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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Rystil Arden" data-source="post: 3811768" data-attributes="member: 29014">"Joe died to save a large number of orphaned children whom he was protecting.  You might be able to trade for a future where Joe ran away and let the children die, but even though are infinitely many futures, it does not follow that there exists a future for all possibile settings of all variables.  For instance, it is quite possible that there exists no such future that is exactly the same as this one except that I dyed my hair blue.  Why not?  It could be a number of reasons.  It might be the fact that I never really considered dying my hair blue, so I would only do it if a huge number of other factors also changed.  It might be that my blue hair would cause a student to pay attention in my class more, for whatever reason, and then because he was paying more attention he suddenly realises an important magical breakthrough.  We simply don't know the ripples that would be caused by any one action--it's basic chaos theory.  Heck, it's possible that of all the infinitely possible presents, there are only a finite number, say 10, where the entire universe wasn't destroyed by some evil force or another and we are just lucky to be in one of those 10.""Also, naming this the 'best possible present' is a bit facetious.  It would imply an all-knowingness on the part of the arbiter, well unless there are only a few possible presents where the universe doesn't blow up.  I would say instead that it is probably a local optimum, and there could be others that were equally optimal.  Of course, a local optimum could be the global optimum, so this may be the best of all possible worlds.  Then again, this entire train of thought is based purely on speculation that only the best world would experience the transfer of the mental particles from the past.  Speculation is fun, though."</blockquote>

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