by choosing to roll, say, 3d8 instead of 3d6, it’s possible to manipulate the shape of that bell curve
It’s turtles all the way down.
This-you chose to roll 3d8 and other-you chose to roll 3d6 and yet more of other-yous chose to roll 1d10, 7d36, etc. etc. Yes, you manipulated the bell curve but in other timelines it also got manipulated, albeit in a different way. When you step in one direction, yes, the timelines spreading out from that step are biased in that direction. But the step itself, when you made it another-you also made a step, in a different direction, and biased another bunch of timelines in that different direction.
The set of all possible futures is the set of all possible futures—you cannot change it.
I think I’ve run out of different ways to try to explain what I’m trying to get across; so we seem to have hit the door-wall debate limit. (“This is a door.” “Yes, but /this/ is a wall.” “Yes, but /this/...”)
If I were to try to explain our difference to an outsider, I might describe your position as being that as there are an infinite number of timelines, any sub-portion of them also contains an infinite number of timelines, and thus any given infinity is equally as important as any other, so there’s no reason to prefer any one bundle of timelines over another. Would you say that that’s valid? If not, could you explain where I’m going wrong? And if so, would you be willing to try to describe the idea I’ve been trying to explain?
It’s turtles all the way down.
This-you chose to roll 3d8 and other-you chose to roll 3d6 and yet more of other-yous chose to roll 1d10, 7d36, etc. etc. Yes, you manipulated the bell curve but in other timelines it also got manipulated, albeit in a different way. When you step in one direction, yes, the timelines spreading out from that step are biased in that direction. But the step itself, when you made it another-you also made a step, in a different direction, and biased another bunch of timelines in that different direction.
The set of all possible futures is the set of all possible futures—you cannot change it.
I think I’ve run out of different ways to try to explain what I’m trying to get across; so we seem to have hit the door-wall debate limit. (“This is a door.” “Yes, but /this/ is a wall.” “Yes, but /this/...”)
If I were to try to explain our difference to an outsider, I might describe your position as being that as there are an infinite number of timelines, any sub-portion of them also contains an infinite number of timelines, and thus any given infinity is equally as important as any other, so there’s no reason to prefer any one bundle of timelines over another. Would you say that that’s valid? If not, could you explain where I’m going wrong? And if so, would you be willing to try to describe the idea I’ve been trying to explain?