Plausibility Scale

[Akiyama]

I don't know if anyone's done this before, but how about a scale to rate ATLs on?

There are seven ratings, !!!, 0, 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5

!!! is for undisputable ASB stuff.

0 is for ATLs that, while technically not impossible, could be taken as proof of the existance of ASBs. For example, Operation Sealion succeeds, or that Sliders episode where 99% of the male population outside Australia were wiped out by an Iraqi bio-weapon.

1 is for ATLs that could concievably happen given the right combination of improbable events, but many people would suspect ASB involvement.

2 is for ATLs that are unlikely, but possible.

3 is for ATLS that everyone can agree are plausible (not counting people with an axe to grind, obviously).

4 is for ATLS with events that are so plausible that, if they had happened, it would be completely unsurprising. For example, Al Gore winning the 2000 election, or a German victory at Stalingrad.

5 is ATLS with events that are so plausible our timeline is probably the exception. For example, the "divine wind" (kamikaze) that wrecked the Mongol fleet off the coast of Japan never happened.


Ratings 1, 2, and 3 are fairly subjective, so I haven't given examples.

So what do you think? Useful or not?

Can anyone think of other ATLs that would rate a 5? I had a hard time thinking of one, but there must be others.

 

[Agentdark]

The Hurricane the wrecked the Spanish Armada in the 1500's.
that would rate a 5.

 

[Scarecrow]

perhaps Decades of Darkness ranks as a 5, or a 4.9?

 

[Floid]

perhaps Decades of Darkness ranks as a 5, or a 4.9?

Please tell me you're kidding.

 

[David S Poepoe]

With some tilt of the hat towards GURPS Infinite World I would think that an ATL Plausibility Scale should run in the opposite direction. No scale has a '!!!'. OTL should be '0' and degrees of plausibility to implausibility to ASB should range from 1-5 or 1-6. The more plausible a timeline is the lower the number.

 

[NapoleonXIV]

Who would give the ratings? Would it be like a poll or something?

I'm generally against this. I think we can make a fetish about the plausiblity of what is really just a device to write a story. The import of plausibility to me is like, "there's a mountain range there, so your proposal of a sea level canal is a little difficult" or "Hannibal was a general in the Punic wars, so you're having him repel Meade at Gettysburg is implausible" or somesuch. Stirling and Turtledove seem to get by alright without worrying overmuch about it and so should we.

 

[wkwillis]

Sounds good to me. ASB 1 to 5.

 

[Admiral_Ritt]

I think a plausibilty scale needs to have more elastic structure.

For example. Some events seem driven by the personalities of their day, and others seem to be pushed along by a wave of inevitability, and others
seem random events piled upon still more random events.

For a crucial event you have weigh the belief that it was personality
driven or not. For example How important was Bismark to the forging of
Germany of SIGNIFICANT Power. I think he was crucial and the likelyhood
of a Strong German state is far less w/o him.

In this case I would use a scale like this P + I + R = 1.0
P=personalities I=inevitable forces R=random element.
For the formation of A strong Germany P=.6 I = .2 R =.2


For any particular Single Event.
For example the outcome of the Battle of Midway.
P = .2 I = .3 R = .5

IMHO, if Midway is refought, there is a LARGE random element that makes
the historical results one of many that could just as easily have happened.

Lets take the Fall of the Soviet Union. P=.4 I = .5 R = .1
Why is P so high? Because Andropov Picked the wrong guy to suceed him
in the form of Michail Gorvachev. He accellerated the downfall IMO. I is high because even another Strong leader would have had a tough time trying to keep the SU afloat, and was most probably doomed anyway
Finally R is a contributing factor because certain random events like Afghan
war and other political events (like the downing of that KAL airliner) played
a role in the weakening of he SU.

Obcourse the value of each Component in the P.I.R formula is subject to
argument, but what else is new? This approach is better suited to specific events.

Let rate some of the ALT on this board.

DECADES OF DARKNESS, Not the entire Timeline just the set-up as I am sure the Author, would agree his specific outcomes are less and less likely the further one gets from the point of departure.
P= .4 I=.1 R=.5

TEMPLE OF PALLAS-ATHENA. ATHENIANS Discovering the new world and
gaining a foothold there. Not so likely. It would require good leadership.
P= .2 I=.1 R=.7

SOUTHERN CW Victory. Even less likely, ask Shelby Foote. They needed
more great rebel leaders.
P=2 I=.05 R= 7.5

AMERICAN REVOLUTION. The French willing to expend treasure
to help the colonials, changed everything.
P=.4 I=.3 R=.3

 

[Jared]

I don't know if anyone's done this before, but how about a scale to rate ATLs on?

There are seven ratings, !!!, 0, 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5

After reading these ratings, you're not rating timelines, you're rating individual events. Some of which may be probable, some of which may be improbable, and some of which may produce the sounds of leathery wings flapping throughout the cosmos...

For instance, you've cited the success of Operation S**lion. Which is an individual event anyway, and one where the probability of it happening is, well, rather low. Some of the events you cite elsewhere have higher probabilities than others (Al Gore in 2000, that horse which became pope), but they're still individual events.

An ATL is a series of events. Each of those events may be probable, improbable, ASB or somewhere in between. But the specific chain of events itself is improbable, since there were so many alternate paths it could have turned out. This is true of any TL which extends past a few brief events. It doesn't mean that we should abandon any notion of probability, but it also means that in a realistic ATL, there will be some improbable events happening. To have nothing improbable happening is itself improbable.

In OTL, for instance, there's any number of improbable events which happened. The Germans getting as far as they did during WW2. (Various Allied mistakes in Norway could be cited here, or that plane crash which made them abandon their original war plans). The Mexican-American border being as far north as it is (thank you, Mr. Trist). And so on.

Can anyone think of other ATLs that would rate a 5? I had a hard time thinking of one, but there must be others.

Nope, because a TL with no improbable events is in itself improbable. Put it into the context of rolling dice - if you have one side roll double-sixes over and over, that's improbable. But so is having them never roll double-sixes.

 

[Jared]

I'm generally against this. I think we can make a fetish about the plausiblity of what is really just a device to write a story. The import of plausibility to me is like, "there's a mountain range there, so your proposal of a sea level canal is a little difficult" or "Hannibal was a general in the Punic wars, so you're having him repel Meade at Gettysburg is implausible" or somesuch. Stirling and Turtledove seem to get by alright without worrying overmuch about it and so should we.

In general I'd agree with this, but I'd add a caveat. People read fiction and have, in some sense, willing suspension of disbelief. Some things hang one's sense of disbelief, not suspend it. S**l**n is the classic example, but there's others.

Of course, they will vary for different readers. Personally, I can forgive improbable events if there's some other compelling reason to keep reading - usually good ideas or good writing. Turtledove comes up with some interesting ideas, even if I usually find his writing style... stale. I knew the Draka series was utterly implausible, but had no problems reading it as tragedy (everything which can go wrong, does).

Mind you, if a series lacks either good ideas or good writing, it'd better at least be plausible. Which is why I was so tempted to use Harry Harrison's Stars and Stripes book as toilet paper.

 

[Jared]

DECADES OF DARKNESS, Not the entire Timeline just the set-up as I am sure the Author, would agree his specific outcomes are less and less likely the further one gets from the point of departure.

Sure, but then _any_ specific outcome is less and less likely the further one gets from the point of departure. (I do try to stay on the side of low-probability but still plausible, but then often that rating is subjective).

As regards the initial set-up, i.e. New England secession, I actually regard that as one of the most improbable parts of the TL. It would take some bad luck to have that happening. The New England secessionists were fairly reluctant to do anything more than talk about secession. It would take both additional motive on their part, and mishandling of the situation from the federal government to produce New England secession.

 

[NapoleonXIV]

I think a plausibilty scale needs to have more elastic structure.

For example. Some events seem driven by the personalities of their day, and others seem to be pushed along by a wave of inevitability, and others
seem random events piled upon still more random events.

For a crucial event you have weigh the belief that it was personality
driven or not. For example How important was Bismark to the forging of
Germany of SIGNIFICANT Power. I think he was crucial and the likelyhood
of a Strong German state is far less w/o him.

In this case I would use a scale like this P + I + R = 1.0
P=personalities I=inevitable forces R=random element.
For the formation of A strong Germany P=.6 I = .2 R =.2


For any particular Single Event.
For example the outcome of the Battle of Midway.
P = .2 I = .3 R = .5

IMHO, if Midway is refought, there is a LARGE random element that makes
the historical results one of many that could just as easily have happened.

Lets take the Fall of the Soviet Union. P=.4 I = .5 R = .1
Why is P so high? Because Andropov Picked the wrong guy to suceed him
in the form of Michail Gorvachev. He accellerated the downfall IMO. I is high because even another Strong leader would have had a tough time trying to keep the SU afloat, and was most probably doomed anyway
Finally R is a contributing factor because certain random events like Afghan
war and other political events (like the downing of that KAL airliner) played
a role in the weakening of he SU.

Obcourse the value of each Component in the P.I.R formula is subject to
argument, but what else is new? This approach is better suited to specific events.

Let rate some of the ALT on this board.

DECADES OF DARKNESS, Not the entire Timeline just the set-up as I am sure the Author, would agree his specific outcomes are less and less likely the further one gets from the point of departure.
P= .4 I=.1 R=.5

TEMPLE OF PALLAS-ATHENA. ATHENIANS Discovering the new world and
gaining a foothold there. Not so likely. It would require good leadership.
P= .2 I=.1 R=.7

SOUTHERN CW Victory. Even less likely, ask Shelby Foote. They needed
more great rebel leaders.
P=2 I=.05 R= 7.5

AMERICAN REVOLUTION. The French willing to expend treasure
to help the colonials, changed everything.
P=.4 I=.3 R=.3

This is sort of what I mean by fetishistic. OTOH I never knew a girl who wasn't just a little flattered by the fact that I would actually eat their panties given the chance, no matter what they said, . Damn, formulae and every thing; so what if you give it P=0, I=0, R=.1 (some things did happen, though not what one would expect) at least you've read it.

Actually, if we go back to a one dimensional rating couldn't we do this ourselves as a poll after our stories and TL? One choice would be 1, another 2, then 3 etc. Manners would dictate we explain a low rating but a poll would also encourage more response.

 

[Akiyama]

I believe that other timelines actually exist somewhere "out there".

So while I can enjoy an implausible timeline for other reasons, it doesn't grab me nearly as much as a plausible timeline would.

And for the same reason, I like alternate histories that are fairly detailed, particularly where the author has taken the time to include cultural differences, since it makes that world feel more real.

If an AH story has an implausible timeline, there may be elements of it that I really enjoy, but I find it impossible to enjoy the story as a whole.

BTW I'm quite pedantic generally in this way. When I was watching the Lord of the Rings films I got so annoyed that there was not a single farm outside of Minas Tirith. How do it's citizens live if they don't have any food? G r r r r r r r r r . . . I was ranting about it afterwards to anyone who would listen. Minas Tirith looked great, the scenery was magnificent, would it have killed them to put some CGI fields in? I have similar questions about the Harry Potter universe: Wizards are depicted as being unfamiliar with Muggle money - so how do they buy their food? How does Hogwarts purchase and transport the food it needs to feed all its students?

Better get back to the topic before I start on Narnia . . .

After reading these ratings, you're not rating timelines, you're rating individual events. Some of which may be probable, some of which may be improbable, and some of which may produce the sounds of leathery wings flapping throughout the cosmos...

My intention was that timelines as a whole should be rated, not individual events, although I gave examples that were single events.

The Draka series, for example, has a perfectly plausible POD as far as I know, followed by a number of events of various degrees of implausibilty that all tend in one direction - the Draka take over the world very quickly. This adds up to a totally implausible timeline.

Or to take another example, the events in Turtledove's "Confederacy" books (does this series have a name?) are all totally plausible (disregarding minor characters from OTL who should never have been born in the ATL) but they all trend in a single direction - making the history of the Freedom Party exactly mirror that of the Nazi party in OTL. For that reason I can't regard this as a plausible timeline.

An ATL is a series of events. Each of those events may be probable, improbable, ASB or somewhere in between. But the specific chain of events itself is improbable, since there were so many alternate paths it could have turned out. This is true of any TL which extends past a few brief events. It doesn't mean that we should abandon any notion of probability, but it also means that in a realistic ATL, there will be some improbable events happening. To have nothing improbable happening is itself improbable.

It's true that any specific chain of events is improbable, but still some chains of events will be much more improbable than others.

If one were to roll a pair of dice ten times, the chance of rolling:

7 7 7 7 7 7 7 7 7 7

is fairly improbable (maybe not as improbable as you might think, there is a 16% chance or about 1 in 6 [edit: this is wrong, see Kaiser Wilhem III's post below]).

but the chances of rolling

5 8 2 10 9 6 2 8 7 4

(that is, that exact series of numbers, in that order) is vastly more improbable.

So while a "typical" timeline would have a few improbable events, a timeline with no improbable events is far more probable than any specific timeline containing improbable events.

So it depends on your point of view, whether you consider a timeline with no improbable events to be more plausible or less plausible. My POV is that it is more plausible.

As I said before, I believe that there really are other timelines "out there". Now, if you could get into a cross-time conveyor and visit a random timeline, what would you expect to see? This is a very interesting question to me - given a particular starting point (for example 1900 CE) what would one expect timelines diverging from that starting point to be like? Thinking about this means thinking about how history works, which I find fascinating.

Most AH writers assume OTL is the norm from which everything else diverges, or on which everything else is patterned. But it is improbable that our timeline is normal - it is more probable that it includes a certain number of improbable events and is therefore abnormal in some ways. I believe there exists, for example, a "canonical" 20th Century - the most probable 20th Century given a starting point of OTLs 1900 CE - and that if you were to take a random trip in a cross-time conveyor you would be much more likely to end up in a timeline resembling the "canonical" 20th Century than one resembling our 20th Century.

I want to know what other timelines are really like! So I'm interested in plausibility. Of course one can never actually know what is probable and what is improbable, but thinking about it can be educational, I think.

Admiral Ritt, I think you have come up with an brilliant way of thinking about plausibility. Thank you.

My rating system was just intended as a way for people to rate books and stuff if they wanted to, for example, when reviewing them. Although, come to think about it any assessment of a timeline's plausibility that doesn't explain the reasoning behind it is pretty uninformative, so maybe it was a bad idea.

 

[Jared]

My intention was that timelines as a whole should be rated, not individual events, although I gave examples that were single events.

Insofar as I think any rating system is useful (which is not much, but that's just me), I'd suggest that it's individual events you should be looking at. Evaluating plausibility depends on too many factors, some of them subjective, to make it easy to do so over a whole timeline, except when there's a consistent bias throughout all of the events. In which case, I'd just pick on some of the representative events. For instance:

The Draka series, for example, has a perfectly plausible POD as far as I know, followed by a number of events of various degrees of implausibilty that all tend in one direction - the Draka take over the world very quickly. This adds up to a totally implausible timeline.

The implausibility of the Draka was on several levels. For one thing, it included a number of hugely improbable or flat-out impossible events. First- and second-generation people of European descent ignoring disease barriers in Africa, and magical supply corps being two which really stick in my memory. Then there's the enemies of the Draka all being given the collective IQ of a gecko's tail. And then there's questions of human motivation which I really can't buy. (No Fat Draka, anyone?) But I'd still concentrate on the implausible events, in such cases. And more precisely, because these implausible events all pointed in the same direction - stacking the deck in favour of the Draka at the expense of all others.

Or to take another example, the events in Turtledove's "Confederacy" books (does this series have a name?) are all totally plausible (disregarding minor characters from OTL who should never have been born in the ATL) but they all trend in a single direction - making the history of the Freedom Party exactly mirror that of the Nazi party in OTL. For that reason I can't regard this as a plausible timeline.

Turtledove defaults to copy and paste from real history the further he gets from a PoD, and it's one reason I think his extended timelines are implausible.

It's true that any specific chain of events is improbable, but still some chains of events will be much more improbable than others.

If one were to roll a pair of dice ten times, the chance of rolling:

7 7 7 7 7 7 7 7 7 7

is fairly improbable (maybe not as improbable as you might think, there is a 16% chance, or about 1 in 6).

Pardon? There's a chance of 1/6 to the power of ten of rolling that particular sequence. A chance of 0.00000016%, in other words.

But the chances of rolling

5 8 2 10 9 6 2 8 7 4

(that is, that exact series of numbers, in that order) is vanishingly small.

That depends. Once you've rolled it, the probability that you would roll that sequence is 1. (Conditional probabilities are wonderful things).

More seriously, the chances of rolling _any exact series of numbers_ are vanishingly small. It's still a sequence of individual events, all of which are either probable or improbable.

So while a "typical" timeline would have a few improbable events, a timeline with no improbable events is far more probable than any specific timeline containing improbable events.

Not really. The chances of any specific timeline are so vanishingly small that it's hard to notice the difference. Saying that the dice are never going to come up double-sixes in a TL really grates on my nerves.

So it depends on your point of view, whether you consider a timeline with no improbable events to be more plausible or less plausible. My POV is that it is more plausible.

To each his (or her) own. Having had to deal with probability theory, if there were no improbable events, I'd think someone was loading the dice.

As I said before, I believe that there really are other timelines "out there". Now, if you could get into a cross-time conveyor and visit a random timeline, what would you expect to see? This is a very interesting question to me - given a particular starting point (for example 1900 CE) what would one expect timelines diverging from that starting point to be like? Thinking about this means thinking about how history works, which I find fascinating.

There's a million billion trillion possible sequences. It's picking any one of them and seeing how it could have unfolded which interests me.

Most AH writers assume OTL is the norm from which everything else diverges, or on which everything else is patterned. But it is improbable that our timeline is normal - it is more probable that it includes a certain number of improbable events and is therefore abnormal in some ways. I believe there exists, for example, a "canonical" 20th Century - the most probable 20th Century given a starting point of OTLs 1900 CE - and that if you were to take a random trip in a cross-time conveyor you would be much more likely to end up in a timeline resembling the "canonical" 20th Century than one resembling our 20th Century.

That's like having a TL with 1000 coin tosses, and defining the "canonical" TL as being one where there's exactly 500 heads. The odds of landing in such a TL are vanishingly low. Sure, they're more probable than any other individual TL, but vanishingly small compared to the total number of TLs. So having a "canonical" twentieth century is a bit of a misnomer. I think it's easiest just to pick divergences from OTL, since that's the one we know. Just choose an interesting divergence and run with it.

I want to know what other timelines are really like! So I'm interested in plausibility. Of course one can never actually know what is probable and what is improbable, but thinking about it can be educational, I think.

Probability and plausibility are not the same thing, as such. Plausibility asks 'could something happen'. Probability asks 'how likely is something to happen'? So I'd be careful to draw that distinction.

 

[Akiyama]

Quote:
It's true that any specific chain of events is improbable, but still some chains of events will be much more improbable than others.

If one were to roll a pair of dice ten times, the chance of rolling:

7 7 7 7 7 7 7 7 7 7

is fairly improbable (maybe not as improbable as you might think, there is a 16% chance, or about 1 in 6).

Pardon? There's a chance of 1/6 to the power of ten of rolling that particular sequence. A chance of 0.00000016%, in other words.

You are quite right.

Originally, I was going to use the example of rolling a die with one white side and five black sides. If one rolled that ten times, there would be a 16% chance of getting no white sides. Then I thought that would too confusing to explain and it would be better to use the example of rolling pairs of dice, but I got my probabilities mixed up somewhere.

 

[Akiyama]

Kaiser Wilhelm (should I address you are "Your Majesty"?),

I agree with everything you are saying.

I don't mind improbable events at all, as long they don't all trend in the same direction. Please don't get the idea that I read a timeline and think "hmmmm . . . eight improbable events . . . this timeline is rubbish". Thoughts like that never cross my mind.

I'm just saying that some events, and some timelines, will be more probable than others.

I said myself that any specific chain of events will be improbable. If you climb into a cross-time conveyor you will end up in an improbable timeline, because there are zillions of possible timelines, all of which are improbable in one way or another. In fact, before I read your post I was considering editing my post to make that more clear.

But I believe that there are general historical laws that make some sorts of things more probable than others. I like thinking about what these sorts of laws might be. And I like thinking about the ways in which our own timeline might be atypical.

So, I guess the fact that some events are more probable than others, matters more to me than it does to you. As you say, to each his own

 

[Flocculencio]

BTW I'm quite pedantic generally in this way. When I was watching the Lord of the Rings films I got so annoyed that there was not a single farm outside of Minas Tirith. How do it's citizens live if they don't have any food? G r r r r r r r r r . . . I was ranting about it afterwards to anyone who would listen. Minas Tirith looked great, the scenery was magnificent, would it have killed them to put some CGI fields in? I have similar questions about the Harry Potter universe: Wizards are depicted as being unfamiliar with Muggle money - so how do they buy their food? How does Hogwarts purchase and transport the food it needs to feed all its students?

Same thing with Rohan- they made it look like a desolate tundra when it's supposed to be rich farmland.

 

[Akiyama]

To elaborate a little on what I mean, all 20th Centuries will be different, since there are zillions of things that could happen.

But still, there might be general trends that affect most 20th Centuries. For example, Friedrich Hayek argued that that modern states tend to accumulate more and more power for themselves, at this expense of individual citizens, at least until it becomes obvious that this is a bad idea.

So the rise and fall of totalitarian states could be something that is common in 20th Centuries.

On the other hand, one might argue that the invention of atomic weapons in 1945 relied on a number of improbable events - Einstein working out the Theory of Relativity, his being taken seriously by the scientific establishment (it was a bit of a fluke that something so at odds with scientific orthodoxy, written by an unknown, was ever published), the rise of the Nazis meaning that Einstein moved to the US and Germany and the US went to war, and Einstein persuading Roosevelt to set up the Manhatten Project.

So perhaps atomic weapons are commonly invented later in the 20th Century and OTL is atypical in inventing them so early. Maybe other 20th Centuries are bloodier as a result. I don't think this is a nonsensical statement.

So when I talk about a "canonical" 20th century I don't have a single specific timeline in mind, but I do believe there must be certain features that are common to many 20th centuries. And a timeline that included all those features would be considered "canonical". If this seems totally irrelevent, fine. It's just something I've been thinking about.

 

[Straha]

I see at least minor atomic weapons usage at some point being common in virtually all advanced TL's. Remember even in OTL we used 2 nuclear weapons for war. I see using more than that being a feature of alot of 20th centuries.

 

[Admiral_Ritt]

Sure that is an easy prediction, but the real trick is
ask how long it takes from.

Start of the age of Enlightenment

to Hiroshima???

without WWII, how many countries would have assigned something like
3-4% of their GNP, on a project that Theory says might work??