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Tier 2: Space-Time Continuum Revision

Given how this debate has made little progress, I wish to say that, as of now, our way of tiering Tier 2 looks extremely shoddy compared to the rest of the tiers at the moment - which, in my eyes, is due to the inconsistent application of a standard regarding when to suspend logic for the sake of fiction.

Tier 2, which is dependent on destroying the entire past, present, and future, is rated as superior to 3-D feats, even the infinite 3-D power represented in High 3-A, because affecting spaces with an additional dimensional axis represents an uncountably infinite power gap. Thus, destroying a spacetime continuum is uncountably infinitely above any 3-D feat. On a mathematical level, there's nothing wrong with this logic.

However, one side effect of this system, were it to be based solely on the math, is that a spacetime continuum's 3-D size technically becomes irrelevant to its tier; because adding the temporal axis multiplies its dimensional scale by an uncountably infinite level, any finite change in the other axes shouldn't affect its scale substantially, meaning that planetary, universal, galactic, and every other size for a spacetime would be treated as the same. Obviously, this is extremely inconsistent with how fiction typically treats these things - bigger is near-universally treated as a greater feat.

Thus, we currently justify only ranking spacetimes as Low 2-C or higher if they are of a universal scale, even though any smaller ones are also a dimensional level above all 3-D things, using a rule of thumb for evaluating fiction common here: If the vast majority of fiction doesn't treat something the way that you would have to treat it if you applied logic rigourously, then to make your analysis representative of the actual work, you shouldn't use logic rigourously when evaluating it. As such, small spacetimes aren't given the ranking that they are technically mathematically entitled to because doing so would blatantly disregard how they're actually portrayed in fiction.

However, in my view, using this rationale to justify only tiering some spacetimes as Tier 2 introduces a glaring problem with consistency regarding the tier as a whole: If we were to apply this rule regarding the suspension of logic consistently to evaluating how spacetimes should be tiered, it would destroy our basis for treating most spacetime feats as superior to 3-D in the first place.

To see why, imagine an average consumer of fiction, not connected to battleboarding or immersed in any of the tiering lingo that we've developed, presented with two works of fiction: the first work establishes its sole universe to be infinite in 3-D terms, populated with an infinity of matter spread throughout it; the second work has a multiverse with two universes, both explicitly finite in 3-D terms, with sufficient information about how they're separated that they qualify as separate spacetimes.

Now, the first work has a feat where character A obliterates all of the matter in its infinite universe, while the second has a feat where character B obliterates everything in both spacetimes in its setting, and you ask the consumer which character they thought was stronger. It should be pretty easy to observe intuitively that most such people would think that A is the stronger one - after all, A's feat is over an infinity of space, while B only affected the finite combined space of two universes - despite that we would rank A as High 3-A and B as 2-C, because A's feat was only 3-D, while B's was 4-D for crossing between spacetimes. This, obviously, is because the vast majority of people, producers and consumers alike, simply aren't informed about the technical differences between simple universes and spacetimes.

With that established, it's easy to see how extremely inconsistent Tier 2 as a whole is with fictional portrayals. If one character destroys five universes and another destroys one universe ten times the size of a normal one, our wiki would rank the former as stronger, despite how the vast majority of fiction would see it the other way. As a whole, fiction will nearly always treat outputting infinite power on a 3-D scale as a greater feat than destroying a finite amount of spacetimes, as well as disregard how feats propagate between spacetimes in favor of simply looking at how much 3-D stuff was affected. Thus, if we were to truly abide by the principle of not tiering things in a way that contravenes how fiction does things concerning Tier 2, we would be forced to simply not tier affecting spacetime continuums as requiring power uncountably infinitely above 3-D, relegating them to the same category as mundane universal feats. On the other hand, if we were to insist that 4-D feats should be tiered as above 3-D feats, then, since we're already ignoring the practice of aligning with fictional portrayals, we would have no real justification for not tiering small spacetimes as properly Tier 2.

I am not advocating for any solution here myself; I have no real thoughts on how to proceed here. I want only to spark some thinking.
 
People may think as you suggest on an immediate basis, but I think it wouldn't be too hard to convince them that B's feat is stronger by emphasising how copies of it across all of time were affected. I think it's harder to make that sell when it's just a building-sized space.

But beyond that, we have this sort of inconsistency present in higher tiers. The difference between a series qualifying for 1-B, and only being 3-B, can be as simple as whether their 20-dimensional world is galaxy-sized or universe-sized. See the Tiering System FAQ
However, vaguer cases where a universe is merely stated to be higher-dimensional while existing in a scaling vacuum with no previously established relationship of superiority towards lower-dimensional ones (or no evidence to infer such a relationship from) should be analysed more carefully. In such cases where information as to their exact nature and scale is scarce, it is preferable that the higher dimensions in question be fully-sized in order to qualify.
Despite this only being a finite difference in scale.
 
People may think as you suggest on an immediate basis, but I think it wouldn't be too hard to convince them that B's feat is stronger by emphasising how copies of it across all of time were affected. I think it's harder to make that sell when it's just a building-sized space.
"Copies of it across all of time" isn't a remotely intuitive consequence of an attack affecting the contents of multiple spacetimes; on an intuitive level, that just looks like a larger-scale attack. You'd have to explain in detail how spanning universes actually entails that kind of effect over all of time, and if you managed to make someone truly understand the math behind that, it wouldn't be significantly harder at all to explain how 3-D size is technically irrelevant when the snapshots are uncountably infinite - after all, "infinities make finite amounts insignificant" is a much less complicated concept than a block universe.
But beyond that, we have this sort of inconsistency present in higher tiers. The difference between a series qualifying for 1-B, and only being 3-B, can be as simple as whether their 20-dimensional world is galaxy-sized or universe-sized. See the Tiering System FAQ
Despite this only being a finite difference in scale.
That doesn't seem nearly as consequential to this discussion; fiction doesn't always treat higher geometric dimensions as an indicator of power, but any creator who uses them is bound to understand that they're using the notion of geometric dimensions, whether they write it in a way that allows for dimensional scaling or not. Meanwhile, with 4-D spacetimes, it's entirely doable for someone to write a multiversal work that qualifies for Tier 2 without ever considering or incorporating geometric dimensions as an established concept in their work. Spacetime and multiverses are rather more accessible concepts than higher-dimensional spaces.
 
People may think as you suggest on an immediate basis, but I think it wouldn't be too hard to convince them that B's feat is stronger by emphasising how copies of it across all of time were affected. I think it's harder to make that sell when it's just a building-sized space.

But beyond that, we have this sort of inconsistency present in higher tiers. The difference between a series qualifying for 1-B, and only being 3-B, can be as simple as whether their 20-dimensional world is galaxy-sized or universe-sized. See the Tiering System FAQ

Despite this only being a finite difference in scale.
@DontTalkDT @Ultima_Reality

Your further help would be appreciated here. 🙏
 
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