Bakker LV - Nau's Ark

[Sci-2]

1 hour ago, .H. said:

Ah, ok, I think I follow what you are saying.  So the corporeal body is the method of delivering the corporeal to the Monad?  In this example, that is the corporeal experience of life.  Then, upon death, the "timeless" body is the Monad which still endures?

This makes some sense, along the line of what Koringhus "tells" us about Unity, or the Zero-God.  So, if each Monad is a "shard" of the infinite God-of-gods, then yes, it does seem that every spirit is at least some division of the infinite.  What is interesting about the Eärwan spin on this is that it seems that the Soul, or Mind, or whatever you want to call the operator that differentiates the Spirit/Monad, can willfully move "back" toward that Unity (Redemption?) or away (Damnation).  The idea though, that "the Spirit" or the Monad permeates everything does seem plausible, since we know that Kellhus can see things from other things (being able to look into one fire and see out from another).

Yeah I suspect what Kellhus is doing is using an experiential strategy - the commonality between fires as represented in experience allows him a path to seeing from perspectives other than that of his own monad. It works because in this Idealist perspective the experience/thought of a fire is in some way connected to actual fires given the distance between internal personal experience and the Experience of the World via God's dreaming aren't separated in the way they would be in a physicalist or dualist universe.

This also gives us some sense of how the Inchoroi (or their progenitors) figured out they would be damned. The continual reductionism got to the base level of structured/atomic reality, where these particle structures are bodies of monads themselves. And since each monad has a holographic aspect representing the Whole a continued digging into these base level particles opened up a window to the vistas of what waits the damned.

There are more reasons to suspect monads would exhibit scientifically measurable behaviors like special relativity and quantum entanglement, as per Paul Marshall's essay Transforming the World Into Experience: An Idealist Experiment.

At the moment I'm really enamored with Marshall's Monadology as a way to explain how consciousness transitions from "meat space" to a body in the afterlife as well as how Reductionist Science could ultimately lead to awareness of one's own damnation while confirming some of our known findings from physics along the way.

edit: Magic as Recollection of God's viewpoint probably works in Monadology as well but need to reread those parts in...I think it was TTT?

[Kalbear]

Do we have an example of Kellhus actually seeing things through the fires, or is that something he's said but we don't actually experience? 

[.H.]

7 minutes ago, Kalbear said:

Do we have an example of Kellhus actually seeing things through the fires, or is that something he's said but we don't actually experience? 

WLW, Chapter 2:

Quote

Proyas surprised himself with his lack of hesitation. He came to his knees before the edge of the small iron hearth. The heat of the fire pricked him. He knew the famed story from the Tusk, where the God Husyelt asked Angeshraël to bow his face into his cooking fire. He knew,verbatim, the Sermon of the Ziggurat, where Kellhus had used this story to reveal his divinity to the First Holy War twenty years previous. He knew that "Bowing into the Fire" had since become a metaphor for Zaudunyani revelation.

And he knew that innumerable madmen wandered the Three Seas, blinded and scarred for taking the metaphor literally.

Even still, he was on his knees, and he was bowing, doing exactly as his Prophet and Emperor commanded. He even managed to keep his eyesopen. And a part of him watched and wondered that a devotion, any devotion, could run so deep as to throw a face into the furnace...

Across the crazed bourne of opposites. Into the lapping glitter. Into the needling agony.

Into the light.

His beard and hair whooshed into tinder. He expected agony. He expected to scream. But something was tugged from him, sloughed like flesh from overboiled bone... something...essential.

And he was looking out from the fire, into a thousand faces—and a thousand more.

Unless Kellhus is just next level fucking with Proyas and making him see what he wants him to.  But I think it's more probably Kellhus was actually showing Proyas what he really can do...

[Kalbear]

Man, those italics

[.H.]

1 minute ago, Kalbear said:

Man, those italics

If some could be good, than more must be better.

Oh, if only he had a good editor any more...

[.H.]

17 minutes ago, Sci-2 said:

The continual reductionism got to the base level of structured/atomic reality, where these particle structures are bodies of monads themselves. And since each monad has a holographic aspect representing the Whole a continued digging into these base level particles opened up a window to the vistas of what waits the damned.

A good point, which the Glossary kind of hint toward:

Quote

The Inverse Fire—Xir’kirimakra (Cûno-Cincûlic). Subparticular intentional field machine linking individual observational frames of reference to their eternal fate in the Outside.

Monad as the "subparticular." 

That would be, the Inverse Fire as a mirror that allows one to gaze not only back at one's self, but at one's literal essence of being?  Doubtful that it would be coincidence that Kellhus can look outward through regular fire and the Inverse Fire allows one to gaze inwards.

[Sci-2]

3 minutes ago, .H. said:

A good point, which the Glossary kind of hint toward:

Monad as the "subparticular." 

That would be, the Inverse Fire as a mirror that allows one to gaze not only back at one's self, but at one's literal essence of being?  Doubtful that it would be coincidence that Kellhus can look outward through regular fire and the Inverse Fire allows one to gaze inwards.

Good find! I also like that Bakker refers to the fate of "individual observational frames" which is what I would say comes close to the idea of a "monad" that is subjective perspective of the Real which God dreams into being.

I think the Inverse Fire allows one to access the Holography of the Real in a very specific way - what happens to me after I die?

[Kalbear]

4 minutes ago, Sci-2 said:

Good find! I also like that Bakker refers to the fate of "individual observational frames" which is what I would say comes close to the idea of a "monad" that is subjective perspective of the Real which God dreams into being.

I think the Inverse Fire allows one to access the Holography of the Real in a very specific way - what happens to me after I die?

Remember, there is no 'after', at least not in the traditional sense. What the Inverse Fire lets you see is the end result of their time on Earth. This has already happened, so they're seeing simply the predestined value of what will occur to them. They're skipping ahead to the chapter of burnination. 

And with the Inverse Fire, it isn't just seeing; per the explanations given, it's the experiencing. As far as I can tell they experience what is happening to them in the Outside after they will die. 

[Sci-2]

1 minute ago, Kalbear said:

Remember, there is no 'after', at least not in the traditional sense. What the Inverse Fire lets you see is the end result of their time on Earth. This has already happened, so they're seeing simply the predestined value of what will occur to them. They're skipping ahead to the chapter of burnination. 

And with the Inverse Fire, it isn't just seeing; per the explanations given, it's the experiencing. As far as I can tell they experience what is happening to them in the Outside after they will die. 

Ah I always get mixed up with the Future Has Happened stuff.

But if Monads contain past/future states of the Whole within themselves this still works within the proposed metaphysics? The fire shows the future viewpoint of the observational frame...Or at least the uninterrupted path/trajectory of the observational frame before the intervention of the No God.

But then what is shown can't be what has already happened, because it was (arguably) prevented by the arrival of the No God. What this means for the nature of Time/Causation in the Bakkerverse I'm not sure...

[.H.]

14 minutes ago, Sci-2 said:

But then what is shown can't be what has already happened, because it was (arguably) prevented by the arrival of the No God. What this means for the nature of Time/Causation in the Bakkerverse I'm not sure...

Well, I think there are two options to "resolve" the paradox:

1) The Inverse Fire only shows your fate as it stands given no intercession.  The same way that the White Luck Warrior's vision shows him killing Kellhus.  Fate is only fate for as long as it is not preempted by something outside it's causal chain.  This is itself a paradox, but one that seems to just be fundamental to Eärwa.  So, in this way, we just trade one paradox for another.

2) It means that the No-God must fail.  Which I don't think is true, because if the No-God is little Kel (and it is) then the No-God is outside the "normal" chain for circumstance and isn't subject to the usual "flow of Fate."

[Sci-2]

17 minutes ago, .H. said:

Well, I think there are two options to "resolve" the paradox:

1) The Inverse Fire only shows your fate as it stands given no intercession.  The same way that the White Luck Warrior's vision shows him killing Kellhus.  Fate is only fate for as long as it is not preempted by something outside it's causal chain.  This is itself a paradox, but one that seems to just be fundamental to Eärwa.  So, in this way, we just trade one paradox for another.

2) It means that the No-God must fail.  Which I don't think is true, because if the No-God is little Kel (and it is) then the No-God is outside the "normal" chain for circumstance and isn't subject to the usual "flow of Fate."

Perhaps what they experience is a possible future that, in some sense, exists. There's an idea that potentials are extant but not actualized, in the same way that the code for particular path exists in a FPS but if you never walk down that path it is not actuality. (I'm poorly paraphrasing a few philosophers/scientists here...)

So the IF translates the observational frame (aka monad) into the potential future kind of like a magic item in an FPS could shift to a cut scene.

[.H.]

2 minutes ago, Sci-2 said:

Perhaps what they experience is a possible future that, in some sense, exists. There's an idea that potentials are extant but not actualized, in the same way that the code for particular path exists in a FPS but if you never walk down that path it is not actuality. (I'm poorly paraphrasing a few philosophers/scientists here...)

Note that your use of the word "code" is appropriate, given that is the same word used to describe whatever it is that each death (on the path to the correct number of still living souls) supplies the No-God apparatus to do whatever it is that it does to "seal the world."

(Side note, I sent you the Google doc in a PM, not sure if you saw it.)

[Sci-2]

5 minutes ago, .H. said:

Note that your use of the word "code" is appropriate, given that is the same word used to describe whatever it is that each death (on the path to the correct number of still living souls) supplies the No-God apparatus to do whatever it is that it does to "seal the world."

(Side note, I sent you the Google doc in a PM, not sure if you saw it.)

Ah got the Doc thanks!

Yeah I think, as per Marcus Arvan's P2P Hypothesis, the Bakkerverse is at least functionally like a simulation. It's underlying metaphysics, at least within the Inside, can be modeled computationally to a high degree of fidelity. These are the God imposed rules where everything Inside is constituted via the particle monads.

Of course we have to then try to explain why the God might ever make a universe composed of monads in such a way as to parallel the structures/regularities we seem to find in physics....

 

[.H.]

3 minutes ago, Sci-2 said:

Yeah I think, as per Marcus Arvan's P2P Hypothesis, the Bakkerverse is at least functionally like a simulation. It's underlying metaphysics, at least within the Inside, can be modeled computationally to a high degree of fidelity. These are the God imposed rules where everything Inside is constituted via the particle monads.

Could it be that this is partly because the God-of-gods, which every Spirit is a part of, is then fuctionally similar in role to the "central server."  And that the Outside (which is plausibly not Outside at all, but rather, as Kellhus experiences, it is actually Inside, inside everyone and every thing) is really the underlying intercontinental medium of everything?  That is to say, the universe of Eärwa is fundamentally the Outside and everything "Real" is some manifest "dream" of the subjective "parts" of the fractured infinite God?

[Callan S.]

On 10/11/2018 at 9:16 AM, Hello World said:

Why do the Dunyain call themselves "the conditioned"? Isn't the whole point of their training to become unconditioned or something? Yet Kellhus seems kind of proud to think of himself as one of the conditioned. (This question has bugged me for years but I didn't want to ask out of fear that I'll sound stupid.)

I wonder if it's double think/a 1984 reference?

 

Quote

His beard and hair whooshed into tinder. He expected agony. He expected to scream. But something was tugged from him, sloughed like flesh from overboiled bone... something...essential.

I always wondered/worried if that sloughing was actually some kind of damnation happening right then. Just boom, you did drugs once/you used a magic device once, you're bad.

[Callan S.]

6 hours ago, lokisnow said:

The central problem here is your belief that there is a need for explanation. It’s nihilism: there’s nothing to explain because the point was to emphasize there is no meaning, there is nothing, the desire for meaning is delusion etc etc  .

To continue searching for the magical belief key that will unlock the mysteries of the bakkerverse (monads ain’t the key) is to willfully miss the point.

its a seven book mocking lecture on why sci-fi / fantasy is dumb and for dummies, pretty good joke overall.

I don't get what an author is supposed to do instead - deliver true meaning?

Unless you're real keen on Bakker, was it like he was going to do that but chose not to?

[Darth Richard II]

Well, usually things have SOME meaning, as opposed to none.

[Kalbear]

Aha. 

So think of this as a mmo. They all have a client server architecture where the server maintains all game state and knows the value of everything and the client attempts to figure this out while not having all information. When the two conflict, the server corrects and the client experiences lag. 

But if the client (or something else) can exploit the server information in some way, or do a man in the middle attack where all calls from the server go through it to the client (and can be mutated or changed) the server will still think the state is one thing, but the clients may never know otherwise.

The No-God is at its core Fiddler. It's a proxy server listening to the soul traffic. Once it gets enough sample data to extrapolate a pattern it can then simulate other traffic - such as, say, claiming someone is super holy or simply intercept that soul entirely.  

[Callan S.]

7 hours ago, Darth Richard II said:

Well, usually things have SOME meaning, as opposed to none.

What was the meaning of lord of the rings?

[.H.]

7 hours ago, Kalbear said:

The No-God is at its core Fiddler. It's a proxy server listening to the soul traffic. Once it gets enough sample data to extrapolate a pattern it can then simulate other traffic - such as, say, claiming someone is super holy or simply intercept that soul entirely. 

I think this is true, or at least is similar enough to approximate what the No-God's function is.  Note that similarly the No-God exhibits a "connection" to all things (seeing as to how it can direct Sranc, but also exibit some kind of "pull" on Souled" beings).  Plausibly, when the required number of souls are left, the apparatus has sufficient "power" to redefine the destination of Souls, perhaps?

I think, even if we disagree on further implications, the Spirit (or Soul, if you'd rather) is a division and so a connection to the infinite (The God, or God-of-gods, if you will) though.  In this way, the P2P model is apt, since, each "ensouled" being is the experiential vessel of the whole, that is, of The God-of-gods itself.  This is similar then, in a way, to answer the real world question of, "why Christ?"  Why would an infinite God lower himself to the stature of a mortal human?  Why then, similarly, would the Eärwan God-of-gods fracture itself?