Maybe we’re overly pessimistic. It just occured to me that Aerhien’s world might actually be on the unlucky branch.
Suppose that the “branching point” is not whether or not the hero succeeds (that is, one branch lives, the other is destroyed). Instead, it could be whether or not the dust “finds” another way of attacking.
In the other branches, the defeat of the dust was finally successful (at the first try in one world, second try in another, or ~fiftieth attempt in the nearest-neighbor branch).
It is only in the unlucky branch that the dust keeps finding new ways of being nasty, and thus only in the unlucky branch there is a never-ending need to summon new heroes.
The other worlds don’t need to keep summoning heroes because they simply won, not because they simply lost.
Note that in this case most instances of Aerhien would live in in “nice” worlds. That is, among worlds with Aerhien, most measure is concentrated in successful worlds. However, among worlds with a newly-summoned Hero, most if not all measure is concentrated in threatened worlds (even if this is only a tiny sliver of the “total” measure).
Maybe we’re overly pessimistic. It just occured to me that Aerhien’s world might actually be on the unlucky branch.
Suppose that the “branching point” is not whether or not the hero succeeds (that is, one branch lives, the other is destroyed). Instead, it could be whether or not the dust “finds” another way of attacking.
In the other branches, the defeat of the dust was finally successful (at the first try in one world, second try in another, or ~fiftieth attempt in the nearest-neighbor branch).
It is only in the unlucky branch that the dust keeps finding new ways of being nasty, and thus only in the unlucky branch there is a never-ending need to summon new heroes.
The other worlds don’t need to keep summoning heroes because they simply won, not because they simply lost.
Note that in this case most instances of Aerhien would live in in “nice” worlds. That is, among worlds with Aerhien, most measure is concentrated in successful worlds. However, among worlds with a newly-summoned Hero, most if not all measure is concentrated in threatened worlds (even if this is only a tiny sliver of the “total” measure).