Editing Talk:2149: Alternate Histories
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Let's assume that any given alternate history has a 1% chance of being detailed enough to consider the alternate history's alt-history, and (for simplicity's sake) that no alternate histories develop in such a way as to eliminate interest in alternate histories. Given these assumptions, reaching the 500th level would require...um, my calculator isn't giving me an answer, let's just say a LOT of top-level alternate histories where the Nazis won WW2 to get anything that reached that deep. Even if each alt-history had coinflip odds of reaching the next level, you'd still need something like 3.3e150 alternate histories to get that deep; even 90% odds need 7.5e22 alt-histories. This sort of infinite regression is only practical if some aspect of an alternate history makes it and its descendants more likely to generate further alt-histories. At this point, evolution would kick in and before you got more than a dozen levels deep nearly all alt-histories would be from well-adapted alt-histories. It seems likely to me that alt-histories with lots of little details and weird contrivances would be more likely to spawn alt-histories, so this comic seems pretty accurate in that regard. [[User:GreatWyrmGold|GreatWyrmGold]] ([[User talk:GreatWyrmGold|talk]]) 16:56, 14 May 2019 (UTC) | Let's assume that any given alternate history has a 1% chance of being detailed enough to consider the alternate history's alt-history, and (for simplicity's sake) that no alternate histories develop in such a way as to eliminate interest in alternate histories. Given these assumptions, reaching the 500th level would require...um, my calculator isn't giving me an answer, let's just say a LOT of top-level alternate histories where the Nazis won WW2 to get anything that reached that deep. Even if each alt-history had coinflip odds of reaching the next level, you'd still need something like 3.3e150 alternate histories to get that deep; even 90% odds need 7.5e22 alt-histories. This sort of infinite regression is only practical if some aspect of an alternate history makes it and its descendants more likely to generate further alt-histories. At this point, evolution would kick in and before you got more than a dozen levels deep nearly all alt-histories would be from well-adapted alt-histories. It seems likely to me that alt-histories with lots of little details and weird contrivances would be more likely to spawn alt-histories, so this comic seems pretty accurate in that regard. [[User:GreatWyrmGold|GreatWyrmGold]] ([[User talk:GreatWyrmGold|talk]]) 16:56, 14 May 2019 (UTC) | ||
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Does anyone think some of this might be a shot at the Kaiserreich/story inside kaiserreich/so on thing? {{unsigned ip|172.69.68.129}} | Does anyone think some of this might be a shot at the Kaiserreich/story inside kaiserreich/so on thing? {{unsigned ip|172.69.68.129}} | ||
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:True, though you only need 100 alternate histories in each history. Until you hit the alternate history where the war with Italy causes us to stop using the roman alphabet, you're likely to get at least that many in each setting. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.62.195|162.158.62.195]] 22:38, 17 May 2019 (UTC) | :True, though you only need 100 alternate histories in each history. Until you hit the alternate history where the war with Italy causes us to stop using the roman alphabet, you're likely to get at least that many in each setting. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.62.195|162.158.62.195]] 22:38, 17 May 2019 (UTC) | ||
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