Bakker LV - Nau's Ark

[Callan S.]

7 hours ago, noshowjones said:

No. I found a lot of Altered Carbon implausible. 

Not sounding intense so far.

[.H.]

13 hours ago, Callan S. said:

It reminds me of magic in the setting - with Pshuke if something is very passionate then it is indistinguishable from gods own work because it does what god wants to do.

The Psûhke is specifically not Divine though.  It shares no intentionality with God, or even the gods.  The Eärwan God-of-gods is pretty much just a sort of unconscious demiurge.  The Psûhke shares something of a nature with Divine Thaumaturgy, but it is definitely not the same, The Psûhke only approximates God's "unconscious" nature where Divine Thaumaturgy is that nature.

[noshowjones]

8 hours ago, Callan S. said:

Not sounding intense so far.

This isn’t an Altered Carbon discussion thread. Do you think I don’t have issues with it?

[Callan S.]

54 minutes ago, noshowjones said:

This isn’t an Altered Carbon discussion thread. Do you think I don’t have issues with it?

'Whale mother' levels of issue with it? As said, I don't think you're that intense about it. What technical faults actually come off as moral issues to you? Stuff that's worse than kicking a puppy?

[Callan S.]

6 hours ago, .H. said:

The Psûhke is specifically not Divine though.  It shares no intentionality with God, or even the gods.  The Eärwan God-of-gods is pretty much just a sort of unconscious demiurge.  The Psûhke shares something of a nature with Divine Thaumaturgy, but it is definitely not the same, The Psûhke only approximates God's "unconscious" nature where Divine Thaumaturgy is that nature.

Source?

I mean, if you take it that the god is dreaming the people of earwa into existance, then each person is just an extension of the god. So why would the passion of a Cish somehow not be of the intentionality of the god? It'd be like saying when I use a globe puppet that that glove puppet shares none of my own intentionality.

[Kalbear]

Clearly the things that were most morally upsetting are the things we noticed the most, which is why we dug deep into why dragons don't wear chorae, why Kellhus had a heart in his butt, and how important it was that chanv came from salted sorcerers. 

[Darth Richard II]

Well, I find a man with a heart in his butt to be morally upsetting.

[.H.]

15 minutes ago, Callan S. said:

Source?

I mean, if you take it that the god is dreaming the people of earwa into existance, then each person is just an extension of the god. So why would the passion of a Cish somehow not be of the intentionality of the god? It'd be like saying when I use a globe puppet that that glove puppet shares none of my own intentionality.

Well, actual Divine Taumaturgy is not stopped or at all effected by Chorae, as demonstrated by Ajokli in TUC.  That Chorae still works on the Psûhke is, to me, a very real clue that it is not Divine at all.  At least, not any more than superficially.  I mean that literally, it only shares the appearance of the Divine, because it, like the God's doing, is not conscious.

I guess though, if we choose to define The God's intention as "anything done without consciousness" than, yes, it does share that intent.  For some reason that doesn't seem right to me, but I can't quite figure out what it is about it.  I guess I am biased to think of intent as specifically conscious?

[noshowjones]

45 minutes ago, Callan S. said:

'Whale mother' levels of issue with it? As said, I don't think you're that intense about it. What technical faults actually come off as moral issues to you? Stuff that's worse than kicking a puppy?

The show isn’t deep enough to really explore moral issues. They touch on what it means for religion if people can live forever, but give it a superficial treatment. They kind of touch on what gender means if you can swap bodies at will, and that’s interesting, but not explored very deeply. Ditto for murder/violence. What does it mean to sell your body to get murdered if you can swap into a new body afterwards? It’s what 10 episodes in a single season? There’s much less there than 7 novels. 

[Larry of the Lawn]

Can we just keep the Soul Sphincter thread title from awhile back forever?  Please?

[lokisnow]

13 hours ago, larrytheimp said:

Can we just keep the Soul Sphincter thread title from awhile back forever?  Please?

How about “the heartbeat of thine Uber-anus”

[Callan S.]

On 10/31/2018 at 6:12 AM, .H. said:

Well, actual Divine Taumaturgy is not stopped or at all effected by Chorae, as demonstrated by Ajokli in TUC.  That Chorae still works on the Psûhke is, to me, a very real clue that it is not Divine at all. 

Something is divine because it overcame a mundane artifact like a Chorae?

Maybe in dream logic some things are just stronger than other things.

Plus like the wight under the mountain isn't affected by Chorae because he brings his frame with him, I imagine Ajokli is immune in much that same way. You can't dispel the glove puppet when it's the raw hand. As I recall summoned Ciphrang don't die/salt when hit by Chorae. Where as dragons feel pain when they wear Chorae, because they are partially glove puppet.

[Callan S.]

On 10/31/2018 at 6:40 AM, noshowjones said:

The show isn’t deep enough to really explore moral issues. They touch on what it means for religion if people can live forever, but give it a superficial treatment. They kind of touch on what gender means if you can swap bodies at will, and that’s interesting, but not explored very deeply. Ditto for murder/violence. What does it mean to sell your body to get murdered if you can swap into a new body afterwards? It’s what 10 episodes in a single season? There’s much less there than 7 novels. 

Yeah, that's what I mean. Technical issues/the sets wobbling doesn't really stick in anyone's throat (well, except perhaps uber nerds). And really, is anyone super upset at what it means to religion if people psuedo live forever? It's pretty much academic. 

Bring in an intense moral issue, tho, and suddenly deep parts of our psyche will wake up.

[.H.]

3 hours ago, Callan S. said:

Something is divine because it overcame a mundane artifact like a Chorae?

Maybe in dream logic some things are just stronger than other things.

Plus like the wight under the mountain isn't affected by Chorae because he brings his frame with him, I imagine Ajokli is immune in much that same way. You can't dispel the glove puppet when it's the raw hand. As I recall summoned Ciphrang don't die/salt when hit by Chorae. Where as dragons feel pain when they wear Chorae, because they are partially glove puppet.

Well, first, a clarification, that Ciphrang do die by Chorae:

Quote

Flee, the Voice whispered in his soul.
Setmahaga fell first, struck in the eye by an absence affixed to the end of a stick. An explosion of burning salt …
Flee!
Then Sohorat, his slavering form caught in torrents of light, screamed.

But you are correct about the Wight.

Perhaps then we need to consider what then is the role of Chorae?  Bakker often just conveys the idea that they are paradoxical undoers of paradox.  So, sorcery is a paradox, as, seemingly is a Ciphrang in the Real, as is a Wracu.  What is not a paradox, seemingly, is Ajokli and the Wight.  Now, presumably, you are correct, as Akka explains, the Wight is not a paradox, because it brings it's "frame with it."  That is to say, it is ensconced in it's particular, self-sustaining reality.  In reality, I think Akka's description is slightly off.  So, in the topoi, it is possible for reality to be so thin, so nonexistant, that even a Ciphrang like the Wight is not discontinuous.  Where in non-topoi places, a Ciphrang would be discontinuous and so, undone by a Chorae, in the Topoi, The Real is so thin, the Chorae has nothing to really enforce.

Well, then I think we are digging deeper here into just what then, is Divine and what is not.  If you can "bring your frame," which I think is to say, enforce your frame, than you are not "dis-contiguous" with Reality.  I guess it is plausible that is this what Ajokli does, specifically, in the topoi that is The Ark.  There, where the Real is so thin, the his demands are not only able to manifest, they manifest as fully continuous and specifically not paradoxical.  A Chorae, made specifically to resolve paradox against the holder's frame, doesn't do anything when you are ensconced in that "brought" frame.  In other words, you've had your frame forced over.

So, then, we are still left to ponder, what then is Divine?  Well, it would seem it is having a nature not of The Real.  So, the Wight seems to rightly declare that it dreams itself a God.  Why?  Because it's nature is now that of a God.  Yet, it is devoid of any real Divine power, it would seem.  Indeed, it hungers.  AS a matter of fact, we know Ajokli hungers too, because that is the very reason he enter Eärwa, but the difference, it would seem, is that Ajokli is comparatively well fed, compared to the impoverished nature of the Wight.  His power, then, is probably proportionally much, much higher.

So, to return to the issue at hand, what then do we make of The Psûhke?  Well, it does mimic the specifically unconscious nature of The God's work.  That is to say, that the passive nature of The Real does not render against it.  However, it is still paradoxical to the Real.  Just not in a manner than makes it immediately recognizable against the baseline Real.  So, where The Few's subjective Frame cannot render it continuous or not, The Real's frame (that is, the passive frame of the Chorae itself, or the Aporetic sorcery itself, whatever) still resolves it as non-continuous and so a Chorae still undoes it.  Perhaps that is a false dichotomy I am enforcing, though to me there is a difference.

Note: this is likely what Mimara can dispense the Wight with her Chorae though.  Because she looks through the Chorae and where the Chorae is usually the passive resolver of disjunction, Mimara make it the active enforcer of her (the Eye's) judged Frame.  That is, she turns the Chorae from a sort of "black hole" destroyer of disjuction, to a "Sun" shinning purveyor of forced Frame.  In this sense, Mimara takes a "Divine" role, enforcing her Frame over both the Real and the Wight's.

[Hello World]

Bakker has a new interview,

I haven't listened but I don't think they talked about the series directly.

[.H.]

22 minutes ago, Hello World said:

I haven't listened but I don't think they talked about the series directly.

Nah, I watched it live.  The interviewer has no real input and nothing to say, Bakker just rehashes what you can read on his blog.  Not worth the time to watch, unfortunately.

[Hello World]

Ah... sorry to hear that.

I've been reading this thread in the Winds of Winter forum about why GRRM has "lost his grip on the material". There seems to be almost a consensus that he's finding it exceedingly complicated to finish the story due to having way too many POVs and character arcs/story lines that he can't deal with properly. As one comment put it about AFFC/ADWD "bringing the two stories back in synch and matching up everything and telling a cohesive story that made sense and gave all of the characters their due proved to be monstrously complicated without an outline (and a refusal to write one), and took six years to resolve."

I was going to suggest that maybe GRRM should follow the RSB approach and only focus on the battle north of wall in the next book while all the other story lines (Cersei, Dany, Jamie, Brienne, Arya, Sansa, etc etc) go unresolved but I was worried that people will think I'm trolling. I wonder how these people will react if ASOIAF had an ending similar to TUC. I know it's a different story and all but I have a feeling they won't take it too kindly.

[noshowjones]

On 11/2/2018 at 4:58 AM, Callan S. said:

Yeah, that's what I mean. Technical issues/the sets wobbling doesn't really stick in anyone's throat (well, except perhaps uber nerds). And really, is anyone super upset at what it means to religion if people psuedo live forever? It's pretty much academic. 

Bring in an intense moral issue, tho, and suddenly deep parts of our psyche will wake up.

There is potential for intense moral issues in AC. They just don’t engage with them.

Your original point was that people don’t get that bent out of shape about the impossibility of AC technology the way they do about whale mothers. Correct? Edit - and you believe that’s because the whale mothers engage with morality in a way sci fi doesn’t?

[Darth Richard II]

Plausibility has nothing do to with it.

[Hello World]

47 minutes ago, noshowjones said:

Your original point was that people don’t get that bent out of shape about the impossibility of AC technology the way they do about whale mothers. Correct? Edit - and you believe that’s because the whale mothers engage with morality in a way sci fi doesn’t?

That's not true. There are whole threads of people complaining about how unrealistic the long seasons are in ASOIAF and I can't remember the last time a science fiction movie or series came out and people didn't get triggered by trivial things being unscientific. Go read the Expanse threads in Entertainment.