There was a story with an “outcome pump” like this, I do not remember the name. Essentially, a chemical had to get soaked with water due to some time travel related handwave. You could do minor things like getting your mom out of the building by pouring water on the chemical if you are satisfied with the outcome, with some risk that a hurricane would form instead and soak the chemical. It would produce the least improbable outcome (in the sense that all probabilities would become as if it is given that the chemical got soaked, so naturally the least improbable one had the highest chance to have occurred), so it’s impact was generally quite limited—to do real damage you had to lock up the chemical in a very strong safe. With a minor plot hole that the least improbable condition was for the chemical to not get locked up in the safe in the first place.
This is my objection to the conclusion of the post: yes, you’re unlikely to be able to patch all the leaks, but the more leaks you patch, the less likely it is that a bad solution occurs. The way the Device was described was such that “things happen, and time is reset until a solution occurs”. This favors probable things over improbable things, since probable things will more likely happen before improbable things. If you add caveats—mother safe, whole, uninjured, mentally sound, low velocity—at some point the “right” solutions become significantly more probable than the “wrong” ones. As for the stated “bad” solutions—how probable is a nuclear bomb going off, or aliens abducting her, compared to firefighters showing up?
I don’t even think the timing of the request matters, since the device isn’t actively working to bring the events to fruition—meaning, any outcome where the device resets will have always been prohibited, from the beginning of time. Which means that the firefighters may have left the building five minutes ago, having seen some smoke against the skyline. Etc. …Or, perhaps more realistically, the device was never discovered in the first place, considering the probabilistic weight it would have to bear over all its use, compared to the probability of its discovery.
There was a story with an “outcome pump” like this, I do not remember the name. Essentially, a chemical had to get soaked with water due to some time travel related handwave. You could do minor things like getting your mom out of the building by pouring water on the chemical if you are satisfied with the outcome, with some risk that a hurricane would form instead and soak the chemical. It would produce the least improbable outcome (in the sense that all probabilities would become as if it is given that the chemical got soaked, so naturally the least improbable one had the highest chance to have occurred), so it’s impact was generally quite limited—to do real damage you had to lock up the chemical in a very strong safe. With a minor plot hole that the least improbable condition was for the chemical to not get locked up in the safe in the first place.
Isaac Asimov’s thiotimoline stories. The last turned it into a space drive.
This is my objection to the conclusion of the post: yes, you’re unlikely to be able to patch all the leaks, but the more leaks you patch, the less likely it is that a bad solution occurs. The way the Device was described was such that “things happen, and time is reset until a solution occurs”. This favors probable things over improbable things, since probable things will more likely happen before improbable things. If you add caveats—mother safe, whole, uninjured, mentally sound, low velocity—at some point the “right” solutions become significantly more probable than the “wrong” ones. As for the stated “bad” solutions—how probable is a nuclear bomb going off, or aliens abducting her, compared to firefighters showing up?
I don’t even think the timing of the request matters, since the device isn’t actively working to bring the events to fruition—meaning, any outcome where the device resets will have always been prohibited, from the beginning of time. Which means that the firefighters may have left the building five minutes ago, having seen some smoke against the skyline. Etc. …Or, perhaps more realistically, the device was never discovered in the first place, considering the probabilistic weight it would have to bear over all its use, compared to the probability of its discovery.