The Unholy Consult Post-Release SPOILER THREAD II

[PapushiSun]

3 hours ago, .H. said:

I believe Walter misquoted the following line from TJE (Chapter 9):

Quote

"All of the woe the world has to offer, if need be. So long as we overcome the only one that is fatal."

Ah thanks.

[Spring Bass]

I finally finished all of it, including the Glossary. 

- Put me in the camp that's confused over Esmenet being saved (not that we really got any further meaning on what that might mean - it's presumably not the same thing as ending up in one of the Hundred's embrace like with Sorweel). Maybe Mimara forgave her somehow, or wants her to be save and so she is because Judging Eye? Although she presumably doesn't want Akka to be damned, so . . . 

- I thought Bakker might work the Semantic Apocalypse into the story, and he did! The Progenitors went through the "Illumination" (*wink wink*) and stopped believing in gods and started believing only in science, and eventually managed to use science to unravel the mysteries of the soul (how did they know it existed?) and found out they were damned (although aside from the No-God, there doesn't appear to be any technological way to trap a soul Ghostbusters-style beyond keeping the body alive in some fashion). 

-I wonder if Seswatha's magical memories tied to his mummified heart and all the Mandate Sorcerers-of-Rank led to any weird stuff in the Outside for him - he seems to be able to effectively possess Mandate Schoolmen at times when the Memories are particularly triggered. Is he like a Wathi Doll soul? Did he accidentally create one of those Zeum-style "ancestor nets"?

- MRA Dragon/Skuthula seems to be a tad different from how Akka described dragons not under the No-God's control back in Judging Eye, where he said that if they came across one it would probably ignore them until they left. Maybe the Inchoroi tried making Skuthula rapey like the Sranc, and didn't like the results. 

- What was the point of bringing back Cnaiur again? So that Moenghus Jr could take over the Scylvendi while Cnaiur walks into the whirlwind and misses his chance to become a minor demon godling in the Outside? 

- I wonder what demons eat sorcerers specifically in the Outside. 

- I noticed a very conspicuous lack of extra detail in the "Zeum" entry. Probably so we can RAFO in the next book (if there is a next book), when the story skips ahead 20 years and has the Three Seas almost totally overrun by Sranc while the survivors are cowering in Zeum. 

- It's always struck me as kind of odd that we've almost never had any of the other Tusk Prophet stories come up in the books aside from Angeshrael, even though he was the last one recorded on it. I can't recall the source, but didn't it come up at one point that countries have mounted expeditions into Eanna and found basically no one there (not even Sranc apparently?). 

[jurble]

7 minutes ago, Summer Bass said:

- I thought Bakker might work the Semantic Apocalypse into the story, and he did! The Progenitors went through the "Illumination" (*wink wink*) and stopped believing in gods and started believing only in science, and eventually managed to use science to unravel the mysteries of the soul (how did they know it existed?) and found out they were damned (although aside from the No-God, there doesn't appear to be any technological way to trap a soul Ghostbusters-style beyond keeping the body alive in some fashion). 

 

I think the soul 1:1 with consciousness in Bakkerworld.  The Progenitors tried to discover how consciousness worked and discovered souls and damnation.  Hence, the Dunyain being able to ascertain the Sranc lacked souls by dissecting their brains.  The Dunyain apparently know the physical structures necessary for consciousness and realized the Sranc lacked them.

9 minutes ago, Summer Bass said:

- It's always struck me as kind of odd that we've almost never had any of the other Tusk Prophet stories come up in the books aside from Angeshrael, even though he was the last one recorded on it. I can't recall the source, but didn't it come up at one point that countries have mounted expeditions into Eanna and found basically no one there (not even Sranc apparently?). 

I don't recall this at all.  The Jekk are late entrants to Earwa from Eanna, arriving a few centuries after the Apocalypse. 

[Callan S.]

Cnaiur is one of two pawns Ajokli had on the board. It was kind of a reveal at the end.

 

Edit: In fact I wonder if Ajokli engineered the original Dunyain refugees finding of Ishual.

[Happy Ent]

6 hours ago, Ajûrbkli said:

I think the soul 1:1 with consciousness in Bakkerworld. 

This is false. The Skin Spies are conscious but have no soul.

There is a cute paragraph or two in one of the later Cnaiür POV sections in Thousandfold where he talks to his artificial co-travellers about this.

[Spring Bass]

14 minutes ago, Happy Ent said:

This is false. The Skin Spies are conscious but have no soul.

There is a cute paragraph or two in one of the later Cnaiür POV sections in Thousandfold where he talks to his artificial co-travellers about this.

Hell, we spend segments of the first book inside the head of the Sarcellus Skin-Spy. It certainly seems conscious, with a sense of self-awareness. And the dragon that Seswatha talks with in one of the Apocalypse Dreams referred to itself with an "I" - "I am not a god" - and they're not ensoulled either IIRC aside from Wutteat. 

There's just some weirdness about how they apparently can't hold a true contradiction in their heads, only approximate it IIRC. 

Side-note, but I think I remember asking on the old defunct Three Seas forum ages ago if the Inchoroi could have essentially created a very close copy of human beings, but without souls - or if they would just spout souls anyway once birthed if they were too similar to regular humans. Can't remember what the consensus was in the discussion. Wasn't there that weird fan theory for a while that the Womb Plague didn't actually kill the Nonmen females - it just made them give birth to soulless versions of the Nonmen(sort of but not really Sranc), and the Nonmen killed all their women over it?

[Hello World]

I think this was already suggested in the previous thread, but souls, the outside, damnation, etc., are just part of the "natural" world in Earwa and hence discoverable by science and can be expressed through mathematical equations and so on... just like nuclear physics, quantum mechanics, whatever.

[lokisnow]

2 hours ago, Callan S. said:

Cnaiur is one of two pawns Ajokli had on the board. It was kind of a reveal at the end.

 

Edit: In fact I wonder if Ajokli engineered the original Dunyain refugees finding of Ishual.

I would guess that Ark is responsible for the dunyain refugees finding Ishual, but Ark didn't tell the consult, because it wanted better users to interface with than rape focused weapon races and a disembodied human and a depressed cunoroi with accelerating capacity issues.

 

[Happy Ent]

2 hours ago, Summer Bass said:

There's just some weirdness about how they apparently can't hold a true contradiction in their heads, only approximate it IIRC. 

No, this is a well-known idea in consciousness and philosophy of AI.

(It’s also completely bonkers, but let me give a loyal description of it:)

AIs are formal systems. Formal systems, according to Gödel’s Incompleteness Theorem(s) contain certain expressive weaknesses with respect to paradox. (Gödel’s argument can be understood as a strong generalisation of the liar’s paradox “This sentence is false.”) This makes such systems incomplete, in particular with respect to non-formal systems such as Human reasoning. There is “something” in the inner workings of a formal (non-souled, not-created-by-God) system that is murky, and you can “Turing test” the system by asking pointed questions related to paradox, where the system will either fail of become psychologically disinclined to pursue the line of reasoning.

(As I said, I think this is bonkers in our world. But Bakker has made this part of his model for how Strong AI works.)

[Callan S.]

1 hour ago, lokisnow said:

I would guess that Ark is responsible for the dunyain refugees finding Ishual, but Ark didn't tell the consult, because it wanted better users to interface with than rape focused weapon races and a disembodied human and a depressed cunoroi with accelerating capacity issues.

 

Is that a hitchhikers guide to the galaxy reference?

[lokisnow]

if it is it is inadvertent, I haven't read it since high school

[wayward_ishroi]

Anybody notice that Imimorul had hair?

 

And there was a comment about nonmen having adapted to life under the mountain by Ajencis.

[jurble]

On why Esmenet is Saved - a quote from Kellhus in TWLW:

Quote

Nothing is more complicated than virtue and sin.

R. Scott Bakker. The White-Luck Warrior (Kindle Location 774). Overlook Press, The. Kindle Edition.

Apparently there's numerous factors that go into whether what does or doesn't constitute sin (or a good deed).  So a question to ask is : Was Proyas damned before the rape-cannibalism?  If Sosering is indicative of someone who didn't engage in rape-cannibalism but was otherwise Zaudunyani, then it's possible that Proyas wasn't damned until the rape-cannibalism, with Eskeles being correct that the Toll was rape-cannibalism and not years of prior violence for Kellhus. 

 

Edit:  What exactly is the Chair-of-Hooks?  It's a

Quote

throne arising out of a massive array of horned cylinders and convoluted nodes and grills.

that sits on the edge of an abyss in the Golden Room,  It was, originally, either on the ceiling or the floor.  I assume it's supposed to be some sort of obvious device that Bakker intends us to see so we can laugh and go "Ha! The Inchoroi used a [insert] as a throne!" But I can't figure it out.  The reference to grills and cylinders make me think some sort of ventilation equipment.  But I can't think what horned cylinders could be other than missiles.

[IllusiveMan]

real quick - is Sosering saved because he rescues Esmenet? That's one of the only things that I can see that distinguishes him from Holgrim and the rest of the Ordeal (unless he didn't engage in rape cannibalism). 

[unJon]

5 hours ago, Ajûrbkli said:

On why Esmenet is Saved - a quote from Kellhus in TWLW:

Apparently there's numerous factors that go into whether what does or doesn't constitute sin (or a good deed).  So a question to ask is : Was Proyas damned before the rape-cannibalism?  If Sosering is indicative of someone who didn't engage in rape-cannibalism but was otherwise Zaudunyani, then it's possible that Proyas wasn't damned until the rape-cannibalism, with Eskeles being correct that the Toll was rape-cannibalism and not years of prior violence for Kellhus. 

Is Sosering the guy that died and went to Gilgaol (sp). If so I don't think we can conclude he's "saved" in the sense of TJE. No reason to think that going to "Gilgaol heaven" is being saved from God of Gods perspective. The 100 might really be as Psatma (sp?) describes Yatwer as a bigger badder demon that protects those who worship her correctly. I still think Mimara saw that dynamic as a "false foil" when she inverted the chorae in TJE. 

[Callan S.]

I was reading the wikipedia entry and it clarified to me that Earwa is the continent, not the worlds name (what is that, then?). Someone mentioned Eanna and there being an expedition that found no one, but then a peoples arrived from Eanna. If Earwa is an anagram of Aware, what is Eanna an anagram of? And does it spawn people, for being closer tot he godthing of godthings blindspot - like there's no one there, but then the god thing makes them as basically part of its sleep related connection with creation.

[Spring Bass]

That seems pretty likely to me, although I don't think Mimara ever saw any of the characters who definitely went to one of the Hundred after death with the Judging Eye. 

RE: Callan S

I was wrong about the Eanna bit. The Xiuhanni - or some fragment of them - are still there. 

 

[Darth Richard II]

16 hours ago, Happy Ent said:

No, this is a well-known idea in consciousness and philosophy of AI.

(It’s also completely bonkers, but let me give a loyal description of it:)

AIs are formal systems. Formal systems, according to Gödel’s Incompleteness Theorem(s) contain certain expressive weaknesses with respect to paradox. (Gödel’s argument can be understood as a strong generalisation of the liar’s paradox “This sentence is false.”) This makes such systems incomplete, in particular with respect to non-formal systems such as Human reasoning. There is “something” in the inner workings of a formal (non-souled, not-created-by-God) system that is murky, and you can “Turing test” the system by asking pointed questions related to paradox, where the system will either fail of become psychologically disinclined to pursue the line of reasoning.

(As I said, I think this is bonkers in our world. But Bakker has made this part of his model for how Strong AI works.)

Fucking Gödel, always ruining things!

[Caligula_K3]

A really important question. I read the last 100 pages of the book pretty quickly late at night, and then lent the book to a friend the next morning. So I'm not sure if I'm making this up. But during the climax of the book, does a character at some point exclaim the words: "hot, hot sausages!"?

[Kalbear]

19 minutes ago, Caligula_K3 said:

A really important question. I read the last 100 pages of the book pretty quickly late at night, and then lent the book to a friend the next morning. So I'm not sure if I'm making this up. But during the climax of the book, does a character at some point exclaim the words: "hot, hot sausages!"?

No. The phrase is "Mad, mad sausages!". In reference to the DunSult attempting to convince Kellhus to obliterate most of the human race.