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Bakker 亀 Anarcane Turtles All the Way down


lokisnow

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I think they are immortal. In fact I think this is why they became a 'race of lovers' in the first place. They took whatever they gave the Non-men to become immortal themselves not knowing that all their females are going die. Then they spent thousands of years in sexual frustration until they built the ark and starting loving other worlds.


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I think they are immortal. In fact I think this is why they became a 'race of lovers' in the first place. They took whatever they gave the Non-men to become immortal themselves not knowing that all their females are going die. Then they spent thousands of years in sexual frustration until they built the ark and starting loving other worlds.

Interesting thought.

Maybe they experience the same crowding out of memories as the Nonmen, too, only that it's not the traumatic experiences they remember, but sexual ones. Would make some kind of sense.

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This does remind me of something I've thought about before. Why is it that Shae keeps himself "alive" by doing the crazy quadriplegic soul circuitry thing, instead of letting the Inchoroi do to him whatever it was that made the Nonmen immortal? It seems like he'd be a lot more useful in a physical body then he would as..whatever the hell he is now.

Maybe it avoids the eraticism problem?

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How could you definately know? Pic's or it didn't happen?



He's probably guessed it.



But given his pause about how his brothers and sisters were drowned by moe the instant they didn't meet correct standards, he might be okay with that to some degree.



And never see an assassin who stands in the spot where nobody looks (not even a half dunyain, apparently). Though presumably the assassin looked there...



Okay, I shifted off the topic...


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And never see an assassin who stands in the spot where nobody looks (not even a half dunyain, apparently). Though presumably the assassin looked there...

This kind of thing has me worried about TUC.

It's hard to have the description of Dunyain sensory mechanics in the first series and then be confronted by this Deus Ex Machina.

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If the assassin is the white luck warrior, it's probably about the strongest evidence toward that.

Otherwise the best we have is that he is half dunyain - so, roll percentile, 1 - 50% he doesn't notice? But again, if you are the WLW, you get to roll - then roll again...until you pass.

But meta gaming it, it just seems a bit too easy for the assassin to be the WLW.

On Maithanet, I'd actually like to have seen a seperate book just on him.

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crossposting a definitely not a sockpuppet post from the other forum. heh. TUC must be done for sockpuppetry to be going on.


http://second-apocalypse.com/index.php?topic=824.msg11557#msg11557


I've outrun myself here so I'm winging it.

I don't think I have the exact mechanics of magic in Earwa down but as I understand it sorcery sort of represents any kind of meaning manipulation.


Math, art, philosophy and religion are tools we use to manipulate meaning in our world. In Earwa matter follows meaning to such a potent degree that the equivalents of the ways we manipulate meaning can burn armies.


Sorcery is like Wittgenstein's conception of language games except it goes beyond language. Meaning games and truth games. We like to think that when we inquire into truth we are doing something something objective but we aren't. Truth is up for grabs and we manipulate it with whatever tools are at our disposal for selfish animal reasons. Science, philosophy, religion and common sense are all the same. They are just sets of rules for the games we play with truth.


Again, the specific mechanics are beyond me but we know some of the things that are connected with being good at wielding these powers in Earwa. Will, intellect, emotion, and sight are all tied up with it.


Quote

I'm specifically interested in more of what you think the No-God's subjective experience is like, if you'd indulge me...


Quote

Someone mentioned the no god being a god of anosognosia but I think it's more likely to be the opposite. I can see the mechanics of the no god somehow working through hyper self awareness.


What I was thinking here was that the gods are these blind, illusory sources of meaning and the no god is an inward looking antithesis to their meaning.


Our intuition tells us that if the no god is asking for help seeing it follows that he can't see. Bakker thinks that intuition is dangerously misleading though. When we can't see, we don't know we can't see, and we are unconcerned. As we gain access to more information we become more aware of our own ignorance. Moreover, the world is a place without inherent meaning, and possibly a place without truth. Because of that it's our ability to lie to ourselves that creates truth.


The ineffable but all important thing we call “meaning” is actually a direct product of informatic deficits wired into our brains. Our ability to experience love, hate, beauty, time, consciousness, is the direct product of our blindness to the truth of our own nature. If we could see our thought processes clearly the illusion would be broken. Our soul is our capacity for illusion and the gods are a concentration of that. They just believe and feel their certain truths, thereby providing anchors of truth for us to exist downstream of.


D because C, C because B, B because A, A because? A because the gods know and feel it to be true. That kind of belief (wrong word?) has power. Power that is similar to sorcery. They are big powerful agencies. Souls more deluded and willful than a human could ever hope to be.


I'm just throwing stuff around here. I think that this self-delusion, illusion stuff is critical but its tangled. There seems to be power in both sight and blindness. Look closely enough and illusion collapses. Sometimes that's a good thing. They mandate are skeptics and that makes them powerful. The Cish are zealots who literally have blind faith, and that makes them powerful. Mimaras clearly on the power from sight side of things. Sight is definitely associated with destruction and illusion with creation.


Anyway, the No God begging to know what people see makes me think his vision is too good. Plus it's a cool parallel to the blind gods.


Theres a few ways this could work but what I'm imagining is that the No God is a big soul and a big “lens”. Under his powerful gaze all the beautiful lies and illusions whither. Horrifyingly I suspect the lens may be mostly focused on itself. He is a lens and a consciousness leashed together for the singular purpose of experiencing the worlds and his own meaninglessness. Thus the desperate mantra. He exists only to perceive the illusory-ness of that his existence. He experiences consciousness as robustly as we do, but he can see the neural or digital circuits that generate that consciousness doing so as they do it. His sensorium is taken up by a never-ending lesson in nihilism.


Because of the way magic is tied up in sight and will and soul, his torment changes the rules for everyone. He is a god of nihilism and materialism. Meaning is shut out from the world.


When I finish writing these they seem hopelessly speculative. Way fun though.

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In the spirit of cross-posting, I'm going to cross-post my own little crackpot from TSA because I want some opinions from those of you who only post here:



So over the last few days, I've actually pretty radically altered some of my thoughts on the metaphysics. This came through a combination of doing sporadic re-reads of semi-random parts from the books, and from re-reading old threads here, including the Thorstein's amazing write-ups, which I actually agree with largely, with some discrepancies.


To start with, I no longer think the gods are enforcing damnation per se, nor that they made up the rules of damnation in the first place. I do still believe, however, they are in no way worthy of any admiration, and that any plans/goals/missions to cut the bonds between the gods and the World (or just the Outside and the Wolrd) are, ultimately, a "good" thing. I use the word "good" lightly. To put it another, I think that shutting off the Outside is overwhelmingly beneficial to the sentient life of the Bakkerverse, human, Inchoroi, whatever.


I should probably outline my thoughts so as to better argue my point: I think Thorstein's ideas on the relation between quantum mechanics, and the concept in the Bakkerverse of the "circuit between watcher and watched being the foundation of reality", are pretty spot on. I already believed that the Bakkerverse is supposed to be, in a weird way, what our universe would be like if it was truly as anthropocentric as many religions (in this case, primarily Abrahamic ones) imagine it.


Earwa is, in perhaps a very literal sense, the center of the Bakkervese. We know that Earwa is special. Sorcery, it seems, can only be used there. In addition, we know the Bakkerverse is populated with non-human life, and these beings are very alien, which includes alien morals. And yet, the gods are incredibly anthropomorphic, as are the "rules of morality" that outline damnation. This means an entire universe of ensouled beings are being subjected to a purely anthropocentric set of morals, and being -- quite unfairly -- punished for it.


So, I think that the gods quite literally arose from the noosphere of Earwa's conscious beings (humans, who I suspect have always outnumbered Nonmen). Humans themselves aren't particularly special in-and-of-themselves, but Earwa is. The gods would have reflected whatever the noosphere of Earwa's dominant inhabitants held. Damnation, too, is a relfection of this noosphere, reflection of the collective consciousness of the Earwans.


I believe that the "circuit of watcher and watched" is what pins these things into existence. Ensouled beings, fragments of the God, watching each other (collapsing the wave function, if you will). This is why Cishaurim have no mark -- they've removed themselves from the circuit. This is why the gods can't see the No-God -- it was never part of the circuit of the to begin with. Once that circuit is broken, the rules no longer apply quite the same. The pin has been removed.


The problem is that the gods themselves are only interested in Earwa. They want the devotion of humans, Earwans, because they're the ones who matter. All the ensouled beings in the universe don't offer anything. Thus, they're never given revelations. They didn't have Inri Sejenus, or prophets. They're damned without even knowing it, because they could never know otherwise.


Again, I think all of this stuff really hits home for people who grew up with a religious background (particularly an Abrahamic one), as Bakker did. It this on all these ideas that would crop up. If Jesus is real, he revealed himself to humanity as to save their souls, then what about the entire universe of sentient beings that didn't have a Jesus? Who, by their very nature, could not have anthropocentric morals, and so are doomed to damnation? It's just as the Inchoroi said -- they were born for damnation.


This also ties into why the number 144,00 is important. One of the chapter quotes in WLW is from "The Third Revelation Ganus the Blind" (hey, there's that blindness again), and it says:



The last of the wicked stand with the last of the righteous, lamenting the same woe. One Hundred and Forty-Four Thousand, they shall be called, for this is their tally, the very number of doom.






So, what happens when the population is ed to 144,000? This is the goal of the Consult, so obviously it must be something related to the Outside, or the gods, and the blocking/closing/ending there of. I suspect that by reducing the population of Earwa's dominant collective consciousness (humanity)...something important happens. The boundaries between the World and the Outside break. The gods lose their power. I don't know exactly what, but I do think that's where this story is headed.


I'll post more about how I think the No-God fits into this later.

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Man, I always get sad when I remember Maithanet's dead. He was such a bad ass. I always liked the scene where he just choke-grabs that Mandate skin-spy out of nowhere. It was so unexpected the first time.

Bakker basically pulled the same trick on me that Maithanet pulled on Esmi. He's like Kellhus, and a badass Dunyain in his own right, but not so much of a bastard that you hate his guts. It helps that he dies for absolutely no reason (goddamn I hate that kid)

It's hard to have the description of Dunyain sensory mechanics in the first series and then be confronted by this Deus Ex Machina.

The chance that the WLW has to evade detection only has to be nonzero . If he can escape detection for a second he wins. It may be a leap, but the idea that the Dunyain are omniscient and cannot be surprised is arguably the bigger leap, and is actually worse if you're worried about improbable and convenient ass-pulls.

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Maithanet was like an android to me. What was there to like about the character?



As for his death, I get the idea that there's a greater than zero probability that he could be surprised. But the way it's written - "the one place overlooked" - it came off as forced to me.


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crossposting a definitely not a sockpuppet post from the other forum. heh. TUC must be done for sockpuppetry to be going on.

http://second-apocalypse.com/index.php?topic=824.msg11557#msg11557

As an interesting idea following from this, maybe this helps explain Meppa's power.

It's the Cishaurim's blindness that gives them power. Their utter ignorance of the reality around them allows them to submerge themselves fully in the meaning established by the Solitary God.

Meppa is a man even more blinded to reality around him as he lacks any point of reference for his own identity. He is nothing more then a believer and thus incredibly powerful.

And conversely we have Moenghus, a man bred and trained to dissect the world in an objective manner. To see no meaning in reality, only causal links from A to B. And with this comes a commiserate deficit of power.

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