Avenger's Infinity War *Spoiler* Discussion

[billd91]

But, that's the thing about randomness. Sure, you might get an even distribution, but, there's no guarantee of that. It's equally possible that you get group in random choices, meaning that you might wind up wiping out everyone with any medical training, for example, simply through random chance.

It really is a mad idea.

Well, he is the Mad Titan. Would it seem less mad if all the destruction were still essentially Thanos's love letter to the personification of Death? It may seem like that's, at least, is a bit better thought out than annihilating half the population for population management - but it's still madder than a hatter.

 

[Umbran]

But, that's the thing about randomness. Sure, you might get an even distribution, but, there's no guarantee of that. It's equally possible that you get group in random choices, meaning that you might wind up wiping out everyone with any medical training, for example, simply through random chance.

Technically, that could happen, yes, but it is not "equally possible".

The best way to see this is probably with a much smaller example. Imagine a room with 10 people in it when Thanos snaps his fingers. Five of these people are doctors, the rest are not. What is the chance that you lose the five doctors, and none of the others in the room?

The number of different groups of five that might be chosen is given to us by combinatorics - and if I hae my numbers right, there are 252 distinct groups of five you could choose. Only *one* of these is all the doctors. So, the chance that you lose all the doctors is 1 in 252, or just under 0.4%. Not likely.

It is as likely as any other *particular* arrangements (like, say, 4 of the doctors and Fred). But we are implicitly comparing "lost all the doctors" to "not lose all the doctors" - teh ensemble of possibilities where all teh doctors are dead is small compared to *all the other * possibilities, which include some living doctors.

Or, to put it more graphically - There are something over one million doctors in the US. The chance of losing all the doctors is basically the same as the chance of losing specifically the entiretyof Dallas, Texas (which something over 1 million people). When Thanos snaps his fingers, do you expect to then walk into Dalls, specifically, and find it completely and utterly empty? No. That's not a likely scenario. Same thing here.

 

[Hussar]

Using your .4% idea, out of a thousand worlds, 4 have Texas vanishing. Since the MCU posits a pretty full universe with lots and lots of inhabited worlds, then this sort of rare grouping will happen and the consequences become that much worse. That's the funny thing about randomness. The more times you spin the wheel, the weirder the results you start to get.

 

[Umbran]

Using your .4% idea, out of a thousand worlds, 4 have Texas vanishing.

No. The 0.4% was for a room full of 10 people, five of them doctors.

I said the probability of *all* doctors in the US biting the bullet was equivalent to having, specifically, Dallas vanishing. But is not equal to 0.4%. I can't tell you what it is, but I can tell you they are equal, because being a doctor is not the functional bit - being a member of a specifically chosen 1 million people is the important bit.


Let us be clear: There's a difference between, "Given a nigh-infinite number of planets, this will happen on one of them, somewhere," and, "it is equally possible."

That's what I am responding to - the mis-statement of the probability.

 

[Particle_Man]

Interestingly, it seemed that Thanos's original "half-off sale" actually worked on Gamora's home planet (at least, that is what Thanos said in IW). This was when he had to do things the old-fashioned way, pre-Snap.

Anyhow, I liked the movie a lot. I look forward to the sequel next year. Hmmm . . . 6 infinity stones, 6 original avengers . . . Lessee: Captain America - Soul, Iron Man - Mind, Thor - Reality, Hulk - Power, Hawkeye - Space (can put those arrows anywhere), Black Widow - Time (good at planning in advance). Don't know if the movie will go for a sextuple sacrifice though.

Also, if Loki lived, perhaps he is somehow hitching a ride on the hidden Hulk? Because Loki is definitely tricky enough to fake his own death.

 

[OB1]

Interestingly, it seemed that Thanos's original "half-off sale" actually worked on Gamora's home planet (at least, that is what Thanos said in IW). This was when he had to do things the old-fashioned way, pre-Snap.

Maybe not the best idea to trust the word of a genocidal sociopath?

We have no information that Gamora’s planet was in any kind of risk of collapse.

We only have Thanos’ word that the planet is better off now than before.

Even if it is “better off” now, it came at the cost of the brutal slaughter of half the population. How do those who lost a loved one feel about that trade off?

Even if the planet actually was on the verge of collapse, and even if what Thanos did prevented that collapse, it’s still an anecdotal example and no logical person should have any reason to believe it would work in all cases, and even if it did, it’s still an act of pure evil.

Thanos is a sociopath who is completely disconnected from reality. He is not smart, deep, or interesting. He is just a force of nature. Killing his adopted daughter to fulfill his quest doesn’t humanize him, it further locks him in as a sociopath.

Making him the protagonist of the story is akin to making a volcano or a hurricane the main character. You can’t empathize with a volcano or hurricane, so they can’t be characters. The same is true for Thanos.

They should have set up the film as a disaster movie.

 

[Particle_Man]

Actually I have at least one friend IRL and a few message board folk that liked it being the story of Thanos and got a movie where the villain wins.

 

[MarkB]

Interestingly, it seemed that Thanos's original "half-off sale" actually worked on Gamora's home planet (at least, that is what Thanos said in IW). This was when he had to do things the old-fashioned way, pre-Snap.

On Gamora's world they knew exactly who had attacked them and why - and they also knew they didn't stand a chance against him. So after the horrors he'd inflicted, they could eventually rebuild.

But right now in this universe, on every planet that hadn't heard about Thanos and his grand schemes, it seems like half the population's been turned to ashes through some unknown means. Maybe some of them will blame a vengeful god, but in the vast majority of cases any planet on which there is any history of conflict is going to see the various factions blaming each other. Anywhere that the random chance happens to favour one side, everyone else will pin the blame on them. Even when both sides are equally affected, people will assume that one or another faction created a doomsday weapon that got away from them.

And then, since pretty much everyone who survived has lost people they loved and is looking for someone to blame and get angry with, there's going to be war.

Lots and lots and lots of war, the whole universe over.

Half the population of the universe was just the start. By the time the dust settles, there may not even be 10% left.

I feel like if there's anything that can turn back the clock on the whole thing, that will be it. The future that Doctor Strange envisioned that led him to choose this endgame - I think it was allowing Thanos to succeed, and then allowing him to witness the result of his success. Hopefully he learns enough of a lesson that he'll eventually use the Time stone to go back and fix it himself.

 

[tomBitonti]

Clearly, Thanos overapplies his strategy: One presumes that some planets face immanent overpopulation crisises, such as arguably us, or did in the past, as is shown happened on a Titan. But civilizations have existed over many thousands of years in the Marvel Universe. I haven’t gotten a sense that all of them fail to find a balance. Also clearly, the solution is short termed.

But, I think we are using the literary prentation to evade the real question: Are people, here, facing collapse? Will we be able to find a sustainable mode before failing? If we won’t, is Thanos solution worse than the collapse?

Thx!
TomB

 

[Jhaelen]

Clearly, Thanos overapplies his strategy

Yup, it's just like the saying: "If all you've got is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail."