ParaTulip
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What is this perfection business supposed to be like?
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This notion that the social is not objective. I have seen people balk at the idea of social sciences because they can have no object of study. I think this even leads people to think in terms of atomic individuals. Not the hypothetically ensouled uranium atoms that @Hmmm lies has conceptualized (How does such a being experience being annihilated in a nuclear bomb? Does it?), but [politics]. And since we are doing dialogue now, how do you feel about my responses here https://www.17thshard.com/forums/topic/107588-general-religious-discussion-thread/page/9/#findComment-2027365 ?
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Just a small thing here, since this is passing on an assumption that I dislike: Social constructs are objects. Social mores are objects. Laws are objects. Society and its processes are able to be understood as objects of the senses. The real pain about morality is that it, like aesthetics, feels like it can be made universal. And then this leads into a sort of meta-morality points: Ought there be a universal moral law? Can we express an idea well enough that it could actually be universal? I am doubtful of both of these, but I still think Kant's method is the best way to even approach the matter; anyone who presumes a God or god or natural source for morality is just postponing the problem on to the question of if that source could or should make a universal morality. Like what? I honestly think the actual problem is that we are getting dangerously close to living inside unstable experience machines already. Our modern world is full of simulated experiences that press on the various senses and manipulate our desires. I am amazed more people don't think sugary drinks are somehow the devil's work, the advertising for them is some of the worst things human expression can be used for.
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All experiences can "lose their edge" with over repetition. The same food at every meal, being confined to a small cabin by snow, old books re-read too many times, these all wear out the sense of novelty or enjoyment that the meal had at the first bite, a vacation getaway, or a new story once had. The electrode machine might physically burn away cells, but a heroin addict will dry out for a bit and return more sensitive to their old habit. Cannabis users can tell you that a fortnight long break from T will revert tolerance. The experience machine is much closer to Descartes' deciever or the Matrix if people liked being in it. I would say that the issue with a true Control, the worse-than-destruction god of William S Burroughs, is that it denies its subjects ability to rearrange Spinoza's God's innards. I don't want to just feel things; I instead want to make the world a certain way and feel things about the whole experience. That said, video games are neat.
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I never really got caring about Sigzil. I get that armies need people who do numbers, but I cannot recall feeling much anything about him. I probably will not care about Yelig-nar for having killed a bunch of them in the half decade plus time.
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I don't think those were meaningful characters. You can put them on Yelig-na's scoreboard if you want, it makes Yelig-nar have a good KD ratio. You can put Moash in Yelig-nar and give him both Jerzin's and IIshar's Honorblades. That would make Yelig-nar meaningful again, since now Moash has like, all the Surges so... how does Kaladin beat that without spawning a novella of consequences?
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You could be a Kandra or something else really durable instead. Shapeshifting in general feels like a huge upgrade for a long term guide to society, since trying to guide or manage society is probably easier when you can try for a mulligan by putting on a new face. "Sorry this agricultural system collapsed and killed a bunch of people. I know it was my idea, so I am going to think about it in a cave on my own for a few years and try being someone else next time." See, totally more reasonable than trying to be one person for thousands of years.
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The battle of champions plan was a plan to just start a cold phase in the endless war between Singers and Humans of Roshar though. It was a dumb plan. Tanavast was dumb. Hoid is dumb. Everyone who believed in the contest of champions plan was a dupe; I feel most bad for Jasnah in this since it hurts her reputation to be made into a dupe. Suppose the day of the contest came and Rayse as Odium put up a normal chicken for a champion which Dalinar strangled and cooked for dinner, winning the contest. Sure. This theoretically traps Rayse on Roshar for a thousand years. He won't start anything, but eventually someone's pig or chull is going to walk over the border and cause an incident. I really wish exploring the details of how a peace under the terms of the contest is never going to last was itself part of the contest instead of concluding that in the spirit world. Having the contest itself be defeated by Taravangian working through the logic of it like a lawyer or a judge might have been an interesting thing. Honestly, I wish the Contest was more like a debate than "I spent 20 years raising your grandson to hate you as of chapter 105 of this book, so.... gg?" But I guess that would resolve too much and Mr Sanderson wants to make this go on for 5 more implausibly long books. -
Yeah, because it isn't a big deal. Amaram wearing the Super Unplate Crystals is a meaningful enemy for exactly Kaladin, especially since he is at this battle in part because of postponing his 4th ideal. That was a build to a payoff, so it was really cool. It even had meaningful consequences with Lunamor having to leave because he had to kill Amaram for Kaladin. Yelig-nar is less interesting than a Thundercast, since at least those always have to fall over and change the terrain for the rest of the scene.
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If we're talking about setting animation to music: The Daikon opening video is a legend for a reason.
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I have been made aware of just the opposite. If you ever watch someone die, they don't actually lose that seeming liveliness until the fluids stop flowing. The lack of a living brain behind the eyes is not the key thing. Wasn't fun learning that, but, as I think I have said before, death is one of the two essential taboos.
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The way Kant did it sure was. There are problems in trying to develop an idea of a universal moral code, command, or system. I think that all morality ultimately is only resolved by specific decision making in the moment, that it is the essence of our sense of being ourselves to make such decisions and try to reconcile them or not. Non-contradiction is a value that conditions a rationality just like universality is.
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Huh, this is not too dissimilar to the stuff I ran into when I was reading up on Catholic catechism. When it comes to the morality on this. I imagine that is because both are coming from a sort of Paul as read by Augustine perspective? This is a bit of a strange way of understanding drugs, mostly since it is treating all drugs as one and the same. This is not a drug use discussion thread, but suffice to say I am experienced and read on the matter from a less scientific and more intimate perspective. To address the specific notions: What drives a person to start using drugs, what causes a person to relapse into drugs, why does society manufacture drugs, these are all clearly worth consideration beyond what the mouse model can say. Consider reading William S Burrough's if you want to consider this more. Only got about 7 minutes into the video before the website crapped out on me, so maybe it brings this up, but we have been putting electrical stimulus devices in people for a while now.
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He was so obviously a villain of the book who had to be killed off before the next one. It would have been a pain for Kaladin if these was this guy teleporting after him for the whole of WaT but never actually being that much of a threat. It should have been Leshwi who was menacing him. That was they could mirror the romantic tension between Raboniel and Navani. On the actual topic: Yeah, El is a bit lame.
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The concept of rules isn't unique to deontology. Divine command theories of morality will usually have the rules of a divine figure be the moral code. Rule utilitarians will have sets of rules they see as maximizing pleasure. What I find compelling about Kant is how his idea moves towards a system of reasoning about morality from intent and overlaping axiom. Have you heard of the notion of an experience machine? This sounds like a similar notion.
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Okay, so this is three questions. I am going to answer these, and I am going to hope I am not repeating anyone: why we live We live because we are born. We die because we are born. All living things are thrust into life unto death. why we want to be good people Because the alternative is being bad people, and badness is related to being unwanted by connotation. Of course, what makes a good as opposed to a bad person is a kind of subjectivity. Heck, the choice of good-bad as opposed to good-evil is something I just threw in here. our desire to continue living This one is related to why we live: The processes by which we are born are self-replicating. The nearly machinic animal aspects of a human being often cling to life, but not necessarily. I know there is a long discourse around suicide in philosophy, since Socrates is so famous for having done it. Consider starting there or going with Albert Camus, the prick. A quick search suggests that no one has brought up that deontology, or Immanuel Kant's notion of ethics, is the counter to Bentham's calculus of hedonism. I actually think this is the best option for those who value universality. I can't justify why you should value such a concept, but I do. What is a soul? I have no idea how to understand what one of those does or is outside of the context of being something like this scene but for different assemblies of god/God/gods. But without an afterlife, what does such a thing do? I don't even know what question to ask but I am so curious about what this means.
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Yeah, it seems like both Ati and Leras were going nuts on the scheming thing. Somehow, Ati figured having another Atium Alloy in circulation would result in someone realizing Rashek's youth compounding and associated weaknesses. In return Leras came up with the Sign of 1/16th and somehow Elend just got that meant "feed the Atium to those people". This all feels weird to notice as a 'plan' and not just a bunch of weird stuff being done by characters who have lost most of their sanity to each other's pain and suffering.
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Oh, if we are doing books, has anyone tried Feuerbach's Essence of Christianity? I tried picking it up a while ago, and it quickly gets into some interesting points about the conception and perhaps desire for the infinite. Considering the place of infinity in Descarte's philosophy of God and his method of doubting, I was really intrigued.
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World conquest seems like a hassle, especially without modern communications technology. I think I would pass. Making the Kandra seems cool. No clue how I would make them, but they seem like a better kind of life than humans. At the very least I am trying to get myself that deal. Can I make my blessiing out of Lersium by condensing Well-stuff? I don't even need it to do anything fancy, just want to keep my memories. I guess I would spend most of the time in the Well just trying to learn the true nature of reality on a physical and spiritual level so I could use my now indefinite shapeshifting lifespan to try to trigger an Enlightenment-but-without-the-colonialism-or-empires style historic period. Maybe look into worldhopping since there are probably better species than humans I could be doing this for out there. What do I care for the scadrial of a thousand years in the future? Sure, I will try to explain expending the Well periodically is important and why, but I would probably try to be somewhere else by then. Oh and I would afflict Hoid with a recurring testicular torsion. He will randomly suffer a terrible pain in his nethers, and I will be happier for it. Hate that guy.
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We are going to have to fight the Herald like Ozymandias fought Dr Manhattan or Taylor fought Scion: We need to attack the psyche. Feels like it has only so many chances to work, but I... I don't know if that is true? One question I have about the kind of speed they all can tap is what other attributes are they able to access? They have Youth for sure, and Speed. I feel like they might have something in the genre of Pewter-like Strength. Is a Pewterarm or, worse, Pewter ferring unable to bend bars? Also, if aluminum is the thing that kills anything, developing a high-explosive anti-tank round that can deliver molten aluminum into various kinds of targets. The bazooka-style platform is compatible with mass production. Yeah, figuring out which Herald is suddenly doing this and getting relevant associates to turn on them would be a good idea. I feel like "A Herald is trying to destroy Scadrial" means that Herald has built some kind of organization which is going to either deploy large investiture weapons or implement an extermination campaign. In either case, I assume the Herald is the organizational lynch pin, but not literally the only potential target. So my plan of attack would be to start by identifying which herald this is, finding various people, institutions, and similar emotional anchors they have, as well as the key elements of their hostile organization, and pursue a campaign of allying or destroying those without alerting the principle target. Only when the target is in some kind of emotional tilt is any direct attack to be attempted.
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I doubt Wax is using the pinnacle of anti-armor firearms. While Pewterarms are tough to put down, actual anti-tank style weapons would not have been developed in his time due to there not having been the trench -> tank -> anti-tank weapon arms evolution. My personal oktaku fave of this geaneology is this : The PTRD-41 . It is a two person weapon that disables a tank. It does not destroy the tank, but it can disable tracks or pierce side when lucky. Noble weapon in my mind. The heavy machine gun especially makes it so just about anyone who is relying on armor that wears down when taking small arms damage is radically disadvantaged. Or modern artillery. I imagine the pre-Catecendre "guy fighting with glass daggers and wooden canes" type of warrior is never going to come up again, and the Era 2 kill squads use the modern weapons of the time. The nearest semantic thing to a kill squad is a "Death Squad" but those are a pretty heavy subject.
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Wait, do you know what Homestuck is? My PfP is a supepr niche minor character from that https://www.tumblr.com/tulipq/765720127524257792/tulip-porrim-pfp? under a few layers of filters. Do you mean using a Porrim Maryam PfP in general or the specific way I edited it?
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Not sure how you or anyone else takes these things, so I guess I can try to explain my pronouns here. I mean, this cannot be more awkward than explaining a chosen name, right? I don't think there are such "real things" as faeries or elves or faefolk. I like the odd fairy story, but who doesn't these days? What the pronouns really try to get at is being a nonbinary but still femme kind of vibe, without just using she/they. I do not like being referred to as a "they/them" but I am still somewhat nonbinary. I hope that makes sense. If you don't ever let it out, I think that causes problems. Not a doctor though.
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I doubt it could, since just having the right shape and a bunch of investiture isn't the same kind of substance as what is in a kandra's blessings. I do also think a sort of Radiant-body Kandra would be so cool. Getting the Lightweaver ability would let such a character be so specialized at deception and disguise, but I think there would be other really interesting stuff to think about how the old dominant cultural form of The Contract for the Kandra would feel as a point of comparison to the Oaths of the non-Lightweaver orders.
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Oh, yes. That I am new to.
