This is a thread for discussing my luminous!Twilight fic, Luminosity (inferior mirror here), its sequel Radiance (inferior mirror), and related topics.
PDFs, to be updated as the fic updates, are available of Luminosity (other version) and Radiance. (PDFs courtesy of anyareine). Zack M Davis has created a mobi file of Radiance.
Initial discussion of the fic under a Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality thread is here. The first dedicated threads: Part 1, Part 2. See also the luminosity sequence which contains some of the concepts that the Luminosity fic is intended to illustrate. (Disclaimer: in the fic, the needs of the story take precedence over the needs for didactic value where the two are in tension.)
Spoilers are OK to post without ROT-13 for canon, all of Book 1, and Radiance up to the current chapter. Note which chapter (let's all use the numbering on my own webspace, rather than fanfiction.net, for consistency) you're about to spoil in your comment if it's big. People who know extra stuff (my betas and people who have requested specific spoilers) should keep mum about unpublished information they have. If you wish to join the ranks of the betas or the spoiled, contact me individually.
Miscellaneous links: TV Tropes page (I really really like it when new stuff appears there) and thread. Automatic Livejournal feed.
I just thought of something. Given Alice's precog, could she, for instance, guess passwords? Assuming a numeric entry code, could she do something along the lines of 1. decide to press 0 first; 2. if she sees the door opening in her precog set, press 0 and then go to 1; 3. if not, then try 1 with the number 1 instead, etc. (i.e., does her precog give her a set of possibilities based on future decisions, or does it give her only one possibility based on what she has in mind at the time?)
If the latter holds, and hence the above algorithm won't work, then how long a password is it feasible for her to guess by exhaustive mental search of the command space (i.e. resolve to type 0000, then if she sees door opening type it, otherwise go to 0001, etc.) with vampire mental speed? The advantage of this over simply trying each password is 1. that it's likely to be faster, with physical bottlenecks removed, and 2. it doesn't trigger anti-brute-force alarms in the system.
That's an interesting possibility.
Though, I think there's an easier approach.
In the case of passwords or PIN numbers or whatever, she could probably look into the future and see the password used by an authorized user of whatever-it-is-that-she's-trying-to-break(eventually, someone's going to use it).
This is vastly less universal(she can't solve problems unless someone already knows the answer), but far easier. She could, for example, try to see who's going to use the ATM next, overlook the PIN and then decide to steal that person's wallet.
On the other han... (read more)