He changed Tiwat

Oz whispered to Mona and Han Fulai, "Miss believes that the reason she failed at the 'Poetry Recitation' competition yesterday was because she ate 'Sweet Flower Chicken' for lunch, which symbolizes a bird with broken wings..."

"..." Mona was speechless. "Never mind, I'm actually already full."

Han Fulai nodded silently, thinking to himself, "I see."

Chapter 263 Fate is Pseudo-Random

"Welcome to 'Flower Language'! Sir, why don't you buy a bouquet for the lady beside you? I recommend dandelions, hehe."

A little girl in a light pink dress enthusiastically recommended the flowers in the shop to passing tourists.

She is Flora, the manager of "Flower Language," the most famous flower shop in Mondstadt.

Despite being underage, Flora's interpersonal skills rival those of any seasoned businessman, making her flower shop thrive. Her sweet voice and warm smile are quite popular among some customers, and there are even messages on the "Cat Tail Tavern" message board from customers who want to propose to the shopkeeper.

—The drunken guest was later taken to a solitary confinement room by the Knights to sober up.

Few can resist the sales pitches of cute little girls, but the two tourists Flora encountered this time were not only not a couple, but also... had very little money.

The two tourists were Han Fulai and Mona, who were taking a walk after dinner after finishing their "experiment".

Naturally, Han Fulai "cruelly" rejected Flora.

The two found a tea table nearby and sat down. Mona, who had been deep in thought about the "experiment" they had just had, finally spoke up: "How should we interpret the results of the experiment we just had?"

The results of this experiment were completely unexpected by Mona.

She actually always felt that the result of this divination would definitely be wrong.

She now believes that "predestination" should not exist. Her choice of what lunch to eat is a completely random event, and a trivial matter. Theoretically, it is impossible for it to be written into "fate" in advance by the laws of nature.

But reality told her that it seemed her lunch menu had already been planned by fate...

Honestly, this outcome frightened her even more than the so-called "contradiction of fate."

Han Fulai, however, remained calm and composed. Pointing to the flowers in the "Flower Language" shop across the street, he said leisurely, "Before you saw this flower, it and you were both in a state of stillness; now that you see it, its colors suddenly become clear..."

He was reciting a famous quote from Wang Shouren's "Instructions for Practical Living," which Mona had naturally never heard of.

Seeing Mona's puzzled expression, Han Fulai rephrased the statement: "This is a famous quote from a scholar in my world. He meant that before you observe this flower, it does not actually exist; according to the quantum state, it remains in a state of nothingness. When you observe it, the flower collapses from the quantum state, and its color suddenly becomes a tangible reality..."

Mona rolled her eyes: "Speak like a human."

Han Fulai shrugged. Quantum mechanics is truly amazing; it can make an astrologer, who usually doesn't speak like a human, ask others to "speak like a human."

"Simply put, you used divination to determine your own 'fate'. I imagine before you did the divination, you were completely in a state of confusion about what to eat for lunch today. You could eat barbecue, salad, toast, or even go hungry... But after you observed 'destiny,' your 'fate' was written into the 'false heaven.'"

“Look, even if you don’t order the ‘Satisfaction Salad,’ Sarah will give it to you for free; you didn’t expect to eat ‘Fried Beans,’ but you still run into Fischl and Oz… These accidental, random events become inevitable the moment you observe them, just like that cat that was both dead and alive, whose fate was decided the moment you opened the box.”

In quantum mechanics, the importance of measurement or observation is always mentioned.

The moment of taking the measurement seems to be the most magical instant.

In that instant, the observed wave becomes a particle, the function becomes the result, all randomness disappears and becomes a concrete physical quantity, and all mathematical abstraction becomes physical reality.

Before measurement, all entities seem to cease to exist, all matter seems to be merely code, and all objectivity is meaningless. But at the moment of measurement, the world suddenly becomes concrete—what one sees is an entity, what one perceives is matter, what one measures is a numerical value, and everything is objective and real.

Then, the measurement ended, and everything returned to a state of nothingness. The wave was still a wave, the function was still a function, and the cat returned to its superposition state of being both dead and alive.

They become virtual again when the measurement ends, and the reappearance of the particles requires the observer's next measurement.

The so-called "objectivity" only exists when "someone is observing".

Mona understood the explanation, but she still had questions: "But we just tried adding dishes. If I had ordered something else instead of 'Sweet Flower Stuffed Chicken,' would that have changed our 'fate'?"

Han Fulai thought for a moment and replied, "I suspect that to some extent, these things that cause errors will be corrected by various 'coincidences.' For example, if you want to order 'Fisherman's Toast,' Sarah will tell you that the toast is sold out. These are all possible things."

“But I think it’s possible to force a ‘contradiction of fate’ if you want. For example, after you finish your divination, you decide not to go out or eat anything at noon today, and you refuse even if someone brings you a free lunch. That might break the ‘fate’.”

“I remember you said your master warned you to be careful of ‘cause and effect and future troubles’… I think this advice is related to ‘the contradictions of fate’. The greater the contradictions you create, the stronger the backlash from this fate system may be, because it means that the records of ‘false heaven’ have errors, and the system will receive ‘errors’.”

He raised his hand and pointed to the sky.

"If I'm not mistaken, this 'Constellation' system is 'pseudo-random'."

“'Pseudo-random'?” Mona tilted her head.

Han Fulai thought for a moment and said, "Let's take dice as an example. A die has six sides. Under normal circumstances, when we roll a die, the probability of each face being face up is the same, one in six. In a truly random system, the probability of each face being face up is exactly the same, and in principle, we should be unable to predict which face will be rolled."

"For example, if you want to roll a 6, theoretically you should get a 6 100 times out of every 600 rolls. However, in practice, we find that the number of times you roll a 6 might be significantly more or less than 100, because no matter when you roll the dice or how many times you roll, the probability of rolling a 6 is one in six each time. In extreme cases, you might get a 6 every 600 times, or you might not get one at all."

“Pseudo-randomness means that the result of your dice roll is actually determined before you even roll it. For example, if you roll the dice 600 times and don’t roll a 6 in the first 500 times, then you will roll a 6 in the remaining 100 times. Although on the surface the probability of rolling a 6 is one in six, and it seems like you are rolling the dice freely, the result is actually predetermined.”

"But what does this have to do with our lunch today?" Mona was still puzzled.

“There is a connection.” Han Fulai looked at Mona very seriously and said slowly, “The lunch you divined wasn’t some raw meat, dirt, stone or any other random stuff, but rather cooked food that ordinary people can eat in a restaurant. That’s ‘pseudo-random.’ And all the ‘fates’ you see in the ‘Constellation’ system are just ‘pseudo-random numbers’ generated to deal with the observer.”

Chapter 264 Shut up, calculate [4k]

This was the first time Mona had encountered the concept of "pseudo-random numbers".

After all, even the "Difference Machine" is still under construction on the continent of Teyvat, and the invention of the "electronic computer" is still a long way off. Moreover, people rarely encounter "pseudo-random numbers" in their daily lives; they are usually generated by algorithms from electronic computers.

In principle, the computer obtains a number from the outside world, such as the current time, like a string of numbers like "20240108161618" as a "seed". Then, based on this "seed", it performs a series of calculations using a specific function to obtain a result, which is used as the generated "random number".

These "pseudo-random numbers" are generally used in generating electronic account passwords, lottery draws, simulation experiments, or game development and design—for example, in determining the critical hit probability of characters in various MOBA games, or in gacha games...

The “series of calculations” performed by the computer are all deterministic calculations. For the same input, if the computer performs the calculations thousands of times, the result will always be the same.

In other words, in principle, as long as one knows the specific algorithm of the computing system and the specific value of the "seed" it obtains, one can perform the same calculation to predict the result of this "pseudo-random number".

In other words, in principle, people can even predict lottery winning numbers, as long as they know the algorithm...

Some players of gacha games have a strong belief in "mysticism" and think that "mysticism can save you from bad luck." They believe that drawing cards at a certain time is the most likely way to get good results, and there is some truth to that—because the "seed" for generating random numbers in gacha games is very likely the time of drawing the card.

For example, if you draw a card at 1:2:3 AM, this time is used as a random number seed and the program performs a series of complex calculations. The result generated may be the number that represents the card you get... In short, from a statistical probability perspective, there is indeed a phenomenon where the probability of getting a card increases at a specific time.

—Well, as a poor guy from Africa who plays gacha games, Han Fulai had previously studied "metaphysics" quite well.

But his experience taught him that "luck can't save the unlucky," at least not him. The random number seed for that time was likely accurate to the millisecond (one-thousandth of a second), and getting it right at that time was itself a matter of luck...

True randomness, in mathematical terms, must be "unpredictable in principle," while random numbers that are "predictable in principle" are, of course, "pseudo-random."

All so-called random numbers generated by computer algorithms are, in principle, not truly random—although from a user experience perspective, there is not much difference between pseudo-random and true randomness. Anyway, no matter what the algorithm is, lucky people will always get two lucky numbers in ten pulls, while unlucky people will always get the maximum guaranteed reward...

As a transmigrator and a Genshin Impact player, it's natural to think of gacha pulls as my first thought when I hear about Sky Isles and "Constellations".

If Han Fulai were to explain the experiment in the terms of Chinese programmers, he would probably say something like this: Measurement is a kind of execution behavior of virtual code.

Mona's divination essentially involves inputting "my lunch today" as a virtual code instruction into the "Constellation" system, running it, and the computer on Sky Island—perhaps imaginable as a quantum computer that surpasses Earth's technology—performs a series of function calculations, obtains a result, and then determines "fate."

In his view, the fate system of Sky Island was a program running on a supercomputer, and Mona's divination was equivalent to "clicking to draw cards" for Sky Island.

But Mona clearly couldn't understand any of this... Han Fulai's words, when heard by Mona, only meant one thing:

"You mean... all the results we've gotten from divination, from the past to the present, have been manipulated? Like those tampered dice?"

Han Fulai nodded and then shook his head, uttering the phrase most commonly used by civil servants: "Yes, and no."

"...So what exactly is going on?" Mona's expression grew increasingly confused.

“Didn’t I already say? You used divination to determine your own ‘fate’. Your ‘observation’ is very important. It wasn’t ‘fate’ that decided today’s lunch, but you. The ‘Seat of Fate’ is only responsible for recording it,” Han Fulai replied.

Such a simple answer was certainly not convincing to Mona.

"The problem is... I've never thought about eating 'fried beans' even when I'm doing divination. If it were up to me, I definitely wouldn't include 'fried beans' in today's lunch menu."

Han Fulai understood the persistent questioning in Mona's eyes. After thinking for a moment, he asked, "Mona, have you ever heard of 'jade gambling'?"

The introverted astrologer, who was traveling far from home for the first time in her life, blinked and asked, "Is this also a concept from your world?"

"Although my world also has this, I'm talking about 'stone gambling' in Liyue. The shop is located at the main entrance of Liyue Harbor. You can see it as soon as you enter Liyue Harbor. You can simply think of it as an activity of gambling with stones, similar to the stalls at the 'Badminton Festival' where you can win prizes by solving riddles," Han Fulai said with a smile.

Mona understood after he said that—not only had she participated in the event, but she had also cheated with water divination in order to win the prize… Of course, the genius astrologer who regarded money as dirt would never tell anyone about such a thing.

Han Fulai continued, "Yes, there are many beautiful jades hidden in the Lava Pit of Liyue. However, before they are unearthed by craftsmen, most of them are hidden in ordinary-looking stones, almost indistinguishable from regular rocks. Merchants mix the jades with a pile of ordinary stones, and customers pay for a chance to win one through a lottery. The merchant will then cut open the stone the customer chooses. The stone may be empty, or it may contain precious jade..."

“Mona, imagine this—Sky Island is the stall owner, and you, Mona, are a customer participating in the lottery. The stones in the stall represent everyone's ‘fate.’ If you don’t participate in the lottery, no one knows what kind of ‘fate’ is hidden within those stones…”

"Ah!" Mona clapped her hands, suddenly realizing, "If I don't participate in the lottery, no one will know what prizes are on the stall, it's like an uncertain 'fate'. But if I participate in the lottery, the owner has to cut the stone open for me to see. The moment the stone is cut open, we can see what's inside! And my use of water divination is like the 'ticket' to the lottery?"

“That’s exactly right,” Han Fulai smiled. “And think about it again, ‘jade gambling’ is about betting on jade, so the stalls only display stones. Although you might see all sorts of minerals inside after cutting the stone open, in the end, it’s all just stones—at least it won’t contain ‘roasted beans’…”

Mona immediately understood: "You mean, because I divined about 'my lunch,' the results were all within the scope of 'my lunch,' and not random stuff..."

Han Fulai nodded, "Yes, that's why I said the result is 'pseudo-random,' because the options have a fixed range. Your divination is like drawing a prize from a fixed prize pool. Although you may not be able to draw the prize you want, the types of prizes are predetermined. If something is not in the prize pool, you won't get it no matter how many times you draw."

Mona immediately put her quick thinking to use: "...So the reason we ran into Fischl was actually because the lottery booth owner was cashing out the 'prize'?"

Han Fulai nodded again.

"Yes, I think that's the reason. This should be the situation that best fits the 'predestined fate' calculated by the Sky Island system. Fischl must have experienced some coincidences that she herself was unaware of, which ultimately led her to us."

Sky Island once truly answered the prayers of its people. As Zhongli described it to him, "If there is famine, food and rain will fall from the sky. If there is barrenness, minerals will spring up on the earth. As long as the people pray, the reliable government will respond."

Responding to Mona's divination was a trivial matter for this powerful system.

However, Zhongli had also told him that Tianli was asleep, so this news was probably true. The blatant rebellion of the Fools at Winter's End, along with Barbatos's series of petty actions, all indicated that the real administrator was no longer involved.

Sky Island is now likely under an automated management mode by an AI program.

According to Han Fulai's understanding of computer operation, AI program control could never be as precise as "Laplace's demon," because the programmer who designs the program, that is, the natural order, is by no means omniscient and omnipotent. At most, it can only prevent errors (bugs) from occurring within the scope that the programmer has considered.

Calling it prevention is an exaggeration, because in a world-scale "chaotic system," what will happen is completely unpredictable. Therefore, most program control works by allowing for errors and taking remedial measures when they occur. This mechanism can never eliminate all errors; rather, it achieves a fault-tolerant state where individual mistakes are insignificant.

In technical terms, this is called the system's "robustness." For example, whether computer software can avoid crashing or freezing in the event of input errors, disk failures, network overload, or malicious attacks is the software's "robustness," commonly known as "durability."

In fact, most common AI architectures and design principles fall into this category of fault-tolerant architectures.

When Han Fulai was preparing for his postgraduate entrance exam and switching to coding, he had dabbled in the currently popular "AI-oriented programming".

In this type of programming logic, in order to increase the system's fault tolerance, strict formal logic is often abandoned in favor of a "probabilistic logic system".

Simply put, the program is no longer set up in a strict logical form such as "if A and B happen, C will happen", but is designed in the form of "if A and B happen, C will happen with a certain probability, and D, E, F... will happen with a certain probability".

In other words, in each given situation, there will be different outcomes, each with a different probability.

Mathematically, this is called a "probability matrix," which illustrates the probabilities of transitions between various states. When a program system makes a decision, the logic it typically uses is, "If A and B have already occurred, what is the probability that C will occur next?"

In the context of their experiment today, it's as if Sky Isle received a code from Mona via the ley lines: "Question: What might Mona eat for lunch today?" Then, based on Mona's characteristics, the Constellation drew her a recipe—and upon closer inspection, it becomes clear that this recipe is very Mona-esque, or rather, very inexpensive…

Han Fulai estimated that even if Mona conducted a hundred more experiments, she would still be unable to predict a dish with a unit price exceeding 2000 Mora... Han Fulai gently chose not to reveal this cruel fact to Mona.

Mona lowered her head and pondered for a moment before finally asking the question that concerned her most: "I have one last question... In the end, why can my divination, or rather, my 'observation,' determine 'fate'?"

Han Fulai remained silent for a long time, which was quite unusual.

"You're asking about the nature of the act of 'observation'? Unfortunately, the answer... I don't know either. I've simply discovered this phenomenon."

What is the essence of measurement?

This question seems simple, but even with the advancements in quantum physics, countless geniuses still cannot answer it.

Physicists have actually raised many questions about this:

Are there any differences in measurements taken by different people?

Does observing animals, other organisms, or even microorganisms count as measurement?

Does observation by artificial intelligence (AI) count as measurement?

Does indirect observation through instruments and equipment count as measurement?

"Does information obtained through complex logical deduction count as measurement?"

"Furthermore, how do various external disturbances affect the measurements?"

None of these questions have answers.

People can only use experiments to test what kind of behavior will cause the wave function to collapse, but they still cannot summarize a universal law.

The traditional Copenhagen interpretation holds that only consciously involved measurements can cause collapse.

But this raises another mystery that humanity has yet to solve—"What is consciousness?"

Einstein, Bohr, Schrödinger, Heisenberg, von Neumann, Pauli... the most brilliant minds on Earth have all tried to solve these questions, but all have failed.

Han Fulai certainly couldn't do that either.

This is simply how the world works for humanity. No matter how you answer these questions, you can't verify whether they are right or wrong. Physics is ultimately an empirical science; all theories are meant to explain reality, not to force reality to conform to the theories.

Since transmigrating, he has experienced the existence of "willpower" several times. In this world with gods, souls, and all kinds of magic, this situation of "consciousness determining matter" does not seem so special.

However, this was the first time he had ever done something like linking human consciousness with the word "fate," and even going further, using human consciousness to influence so-called "fate."

In any case, no matter what the laws of nature are, they all need to be tested by experiments in the end. Practice is the sole criterion for testing truth.

Therefore, Han Fulai's final conclusion is based on Feynman's famous quote—"Shut up and calculate."