Future Mirror Universe books
- Thread starter EJA
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that was addressed in the Shat's MU trilogy, by 2375 the number of doubles was lower and becoming rarer. it's discussed in the scene with Ensign Margerat Clark's double after the Alliance hijacks the E-E with the Mirror-VGR.
There is idea in Conter-factual history that states that a seemly major event may not change the whole course of histoy because of unkown factors (ie the Allies win at Dieppe would likly have lost a few week later) were as some thing minor (At young Newpaper report is killed as by the boars in South Africa) can be major. Given the opening for In a Mirror, Darkly with the Sysblom being shown for the first time over marching German troop I would think that the outcome may have been the result of a German victory in one of the World Wars. Agin the main event could have been small ( Arther Currie is kill early in the war Vimy Ridge is not taken the last major push by the german works) or Major from the get go (German do the smart thing a don't go though the Beluim and Holland kept the British Empire out of the war they later ally and ulmeantly become the Terran Empire) Phlox did said that most writing in the MU were dark however he did say that WS was about the same and that could tell us that the PoD was after about 1600( maybe even gunpowered plot? that could lead to no US)
I personally prefer the First Contact divergent point, where in the regular Star Trek universe Cochrane made peace with the Vulcans because the crew of the Enterprise-E had told him they were friendly so he didn't attack. Thus a predestination paradox (those are always fun 
) is created with Picard, Riker and co creating their own bright, optimistic future.
Whereas in the Mirror Universe, with no Enterprise-E to meddle in Cochrane's warp flight, an obviously unstable man with a drinking problem, sees an alien ship come out of the sky and assumes the aliens are invading, attacks them, steals their technology and so begins the Terran Empire's bloody crusade across the stars, fueled by regular old human paranoia. Which would kinda make the MU, our universe.
Now alot of people bring up several pieces of contradictory evidence from In A Mirror Darkly to dismiss this theory, but those are actually easily explained away.
Firstly, the opening credits features a Terran Empire symbol over the top of what appears to be Nazi troops marching, and later a person in a space-suit raising the TE flag on what appears to be Earth's Moon. People claim that this is evidence the TE existed as far back as the early 20th Century.
But that is based on the assumption that the credits follow some linear history, which if we compare them to the RU credits they obviously don't, what with overlaying several pieces of historical footage from different time-frames together. Notice how the shuttle Enterprise appears before Chuck Yeager's X-1 flight and a Saturn V rocket is played over black and white footage of Robert Goddard. Clearly these things didn't happen at the same time, just as the TE didn't necessarily happen at the same time as Nazi troops marching through Europe.
Now, the second so-called piece of evidence is Mirror-Archer's little speech to the crew of the Avenger in Pt II of In A Mirror Darkly, when he says the Empire has endured for centuries. I don't know about you, but I'd hardly call M-Archer a credible source of historical data, nor the (possibly) revisionist imperial historians or could just have easily fudged a few numbers for propaganda purposes.
And lastly there's Phlox's little spiel about literature being slightly different (excluding ole' Shakespeare of course) from the RU. Now aside from Shakespeare (who we know was the same in both universes), we don't know which pieces of literature Phlox is comparing, he could be comparing only the last hundred years in which case the universes had already diverged and the differences can be chalked up to that. We just don't know, and in that doubt is the possibility that FC is when it all happened.
Now, before the latest Mirror Universe Novels, specifically Glass Empires: Age of the Empress, the theory of the First Contact divergence was still pretty valid. Obviously, Mike Sussmore disagreed and saw fit to sprinkle some little historical anecdotes about the Empire's history stretching back to the early 21st Century with an Emperor George the Second. While I loved this little piece of satire, it kinda torpedoed my favourite theory on the MU.
But, then again, I've already accepted that some Imperial historians were a little revisionist, why couldn't more of them be, so there may still be a place for the theory. But it's just my opinion.
) is created with Picard, Riker and co creating their own bright, optimistic future.Whereas in the Mirror Universe, with no Enterprise-E to meddle in Cochrane's warp flight, an obviously unstable man with a drinking problem, sees an alien ship come out of the sky and assumes the aliens are invading, attacks them, steals their technology and so begins the Terran Empire's bloody crusade across the stars, fueled by regular old human paranoia. Which would kinda make the MU, our universe.
Now alot of people bring up several pieces of contradictory evidence from In A Mirror Darkly to dismiss this theory, but those are actually easily explained away.
Firstly, the opening credits features a Terran Empire symbol over the top of what appears to be Nazi troops marching, and later a person in a space-suit raising the TE flag on what appears to be Earth's Moon. People claim that this is evidence the TE existed as far back as the early 20th Century.
But that is based on the assumption that the credits follow some linear history, which if we compare them to the RU credits they obviously don't, what with overlaying several pieces of historical footage from different time-frames together. Notice how the shuttle Enterprise appears before Chuck Yeager's X-1 flight and a Saturn V rocket is played over black and white footage of Robert Goddard. Clearly these things didn't happen at the same time, just as the TE didn't necessarily happen at the same time as Nazi troops marching through Europe.
Now, the second so-called piece of evidence is Mirror-Archer's little speech to the crew of the Avenger in Pt II of In A Mirror Darkly, when he says the Empire has endured for centuries. I don't know about you, but I'd hardly call M-Archer a credible source of historical data, nor the (possibly) revisionist imperial historians or could just have easily fudged a few numbers for propaganda purposes.
And lastly there's Phlox's little spiel about literature being slightly different (excluding ole' Shakespeare of course) from the RU. Now aside from Shakespeare (who we know was the same in both universes), we don't know which pieces of literature Phlox is comparing, he could be comparing only the last hundred years in which case the universes had already diverged and the differences can be chalked up to that. We just don't know, and in that doubt is the possibility that FC is when it all happened.
Now, before the latest Mirror Universe Novels, specifically Glass Empires: Age of the Empress, the theory of the First Contact divergence was still pretty valid. Obviously, Mike Sussmore disagreed and saw fit to sprinkle some little historical anecdotes about the Empire's history stretching back to the early 21st Century with an Emperor George the Second. While I loved this little piece of satire, it kinda torpedoed my favourite theory on the MU.
But, then again, I've already accepted that some Imperial historians were a little revisionist, why couldn't more of them be, so there may still be a place for the theory. But it's just my opinion.
Well, some things happen by the luck of the draw. If you give the same thing the chance to happen twice with the same general parameters in place, it could still happen in two different ways. If the timeline split at noon today because of something that had no direct effect on you, and you flipped a coin five minutes later in both timelines, it could come up heads in one and tails in the other even though the conditions in which the coin toss occurs are essentially identical in both instances.
Or it's possible that the original divergence could've happened earlier, sure. But that still doesn't mean that every world's history would somehow have been magically "darker" at the same time, not when there's a clear pattern of cause and effect with most of the other worlds' different histories being the result of Earth's different history. Even if Earth wasn't the original divergence point, it's clear that it's been a key force in shaping the history of its neighbors in both timelines.
Without an infinite number, of course, what you said is exactly right. However I specifically stated that if we were going with the idea that there was an infinite number then that would be the case. The difficulty here is in the idea of 'infinite.' Never ever ending so yes, there would be a large "number" (really a silly term when dealing with infinite) of recurring identical universes. But there must also be every other configuration of universe possible too. The problem lies wholly in infinity and our ability (or lack there of) to understand it. Now this, of course could be proof that there can not be an infinite number of universes, but that'd be assuming we really do understand infinity.
That's supposing an actual timeline divergence. I wasn't really talking about the universes sharing a past as some point. But talking about that even with out the idea that the universe has existed for a finite amount of time (something that can't be -- I'll discuss later), that gives that divergent universe a beginning right there so it can't possibly be infinite.
As for the universe (in general) having a single starting point. That doesn't make sense because are we now saying that nothing existed prior to the universe's existence? Nothing means the non-existence of something, so saying "nothing exists" is an oxymoron. Or are we defining 'universe' to mean only the matter and energy in the universe and not the space it resides in? That still wouldn't make sense though because we purport that matter and energy can not be created nor destroyed so all matter and energy in the universe must have always existed and always will. Just because at the time of the so called "Big Bang" all of the matter and energy in the universe existed in one spot it still had an existing state prior to said "bang".
But that's the only way they could have the same planets, species, histories, and individuals.
Whatever existed before is irrelevant to this discussion. Parallel timelines, by physical definition, are alternate quantum states of our universe. So earlier or other universes would not be involved. Even aside from that, other universes would not have an Earth, a Vulcan, a James Kirk, a Jonathan Archer. They probably wouldn't even have the same laws of physics as our universe. Most of them couldn't even form stars and planets, since it requires a very precise set of physical constants to allow such things to exist. And even a separate universe with the same laws would still be a different physical place with a different history and different planets. Fiction blurs this issue because it treats "universe" and "timeline" as interchangeable words, but they really, really aren't. Anything with the same specific planets, species, etc. must have branched off from the same origin.
It's as I said before -- it's a gross fallacy to assume that an infinite number of chances requires that every imaginable scenario must actually occur, because any given scenario is the end result of prior events, and only a finite number of timelines will include those events. Say we start at the Big Bang 13.6 billion years ago and have timelines branching off from that starting point. The Solar System and Earth formed about 4.5 billion years ago, so only 1/3 of all timelines would have Earth in them. Multicellular life emerged about 450 million years ago, so only 1/30 of all timelines would have an Earth inhabited by multicellular life for as long as ours has been. The dinosaurs arose about 225 mya, so only 1/60 of all timelines would have Earths that had once been occupied by dinosaurs. And so on. When you get to humans, as I said before, you're talking about a tiny, tiny percentage of the total number of timelines that could exist in the universe. And when you get to timelines that have an English language comprehensible to us and an Industrial Revolution and so forth, things that are only a few hundred years old, then maybe only one timeline out of 50 million would include those elements.
^ What about the idea that the rise of consiousness and decision-making sentients will spawn a greater number of potential universes than one devoid of life? A universe whose constants are not suitable to life emerging will have relatively few divergeant points beyond the initial one, meaning only a handful of universes in the multiverse will stem from it. One the other hand, the massive amounts of divergeant possibilities creating by decision-making sentients should increase the number of potential realities stemming from those base realities. One could say that the multiverse is a spectrum of possibility, but I think a large number of potential realities would cluster in those areas that saw sentience and relatively fewer on the lifeless ends of the spectrum. Maybe even a bell curve shape?
Fictitiously yours, Trent Roman
Fictitiously yours, Trent Roman
You keep saying that like that's what I'm saying. It's not! If indeed there is NOT an infinite number of timelines or universes (be them interchangeable or not) then no there is NOT going to be every possible occurrence of outcomes in them - because it won't be possible to be. As I've said before you are quite correct on that.
You started arbitrarily at the Big Bang, and yes from that point on there are a finite amount of occurrences that could have spawned from that point forward. However, that does not mean there are a finite amount of timelines. Are we saying that time started at that point? There was time prior to Big Bang and as such the infinite state of time itself says that at any given point in this infinite timespan any number of other things could have spawned off and been different.
Also when talking about the sheer number of timelines (even if finite) even if only 0.000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000001% of them had an Earth with a revolution with a Vulcan and a Romulus and warp drive and everything else that makes the Mirror Universe what it is that seemingly small percentage is still quite a LARGE actual number. It's like asking what is half of infinity? Well the answer is still infinity. What's 0.000000000000000000000000001% of infinity? Still infinity! Bringing things down to finite numbers 1% of a dollar is quite small, but 1% of $10 million is not so small. We're talking about timelines that number so high we don't even have words to describe the number so taking a percentage that is so small that we don't have words to describe it still calculates to a number that, while smaller than the original, is so large we won't have words to describe it either. So why exactly do you think it completely impossible or ludicrous that even ONE exists exactly as such?
if every decision and every possible divergence EVER is played out there's probably billions upon billions of universes. if it even goes down to the position of an electron in a single hydrogen atom in the heart of a star in the depths of the M-33 galaxy, there's going to be billions of universes that, as far as we on Earth are concerned are identical, but wildly vary for that electron.
It's not arbitrary at all. We're talking about timelines that could contain the planet Earth, the human race, the starship Enterprise. The very premise of the discussion limits the parameters to timelines within our own universe, and timelines that diverged after the formation of the Earth and the evolution of the human race. Timelines belonging to other universes are totally irrelevant to the discussion, just as the geography of Betazed is irrelevant to a discussion of where Jimmy Hoffa is buried. They're just not included in the set of entities that are applicable to the subject. Even if they are infinite in number and quantity, they just don't count.
Which is irrelevant. As I've already explained, the mere existence of a large number of chances does not guarantee that any given postulate will occur. That is simply not how probability works. Something like this, like whether the English language evolves the same way or whether the same two gametes combine to produce a given individual -- that's not a purely random thing like a flip of a coin. It's part of a chain of cause and effect. If an earlier stage in that chain of causality happens differently, then nothing that follows it will occur at all.
You're saying that in an infinite number of "universes" (a term you're using in a way that conflates unrelated concepts, but never mind that), with matter and events combining in an infinite number of ways, every conceivable permutation is bound to happen. That's just not true, because events in the universe are shaped by causality as well as by random probability. If it were purely a matter of stochastic happenstance, you might have an argument. But it isn't. Cause and effect matter too. If something is the result of a specific cause, it will only happen in those realities that branch from that point of causation. Therefore, citing large numbers doesn't matter, because the total number of realities is irrelevant -- only the number of realities that descend from the point of causation will matter.
And the more specific you get with the details, the smaller the number of timelines becomes. Postulating a future history where humanity forms an empire is fine -- but it shouldn't logically have a Jonathan Archer and a Spock and a Ben Sisko. Because their ancestors would've led different lives, been in different places at different times, maybe not lived as long. The MU is contradictory, as I've already explained, because it's trying to postulate a profoundly similar chain of causation and a profoundly different chain of causation at the same time. That's not something that's going to happen simply by the natural operation of statistical mechanics across the entirety of the multiverse. It's too self-contradictory. There would have to be some other factor in play, something that acts on the system to make things occur in contrast to the natural laws of probability, such as a higher intelligence artificially shaping the course of events in that universe.
I think after all that quantum stuff, that the MU is merely a parallel timeline to our own rather than a darker universe. That said, there needn't be a single point of divergence, it could be a continuous divergence from the moment life began on Earth and on other worlds. like the mass extinction event described in The Buried Age, the Mirror Universe could have come into existence then.
We're not talking about probability, we're talking about possibility. Your use of the terms "absurdity" and "self-contradictory" insinuate that you think the Mirror Universe is absolutely perfectly impossible, that it cannot exist. Regardless of how improbable its existence is, it most definitely could exist EVEN given the assumptions made about timelines splitting from a common point. It is possible that a person could take VASTLY different paths and end up in the same place. It is possible that the universe could lead itself down a path of cause and effect where vastly different causes create the SAME effect. Sisko's parents may have led hugely different lives but that doesn't prevent Sisko's birth from being possible. Even huge events like WW2 may or may NOT have huge effects on the outcome of the year 2100. See the problem here is that you've made rigid assumptions about what is and what isn't possible. I'm saying that it might be the case that if Germany won WW2 things could still be exactly the same as they are now (real world not Trek) except for that one event in history being slightly different. Or it's possible that things would be wildly different from how they are now, or even that some things could be wildly different and other not at all different. Now, probability says that it PROBABLY would be different, but it doesn't guarantee that EVERYTHING would definitely be different. It's possible that only minor things would be different but society on the whole would be essentially the same. This is how the Mirror Universe is. VERY large events happened quite differently but ultimately they didn't effect who lived and who died for the most part nor did they effect who met up and had children. I'm saying yes, it's possible all events are very much interconnected, but it's also possible that they are not. This even touches on another touchy/debatable subject of Fate.
Let's bring it down to a more manageable example.
Person A meets Person B at a bus stop on the sheer happenstance that Person B's car broke down and (s)he had to ride the bus today. Those two fell in love, got married, and had children. Now, people like to say things like "they never would have met had it not been for person b's car breaking down." That it was luck or some such. But there is no reason at all to assume that they wouldn't have met otherwise and had the same outcome. What if Person B's car hadn't broke down he drove to where he was going, perhaps he crashes into the bus because he was talking on his cell phone, gets out deals with people on the bus and the bus driver and meets the person that way. Or any number of other means by which they could have met up and fell in love, hell or even not fell in love but just had a few trysts where they created kids. There are any number of ways a person could hook up with another person in vastly different cause/effect situations. Is it possible they never meet? Of course. But simply having different causes do not negate the possibility of their meeting and having the same children. And simply because the Mirror Universe is working on a much larger scale may make it less probable, it does not make it any less possible.
I'm willing to accept that a Mirror universe might not exist or it might in exactly the manner stated. There is absolutely NOTHING preventing it from existing.
What you said in the original post that started with was:
Key word, "must." You said, explicitly, that everything that was even remotely possible must happen. As I explicitly stated in my very first response to that post, and maybe two or three times since then, what I'm arguing against is not the assertion that it's possible, but the assertion that it must occur given an arbitrarily large number of chances. My point from the beginning has been that possibility does not equate to certainty. You yourself said it was a certainty, that it must occur. That is a completely different assertion from the one that it could occur. I'm arguing against the former, not the latter.
I think like a scientist, and scientists don't deal with black-and-white terms like "possible" and "impossible." It's all about probabilities. It's all about reasonable degrees of expectation. Sure, it's remotely possible that a hostess's undergarments could teleport a meter to the left in accordance with the Principle of Indeterminacy, but the improbability factor of that is so immensely high (even with a really hot cup of tea) that it would be a waste of time to talk about it as a realistic possibility, and any attempt to claim that it had really happened would be met with vast skepticism by any rational observer. That's what I'm doing -- expressing skepticism. You don't have to say something is absolutely impossible to recognize it as entirely implausible.
But only if that person exists in the first place.
The average man produces maybe 40 billion sperm cells in his lifetime. The average human female fetus develops about 7 million primordial oocytes, any one of which could be among the roughly 400 fertilizable eggs she'll produce between puberty and menopause. So it's not just a question of whether the man and woman meet at the same time and conceive on the same day. It would have to be the exact same sperm cell fertilizing the exact same ovum, and the odds against that happening are about 300,000,000,000,000,000 to one against. Maybe less, considering that some spermatozoa are more viable than others, but maybe more, considering that spermatozoa are continuously produced throughout the lifetime and each contains a different random selection of chromosomes, so there's no guarantee that the same mix of genes within a given sperm cell would even arise in an alternate-timeline version of the same person.
So not "impossible," no. But ludicrously improbable. It would be tantamount to the odds against two fraternal, dizygotic twins being genetically identical.
Getting WAY the hell back to the point... 
What's this I hear about more MU books? There really are some? Is it another set of collections, like Glass Empires/Obsidian Alliances? Will we see MU Titan, MU CoE, etc.?
What's this I hear about more MU books? There really are some? Is it another set of collections, like Glass Empires/Obsidian Alliances? Will we see MU Titan, MU CoE, etc.?
Yes, it's called Shards & Shadows and will be an anthology. I don't remember if we know which series are guaranteed to be featured, but I'm pretty certain New Frontier is one.
Yes I said that, but you managed to remove the context in which that was said. I said it MUST occur if we're dealing with INFINITE timelines. I'm trying to show you that even given your definition of what we are talking about here (finite timelines that are different things than universes) it still doesn't necessarily work. With a finite number of timelines I long ago said I agree with you that any given one might not occur. But just because it might not and probably won't, doesn't mean it can't.
It's highly improbable that one specific person might be struck by lightning. So if someone told you that they were, would you say "that's absurd, you couldn't have been struck by lightning, because I'm a scientist and I can't reasonably expect that you have been struck by lightning because the probability is too low." That is what is absurd.
Um, duh! That was apart of the given. An axiom of the paradigm in question.
Which is my point. I never said it wasn't improbable, I said it's not impossible and therefore doesn't make it's occurrence any more "absurd" or "self-contradictory."
Which is also possible.
I'd think the MU to be even more improbable than that, but that probability doesn't ever reduce to absolute zero. So just because it happened to happen doesn't reduce it's occurrence to absurdity.
There's a point here?Babaganoosh said:
Getting WAY the hell back to the point...
