Tales of Cis Chapter 1 : P-World

Visualize, yours as set of ramified paths.

Within every junctions, a number is attached.

Between 0 and 1, inclusively.

Implying no negativity.

Are you scared ?

Are you motivated ?

People say life is all about choices and decisions. Between saving your precious money or having costly dinner with your colleagues. Between isolating yourself or socializing with others. Between striving for glory or going with the flow. It goes without saying that your decision will determine the direction of your life.

Now, let's imagine the P-World, an extended version of our world where this property holds : For every particular actions you are going to commit, you're given the probability of it being successful or failed. And once upon a time in P-World, this simple tale lies within..

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There is this man, Ignavus, stepping his feet on the new ground. While everything else looks the same, he lays his sight to the blinking sign on the corner of the road, it says "Welcome to the P-World !". Knowing exactly what that means, he smiles. This place is his dreamland which now transforms into reality. Ignavus always believes that he could make up for his fiascos had he someday moved into this world. He hopes that the probabilties are capable of assisting him to choose the most profitable actions.

Aroused by the expectation, he walks off to start his new life.

There is another newcomer on the other side of P-World named Impetus. He's also familiar with the typical setup. Not easily satisfied with just seeing, he puts it into test. "Now I want to walk for 10m. What are the chances that I will arrive without falling down ?". Suddenly some random characters appear in front of his eyes, as if one's watching a 3D movie. 

"Wow this really works !", he utters.

Getting excited with the new 'feature', he set his feet on for the maiden voyage.

They depart for their own journey without nothing to rely on but their characters.

Ten years later in the same P-World, both of them meet by some random chance. Ignavus is sitting on the road helplessly, while Impetus, on his zenith, humbly walks towards him and asked curiously, "Friend, why do you just stay here and do nothing ?". 

"I, I can't...." , he stammer.

"Calm down, what's the occasion ?"

"Man, I don't know how you manage to keep up with this harsh way of life. When I first got here, I was very excited that everything will go as planned, a guaranteed good life. Once, I was requested by my boss to work on a complicated project, and the responsibility as the head of one department in the company would be given if the task was done successfully. So I used the probability measure to check whether I'm really able to do it and the result was 

Obviously, I would fail eventually in the middle of the project and that drives me to do the job with minimum effort. Not only it ended badly, but I also was fired because of the malicious effects on the company.  And everytime I tried to build my career all over again, I will stuck at some point because the probability of failing is just bigger. Ever since I was too tired of all this stuff, I decided to stop trying until I have the motivation."

Impetus nods as a sign of full comprehension of that matter. Then he replies, "I was on the same boat with you, before I realized those numbers don't really matter. For instance, when I was given the task that has 80% chance of failing, I thought of it as the following :

Okay, let's see. Hmm, 20% chance of success is quite small compared to 80% chance of failure, so let me define 20% as "unfavourable". But if I tried twice, then my percentage of failure will be 80%*80% = 64%, that makes it 36% chance of success. And if I keep doing this for 7 times, somehow the percentage of failure will be only around 20%, and it means that now I have an "unfavourable" possibility of failure. I just need to try this 7 times, and success will be in my favour !

So I did the work and somehow accomplished the result within only three trials. What's more interesting that when you fail in one trial, the percentage of you failing in the next trial becomes smaller, maybe because you already adapt to the situation on hand (Yeah, I checked that with the probability measure). What you really need is the desire to not give up and to get up each time you're falling down.

Once, a mathematician told me that in this P-World, as long as there's a non-zero possibility that you will be successful in doing something, no matter how small it is, and you keep on doing it, you will get a successful result at some time in the future.* Oh, I ain't a mathematician and I didn't know why he told me that, but as far as I'm enduring the troubles with "no complain-just-do-the-work" style, his statement is accurate. Nowadays, I never use that measure anymore, but you can tell that I'm having a great life at the moment !."

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Now you might have a slight vision of what you are going to do had you been situated in the P-World. One might object : "Unfortunately, we're not living on that imaginary place, mate." True enough. Yet does it occur to you that the world we're living is the copy of P-World, with some hidden folders consisting of those probabilities ? And do we really need to know the numbers anyway ? In that case, should we act in a different way ?

Failures don't accumulate, one victory is sufficient to cover all the pain. To stand tall or to lie down, to grin or to weep, to triumph or to succumb to pressure.  Your choice, your decision, your life.

*Only for those mathematically challenged

With passion,

"Cis, Harry"