Chaos

Yeah, it's really like, the amount of blood and gore. Oh, I also made a video in case anyone wants more of my thoughts:

Honestly, I would be down for Era 1 to be fairly violent. I legitimately think it adds to the setting that it is kind of horrific. Executions there should be brutal. But I wonder what Brandon thinks of the violence level. Like, there's no way he'd make it rated R, so it probably wouldn't be that brutal.

Personally I doubt Brandon would add much "sex sells" stuff. I think this is an advantage of, say, going with Apple vs. HBO. I am curious what he'd do with the violence in Mistborn era 1. I know he's said it's a bit too far for him in retrospect, and seeing it in a visual medium makes it far more visceral. I wonder the balance will be.

That's... so not what he actually said. I believe he has said it is one of his weaker written novels, which I think is not a controversial statement. It's just old writing of his; his prose generally has gotten far better than it. I love Elantris; it got me into Brandon's works, but it's rougher than the new stuff. Adaptations don't destroy the original books. They will always be here for us to enjoy. I'm pretty excited (and have a video coming out very soon on it). I am concerned about Hollywood taking up time in Brandon's schedule. I am not really worried about Ghostbloods' release, but I think if these adaptations get off the ground, it will be challenging to balance a Stormlight show and new Stormlight.

I am not using your definition of object in this context. I am simply using the colloquial and common notion of objective morality (that there is a universal standard for morals) vs. subjective (ultimately, we decide what morality is). All I'm saying is this stuff is context-dependent and culturally-dependent. There are limits to how culturally-dependent it can be (we are humans after all). But of course social sciences study actual things. I will be honest I have no idea what you even mean by "atomic individual". I am pretty confused as to where you're going there, hence why I am merely describing my intent further. Indeed I am using the lens of discussing morality in more a way I hear many Christians use it, but that's the context of the conversation, so that feels appropriate. As for your responses, they seem fine. I'm afraid I don't have a lot to say on them?

What is the assumption that I passed along? I mean, I don't know. I wouldn't classify them as objects but maybe I am using the word object too literally. I certainly do not have a philosophy background.

You are very welcome! I can definitely understand the appeal of looking at the vastness and joy and everything and thinking there must be some reason for it all. That's totally fair. I just think most things do not have metaphysical "meaning" attached. If you and your friend got in a car accident with a drunk driver, it's easy to ask, "Why me?" And people are searching for that deeper why. Whereas I'd just say, yeah, that person drove drunk and hit you. That's it. I'm a bit busy this week (class is beginning Monday) so I may not respond nearly as much as you had, but I did want to comment on this one: This is so fascinating, because I hate the idea of an afterlife. Like, honestly, it does not give any comfort to me at all. I do want things to end. I think life's finiteness is what gives it meaning. We have a limited amount of time to make the world a better place. If this is some cosmic... testing ground before the real eternal life after, that honestly feels like some sadistic, unnecessary game. (If God knows everything, he knows who will join him or not. So he will know who goes wherever in the afterlife. Why do we have this awful part? Why create people who don't go to Heaven? I realize the LDS conception of Heaven is not the same as the standard Christian one but the details escape me, but regardless, I don't really see why God would do... any of this. So he's just... Sending people to hell just because. If Heaven is perfect and without sin, then that kind of takes the wind out of the idea that there even has to be a world with sin at all. And if you're in Heaven and it's perfect and sinless, does that mean free will is gone? Sounds creepy.) An afterlife also provides perverse incentives for this life. It means people will be far more concerned with the supposed next life than actually trying to fix things and make the planet better. Who cares about staving off the end of the world if you'll see them all again in a perfect place later? It's alarming that there are more than a few believers who would be excited about the end times for this reason. I guess I've struggled with suicide enough that I find eternity to be a true punishment, regardless of how "good" it's supposed to be. I'm doing good now, and certainly don't intend to pass anytime soon, but no thanks, afterlife. I've watched too many scifi or fantasy stories about immortals and it's always bad. This would be different if there was an eventual option to cease existing, however. I'd likely change my mind and exist for a few hundred thousand years or whatever. But a trillion? Quadrillion years? Ooof. The calculus teacher in me is like, "Infinity would be a very, very long time!" But then, I have zero evidence of an afterlife that can be demonstrated, so I do not worry about it in the slightest.

I'll take a stab at these. I think a desire to continue living necessarily cannot have religion as the core answer to this. My cats (as far as we know) doesn't have religion, and they sure live. Same with basically any animal, plant, fungi, or bacteria. I feel like evolution has basically hard-coded this, because anything that did not have that wouldn't proliferate. It is important to not anthropromorphize things like bacteria, per se, but basically everything living would be thrilled to use resources and proliferate. As for desire to be good people, by observing primates, we see complicated social structures. We have seen proto-morality, where apes who break social norms are punished and ostracized. It's extremely cool! So I think the answer is pretty obvious: for a social species, social cohesion is really good for the group's survival. Groups and families can work together with child-raising and all sorts of other things. Social cohesion was selected for, and those groups survived and proliferated. In humans, I think we can see very a deep bias to one's own "tribe", which can mean a whole lot of things, but to me it seems really clear how that would be useful tens of thousands of years ago to keep your group alive, and now we see things where we will just inherently trust people of our own group instead of people who aren't of your own group. We're really tribal, and that feels incredibly natural to me. I guess what I'm saying is, though I can understand the desire for there to be some philosophical reason for this, does there have to be an answer that is satisfying for us? Evolution provides a pretty compelling reason that can generalize beyond our own species. And I don't know, we don't know what is going on in other apes, maybe they have religion and beliefs, but it's certainly nothing humans currently have. So, I don't know. This may not actually have an answer that is philosophically or emotionally satisfying. Lots of things in the universe are like that. It's frustrating that, biologically, there is no real definition of "species" (there are lots of concepts, but all fail in different scenarios). That sucks! We humans love to put things in boxes, but why must the world? The quantum world is incredibly weird, not matching our intuitions at all. It's weird, and I don't think anyone is truly comfortable with it. Nature just does stuff and doesn't really care for our desires and cognition. The universe is unfathomably vast, with trillions of galaxies, which is just... hard for anyone to conceive. I guess my ultimate thought is, there doesn't have to be an answer to this, particularly one that is comfortable. It may in fact be correct God does not exist, it may be correct God exists, and it's possible a lot of other possibilities are true, too, and regardless of what said truth is, that will be uncomfortable to people. We want the universe to make sense and be coherent, and we are very good at creating a worldview that forces things to be coherent. Of course, your question is a good one, because you are trying to make sense of a very different perspective. That's awesome! Just for some context, for me, I have never seen or felt anything supernatural. I see nothing that demonstrates anything supernatural, particularly a deity, nor anything that even suggests that such a deity is even possible. Holy books feel very human-created, ways for people to make sense of the world, rather than divinely inspired. It is perfectly fine for people to disagree; perhaps I'd disagree as well if I had any spiritual experience, but I haven't. So to me, since so many magical explanations have ultimately not panned out, I certainly cannot assume something like a soul exists. I am not a neuroscientist, but neuroscientists certainly do not say there is evidence for a soul, or anything beyond our brains. In fact, there are reasons to believe that your brain has decided to make an action before we are even conscious we made a choice. Wild! I see humans as exceedingly complex machines, but they are ultimately solely governed by molecules. I take antidepressants and I feel extraordinarily different on them, and this is purely a chemical process. I don't even see how a soul could, mechanistically, fit in any of it. There are cases where people get brain injuries and they have radical personality shifts. If there's some extra soul juice in here, I don't understand how it correlates so perfectly with the physical meat that is up in our heads. That's just my perspective, however. I could be wrong. So the question is more, "Without theism, how do you... keep going on?" Obviously, not a scientific question, so none of that earlier stuff really matters. Even though I do truly believe that we are biological machines, I'm still here, I still need to function in the world. I still love my wife. So what do I believe philosophically? I don't think there is any inherent meaning in anything. We invent meaning ourselves, and that's awesome! We can treat people well, we can find our own passions, our own loves, our own dreams. Our family still cares about us now, and we care about them and our friend. I get to find my true passion of writing fantasy novels, and that makes me so fulfilled. (Truly, days I don't make progress, I am not doing well.) But philosophically, I don't think there's like... deep down a huge justification, per se. I think everyone has hopes and dreams and creates meaning that is important to them regardless of their beliefs. People create their own meaning every day. I take a walk with my walk and I'm like, "Wow, that was a really great conversation, this was really nice." I at least don't need any authority or tradition to provide such meaning. I can just decide that human life has value. Together, as a society, we can determine that life does has value, and act in accordance to make sure people don't starve, and that species don't go extinct. We are part of an unbroken chain of life that goes back over three billion years, which is a huge proportion of the age of the universe (13.8 billion years ago). Our decisions will have an impact, even if one doesn't have kids, with the friends we have, the smiles we make, and what we do. It could have an effect, however slight, for millions and billions of years to come. But... eventually, there will be a time where there will be no one alive who remembers you specifically. That is true. It is an uncomfortable, dark idea. On an even wider scale, the sun will eventually eat up the Earth, and all our descendants will be dead. (Space travel not withstanding.) The universe doesn't care about us, but we get to create meaning right here, right now. I find that very empowering, because we are the one kind of being that can create meaning. We can make art and weep over it. Or even something as simple as a song that is deeply personal or meaningful. Theism, to me, doesn't add anything to that, though if it does provide meaning for you, awesome! On morality, it seems to me that no one has a strong case for objective morality. Morality is socially contingent. In the times of the Hebrew Bible, slavery was all over the place (including within good God-fearing people), men having multiple wives was normative, women were considered property. I imagine very few people nowadays would feel that way. But we also see different cultures having different values and morals. Not every culture even thinks good and evil is a relevant dichotomy. I think culture and morality does change over time. We see this in recent memory, with many more people supporting gay marriage than in the 90s and the 2000s. I don't think religion actually makes morality objective either, but rather, it's just whatever God decides it to be--so really, it's subjective to his whims. In practice, lots of people claim to have special divine revelation and a special relationship with their god, and yet that never seems to match up with others saying the same thing. I think that says more about how this is more sourced from our intuitions that we feel deep down than something beyond space and time. However anyone wants to rationalize it, I just don't want to murder people, and I very much do not believe in God. That's my moral intuitions. So what is my morality? Don't be a dick. Be nice to people. It's sourced from empathy. That's it. Even with us being biological machines (in my opinion, of course), we do have feelings and empathy. It doesn't feel great to hurt others. It's not a complicated moral philosophy, but it's simple and workable for day to day life. Regardless of any divinity or supernatural entity or truth, it will really hurt when those I love die, or when I die, it will really hurt the people who love me. I do think that is ultimately biologically encoded (like everything), but it's still real. I can understand if people are coming from a religious framework that this sounds very scary, though.

They have a very hard job to do, to be relevant in this decade, when forums have not been relevant in the internet ecosystem for quite some time. They deserve grace

I suppose I will reiterate what I have often say (and maybe I need to make a boilerplate response for this): We are at the behest for Invision Community for software features. Though theoretically we could create some sort of extension or hook to do this, that costs resources, and has a very real downside. The more customizations that appear, the harder it is to make sure software updates work. Probably a decade or fifteen years ago I'd be all, hell yeah, let's make it happen. We had more customizations from the Invision app store, and we were just out of luck when they weren't maintained. (That Marketplace hasn't existed since 2023, but even prior to that, we were long past the forum golden age where there were spectacular free extensions that existed. The Marketplace had tons of paid things which often required subscriptions for dumb, simple crap.) Most importantly, this really can get us behind on software updates, which happened for years before. So, anyway, if it appears in updated versions of Invision Community, sure. If not, probably not. This is not custom software like Arcanum, so we can only really look at feature requests like, "Yeah, that'd be nice!" That's similar for the Coppermind, and let me tell you, MediaWiki has so many things that would be nice to be different... A quick look at the Invision Community forums and a member's profile shows this is not a thing. We could use more advanced badging/awards system to do some interesting things, I suppose, but it would not do specifically this. I think I ultimately had a lot more time for website tinkering and customization a decade ago, unfortunately, and I was a big force for adjusting things to be perfect (in my eyes). I am incredibly busy these days with like... four different jobs, none of which I can really put on a backburner. And as I alluded to before, the amount of customizations led to huge issues in getting software updates in any meaningful manner. Fortunately, Paleo does a lot of the system admin stuff now, which is good, because I really did not know what I was doing for a long time.

I read basically everything in this forum and Tech Support, no need to ping me I do think this would be cool!

Yes, it is an intentional exclusion. You do not need that as a filter. I'm sure the vast majority of the Guests listed are not legitimate users. I was looking at Google Analytics, and traffic is massively swarmed by China. (Like, more than double the US traffic.) I'm sure it's a lot of bots from there. I don't really understand why you're trying to do this or why it matters.

What are you trying to accomplish? I see your post in the main 17S Discussion forum, but like, why? You are more than welcome to look here and try and figure things out: https://invisioncommunity.com/developers/docs/ I think the answer is no to what you are trying to do.

Correct. Unregistered accounts cannot post. (God, can you imagine how awful the spam would be for that?)

We have not announced this period's end date yet (but will soon)!

Lines are different from paragraphs. The system lets us control the number of line breaks (in other words, paragraphs). However, you can have a single paragraph that is extremely long. For example: Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah. The system will let you do that, but we as staff will ask you to cut that down, as that's huge to scroll through on every single post. We cannot technologically enforce that, so we must do so manually. So we are saying even if it is a single paragraph, it cannot span more than four lines in height. (Relative to desktop on the maximum viewport.) Long signatures suck for everyone and make browsing the forum on desktop bad. The system doesn't allow for every conceivable way I would want to control it, but it does control for some things.

I think you two can leave it there, and perhaps others can add more here. That might be best.

Hi. Let's take the temperature down a few notches. Thanks. You all may wish to review this:

Hey there, I did change this topic title so it wasn't so clear Sazed and Taravangian ascended. Though those are definitely out of spoiler period, let's not put big spoilers in topic titles. But this topic title is a bit worse because of it, so apologies there.

We are at behest of the Invision Power Suite platform and its functionality. Adding custom code will make updates take even longer and we are not really going to do that, sorry. It is what it is and I'm not going to stress about it.

This is not an issue. That happens when an admin deletes an account. It is one of the many ways that can appear as. Often, I will delete an account and preserve the username, so it will keep that (but it just won't be a link to a profile, since that profile will not exist), but there are times where I nuke the entire thing. I'm not going to adjust every quote thing, obviously, so I'm just doing the default function the site allows.