White-Luck Warrior IX

[Sci-2]

The aporetics work with all of these, because they eradicate the intent. They state that you can't ask for those things because you'd also be asking for not those things, and you're not doing that, so wtf?

Please elaborate....think I get it but not sure.

[Kalbear]

Probably not a great analogy. Chorae as far as I can tell objectify the world; with them, the world is precisely as God intended it to be. When a sorcerer interacts with a chorae physically it creates a paradox - in the field something that is god by action isn't god by identity. The reality god created doesnt match. And this is resolved by removing the thing that isn't god - by unraveling the god that is not god right then. For non physical interaction it simply acts as a removal of the effects not generated by god.

Therefore the most important part here is the origin.

Now with topoi, and the wight, we have the concept that because they brought their reality with them the chorae has no paradox. Everything is fine, because what is here is what should be here.

What I think mimara does with the chorae is she uses it as a way to emphasize her view. Essentially she asserts her version of reality - the objective truth before the topoi - and the chorae then acts on the difference she is pointing out.

[Sci-2]

Thanks Kal, that clears things up more.

The Gnosis is Assembly and the Anagogis is Java, if that makes sense.

Hmmm, I'm tempted to go with Gnosis is Functional, Agnosis is OO Java, and the Mark is the burden of keeping track of state. ;-)

[Happy Ent]

Yup; the Gnosis is more like Haskell than like assembly language. It’s on a higher level of abstraction, no a lower one.

[jurble]

See, the implication there is that semantic density would be higher in the Gnosis than in the Analogies, but it seems to me that the Gnosis' power is that it lacks the semantic baggage of the Analogies i.e. Dragonfire conjures as much baggage is does benefits, whereas Gnostic burning is something far more explicit.

[Kalbear]

Agreed. The issue as explained in the books is that intent must be clarified. The more clarity, the more precision, the greater the effect. The analogy wastes all this processing power on making a shield like a stone, because the API that the analogies use is too generic. It is like file.open. it sets permissions, does waits, does reads and writes how it chooses, erc

Whereas the gnosis knows that it wants a file of a specific size with read write permissions only if not overwriting, with a read buffer of 5k and only dealing byte by byte - and it does all that without having to know anything about read only permissions or striings or directories or even paths, much less something like .net.

Both suck because they're still dealing through the OS layer which is always an abstraction. Psuke acts as part of the OS itself and looks cleaner, but can only go with the flow of the OS

[Sci-2]

Can the Gnosis [as an API] do a good job connecting to aspects of the Outside? This is where I think the Daimos has to be based on analogy, because attempting to bind a Ciphrang with math equations would involve in such poor "curve fitting" that you'd be gutted in seconds.

[Kalbear]

I think you're thinking about it the wrong way. It's not math vs chemistry. It's simply being able to express your intent.

Think of it this way: every sorcerer has only so many CPU cycles to do something. Now, if you use a high level API you personally don't have to know as much but you will potentially waste a ton of CPU cycles because you're being so generic. That high level API that makes it easy on you has to do all the heavy error checking and be able to do all the things most users want easily. That's a lot of wasted work if you know more of what you want.

If you instead write your own file operation in assembly, well, you have to be really precise and know what you're doing - but you can now make a lot of optimizations that you couldn't. Before you had to hint to the API that you were wanting to open a small file or a large one; now you can say exactly how big you want it.

Now it might be the case that the daimos works better wih vagueness. That ambiguity allows for more likelihood of finding something that will work. My suspicion is that just implies that with more knowledge the gnosis could get exactly what they want. They just don't have the knowledge. And it isn't like the mandate needed to use that kind of power.

[Kynokephalos]

Do chorae then represent a portable frame that excludes anagogic and gnostic sorcery?

[Kalbear]

I don't think they exclude sorcery so much as they exclude noncreators from the mix. Again, look to the wight in the mountain scene. The chorae had no effect there, and the reason was because the wight brought with it part of its reality. And in its reality, since it was from some part of the Outside where desire outweighs objectivity, it was the creator of the reality. So the chorae looks at what the reality is, looks at what's happening and says 'yep, all good here'. (it would have been really interesting if Mimara started turning to salt because of her touching the chorae and her not being of that reality either, but I think that that's okay).

Hmm. Maybe that's the way to think of it. Chorae represent the basis value of reality at the given level of objectivity. Take a chorae to the far outside, and it'll do nothing despite people throwing around gods know what, because reality there is mutable and prone to the desires of the users. Out there I'd bet that sorcery would be fine with a chorae.Take a chorae to the inside - to the world - and you get the chorae enforcing that you can only manipulate reality through very select means, and even then you might be hosed. To take the computer example a bit further, chorae represent a checksum type of scheme.

[Happy Ent]

In the programming language analogy, Chorae represent the Halting Problem, or maybe Post’s or Gödel’s theorems. Chorae insist on the fundamental shortcomings or in-built paradox of all sufficiently strong program languages.

Since (and here the analogy breaks down) Creation is based on meaning and conviction, as soon as you remind the involved parties of the Halting Problem, the intended “program” breaks down. It’s as if gcc refused to work if you had a picture of Turing next to it.

[Curethan]

Sorcery isn't concerned with enforcing objective reality. It's about breaking physical laws and short circuiting reality. Even chorae turns sorcerers into salt. (That ain't just canceling the sorcerous mojo, its making a definite statement.)

Being able to use language to fix meaning is important and maths works for that. So does analogy. So does purity of emotional feeling (inasmuch as tone is a part of linguistic expression).

I don't think programming languages are a good analogy for how you describe or define meaning.

[Kalbear]

Programming languages are both math and linguistics. As such they are really great as far as analogies to sorcery. Meaning and being explicit is what they are.

The halting problem analogy doesn't really work for me though because of the effect of chorae when in a topos.

[Sci-2]

Programming languages are both math and linguistics. As such they are really great as far as analogies to sorcery. Meaning and being explicit is what they are.

The halting problem analogy doesn't really work for me though because of the effect of chorae when in a topos.

I think the thing here is to realize programming languages possess - and I may be using the term incorrectly here - grammars. This is why I brought in Chomsky, as the Psukhe has the quality of being a universal grammar.

The gnosis works as a programming language - especially a functional one as it allows one to model the "problem" aka "spell" with greater ease than the Agnosis.

However, the distance being signifier and signified is still there, despite the precision. It's just that the Gnosis is great for modeling a non-subjective universe.

When trying to lasso something from the Outside, the Gnosis should be terrible and the Agnosis should be able to give some kind of approximation. I suspect we don't ever see Ciphrang as they really are, but rather their forms are shaped by the spell-poem used to describe and capture them. (Think of Abraham's andat here.)

My best guess is similar to HE's about chorae - perhaps some kind of lambda calculus that reveals an inherent paradox in all grammars.

[Madness]

I'm not one to offer much on programming analogies but a couple thoughts. Might help spawn connections between these topics.

Firstly, I'm not sure that the Anagogic Sorceries have innutterals.

Also, I recently reread the entirety of TSA as I finished up exams and started spring semester. I wanted to clarify something that we'd had much confusion about on the Three-Seas forums and I'm not sure why. It might enlighten on the Sorcery/Mimara/Cishaurim mysteries.

There are three described instances of Cishaurim being hit by Chorae in the entirety of the PON. There is one in TWP during the battle of Mengedda but it is never described.

- Proyas hitting a Cishaurim with a Chorae from a building in Shimeh: "a flash, a black-ringed circle of light, from which the saffron figure plummet like a sodden flag."

- Cnaiur killing Moenghus the Elder: "White light flared from his gouged sockets. For an instant, Cnaiur thought, it seemed the God watched him through a man's skull . . . then his lover fell away, burning as he must, such was the force of what had possessed them . . . Cnaiur howled at the sagging form."

- Kellhus killing one of the Last of the Cishaurim with a Chorae: "a burst of incandescence rimmed by a nacre of black. The figure dropped."

No salt and the ambiguity is such that we could suggest Cishaurim's Earwan bodies simply disappear like Raptured Christians.

[.Spooky.]

Lets talk grand strategy:

Though I know this forum is filled with people who can plausibly suggest otherwise, lets assume for the sake of arguement that Khellhus is genuine in his plan to proceed to Golgetterath, destroy the Consult and prevent the return of the No-God and the Second Apocalpyse.

WIth that assumption, two questions:

He started with 300-400k men, including many exceptionally hardy Nosirai contingents and exceptionally large cavalry contigents. The Great Ordeal hasn't reached Dagliash (and likely faces a high casualty seige when it does) and is now down to 200k.

The Non-Men at the height of their power took twenty years to come the depths of Golgetterath. How does Kelhus expect to reach Golgetterath with enough troops to lay siege to such a massive structure, much less to clense it? If his goal is to wipe-out the Consult he will need to ensure no escapes and to go to the very seedy depths of Incu-Holinas. I don't know how they can sustain such an endeavor with no reinforcements.

It would seem like he'd be better off creating a fortified base camp a sort of "mid-point/waystation" along the shores of the Sea of Nelost (where the Great Ordeal is currently located) taking advantage of the combination of food sources/fresh water of the lake itself and the Sranc while securing his supply lines and requesting an additional levy of manpower from the Three Seas.

Does Kelhus have any knowledge of who is behind the Consult name? Does he know that it has Inchorai and soul-swapping Sheonara in charge? Does he know what sort of magics and sorcerers they can bring to bare? It just seems all sorts of half-cocked. The first rule of war is intelligence acquisition, Kelhus appears to have ignored that. He and his advisors knew nothing of the blight in the north, nothing of the sheer numbers of sranc, nothing of the Non-men's allegiances, nothing of the details of the Consult. Its just so very un-Dunyain.

[Sci-2]

The Ordeal exists to bring the Schools to Golgotterath, it's stated in WLW. I can almost guarantee once there the Daimos will come into play. We also don't know what metagnosis has been developed as weapons. Even if you can teleport something other than yourself that could be huge.

But yeah, I personally think that Kellhus plans to destroy Golgotterath [in a kamikaze blowout]. This simply requires soldiers as "meat shields", to get back to the D&D roots, and now that they have the chorae hoard this shouldn't be too hard.

I'm also guessing Kellhus has fed people Sranc before and is aware of the changes likely to happen ala Quirri. Imagine a force that is made

and is addicted to the flesh of their enemy.

@Madness: I think all verbal sorcery possesses inutterals, but I could be wrong. I think what I've been trying to get at is Gnosis is not just Agnosis on steroids, it's a fundamentally different way of describing the world. For the most part, the manipulation of a stable reality, it *should* be stronger. But I think there's a reason that the Agnosis was where the Daimos is discovered, and why the Psukhe is more forceful but sacrifices, AFAIK, all a lot of precision.

ETA: Think of how what Rothfuss calls the "sleeping mind" can do the calculus necessary to catch a stone tossed in your direction. The utterals are simply there to wake the part of the "sleeping mind" that you are using. So Gnosis touches the parts of the brain that recollect the mathy parts of God and Agnosis recollects the poetic parts. The latter grammar is more clunky, but also capable of grasping elusive/subjective concepts the former cannot.

[Kalbear]

The gnosis works as a programming language - especially a functional one as it allows one to model the "problem" aka "spell" with greater ease than the Agnosis.

yeah, I still don't see this as making sense. It isn't modeling a problem. Remember, in order to make things more powerful what does Kellhus do? He adds more meaning simultaneously. This isn't easier nor is it more correct; point of fact the mandate are more marked than anagnostic sorcerers because what they do is further away from what reality is. If you were right, the mandati would be less marked, the quya even less. That's not what we see.

They aren't trying to model reality. They are trying to shape reality. And more importantly to the chorae, they are trying to shape reality when the inside is maximally resistant to being shaped by desire.

And that is the real key to me - the relationship between outside and desire and the chorae. The outside can be manipulated, apparently quite heavily. We know ciphrang salt when at the inside as well, meaning that there is a connective link between what ciphrang are and what sorcerers make of themselves. And what do they have in common? Both are things that express their desires on reality through this sorcery. Ciphrang do it more personally to themselves, but ultimately it is the same thing.

The reason chorae work is because on the inside these cheat codes should not work. It is the rule that desire yields most to objectivity. Chorae act as an enforcement of that rule. They aren't a paradox; what they do is showcase the paradox of the sorcerer, which is that they are in a place that is not supposed to be changed by desire but is. The sorcerer marks themself with this every time they do sorcery - the mark is essentially how much your personal desire has changed reality in a place that cannot change.

But the chorae can only do this for the local reality. If it belongs in the local reality it is fine. If what you said about expressing errors in all grammars was true, chorae should work regardless of location or reality, and we absolutely know this is not the case. So that can't be right.

When trying to lasso something from the Outside, the Gnosis should be terrible and the Agnosis should be able to give some kind of approximation. I suspect we don't ever see Ciphrang as they really are, but rather their forms are shaped by the spell-poem used to describe and capture them. (Think of Abraham's andat here.)

this can't be correct for a couple of reasons. First, the above about what the gnosis is - it is simply more precision in meaning. It is an analogy too, just a much stronger one. Do it should be able to get ciphrang.

Two, Kellhus personally went to the outside and got a couple ciphrang. They are recognizable to everyone; even sorweel knows what they are. Now I guess it's possible that when they manifest they turned into what people thought they should look like, but remember - the inside is the most objective. Here, they would look the most like what they actually are, not the least.

[Kalbear]

Also, inutterals were stated by akka to be the primary difference between the mandati and the anagnoges. They couldn't figure out what the mandati were doing because of them only seeing half of the spell, and it didn't occur to them what was going on. So no, it's not part of every verbal sorcery.

[Sci-2]

If you were right, the mandati would be less marked, the quya even less. That's not what we see.

Mandati have deeper marks?

So no, it's not part of every verbal sorcery.

Hmmmmmmm, good point. Interesting. This is why I asked Scott to go further into the differences in arcane methodology, there seems to be something more going on here than just intent. Agnosis seems to work on a very different use of grammar than the Gnosis.

Precision doesn't necessarily lower the distance between signifier and signified - which is what I think the Mark sort of is. When trying to describe heat/light/direction, one is still, if you will, using "discrete" Gnosis to model a continuous world. IMO it's a death of a thousand cuts, rather than the punch that is the failure to grasp the whole via the poetry of the Agnosis.