up.

 

[pepperjack]

At what point in the future would she learn Alexandria's phone number?

Let me clarify: if in the course of normal events without using her power, she would learn the number, she can use her powers to divine it. If she chooses never to learn it in the future, she never picks it up.

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Ah.

So this is actually much more restricted than Dinah's power. Taylor could only predict the future with regard to the locker incident because she was personally involved. She could figure out the end of the world, but not goings-on in Chicago that would never come to her attention otherwise.

I do not envy you the task of deciding which things fall on which side of this extremely fuzzy line.

 

[Ack]

Ah.

So this is actually much more restricted than Dinah's power. Taylor could only predict the future with regard to the locker incident because she was personally involved. She could figure out the end of the world, but not goings-on in Chicago that would never come to her attention otherwise.

I do not envy you the task of deciding which things fall on which side of this extremely fuzzy line.

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I'll give you a hint: the end of the world is something she'd learn about

 

[pepperjack]

I'll give you a hint: the end of the world is something she'd learn about

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She could figure out the end of the world,

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Pretty sure I didn't need the hint.

 

[Biigoh]

On the other hand, she could always find out the cellphone number of her future friends... :3

 

[pepperjack]

Sorry for contributing to the let's-exploit-Taylor's-powers-fest, but... there's a reason I picked the Alexandria's phone number example, and I've just now remembered it.

The set of ten-digit phone numbers is finite, which means that there's a measurable chance that she could get the right number just by rolling randomly. In turn, that means a series of questions could be used to determine which phone number has the greatest probability of reaching Alexandria.

"Chance that I reach Alexandria if I dial a random phone number" might require too many dice; if you assume each phone number is equally likely to be it (not true, but okay), the chance is about one in a billion, requiring at least 10d10 to get even one significant digit after all the zeros behind the decimal - probably at least 11d10, since she might not pick up.

However, "chance that I reach Alexandria if I start calling randomly-rolled phone numbers with LA area codes" bumps the odds by something close to a factor of a thousand, reducing that fistful of dice to a much more manageable 8d10. (She can confirm the area code by comparing to the chance for reaching Alexandria by calling random New York numbers.)

"Chance that I reach Alexandria if I start calling randomly-rolled LA phone numbers beginning with 2," "chance that I reach Alexandria if I start calling randomly-rolled LA phone numbers beginning with 3," etc., cuts the number of possibilities by a factor of ten in each roll, and would only require ten rolls to cover the whole range (really eight rolls at this point, since phone numbers don't start with 0 or 1, but whatevs).

She can then pick the starting digit with the highest chance - say it's '2' - and start walking down the phone number: "chance that I reach Alexandria if I start calling randomly-rolled LA phone numbers beginning with 21," "chance that I reach Alexandria if I start calling randomly-rolled LA phone numbers beginning with 22," etc.; at only ten rolls per digit, that's 140 rolls. Even with careful bookkeeping, that's the work of half an hour, tops.


Since it would be accessible to her that way, I think my unacknowledged assumption was that she could just cut to the chase and ask for the number most likely to reach Alexandria.

 

[alethiophile]

There's also that, even if it's limited to events she would learn something about otherwise, the power is making more information available to her than would be without it. E.g. when she got percentages for "how likely it is I escape if <X>", she both never actually tried X (after getting those percentages), and even if she had, in that case she would only get a yes/no "did it work", not a percent chance. So something like pepperjack's phone number exploit should be at least vaguely viable. (The difference between a chance of 0.000001% and 0.00000000000001% could be very telling.)

However, since it is a precog shard, I'm going to assume it's going by the rules of all the other precog shards, and perfectly modeling the entire world before making its decision on what it's allowed to tell Taylor based on what its blind spots are. Which means, given this limitation, that functionally she's got a blind spot of "everything she's not personally involved with in the future". Given this, does she still retain the usual blind spots around Entities/Endbringers/Eidolon?

 

[Biigoh]

Oh you guys... let's leave Ack alone until the next chapter is done...

 

[Firedon]

Actually, that restriction is quite nice, since apparently she doesn't have to deal with the headaches, given how much rolling she did.

 

[cyberswordsmen]

So she can make predictions in pretty much any format available but only on topics that she could conceivable figure out herself or she has reasonable access to.

So no predicting distant future events, no predicting secret information, but she can predict events she would likely learn about?

In that case I'm not certain why she can't predict S9 or attacks. They are fairly public events so Taylor could probably learn about them on the news like the weather.

Would this plan be viable?
She would work for the PRT and everyday she would read a really large report on everything the PRT learned that day that they view as important. Would this allow her to make predictions related to things that would probably show up in those reports as long as the information would make it to the report, but if she wasn't working for the PRT she wouldn't get the reports and couldn't predict those things.

Would she be able to predict the next days report in complete detail with d30s? If yes how far in the future can she get?

If I am reading it right she could predict future events that she could discover personally or hear about but not anything that is truly secret. That however seems to be off because you said she can't predict S9 attacks because they are influenced by many people and things Taylor doesn't know about, but wouldn't the odds of Taylor's success be influence by a lot of people she didn't meet and facts she doesn't know especially because of Sophia/Shadow Stalker and PRT influence.

 

[Ack]

Okay.
1) Taylor can roll dice with accuracy for how they land (in formation, whatever) or what number they land on. Throwing them at something won't count. (they stop being dice and start being offensive weapons at that point, and the shard goes "nope, not in my purview any more")
1a) She can also toss other small, light objects down to form patterns.
1b) She has to be physically touching the item(s) she throws down, sufficiently to be able to affect the fall.

2) She can only predict something that she would have learned without the use of her powers.

3) Her predictions start getting really fuzzy once the predictions begin to affect the event that she's predicting. (For instance, calling the police to the site of a potential riot will affect the behaviour of the potential rioters).

4) She can get solid numbers for values of things that are already set beforehand, and will not be altered by her prediction.

5) She can also usually get a solid value on something that is going to happen really soon, and only involves one decision, and the decision is not affected by the prediction. (Her father didn't look at the dice roll for the book, and the decision was taken out of his hands by the dice that he rolled).

6) If it's a future event that she will learn of, but more than one decision is involved in forming the parameters of the event (ie, people reacting to one another) then it's a percentage matter. Also, see rule 3.


Note that "tossing dice on to a map" is the equivalent of making a concrete decision. If it's in relation to a matter that requires a percentage, then it won't work.

 

[Xilph]

So she could do something like the most likely location for tossing dice on a map? As that's just asking about percentages but it's asking what the event with the highest percentage is rather then asking for the percentages of a hundred different places, or is that too close to concrete data? Because if it does work that could be a more effective way of ordering as it removes the fluff by very quickly filtering out all but the most likely results while still not actually requiring absolutes as most do.

Also I thought she could predict things her predictions would affect but it just doesn't take itself into account so it's always inherently at least a little inaccurate. That was changed for some reason to it instead is less clear or that was the way you described the inherent inaccuracy?

 

[Ack]

So she could do something like the most likely location for tossing dice on a map? As that's just asking about percentages but it's asking what the event with the highest percentage is rather then asking for the percentages of a hundred different places, or is that too close to concrete data? Because if it does work that could be a more effective way of ordering as it removes the fluff by very quickly filtering out all but the most likely results while still not actually requiring absolutes as most do.

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Better off finding out from other sources where they might be, then checking the chances of them being at those locations.

Also I thought she could predict things her predictions would affect but it just doesn't take itself into account so it's always inherently at least a little inaccurate. That was changed for some reason to it instead is less clear or that was the way you described the inherent inaccuracy?

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It's less accurate if the prediction will affect the event involved.

 

[abyssmal_kismet]

For finding locations on a map using dice, the easiest way is using a grid map and just rolling for coordinates. Heck, more than likely, that's going to be her roll during Endbringer battles: directing search and rescue by asking "Which coordinate would I save the most lives by having X cape search?"

 

[cyberswordsmen]

Okay.
1) Taylor can roll dice with accuracy for how they land (in formation, whatever) or what number they land on. Throwing them at something won't count. (they stop being dice and start being offensive weapons at that point, and the shard goes "nope, not in my purview any more")
1a) She can also toss other small, light objects down to form patterns.
1b) She has to be physically touching the item(s) she throws down, sufficiently to be able to affect the fall.

2) She can only predict something that she would have learned without the use of her powers.

3) Her predictions start getting really fuzzy once the predictions begin to affect the event that she's predicting. (For instance, calling the police to the site of a potential riot will affect the behaviour of the potential rioters).

4) She can get solid numbers for values of things that are already set beforehand, and will not be altered by her prediction.

5) She can also usually get a solid value on something that is going to happen really soon, and only involves one decision, and the decision is not affected by the prediction. (Her father didn't look at the dice roll for the book, and the decision was taken out of his hands by the dice that he rolled).

6) If it's a future event that she will learn of, but more than one decision is involved in forming the parameters of the event (ie, people reacting to one another) then it's a percentage matter. Also, see rule 3.


Note that "tossing dice on to a map" is the equivalent of making a concrete decision. If it's in relation to a matter that requires a percentage, then it won't work.

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OK. I have some questions/clarifications

2. How picky are you with "would have learned without her powers", because a very strict definition of this would mean that she couldn't have predicted the temperature on TV because she wouldn't have turned on the TV if she wasn't checking if her powers were right, while a very loose definition basically removes the requirement altogether because she could conceivable wander to the perfect place and time to learn but probably won't. For example could her power declare Scion is evil based off of Gold Morning happening in the future (ignoring the possible Scion blindspot). Did you mean something closer to " Could learn without her powers with sufficient effort and relatively little luck needed." So she could learn pretty much anything that is available on the internet, the local library, personal detective work*, or asking someone she knows how to contact and is willing to answer**. So she could learn a celebrities birthday or a about events happening in public locations she has easy access to but couldn't guess a password, or find out what Alexandria had for breakfast.

3. Do you mean that they give bad results or that it just ignores the effect of the prediction on the results such that the odds of the riot may actually much higher depending or lower depending on the effects of the police.

*with this possibility being much stronger if she has access to good information sources such as could be provided by the PRT.

**As such knowing and being on good terms with Lisa would greatly expand her ability to gain information.

 

[Ack]

OK. I have some questions/clarifications

2. How picky are you with "would have learned without her powers", because a very strict definition of this would mean that she couldn't have predicted the temperature on TV because she wouldn't have turned on the TV if she wasn't checking if her powers were right, while a very loose definition basically removes the requirement altogether because she could conceivable wander to the perfect place and time to learn but probably won't. For example could her power declare Scion is evil based off of Gold Morning happening in the future (ignoring the possible Scion blindspot). Did you mean something closer to " Could learn without her powers with sufficient effort and relatively little luck needed." So she could learn pretty much anything that is available on the internet, the local library, personal detective work*, or asking someone she knows how to contact and is willing to answer**. So she could learn a celebrities birthday or a about events happening in public locations she has easy access to but couldn't guess a password, or find out what Alexandria had for breakfast.

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Danny was going to turn the TV on. She was going to learn that information no matter what.

She will learn (once she thinks to ask) that yes, the world will end. Also that (ignoring the Scion blindspot, yes) Scion is evil and wants to kill them all.

If she has the intent (and the ability) to learn something, or if the information is going to come her way, either way without her using her power, then she can predict it.

3. Do you mean that they give bad results or that it just ignores the effect of the prediction on the results such that the odds of the riot may actually much higher depending or lower depending on the effects of the police.

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The 'riot in a certain area' was a bad example.

Suppose she was asked, "Where is Villain X likely to strike next?" What they don't know is that Villain X has contacts in the PRT.

So she asks, "Chances that he will strike next in the northern half of the city?" Gets a 78% chance.
Then she asks, "Chances that he will strike in the northwest quarter of the city?" Gets a 9% chance.
Looks at the northeast of the city, picks likely targets. "Chances that he'll strike at the Northeast Consolidated Bank?" This was actually his target, but if she tells them, and his contact warns him, he will change his mind. Which would cause her to not tell them that he's going to strike there, which would cause his contact to not warn him, which causes her to get a firm result ... and so on.

So, instead of a Thinker headache, the dice play up. They may repeatedly end up cocked, or falling off the table, or she may well actually lose them. Alternately, her hand may cramp up so that she can't throw the dice at all.

If there's a chance that his contact might not warn him in time, she'll show the chance that his contact has of not warning him, instead.

 

[pepperjack]

If there's a chance that his contact might not warn him in time, she'll show the chance that his contact has of not warning him, instead.

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Without even necessarily knowing why the percentage chance is so low, I'd imagine. She'd go through a bunch of locations and it would look like she was either missing a spot or going about the question in the wrong way.

 

[cyberswordsmen]

Wouldn't it be simpler to just have her power not account for the effects of her own predictions unless the question is phrased in a is conditional on something specific happening and whether it happens at all will be influenced by what the results are.

So in your example in the previous post she'll get high odds of the attack happening there because it doesn't account for him reacting to the prediction. She could however get good results from what are the results of success if we do plan X, but they get the odds of success if they implemented it without any future plan changes due to her powers.

Not accounting for her own results is a pretty simple limitation to understand and provides reasonable limits at the same time.

 

[Flammy]

Well this should have some glorious butterflies...

 

[Ack]

Wouldn't it be simpler to just have her power not account for the effects of her own predictions unless the question is phrased in a is conditional on something specific happening and whether it happens at all will be influenced by what the results are.

So in your example in the previous post she'll get high odds of the attack happening there because it doesn't account for him reacting to the prediction. She could however get good results from what are the results of success if we do plan X, but they get the odds of success if they implemented it without any future plan changes due to her powers.

Not accounting for her own results is a pretty simple limitation to understand and provides reasonable limits at the same time.

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... good point.

I think that's what I meant when I said 'fuzzy' the first time around. I need to stop second-guessing myself.

 

[Snake/Eater]

i have a question about Taylor's power,could she use her power to use her dice rolls with a i ching book?to give her a better interpretation of the future.

 

[Prince Charon]

If she has the intent (and the ability) to learn something, or if the information is going to come her way, either way without her using her power, then she can predict it.

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Does that include access to other Thinkers who are inclined to tell her stuff (due to knowing approximately how her power works)? You phrasing suggests it does, which would lead to some pretty impressive synergies.

 

[Ack]

Does that include access to other Thinkers who are inclined to tell her stuff (due to knowing approximately how her power works)? You phrasing suggests it does, which would lead to some pretty impressive synergies.

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Synergy makes the world go around, after all