BREAKER OF INFINITIES 4-146
Chapter: 4
Prim strode on, weary for a resting place. Surely the road had to go somewhere, she thought, otherwise there was no point to the road at all. Yet for every step she took, the ground beneath her feet seemed to stretch out three.
– Prim Masters the Road
Why ask? If she doesn’t ask, Alison will say nothing. The knowledge of a response only exists if the question also exists.
it is even more evident that Jadis the all-seeing corpse god possesses no mind of her own
It’s delicious,
And nutritious,
And I made it just for you.
Put like that, sounds like a part of a nursery rhyme. I love it.
Finally some quiet, to enjoy a hearty breakfast.
Perfect.
*Delighted* that Allison told her to go away and she did.
10/10
“So if you record, nay know, all that has happened and will happen. Then why are you still here? Why are you even asking me these questions if you already know what the answer will be?”
“Because: Until it has happened, it has not. I must be there to see it for it to be true. Else, I might as well be an ape with a type-writer who got lucky.”
That’s sort of an ‘ostrich head in sand’ mentality, if you don’t see it, it doesn’t exist. Unless one is so omnipresent that such a mentality is impossible.
That’s a linear, single-point perspective. Having seen the entirety of time Jadis may not experience the present moment in the way you assume. She describes holding a perfect memory of every moment. For instance, it may be the case that she is experiencing every moment simultaneously. She’s not able to change those actions because in every moment she IS acting. There is no space for her to re-think or do-different. Her probabilities have collapsed to zero.
Alison doesn’t have that problem.
A triangle is a perfect shape. It can hold different lengths of edges at chaos’ will, yet will always be a triangle. Thus, pizza is perfection and my breakfast of choice.
Is a pizza slice not more of a cone?
If you manipulate it the right way, it can even be a cylinder, or a trapezoid.
Or in its most ghastly form, a Square.
Buzz Buzz
Allison hurls herself into pain, over and over, because that is the mark of the hero – even a foolhardy one. To quote John the Gone:
God is a concept
By which we measure
Our pain
Bad move, Allison. You should have asked for waffles.
Can’t be a bad day when it starts with waffles.
The last thing Allison said to her before they disappeared was “It Hurts”
And Here we have Jadis noting that Allison chooses pain over and over.
but I can’t help wondering if this is all supposed to be cycles of Zoss choosing a different inheritor… Is the “over and over” part a reference to her as the successor, choosing pain over and over.
your comic sux now.
So what now, Allison? Will you just sit there like that until you starve yourself to death? It’s best to take your wheelchair, and push yourself back to your bed.
Btw, where’s your wheelchair…?
No, it can’t be over. NOoooooooooooooooooooooooooooo……..
“Oh, damn, was it something I said?…”
I’d laugh if next page is Allison looking at the food, and then eating it alone
It’s like mom always said: “Breakfasting binds us to something higher than ourselves”
“Allison, you must choose: meat, or candy?”
*holds up a pebble*
If you know everything, what am I going to do with this pebble? Since you know everything, surely you know that regardless of what you say I will do something different, but since you know what I’ll actually do you should be able to tell me…and therein lies the paradox, because if you *do* tell me, I will do something else.
Nope, if fatalism is true, there is a way out of that seeming paradox.
The interrogator of the pebble holder simply says nothing and then watches the pebble holder do exactly what fate has determined.
Additionally the interrogator is just as trapped by fate as the pebble holder. The interrogator could something, *anything* really, and then watch the pebble holder do the opposite, just as they declared they would.
But none of this invalidates fatalism as an outlook because the pebble holder said they would do the opposite and the interrogator is just as trapped by fate to say something only to see the opposite happen.
Understand?
Nope.
If they say nothing, they are actively *trying* to protect what is fated. Even suggesting that they would say nothing implies that *if* they say what is fated, it can be avoided. This tacitly confirms that the preservation of fate requires that it remain a mystery, and that if it is known it can be avoided (unless something else actively “corrects” the deviation).
Also, the concept of “opposite” has no bearing. Regardless of what they say I’ll do, I’ll do something else, but not necessarily the opposite. For instance, if they answer “you’ll set it down”, I could throw it, or eat it, or put it in my pocket, or give it to them, or place it on my head.
If the one who knows everything is forced by fate to give an answer they know to be false, then they are engaging in deception, albeit not by choice, once again tacitly suggesting that *if* they could reveal what was written, it could be altered.
Why are you suggesting that engaging in deception is a problem?
I fail to understand your reasoning.
Because nothing requires the omniscient to be truthful. At all.
If Fate is that you will “choose” to put the pebble on your head, there is nothing contradictory for the omniscient to tell you that you will eat it, because the omniscient already knows that through whatever synapses impulses are involved, you will put the pebble on your head.
For an omniscient there is no deception, there is only simple causality of action.
If you require an omniscient to also be truthful, you’re simply moving the goal posts, but it won’t work, because knowing unerringly the future means the omniscient knows exactly what it will do truthfully. And that will still respect Fate and omniscience.
I suspect you’re thinking it’s possible for a truly omniscient being to exist, and free will being anything more than our ignorance of consequences.
If we truly have free will, then omniscience is strictly impossible. Even for gods. Or even for God, for those monotheistically inclined.
Dahl wrote, “If we truly have free will, then omniscience is strictly impossible. Even for gods. Or even for God, for those monotheistically inclined.”
Well, as far as I know, the canon of Judaism, Christianity and Islam is that you can have both. Whether that leads to contradiction doesn’t seem to bother most adherents. Though I have seen some theologians, philosophers and religious scholars attempt to solve the contradiction by *essentially* handwaving it.
Me? I can’t be bothered. I’m both an atheist and a strict fatalist. By my outlook there is only blind fate and blind chance, teleology doesn’t exist. Free will and god(s) are illusions.
And to briefly sidetrack into physics. Laplace’s demon, a creature with absolute, perfect causal knowledge of all events in the universe, is only a thought experiment. The same math that allows for such a thing also generates reasons why it can’t be practically realized. (Specifically the nonlinearity from initial conditions of complex dynamic systems–like waterfalls or clouds.)
But never mind all physics, theology and personal opinions, to get back to Abaddon’s wonderful story, we just have to accept that it’s Abbadon’s story. They make the rules on how things work here.
I don’t want to come across as hairsplitting nerd spoiling all the fun here.
It’s just that the subject matter of this chapter is especially fascinating to me.
If we want to get into physics, it seems the universe is not deterministic (sadly, i sorta wanted it to be) as evidenced by quantum mechanics and the bell test. The brain supposedly has quantum processes involving it. Either way, it seems even with perfect knowledge of the current state of the universe and physics you will end up unable to perfectly predict everything.
ps. iirc the bible doesn’t actually say god is omniscient and all powerful, that got tacked on later. Considering how moody yahweh is portrayed, man being made in his image and similitude probably includes his character as well.
Knowing what you will do does not necessarily mean the ability to tell you what you will do. That’s the problem with your example. Due to the premise being false there is no paradox.
That said, someone omniscient and sufficiently capable could corner you in a way that you will end up doing exactly what you will be told you will do.
Get thee behind me, Satan.
So, uh, if I’m not reading into this too much, the omniscient being told her this is the most important decision she will ever make, and the decision was to tell the omniscient being to piss off
Pretty much, yeah.
And telling Jadis to fuck off may in fact be Alison’s most important decision.
It’s my hunch that Jadis is not exactly omniscient, close but not exactly.
There is the matter of having a limited area of attention. Jadis knows there is the vast, brain-meltingly complex, static (at least as viewed from a fifth dimension.), four dimensional shape that comprises *all* the events of the multiverse.
The past, present and future are all set and Jadis’ machine lets examine any piece of that spatiotemporal shape–but it might be that she can only look at one slice at a time. She can look at any slice she wants but only one at time.
That would mean she had to “concentrate” to learn any answer to any conceivable question. She has to go at look at the correct slice to know what the answer is.
But maybe not.
Maybe her true godlike power, in addition to the machine, is to have the mental ability to remember the *entire* obscenely complex shape in *totality* with perfect recollection. And if that’s true then she really is omniscient.
Hard to fight an opponent like that.
If that’s true Alison might take a page from Camus. If Jadis askes, just as she’s fated to ask, “Why do you keep choosing the way of suffering and pain?”
Alison smiles and declares defiantly, “Because I can!”
Sysiphus is happy.
Doesn’t the existence of quantum physics make any kind of predetermined causality be essentially impossible? Under physical laws as we understand them, reality and the flow of time just CAN’T be static.
Unless in the multiverse of the comic quantum effects do not work?
The answer is as simple as it is consternating.
KSBD is not a world with internally consistent, explicable, discoverable rules. It is a story, governed by by Abbadon’s authorial fiat and nothing else. It is, as Sloth explicitly states, a piece of crystallized amber with each event, twist, and turn determined by powers beyond the characters’ control.
Our world is an endless sea of unpredictable chaos with a veneer of logic and consistency far above it (the scale at which humans operate). KSBD is the opposite: all surprises and uncertainties are a conceit over a crystallized core.
Whether or not you like this explanation, it is true. Even when Allison becomes the breaker of infinities and defies Jadis’s omniscience, this too will be written-predestined.
Allison’s story shares a few superficial similarities with our own world to convince you to briefly ignore it’s true nature. Jadis merely banishes this deception.
Quantum mechanics is not refuge for free will either because it reduces everything to blind chance and randomness. Blind fate and blind chance both remove the illusion of choice we think we have.
As to whether quantum mechanics is incompatible with the causality and predestination of special and general relativity–well–in every area they are compatible, save one: our attempts to quantize the force gravity.
The way to think about that compatibility is to imagine the immense four-dimensional shape of space time–that Jadis can see–as being inherently fuzzy on the submicroscopic quantum scale. From a distance everything looks smooth and continuous it’s only when we zoom in close that we see that space-time breaks up into discreet chunks, like the rastered jaggies of old video games.
And this is what the correspondence principle of quantum mechanics tells us: as the number of particles grows very large, classical mechanics and relativity and causality are preserved.
We know that physics varies between the KSBD universes: Allison’s homeworld is similar to our real planet, Throne has this cylindrical gravity-field, Rayuba seems to have different rules about orbital mechanics. It’s the metaphysics that stays the same. Life is essentially fire in all the universes.
If you prod the known facts a little, you can work out that KSBD humans aren’t subject to evolution (consider the timescales).
Not having quantum effects seems entirely plausible in such a setting.
Jadis died long ago. This is/was a recording. She saw everything she would ever do and made a recording of herself doing it, as she always did after looking at the Wheel and always would do after looking at the Wheel. Unable to cope with the shattering of causality but unable to not play her part.
Allison, however, has looked at the machine and made a choice, even if it’s a small one to be left alone… as she always would, as Jadis always knew she would, as her recording vanished, it’s purpose served, as soon as Allison took one step forward.
This seems to me the best explanation of what’s going on here so far. Thankyou!
Admittedly, I’m more inclined towards happy (or happier) endings for characters I’ve come to know in fiction; the trend of fiction writers engaging in misery porn for its own sake has honestly grown a bit tiresome. And it feels shortsighted, as well. I mean, things DO work out occasionally. Every now and then, the ‘good guys’ win.
And while I won’t shy away from less pleasant endings, I really hope that isn’t what is being set up here. At the very least, Jadis is wrong about one thing: Jagganoth *isn’t* unbeatable. Unless the moments where he came very close to being beaten during the main battle and during the followup when Solomon David was clearly doing damage to him were just fakeouts… I dunno. “Everything is fucked, there’s nothing you can do about it, the end of all things is a foregone conclusion” feels like an uninteresting way to wrap things up.
Aw. I feel kinda bad for Jadis here… she seems like the nicest (if perhaps the craziest – barring Gog-Agog, that is) of all the demiurges we’ve seen so far.
Fitting for someone whose corresponding sin is Sloth. Intense evil and overwhelming slothfulness are not exactly the likeliest of bedfellows.
Of course, she knew that was going to happen so I’m sure her feelings weren’t hurt. It’s just a thing that happened.
So far Solomon David and Jadis are my favourite Demiurges. Incubus and Gog-Agog are probably my least favourite – Incubus, because he’s a truly horrible person, and Gog-Agog, because she’s creeeeeeeeepy. Jagganoth is pretty OK, except for the part where he’s the main antagonist at this point. The remaining two are middle-of-the-pack.