Proof Standards

[571239865l9281729387]

It goes without saying that when discussing what a certain character is or isn't capable of, that proof standards are very important. As such, it is only natural that we demand sufficient evidence to back up a particular claim, as to do otherwise would basically be making arguments from ignorance, which is probably the antithesis of scientific analysis.

However, this does raise a few questions with me when it comes to evaluating characters who are professed to have extremely high levels of power, even unlimited power. In other words, "omnipotence."

1. Proof standards of "omniscience" vs. proof standards of "omnipotence." While the database will not list omnipotence as a possible ability of a character, it does list omniscience as a possible ability. Omnipotence is not listed since it is seen as unprovable; more specifically, the problem with proving omnipotence is "how is one supposed to prove that there are no limits to his/her/its power"? The burden of proof is on the claimant to prove the lack of limits, not on the listener to prove that there is indeed a limit.
   
   However, I imagine a similar principle will be applied to omniscience, where the burden of proof is similarly on the claimant for proving the lack of limits on a character's knowledge, which would similarly be unprovable; I mean, how do you prove a lack of limits on anything? Yet we list omniscience as an ability of a character despite this, where we somehow successfully manage to prove a lack of limits to a standard that is acceptable.
   
   So what does this mean? Does this mean we can prove a lack of limits for omniscience but we somehow can't prove a lack of limits for omnipotence for some arbitrary reason? Does this mean omnipotence is not unprovable, but provable, just with higher proof standards backing it up? Where is the key legislative difference between governing the validity of omniscience claims and omnipotence claims? This latter question is expanded upon more below.
2. Hypothetically, let's suppose a game claims that a character is omnipotent in a character's description. I'm assuming that we throw out that evidence since we need to see it actually being done before we accept it as valid. However, Captain Olimar's database entry professes that Olimar is able to destroy stars merely because a description in-game declared it so, even though we don't see Olimar destroying even one star in any of the Pikmin fictional entries. Yet we list it on his database entry anyways simply because a description in-game declared it so, and so we just automatically assume it to be true.
   
   This raises a question. What is the protocol if a game declares a character capable of something even if we never see it being executed?
   
   Maybe...it boils down to "we'll accept a claim as true or not based on how trustworthy/reliable the source is, i.e. if it's from an omniscient source or if it's from a squire who can't even count to 10." If this is the case, then I assume we'll accept descriptions provided by video games as the highest level of trustworthiness, viewing it akin to a claim from an omniscient being or from the writer themselves, unless the game's description contradicts another canon description in some way.
3. Speaking of omniscient beings, what would be the protocol if an omniscient being claims that another character is "omnipotent"? Do we just assume that the omniscient being is wrong or that he's incorrect about what omnipotent really means? Do we just assume that the omniscient being is automatically wrong about their claim? To what lengths are we willing to go to try to maintain the agenda of “omnipotence unprovable, but omniscience provable”?
4. Word of God. "Word of God" is basically a trope where a writer of a fiction makes a de jure declaration on something that they have control over, and generally fans will only naturally accept a writer's declarations as inarguable fact since it is sensible to believe that the writer a) controls what goes on in the fiction and b) is aware and has correct knowledge about what goes in the fiction. However, if an author were to make a claim that a particular character is omnipotent, what would be our response? Do we just assume the writer is wrong, or that the writer is incorrect about what omnipotence means? Do we just pretend we never saw it? What do we do in this circumstance?

On an unrelated note, what would be the protocol for creating an entry with a character who can grant anyone's wishes, including his/her own? (And just to clarify, there's no cap on the amount of wishes they can grant for any particular requester, and even if there was a cap, they can simply wish that cap away provided there's no clause prohibiting it. Furthermore, even if there was such a clause, they can merely wish into existence a completely different entity that has wish-granting powers, among a myriad of other methods to circumvent the cap imposed. Not to mention realistically they only need one wish to defeat (or at least not lose to) the opposing party using an entire myriad of methods so even wishing away the cap isn't necessary in the first place.) Would they shoot up to tier 0 by default, since "granting their own wishes" is basically just another way of saying "omnipotence" (and thus they would be able to wish themselves powers that qualify them for tier 0? Actually they wouldn't need to wish themselves that power necessarily since omnipotence entails those powers by default)? What would this mean for Jirachi from the Pokémon series, since Jirachi can grant wishes and the games don’t state that Jirachi is excluded from being eligible to receive wishes it creates? Do we just assume that the game is wrong? Would a similar principle may be applied to other genies from fictional entries since they too can wish into existence methods of circumventing their own limitations, or to characters who have a genie at their command? Or am I making a tremendous misunderstanding?

Forgive my ignorance if you see any, since I’m sure there are a lot of unspoken rules I broke that is making everyone cringe right now. I’m just trying to look for some consistency in how we index our characters, and if there’s a rule I’m overlooking, I’d be happy to learn of it.

 

[DarkDragonMedeus]

I'm not entirely sure what the OP is proposing, but there is a combination of positive requiring proof rather than the negative. And it's impossible to prove any fictional character is truly omnipotent; it needs to be assumed the character solos all of fiction and reality and only one character in existence can truly be omnipotent. But such a claim is so big, it's best to consider no character truly omnipotent.

But as for other destruction statements; we usually consider feats > statements. But statements can be used if they're very specific, strait forward, and uncontroversial. Like, "Destroying the entire world" is too vague, but "It has the ability to blow up an entire planet in a single blast" is more reliable if there's no reason to consider it a hyperbole. But "Omnipotence" is a perfect example of something that's never strait forward or uncontroversial.

 

[571239865l9281729387]

I'm not trying to propose anything, merely trying to better understand what proof standards govern the indexing utilized by this database. At the very least if I'm intending to propose something, I do need to learn what I'm talking about before going forward with it.

There were some questions that were left unanswered, but I'll ignore those for now and just ask probably the biggest unanswered question (it's been on my mind ever since I watched Aladdin in French back in November 2020). I'll get back to the other questions later, as I'm breaking this down one piece at a time.

Let's just keep it simple for the time being. So the question on my mind is: If a character is capable of granting their own wishes, would that mean they shoot up to tier 0 by default? Because "granting their own wishes" is just basically another way of saying "omnipotence." It goes without saying that they would thus be able to wish themselves powers that qualify them for tier 0; actually, they don't even need to do that since the new power granted to them by their newfound access to wishes makes them possess tier 0 powers by default.

I imagine one could argue as well that characters who command genies or other wish-granting entities would be tier 0 as well by a similar line of logic to the paragraph above. After all, in the context of a versus battle or in the context of tiering, there is basically no difference between these two.

We recognize granting wishes as a valid power and take that into account when evaluating a character's rating (i.e. Jirachi), but we don't recognize omnipotence. But forget I mentioned this; let's just knock out question 1 first. Would a character that is able to grant their own wishes (or otherwise get their wish granted by some sort of means) be classed as tier 0, or would he be not classed as such? If not, then why are we saying that he is unable to affect the universe in a way that qualifies him for tier 0 when his access to a lamp enables him to affect the universe in exactly that way?

 

[Emirp sumitpo]

If a character is capable of granting their own wishes, would that mean they shoot up to tier 0 by default? Because "granting their own wishes" is just basically another way of saying "omnipotence." It goes without saying that they would thus be able to wish themselves powers that qualify them for tier 0; actually, they don't even need to do that since the new power granted to them by their newfound access to wishes makes them possess tier 0 powers by default.

I'm pretty sure that is guaranteed to get you to Unknown, using only that paragraph alone.

 

[DarkDragonMedeus]

Granting wishes is more so just a sub power of Reality warping, and we do not assume absolute high ends like that.

 

[571239865l9281729387]

So judging by the previous two responses, it seems we're imposing some sort of limit on what a person is allowed to wish for. I'm still not sure I'm seeing what is stopping someone from wishing for something that is "too high end" if the original fictional media is not specifying any such restriction? What's stopping someone from making a wish like that?

I mean, I'm probably unaware of something, but when we say "we don't assume absolute high ends like that" we're basically just saying "this person can wish for anything UNLESS it is deemed too 'high end'", whatever arbitrary point we choose for "high end." I mean where would we even define this point anyways? At what point do we say "ok your wish is too high end, it's not allowed even though the original fictional media didn't specify such a restriction?"

After all, we do evaluate in-game descriptions or similar declarations with very high trustworthiness and only doubt it if there's reasonable cause to, i.e. taking claims of omniscience at face value if there's no reason to believe otherwise, so having a similar approach with wish-making where we don't try to introduce additional clauses not previously present in the fictional media would be consistent with that I imagine.

Now this being said, I'm basically proposing that we categorize all wish users at tier 0, which would considerably inflate how many characters qualify for tier. This would probably be a bit problematic since tier 0 is supposed to be a very exclusive tier. I guess a fair compromise we should probably just say that if a character wishes for a feat that would qualify them for tier 0, only then do they become tier 0; merely being capable of wishing for a tier 0 feat is insufficient. If a character doesn't wish for a tier 0 feat, then the minimum threshold for their abilities will only be defined at "reality warping" and then proceed from there. (In other words, the exact same approach we've been doing up until this point in time.) I can't say I agree with this approach, since it seems like we're making very arbitrary exceptions for wish-making and what a person is allowed to wish for, but hey, I've been wrong before, maybe there are legitimate, not-arbitrary reasons to approach it this way that I'm not seeing.

I'm sorry if it seems like I'm challenging something that's very taboo and if it seems very audacious since I'm extremely new to these forums, but I guess my end point now here is just to ask one thing: where do we define "too high of an end" when it comes to wish making? At what point is a wish not allowed anymore because we deem it "too high end"?

 

[Emirp sumitpo]

This seems an awful lot like a No limit fallacy argument. Basically, in order to reach Tier 0, you need to prove that you are Tier 0, simply saying you are unlimited or you can grant anything is not enough to reach this tier. You must show proper evidence that a wishmaker can perform or grant a tier 0 feat and not saying it is unlimited and can grant anything. At best, it'll just be "Unknown" or just some high level reality warping hax

 

[571239865l9281729387]

This seems an awful lot like a No limit fallacy argument. Basically, in order to reach Tier 0, you need to prove that you are Tier 0, simply saying you are unlimited or you can grant anything is not enough to reach this tier. You must show proper evidence that a wishmaker can perform or grant a tier 0 feat and not saying it is unlimited and can grant anything. At best, it'll just be "Unknown" or just some high level reality warping hax

Let's play along for now and suppose it is indeed a fallacy like you are claiming. This raises several points of contention:

• This seems like an inconsistency with our protocol on how we handle statements of powers. Up until now, we didn't require evidence of a corollary feat in order to accept the statement as true; a statement alone would be accepted provided there wasn't reason to doubt its validity. But now we have a statement from the author and now we're suddenly demanding feat evidence even though our proof standard previously was all too happy to accept statements without requiring evidence.
• If we're serious about this, then a similar protocol should also be put in place for omniscience if we're going to be consistent about this policy, since by your logic merely "professing a lack of limits on knowledge" should be insufficient evidence (which would again be inconsistent with point 1 outlined above, but let's just bear with it for now) as going by your criteria this should also be committing the NLF. Yet we index omniscience anyways despite this, and furthermore, several characters have omniscience indexed as an ability using statements that have EXACT language that seemingly commits the NLF ("the character knows everything there is to know" "the character knows everything that happened and will happen").

So what is the proof standard here? Are we allowing statements alone to be used as evidence or are we not? Are we allowing these "absolute" statements or are we not? We can't have it both ways.

Finally, even supposing it was fallacious, how do we reconcile this? Do we just artificially add a clause ourselves that limits its abilities even though no such clause was previously specified? Do we commit the fallacy fallacy, dropping the "oh you committed a fallacy therefore you're wrong" card and then dip? How are we supposed to reconcile this "fallacious wish" statement even supposing it was truly fallacious? Because right now the only way I see of reconciling this is to commit the "imposing limits where there weren't any previously" fallacy where we modify the original meaning of a statement (from a credible source, i.e. author) to make it better fit with our agenda. This is especially problematic when we allow "absolute" statements like with omniscience.

The problem here is that this entire fallacy is just another way of saying "you took an author's credible statement at face value, therefore you're wrong" but when we're taking author's statements at face value and accepting those as evidence then naturally we have some explaining to do on how we're supposed to reconcile this.

Not to mention that simply dropping "NLF" doesn't really answer the question of where do we define a limit for wish making? If we're going to be adding a limit to wish making ourselves, then where is that limit going to be placed? At what point is a wish "too high end"?

This is part of the reason I almost never resort to invoking the NLF in my own arguments, since for the fallacy to actually mean anything and in order to "fix" it, we have to commit inconsistencies of our own at best and fallacies of our own at worst.

EDIT: NLF rant aside, let's take into account the rest of the post, whic hcovers something different. I guess this means our stance with wish making is that having access to wishes will put you at a minimum threshold, and if you wish for a feat that is sufficiently powerful then you'll tier up (assuming you're not just dropped into Unknown immediately). Although I don't agree with it (due to problems such as issues with double standards), hey, I can think of ways it could be much worse.