Can anyone explain Rivals?

[erastus25]

So, I just watched the episode Rivals and two things jump out at me. First of all, the premise of the episode is COMPLETELY whacked. Does anyone have any explanation at all as to how it's possible to alter probability on a macroscopic level? The idea is ridiculous. It makes this episode seem as ridiculous to me as Threshold.

Secondly, anyone else REALLY REALLY creeped out by Keiko coming on to O'Brien? My skin was crawling.

 

[Pegaritaville]

I enjoy "Rivals", but it's one of those epiosdes (like "Threshold") where you kind of have to ignore the ludicrous concept. Nothing about it really makes sense.

And yeah, having shrill Keiko doing her seductress bit was kind of creepy. But since about the only time I could tolerate Keiko was when she was possessed in "The Assignment", it's not too surprising that the scene didn't work for me.

 

[Navaros]

Rivals' probability altering idea is ludicrous. Try not to think too much about it, nothing good can come of it.

Keiko is always abysmal and skin-crawlingly creepy IMO, her being that way in Rivals is no different than any other episode.

The great part of the rivals is the actual rivalry. Quark is the one who makes the episode amazing by being hilarious in it (backed up by great acting as usual) along with good support from the guest actor rival.

 

[Mr. Fergy]

It was a necessary "Bottle" show of DS9. Not one of the series fine points.

 

[erastus25]

The great part of the rivals is the actual rivalry. Quark is the one who makes the episode amazing by being hilarious in it (backed up by great acting as usual) along with good support from the guest actor rival.

I agree, Quark does an excellent job of making this episode entertaining. It's too bad they had to add the probability thing, I think they could have gotten a full episode out of Quark competing with the listener and Miles vs. Bashir racquetball.

 

[Navaros]

^

Definitely woulda been a much better episode that way. But that's what's great about DS9 relative to the other Trek shows. DS9 has such a strong ensemble that sometimes great actors can salvage what would have been unwatchable crap episodes otherwise, like Quark in Rivals. Usually with other Trek shows, a crap episode is 100% crap with no redeeming qualities at all.

 

[Kegek]

"Rivals" is a rare case of the dodgy science of Star Trek actually bothering me. I chalk it up to me being more familiar with philosophy (and therefore the applicability of the laws of probability in this instance) than any of the sciences.

Getting past that, it's a mediocre episode. Has its moments but isn't anything special. Keiko is fine; Martus is a bit of a drag.

 

[erastus25]

"Rivals" is a rare case of the dodgy science of Star Trek actually bothering me. I chalk it up to me being more familiar with philosophy (and therefore the applicability of the laws of probability in this instance) than any of the sciences.

Getting past that, it's a mediocre episode. Has its moments but isn't anything special. Keiko is fine; Martus is a bit of a drag.

The science bothers me the most because they don't even try to technobabble it away. We're just expected to believe that some stupid toy can tear probability apart, and that it knows to do it only inside the space station. It's almost insulting that we're expected to believe that.

As for Martus, I didn't mind him, but the "twist" at the end was so predictable it was depressing.

 

[chrisspringob]

"Rivals" is a rare case of the dodgy science of Star Trek actually bothering me.

Yeah, I agree. Probably the worst science in all of DS9. Although, honestly, there were probably about five episodes of Voyager Season 2 that I thought had science of comparable badness. Voyager Season 2 was a truly dark time for science in Star Trek.

 

[Timo]

Does anyone have any explanation at all as to how it's possible to alter probability on a macroscopic level?

Nope. Which is why I think the concept behind "Rivals" is actually one of the best pieces of science fiction in DS9 if not in the entire history of Star Trek.

Face it, modern science and philosophy is at complete loss to even begin to explain the nature of "chance" or "probability". The human mind cannot comprehend the concept, not in the sense we comprehend things like F=ma or E=mcc or 1-1=0 that have their direct counterparts in the sticks-and-stones world we apes have always lived in. The brightest minds in natural sciences and mathematics resort to meaningless handwaving, at best managing to create a descriptive model rather than an analytical one. The best philosophers only manage to discuss the effects of randomness (or of denying it), rather than attack the root causes.

We don't know what probability is, or how it behaves in atypical conditions - unlike the case with many other natural forces, such as electromagnetic interaction whose scaleability we have already studied and modeled from the very small to the universe-wide, at times determining stunningly good, umpteen-decimal predictive values for phenomena that are actually studied only decades after the prediction. Instinctually, we feel the need to see probability as something similar to this EM interaction or like phenomena - we feel an explanation lies somewhere deep down, waiting to be discovered so that the world makes sense to our monkey brains once again. A lot of the arbitrariness of nature has been made less arbitrary by giving it "scientific explanations". The basic phenomenon of probability still utterly lacks such an explanation.

"Rivals" may not be the most thorough philosophical discussion on the subject, or the most detailed technological analysis. Nor is it a particularly enjoyable episode of Star Trek drama. But the concept it brings up is perfectly valid and the questions arising on the role of randomness in the macroscopic world are worth asking.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Michael]

^ Yeah, I always felt the same. I found the sci-fi concept of "Rivals" very intriguing. Okay, they don't really explain it with some nonsense technobabble, but at least it's not one of the usual spatial anomalies of the week. A device that changes the laws of probability – I find that very interesting.

 

[Kegek]

The science bothers me the most because they don't even try to technobabble it away. We're just expected to believe that some stupid toy can tear probability apart, and that it knows to do it only inside the space station. It's almost insulting that we're expected to believe that.

Not only that... but probability just doesn't work that way. The laws of probability do not exist in the sense that the laws of gravity do. Probability is a construct based on our observations and connecting a series of events to each other to form a general picture. The events themselves exist; but the conclusions drawn from them are internal to our brains. Messing with the laws of probability is like having a device that changes the laws of Aristotelian drama.

It's basically fantasy, a lucky charm machine, and no amount of dithering about neutrinos changes that one iota.

 

[erastus25]

Does anyone have any explanation at all as to how it's possible to alter probability on a macroscopic level?

Nope. Which is why I think the concept behind "Rivals" is actually one of the best pieces of science fiction in DS9 if not in the entire history of Star Trek.

Face it, modern science and philosophy is at complete loss to even begin to explain the nature of "chance" or "probability". The human mind cannot comprehend the concept, not in the sense we comprehend things like F=ma or E=mcc or 1-1=0 that have their direct counterparts in the sticks-and-stones world we apes have always lived in. The brightest minds in natural sciences and mathematics resort to meaningless handwaving, at best managing to create a descriptive model rather than an analytical one. The best philosophers only manage to discuss the effects of randomness (or of denying it), rather than attack the root causes.

We don't know what probability is, or how it behaves in atypical conditions - unlike the case with many other natural forces, such as electromagnetic interaction whose scaleability we have already studied and modeled from the very small to the universe-wide, at times determining stunningly good, umpteen-decimal predictive values for phenomena that are actually studied only decades after the prediction. Instinctually, we feel the need to see probability as something similar to this EM interaction or like phenomena - we feel an explanation lies somewhere deep down, waiting to be discovered so that the world makes sense to our monkey brains once again. A lot of the arbitrariness of nature has been made less arbitrary by giving it "scientific explanations". The basic phenomenon of probability still utterly lacks such an explanation.

"Rivals" may not be the most thorough philosophical discussion on the subject, or the most detailed technological analysis. Nor is it a particularly enjoyable episode of Star Trek drama. But the concept it brings up is perfectly valid and the questions arising on the role of randomness in the macroscopic world are worth asking.

Timo Saloniemi

This is not entirely true. We have an idea of what chaos is, from which Lorenz attractors and the Butterfly Effect have been derived. The basic concept behind of all this crazy stuff is that the initial condition of a system has a HUGE influence on the outcome of the system. Then an exponential growth of possibilities within the bounds of the initial condition could occur. So, for this device in Rivals to work it would be required to control the initial condition of any chain of events, and then make that event "positive" or "negative." That being said, it would be impossible to even identify an "initial condition" in a human life. For instance, what's the initial condition of Kira tripping in Ops? Leaving her station? Stepping foot in Ops at the beginning of her shift? Raising her foot to step over the ledge?

So, even if that could be controlled the device would still need to determine what a "positive" or "negative" event in an individual's life. The concept of "positive" and "negative" are culturally and personally defined. That means this device would have to read the mind of the individual, extrapolate what the worst possible scenario could be, and then make that happen! We see no evidence of telepathy via the spheres in the episode. And the idea of a machine extrapolating what the worst possiblity of a scenario could be would itself be impossible as it would require the machine to consider all the possible scenarios, and then run them through the brain of the individual to see if they would get a negative result. If the machine does not do this it would have to default to a standard set of outcomes, and these outcomes may not be uniformly negative and positive across culture. As a result they would seem random.

 

[All Seeing Eye]

I don't see a problem with the episode, the devices were explained simple enough, the devices caused particles etc to only spin one way (like neutrinos) thus causing luck to only go one way, good or bad, it was also explained that it was unclear how the device did it since Starfleet doesn't know everything there is to know about the universe. Its no more bizarre or preposterous as every other episode but theres no reason to believe that its impossible to alter luck or chance since we dont know enough about it.

 

[chrisspringob]

I don't see a problem with the episode, the devices were explained simple enough, the devices caused particles etc to only spin one way (like neutrinos) thus causing luck to only go one way, good or bad, it was also explained that it was unclear how the device did it since Starfleet doesn't know everything there is to know about the universe. Its no more bizarre or preposterous as every other episode but theres no reason to believe that its impossible to alter luck or chance since we dont know enough about it.

The problem is that "lucky" and "unlucky" are so subjective that there's no way this could plausibly work, unless the machine can read people's minds. For example, O'Brien is playing racquetball, and the ball keeps bouncing in his direction, which is "lucky" for him, because it helps him in the game to have the ball bouncing near him. But how does the machine know that this is lucky? Wouldn't it have to know the rules of racquetball in order to figure out how to make O'Brien's luck go "good" or "bad"? That's what makes this idea so preposterous.

 

[Tyberius]

I don't see a problem with the episode, the devices were explained simple enough, the devices caused particles etc to only spin one way (like neutrinos) thus causing luck to only go one way, good or bad, it was also explained that it was unclear how the device did it since Starfleet doesn't know everything there is to know about the universe. Its no more bizarre or preposterous as every other episode but theres no reason to believe that its impossible to alter luck or chance since we dont know enough about it.

The problem is that "lucky" and "unlucky" are so subjective that there's no way this could plausibly work, unless the machine can read people's minds. For example, O'Brien is playing racquetball, and the ball keeps bouncing in his direction, which is "lucky" for him, because it helps him in the game to have the ball bouncing near him. But how does the machine know that this is lucky? Wouldn't it have to know the rules of racquetball in order to figure out how to make O'Brien's luck go "good" or "bad"? That's what makes this idea so preposterous.

In the instant case, O'Brien and Bashir were interpreting the events as lucky or unlucky. It certainly could be possible, and was probably occurring, that other events were not interpreted that way. That O'Brien always could reach the ball was "lucky" to O'Brien, not "lucky" to the device, the device was just spinning neutrinos.

It was only remarkable when the effects of the machine had an influence to a tipping point. Certainly, the machine was influencing the randomness of all events localized at the station, weighting the dice, as it were. However not all of the events that the machine influenced would even be particularly remarkable.

What was worth telling was the extremes of the effect of the machine. While under intelligent control, an action would not have a wholly unexpected outcome, as the intelligence could error correct along the way. Also, to actions with limited outcomes, the machine would have limited effects - a door, for instance, could only open, close or stop as it had a track in which the door sits. The true effects of the machine would manifest itself in conditions where chaos has the most effect - games of pure chance and open ended sporting events (I don't see any other area on a station where the machine could have a substantial impact - there was no weather system for instance)

 

[chrisspringob]

In the instant case, O'Brien and Bashir were interpreting the events as lucky or unlucky. It certainly could be possible, and was probably occurring, that other events were not interpreted that way. That O'Brien always could reach the ball was "lucky" to O'Brien, not "lucky" to the device, the device was just spinning neutrinos.

I don't think that works. OK, suppose you have a device that does skew all the probabilities of quantum mechanisms. You would not end up with anything as ordered as a ball bouncing back to you in the same location many times. Instead, you'd just end up with chaos. That's because there are, what? Trillions upon trillions of possible quantum states that those particles could be in? 99.999999....% of those states won't produce any remarkable macroscopic effects. So, OK, your device preferentially puts those particles in one particular state over and over again. Why would that happen to be one of those 0.0000000.....001% of the quantum states in which something as interesting as the ball continually bouncing back to the same spot happens? It wouldn't be, unless the machine somehow "knew" that that particular state was one that O'Brien or others thought was interesting.

 

[Tyberius]

In the instant case, O'Brien and Bashir were interpreting the events as lucky or unlucky. It certainly could be possible, and was probably occurring, that other events were not interpreted that way. That O'Brien always could reach the ball was "lucky" to O'Brien, not "lucky" to the device, the device was just spinning neutrinos.

I don't think that works. OK, suppose you have a device that does skew all the probabilities of quantum mechanisms. You would not end up with anything as ordered as a ball bouncing back to you in the same location many times. Instead, you'd just end up with chaos. That's because there are, what? Trillions upon trillions of possible quantum states that those particles could be in? 99.999999....% of those states won't produce any remarkable macroscopic effects. So, OK, your device preferentially puts those particles in one particular state over and over again. Why would that happen to be one of those 0.0000000.....001% of the quantum states in which something as interesting as the ball continually bouncing back to the same spot happens? It wouldn't be, unless the machine somehow "knew" that that particular state was one that O'Brien or others thought was interesting.

There is nothing in the episode to discount that the machine was capable of reading thoughts. I just don't think it is necessary to the story or to the effect that we saw.

For the amount of time viewed in the episode, natural groupings of outcomes would tend to occur anyway. In short recordings there is no normal distribution of outcomes, they are usually skewed to favor a particular outcome. Only with a large enough sample size does the outcome read to the viewer as random.

We just don't have the information (not a large enough sample size) to determine how the thing worked. The characters assume that it did work in the episode - that it wasn't a god's talisman or anything - but a machine that had real measurable effects. They just didn't know how it achieved those effects.

The device didn't have to impact anything in particular (and I don't think it actually did - I think it impacted everything). We tend to find those interesting patterns anyway - we create gods out of our existence, find meanings in randomness and create stories out of the roll of the dice.

 

[chrisspringob]

If the machine could read minds, then it could work in the manner presented. Otherwise, it doesn't make any sense, for the reasons I mentioned. However, there's nothing to suggest that it did read minds. The characters never say so. They just say "it changes probability", which should seem kind of ridiculous to a scientist like Dax, but whatever.

 

[Kegek]

Just a further observation about probability and luck, and why therefore the machine as explained doesn't make sense. Let's take a simple, quintessential game of chance: The coin-toss.

Every time you toss a coin, there's a fifty percent chance it will land heads, and a fifty percent chance it will land tails. If you have tossed the coin forty times already and every time it has landed heads, the chances of it landing heads again are still equal to it landing tails as it was the first time. But it's improbable that you will get this exact string of heads. For that matter, any specific combination of heads and tails for those forty coin tosses are equally improbable. The more complex any hypothetical situation is, the automatically more improbable it becomes. The specific fact of me having my name, wearing clothes, speaking English, in the room I am, using the kind of computer I am, posting where I am, and so on, all put together is a very improbable outcome.

The episode of "Rivals" only works if you assume things that happen tend to be probable, and rare occurences are improbable, and this is therefore reversed.