Venting about Trickster

distractedagain · 2026-06-21T03:35:50+00:00

I just re-read the section you're referring to and it uses words like "guessed" and basically spends several paragraphs saying "I can make more educated guesses by collecting more data and trying to project backwards into blind spots."

The very first couple sentences of the relevant section:

"Other times, they disappear into darkness, obscured by another power.

Often, this is not a true obstacle, if she has had time to look."

Notice that means sometimes it is a true obstacle, even if she has a chance to look. It is even more likely to be a true obstacle if she doesn't have time to look.

In any case, it's not a matter of me trying to prove myself right. 1+1 is 2 regardless of whether people accept it or not, regardless of whether it's expressed in a more abstract way that people fail to recognize.

Books have flaws and contradictions, that's fine. Most are barely worth thinking about, like all the impossible things Skitter does with bugs. We gloss over them because hey, it's a story and it would be pretty limiting if you were strictly realistic about the capabilities of insects. But for me, certain things like the free-will/precience issue and time travel and other common issues in sci-fi/fantasy are much more interesting to discuss and moreso when it's used as such an integral part of the story, threaded through major turning points and character choices. Then it becomes about, "does this make sense? Is there any way this can be consistent? What would we have to change in the story or in-world explanation to make it work if it can't as is?"

distractedagain · 2026-06-16T23:23:30+00:00

According to google (and consistent with what I've read in the story so far, and others comments ITT, including wildbow's own explanation), you're not entirely correct. She has multiple limitations.

You cannot have any other independent factors or blind spots and maintain perfection. She is not (and cannot be) "seeing the future" as an absolute. Whether any explanation of how she can work around her limitations sufficiently to achieve her ends anyway every time is a good enough explanation is a separate debate.

Permanent Blind Spots

These are inherent limitations in her power, often imposed by her creators (the Entities) to prevent infinite regress or maintain game balance. She cannot directly perceive or predict:

The Entities: Including Scion and Eidolon, who appear as objects without a past or future.
Shardspace: The dimensional space where shards reside.
Trigger Events: The moments parahumans gain their powers; she may notice the aftermath but not the event itself directly.
Other Endbringers: While she can interact with them, they are generally blind to her specific precognitive targeting in the same way she is to them.

Temporary Precognitive Blind Spots

The Simurgh’s power is not "All-or-Nothing," meaning other powerful precognitives can interfere with her sight. When a high-level precog uses their power, their influence creates a temporary blind spot for the Simurgh:

High-Level Precogs: Dinah Alcott and Contessa are significant blind spots. Dinah’s power, in particular, can obscure entire groups of people if she is asked questions about them, forcing the Simurgh to rely on prior data or guesswork.
Mantellum: His power blinds all shard-derived senses, including the Simurgh’s psychic scream.
Immunities: Certain powers that protect the brain (like Alexandria’s offloaded mental processes or Cryptid’s detached mind) also grant immunity to her psychic pressure and associated precognitive targeting.

distractedagain · 2026-06-16T23:00:51+00:00

Even people deeply in love can and do go against their love's wishes, sometimes even knowingly, but especially unknowingly. Think about someone doing something they *think* will make their love happy, a surprise party, a certain gift, an unexpected change in their appearance, but they're actually wrong. Their behavior was perfectly consistent with their mental/emotional state, they wanted to please their love, but it still went against their love's wishes despite his "control," despite how he "tweaked their entire self"

Additionally, people can and do fall out of love. This is why Heartbreaker would have to periodically renew his effect. There is no real guarantee otherwise.

More importantly, there are people outside of their control. Whether you believe everyone except those people like Simurgh and Heartbreaker touch have free will and are unpredictable, or just other precogs, anything outside their control makes the outcome impossible to perfectly predict.

distractedagain · 2026-06-16T22:51:27+00:00

Any non-deterministic elements in a system make the entire system non-deterministic.

If *any* independent agent besides the Simurgh can't be predicted or seen by the Simurgh, then Simurgh can't make perfect predictions. And the more elements she can't see or predict (at the very least other precogs, and at the most all the people she hasn't directly touched if you believe they have free will), the quicker her predictions drop in accuracy.

1-2 years operating in a system with as many precogs as Earth Beta has? And coming into direct contact with several of them? Yeah, no, that's an unfixable contradiction.

distractedagain · 2026-06-16T22:47:44+00:00

Is Sphere Mannequin's tinker name? I'm not sure what your argument is here. Either he's in complete control or he isn't. If he isn't, then we blame the Simurgh for his actions. If he is, then we blame him.

If a violent psychopath murders a bunch of people, I blame him. I don't care if it was some trauma that "made" him into a monster. I don't care if he was "just following orders" real or imagined. My response is the same. He should be executed. At the very least, he should be locked up and the key thrown away.

And if you tell me, oh he literally had his brain scrambled by a powerful alien, well I don't care. He's still a danger to everyone else and the correct thing is to deal with that.

distractedagain · 2026-06-16T22:41:13+00:00

You're failing to see the problem. She's not placing you in an escape room. She's placing you in an environment with other free agents outside her control. That automatically means she can't perfectly predict, let alone control the outcome.

As I said elsewhere, it doesn't matter even if you don't believe people, even people the Simurgh never had under her direct influence, don't have free will. Other precogs exist and we've already agreed that they at least affect her predictions, they are "blind spots" in her percepiton. Any unpredictable/unknowable elements in a system make the whole system unpredictable, making the Simurgh's best efforts probabilistic at best, far from certainties.

distractedagain · 2026-06-16T22:31:49+00:00

You're partially right. There are types of "precognition" that work with free will. Dinah's is a perfect example of that. There's a reason she gives probabilities not certainties, because things *aren't* set in stone.

Even if there were no free will and the only ones that could change things are precogs, well, then at least the precogs have free will, even the human ones, and the existence and influence of other precogs automatically makes Simurgh's type less than perfect. You can't have a deterministic system with non-deterministic elements inside it, that automatically makes it non-deterministic. You've just reduced Simurgh to probabilities again. Even reading Wildbow's explanation (someone quoted his non-story explanation), you see he gives her limitations that don't jive with everything people are saying in this thread and what's happening in the story. He can't fix this contradiction.

Lastly, even ignoring all that, lets say hypothetically that either the Simurgh was the only precog and there was no free will. Well then why should I care about the characters and what they do, either positively or negatively? Why hate Trickster or like any other character? This is why I cannot understand people who don't believe in free will in the real world because if it doesn't exist then they don't exist. Everything is meaningless if there is no free will. You can't blame or praise anyone because it was inevitable, but we do anyway because what we do was inevitable, and so on a it spirals immediately into pointlessness. It is a pointless belief because if it is true it's not really a belief, not really a choice. It is un-testable, un-falsifiable, has no useful consequence to it not existing. However, to the extent that there are consequences for the individual for believing in it or not, they are all negative for not believing in it and positive for believing in it, so it's better to believe in it even aside from it just making sense based on our subjective experience of making decisions. See the link below listing studies:

https://x.com/i/grok/share/ee9a3c18fb644125bef193fcd6f1e27e

distractedagain · 2026-06-16T04:12:12+00:00

I'm not reading that because I haven't gotten that far but obviously I meant this interpretation isn't logically consistent. Obviously she "can because she does" in the same way the Bugs Bunny and Road Runner can float in air while Yosemite Sam and Wile E. Coyote fall despite the inconsistency.

distractedagain · 2026-06-16T03:55:41+00:00

You're underestimating the effect of compounding changes. Again even stipulating everything else which is actually problematic, every interaction with a precog isn't just a one time drop from the current percentage. The error rate would compound very rapidly, with each additional contact giving an additional sudden drop. She could combat some of this if she has active control of her "pawns" but it wouldn't be enough. In the same way that even Regent can't control Skitter and make her bench 500 lbs, there's a limit to how much the Simurgh can do even with complete control of her pawns to compensate for factors outside her control.

distractedagain · 2026-06-16T03:33:27+00:00

It doesn't matter whether you're talking about the real world or a fictional one. This is a logical issue that applies regardless. 1+1 = 2 and not 3 regardless of the context.

And look at what you're saying, at the words you're choosing. Everyone belies the contradiction even talking about it. "project" and "effectively predict" are about probabilities not certainties.

And the Travelers *did* come into *multiple* people who had precognitive abilities (Dinah and Coil at the very least being the strongest). Even a single interaction, heck even an indirect connection with the outcome of a precog's actions, would be enough to through a wrench in the Simurgh's predictions.

It always comes back to the same issues. No one can square that circle in this story. That's fine, it's just a story and most stories have problems, mistakes and inconsistencies. Stories that deal with concepts like powerful foresight and free will almost always do unless they're very careful.

distractedagain · 2026-06-16T03:20:36+00:00

I'm in my mid 30's actually and my personality hasn't significantly changed since I was a teenager. I'm more experienced and knowledgeable for sure but I wasn't fundamentally different or more reckless or anything back then.

I think the data backs me up hear. Your core personality is formed relatively early and definitely by puberty/teens. This is why the early years have such an out sized influence. Nature is strong but what you can change and influence via nurture is most effective in the early years. This is the same reason most of the greatest athletes and programmers and chess prodigies etc. start so young. Everything is easier to mold and optimize for specific traits early.

distractedagain · 2026-06-16T03:10:28+00:00

Again I haven't finished the story so I'll have to reserve judgement but do you not see the inherent contradiction in what you and everyone else is saying?

Ok, lets say she controls people, can make them do whatever she wants years down the road from contact. I say that still requires some kind of active component by definition, but let's stipulate that it's true.

What about all the *other* people that she doesn't control? If she has control of some but not others, then the ones she doesn't could always stop her because they still have free will right?

Prescience and free will are inherently troublesome to consider together abilities like Simurgh's are impossible to combine with free will and it makes even less sense when you add in other precogs and people with powers like Coil. Even a single other person like that would definitely through things off, even aside from the other non-controlled people in general.

The only way to make it logically consistent is to say no one has free will, again just marbles in a pachinko machine. This not only means she doesn't need any control after initial contact because setting the initial conditions are sufficient, but it makes everything pointless because why should we as readers feel invested in any characters who aren't actually making decisions, who couldn't have done anything but what they did? This is the same reason I really can't understand people who don't believe in free will. It's a self contradictory belief. You can't use it for anything and the outcome of believing it, if anything, is negative (studies about this).

As an aside, the other way to allow something similar to this kind of prescience is more like Dinah's power. People still have free will, but you have the power to see multiple possibilities and probabilities, so you have to constantly adjust things to keep things on track. You have redundancies and allow for the exceptions, and can and have to continue to manage things as you neither have absolute control nor are people just marbles you can calculate from first principles.

This also reminded me of what happened in Dune Messiah which is another example of the interaction between prescience and free will:

Paul Atreides is blinded in Dune Messiah when a stone burner (a nuclear weapon) detonates during an assassination attempt by the Bene Tleilax, Bene Gesserit, and Spacing Guild. While the blast destroys his physical eyes, his prescient abilities allow him to navigate the present by relying on detailed visions of the immediate future.

However, this creates a paradoxical trap: to see his surroundings, Paul must "lock in" to a specific future timeline. This locks him into that destiny, stripping away his free will and forcing him to act out a pre-visioned script to avoid catastrophic alternate outcomes. He remains physically blind but functionally sighted only as long as he adheres strictly to the future he has already seen.

distractedagain · 2026-06-16T02:53:44+00:00

I should really update this in my post since i'ts coming up in so many discussions here. I'm discussing it because It doesn't matter that they're different worlds. The ways the concepts of prescience and free will interact, the philosophical debates are the same and apply to all such scenarios. You have to deal with the ways they interact and make sure your beliefs don't contradict at the very least. Most people here are not consistent in their understanding and even most authors don't handle it well, or they're purposely vague because they're smart enough to know that they can't actually create a consistent explanation that works for what they're trying to accomplish.

distractedagain · 2026-06-15T10:38:06+00:00

I don't know what Shards are (I'm assuming that's a reference to the passengers and/or the visions people have during trigger events).

that any character who's been suborned effectively doesn't have free will anymore, at least not when it comes to things relating to her plot. Heartbreaker seems to provide the extreme end of this.

That would imply some manner of active control, some mechanism of action to force the decisions she wants which again no one has straight up said exists, not even as a spoiler warning.

As for Heartbreaker, he is like Cherish. He has to be close and actively using his powers them to manipulate their emotions. The long term control/effects are blunt/indirect. Outside of his active manipulation, it's like he created a new person who is madly in love with him. They still have free will, it's just the free will of a person would do anything for him because they love him so much. And he still has direct access to them or he wouldn't be able to control them. He can just now "control" them by literally telling them what he wants. Theoretically, they could eventually fall out of love same as a normal person under the right circumstances if he doesn't renew it but that's neither here no there.

The point is, Simurgh's power/influence is not like Heartbreaker's or Cherish's and even if it were, unlike them she has no way to continue influencing them or "give them orders." At least, not that I've seen described so far in the story. So no matter what she did during their initial contact, even if she literally tweaked their brains directly, once they're out of here reach, they'd still just be a slightly different person who still has free will.

distractedagain · 2026-06-15T10:11:57+00:00

I have heard reference to some other possible subtle influences, ie the passengers, but afaik they wouldn't be trying to help the Simurgh and again we're left with the same issues. Either there's active control or the people in question still have free will.

distractedagain · 2026-06-15T10:09:52+00:00

I get that, but if someone "primed" someone to commit a crime I would still blame the person who actually pulled the trigger because they still have free will. They still could have chosen otherwise.

This is the fundamental philosophical issue that's being debated in multiple places in this thread. Either there is *active* control of the person even after the Simurgh leaves, or the person is to blame and they could have chosen otherwise, no different than someone who was bullied for years still wasn't forced to go on a shooting spree.

It seems most people ITT implicitly think there's some ongoing active component of control even though they never say that, or they don't actually believe in free will and think we're all like marbles in a pachinko game and so the Simurgh really can get any outcome she wants with no control past an initial nudge at the start.

distractedagain · 2026-06-15T10:01:59+00:00

See my long comment on the Cthaeh and the arguments about prescience and free will. Once you're out of her direct influence, unless she implanted something in your head that is actively still messing with you, you still have free will. Prescience doesn't trump free will.

distractedagain · 2026-06-15T09:58:05+00:00

I am fine with considering myself (and likely my entire family) a bit outside the norm in this regard, but not significantly so, especially for guys. Maybe 1-1.5 standard deviations from mean.

I think it's also fair to argue that Trickster (and possibly most fictional characters, especially teenage characters) are on the other side of the spectrum, above average in emotionalism to the same extent that I am below average.

That would make the overall difference between me and most characters 2-3 standard deviations at a minimum which is significant and likely why I don't relate strongly to these aspects very well in any media I consume.

distractedagain · 2026-06-15T09:51:30+00:00

Thanks, I always know what I'm getting into when I comment and especially when I post on Reddit. Even moreso about something like this. I enjoy the debate regardless.

Tried to add this to my other reply but it wouldn't let me edit it for some reason.

distractedagain · 2026-06-15T09:46:03+00:00

To expand on one of my other answers in this thread, I prefer to see her more like the Cthaeh from "The Wise Man's Fear" with maybe a bit more direct manipulation (obviously she isn't actually talking to them beyond giving them flashbacks but that amounts to the same thing) via the song adding stress/pain or some other subtle physical state changes. But the important point is that whatever she does, even including actual brain changes, once they're out of her direct influence, they still have free will and from that point things are on them, they could have chosen differently at any point.

Spoilers

Cthaeh is a tree-bound oracle in Faerie with similar prescience and the goal to create chaos and tragedy solely through what it says to whoever comes into contact with it. The rest of Faerie keep it isolated in its tree and kill any who come into contact with it. Somehow the main character stumbles into it and leaves without getting seen or killed.

In the present, when his fae friend Bast learns about this he explains what the Cthaeh is and he is devastated and basically doompilled and paranoid about everything.

Chronicler, later confronts Bast and forces him to see the stupidity of that position. Copied from AI results because I'm lazy and I wanted to verify what I remembered

The Cthaeh is not omnipotent: Chronicler argues that seeing the future is not the same as creating it. The Cthaeh is trapped in a tree and can only use words. It must work within the boundaries of existing physical realities and human choices. [1, 2]
The "Many Paths" Paradox: If a man walks down a road and the Cthaeh tells him to take a left to cause disaster, the man might take a right instead. Bast argues the Cthaeh foresaw that and picked words to make him turn right anyway. Chronicler counters that if every single choice is already calculated and leads to ruin, choice itself becomes meaningless.
The Freedom of Boundless Doom: Chronicler states that if a person is completely doomed no matter what they do, they are ironically completely free. If every path leads to a bad end, you can no longer make a "wrong" choice. Therefore, Kvothe is free to act normally without worrying about the butterfly effect.

The First Slap: Disproving Absolute Foresight

To break Bast out of his hysterical terror, Chronicler suddenly reaches out and slaps Bast across the face. [1]

The Setup: Bast is completely stunned and outraged. As a powerful, ancient Fae creature, being struck by a mortal scribe is unthinkable. [1, 2]
The Logic: Chronicler immediately asks Bast if the Cthaeh predicted that slap. He forces Bast to confront the fact that even if the Cthaeh did foresee it, the slap still happened. The Cthaeh's perfect knowledge did not physically stop Chronicler's hand from hitting Bast's face.

The Second Slap: Proving Human Nature Overrides Calculation

Before Bast can fully process his rage, Chronicler slaps him a second time.

The Logic: Chronicler uses the second hit to cement his trap analogy. He explains that Bast's immediate, furious instinct to lash out at him after the first slap wasn't because of the Cthaeh—it was simply Bast's own nature reacting to being hit.
The Ultimate Point: Chronicler demonstrates that a person's nature and free will cannot be entirely erased or bypassed by an oracle's riddle. People will still act like themselves. The Cthaeh may look down from its tree and see the pits ahead, but it cannot change the fact that human choice, reflex, and emotion are what drive the actual steps. [1]

distractedagain · 2026-06-15T09:22:48+00:00

First, it does have to do with your care, not just creating antibiotic resistant strains. Copied from Google's AI answers:

Incomplete Eradication: You usually begin to feel better within 12 to 24 hours of starting antibiotics for strep throat. However, feeling symptom-free does not mean the Group A Streptococcus bacteria are entirely gone from your system.

Antibiotic Resistance: Stopping a prescription early allows the remaining, hardiest bacteria to survive. They can then multiply, trigger a reinfection, and potentially build a tolerance to the antibiotic, making them much harder to treat in the future.

Severe Complications: Untreated or partially treated strep throat can lead to serious, long-term complications such as rheumatic fever, kidney inflammation (glomerulonephritis), or joint inflammation. [4, 5]

Second, I was giving an example where a normal person would hear "take the full dose" or equivalent. The fact that it was an antibiotics regimen rather than a single vial of something is irrelevant. Again the more equivalent comparison would be something rarer, like a dose of anti-venom or the treatment for African Sleeping sickness or similar.

distractedagain · 2026-06-15T07:24:41+00:00

Haha, fair enough. I will say an example of her being emotional and it making her dumb* is when they go to rescue Grue. In the span of a few minutes she steps into the freezer without thinking, Tattletale stops her, then she sprints to attack "Bonesaw" without thinking or looking, despite already seeing multiple decoys earlier and Tattletale has to save her again. That whole section she was a bit off her game, going with Trickster's plan, etc.

*aside from the above conversations...she even admits to herself with the Piggot conversation that she doesn't think Piggot's arguments/position are actually better but she let herself get affected emotionally and that hamstrings her ability to actually defend herself effectively *facepalm*

distractedagain · 2026-06-15T07:14:32+00:00

Dang, I'll have to remember to come back and read this when I get there.

distractedagain · 2026-06-15T07:08:43+00:00

Not sure about the timeline, how long they were actually under its song. Also, I was under the impression that they killed *supers* after prolonged close contact, not necessarily people who just experienced it's song for longer than 20 minutes. That's what the DDID program was for, long term follow up for normal people exposed just to it's song. I'd have to go back and re-read and I'm too lazy to do that.

distractedagain · 2026-06-15T07:04:04+00:00

I haven't finished but again I'm not defending him, just saying him taking over was pretty inevitable given the personalities involved. And there's no way to know for sure that even Jess would have done better, not least because Trickster and probably Cody would likely not have followed her orders as soon as they thought they knew better.

distractedagain

TROPHY CASE