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Ask Kasimir and Wyrmhero Anything


Wyrmhero

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Or as Kashero and Wyrmimir if you prefer :P

I'm Kas, philosophy student and SE player, and answering questions with me is Wyrmhero, physicist and backstabber extraordinare. We are here to finally answer the thousands of questions you have for us, and to save time, we thought we might as well do it together.

Feel free to ask us about Sanderson Elimination, Wyrmhero's Heirs to the Final Empire game, Sanderson's books, games of any kind, being Dulabros, university, or the art of trolling!

Edited by Wyrmhero
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So which do you guys like better? Kashero or Wyrmimir? :P

And Why? Just. Why? :ph34r:

Kas and I talked it over. We both prefer Wyrmimir, for reasons to do with Norse mythology. I'm taking Kashero though, and Kas's taking Wyrmimir because we like to be inexplicably confusing that way :P

And the only good answer to a 'Why' question is: Whyever not? :P

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So who are the two of you, exactly?

Well, I'm Kasimir, best known on the Sanderson Elimination subforum for long posts explaining stuff, and being too willing to kill myself for the good of the team. I've recently branched out to memes though. All the memes. In RL, I do philosophy, which explains the posts that I *do* make in the other parts of the forum.

The other handsome guy is Wyrmhero, a physicist from Britain, who has just finished his degree. Most people will recognise him from the Sanderson Elimination games as well, probably from one of the games that he's run. He's known for accusing people a lot and viciously attacking their defence. He also became King of Alethkar in one of his first games. He also plays board games and Magic: the Gathering.

Edited by Wyrmhero
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Well, what exactly about philosophy appeals to you, Kas? I tend to be a "so what can it do" kind of person, so philosophy, while definitely interesting, isn't something I would devote years of my life to studying. But I have friends that are following that path and they are fun people to have discussions with.

Also, for Wyrm, have you played Eclipse: New Dawn for the Galaxy? And what would you say is your favorite board game?

Lastly, what are each of your favorite SE characters that you have created?

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I thought 'Mimir' sounded Norse. Thanks for the link!

 

Can you guys switch your profile details back already?

 

Of course we can.

 

Well, what exactly about philosophy appeals to you, Kas? I tend to be a "so what can it do" kind of person, so philosophy, while definitely interesting, isn't something I would devote years of my life to studying. But I have friends that are following that path and they are fun people to have discussions with.

...

Lastly, what are each of your favorite SE characters that you have created?

 

That's kind of two separate questions: What philosophy can do and why I went for it. For the latter, engineering was okay, but it wasn't making me happy. I was fine with solving catenary cable problems but I really wanted to look at our methods and understand why they work. But that's not what you do as an engineer: just 'shut up and calculate.' And in philosophy, I get to study all sorts of fields. For my recent philosophy of biology class, I had to read up and do a crash course in uni biology, cognitive science, neuroscience...

 

For the former, philosophy studies the way we know things, assumptions and most importantly: what's rational. That matters in so many ways. It matters if we form our beliefs and claim to be rational but really aren't because we're reasoning in bad ways. (See: some popular arguments about religion.) Philosophy intersects with actual problems in other areas too. Interestingly, both philosophers and weather forecasters (and social scientists) are interested in how we should use methods like Brier scoring, or using p-values and what their weaknesses are. So it's kind of farther reaching than it might sound at first.

 

And as for what my favourite SE character has been, I'd say my favourite is probably Kassel Erikell, He's a bit like me, and I really enjoyed being a part of House Urbain (as you can probably tell from my signature :P). I also had Drax alongside him, even if Wyrm stole him from me just a bit >>. The end of his story, as it were, was also pretty much everything I wanted.

Edited by Wyrmhero
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Can you guys switch your profile details back already?

What’s there to switch? Everything’s the way it’s always been >>

 

Also, for Wyrm, have you played Eclipse: New Dawn for the Galaxy? And what would you say is your favorite board game?

Lastly, what are each of your favorite SE characters that you have created?

A family friend owns a copy. I've only played it once since it took several hours to play, but once we understood what was going on, it was fun.

As for my favourite board game, it is... probably Dominion, if that counts as one. I like the variety of it, mostly. Just the sheer amount of difference each game. Plus, it appeals to my perfectionism. Otherwise, Ticket to Ride would be the best board game.

For my favourite SE character, I’d have to go with Wurum and Heran. Can’t say no to 1337 Windrunner powers, can I? :P But also because the RP was different and fun, and the coincidence of Wurum’s being a Stormwarden and Heran being the town’s unofficial Stormwarden was very enjoyable.

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Oh, philosophy major, riddle this!

With Balefire, when you hit the item, and it ceases to exist, wouldn't that have caused you to have never balefire'd it in the first place?

That sounds more like a cause/effect physics question to me, so I think Wyrm can best answer that one!

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Oh, boy >> Well, I'd look at the Feynman-Stueckelburg interpretation and just say balefire is antiparticles going backwards in time :P

Not sure what else to say here >> The second law of thermodynamics says entropy can only increase or stay the same. It’s basically why time can’t go backwards, since entropy is a measure of wasted energy. Hence why ice-cream never re-freezes. (Well, outside of a fridge anyway, but fridges aren’t closed systems. You put energy into them to get energy out.)

Quite honestly, I’d say this is more Kas’s thing than mine. Looks like what Gamma wants is unpicking a paradox, more than anything else :P And anyway, haven't read the series >>

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Thanks Wyrm >>

Well, basically, this is the paradox, right? Let’s break it down like this:

(S1) The Darkhound bites Mat.

(S2) The DH’s biting Mat causes Rand to balefire that sucker, which erases the DH from the Pattern.

(S3) But if the DH has been erased from the Pattern, then it never existed. (True by stipulation/definition—assume this was a particularly powerful stream of balefire.)

(S4) The DH never existed.

(S5) If the DH never existed, then it never bit Mat.

(S6) The DH never bit Mat.

Technically, I see what you’re angling for, but this way of doing it is sufficient to provide us with a paradox since (S1) and (S6) contradict each other. Adding statements about Rand never having balefired the DH just generates further contradictions.

So, there are several ways to pick apart this reasoning. You’re probably not asking for my philosophical views on time and since I haven’t yet been able to do a class on the metaphysics of time, all I can really say is I’m likely to not be a presentist [=future and past do not exist, the only thing that is real is the here and now.] Not that that helps us out here much :P Now, the key challenge is how to resolve the paradox in a way consistent with Robert Jordan’s portrayal of things. In this case, I’d recommend the strategy employed by philosophers like Hanley (2004). Kind of goes like this: the key assumption needed to set up this paradox is the assumption that retrocausation (or even the possibility of it) sets up a causal loop. But guys like Hanley think that this is a problematic assumption and challenge this. So they say retrocausation does not entail a causal loop. (And if backwards causation can happen without forming causal loops, then (S1) and (S6) are not contradictory statements because both are not true at the same time.) Then, the paradox is dissolved and we WoT readers can get on with life :P

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What exactly is your relation? how did this whole thing happen? Do you actually know each other IRL, or just online?

We volunteered to take part in a science experiment on extended cognition that went terribly right :P That's pretty much it.

Edited by Kasimir
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