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eirenicon comments on The Hero With A Thousand Chances - Less Wrong
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So, is Aerhien's immortality the result of something like a quantum suicide? :)
This is a good piece of SF, but it suffers from a severe case of an ailment common to the genre, which is that someone who's never heard of X (in this case the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics and the anthropic principle) isn't going to have a clue what the hell you're talking about. Additionally, it's kinda hard to tell at first what elements of the story are made up (magic words, dust, summoning, etc) and what we're supposed to connect up with something from science (I would have figured out ahntharhapik principle eventually, probably).
I caught on when the hero said the Counter-Force would never return, although what really made it click was when ShardPhoenix called it a "quantum luckworld", which is a beautifully descriptive term. Still, I would have liked to see the hero go on to actually explain a little of the ahntharhapik principle to the council at the end; then it wouldn't just be a good story for the LW audience but a good story for anyone. Right now, you have to figure out the payoff for yourself, which only works if you are already familiar with the underlying concepts.