RuneScape Forum Archive | Seren: Pulling Zaros' Rug

Dec

2023

Cthris

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Hguoh said :
Cthris said :
1) Ah but would you not say the twins contain flesh too? So what's the difference?

2) Nothing cannot be acted upon, otherwise it can't be nothing. Thus nothing cannot be converted. It's not the case that it doesn't make much sense, but the case that it makes no sense.

1) Well, no, I wouldn't. They were shards of Seren's being split off and acting autonomously from her. If anything, they were just crystal imitating flesh.

2) I said it didn't really make sense. But that comes with the territory when dealing with fantasy.

1) And the mahjarrat are not imitating flesh? CoM points out that mahjarrat flesh doesn't rot like normal flesh. It disappears magically when the mahjarrat lacks the divine energy required to sustain it. So both would be divine energy imitating flesh.

2) It's completely unnecessary, and as dumb as saying that in this universe 1 plus 1 is 7. It's literally an unfathomable concept because one cannot conceptualize nothing.

20-Jan-2017 15:54:14 - Last edited on 20-Jan-2017 16:04:37 by Cthris

Raleirosen

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Cthris said :
It's literally an unfathomable concept because one cannot conceptualize nothing. You can't conceptualize nothing. But can the Elders? Remember, we are like unto amoeba to them. If they say they can create something from nothing, then for all intents and purposes in the context of this fantasy universe, it's probably true. Patrolling Lore FC almost makes you wish for a Great Revision.

20-Jan-2017 17:26:47 - Last edited on 20-Jan-2017 17:49:18 by Raleirosen

Hguoh

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Original message details are unavailable.
And the mahjarrat are not imitating flesh? CoM points out that mahjarrat flesh doesn't rot like normal flesh. It disappears magically when the mahjarrat lacks the divine energy required to sustain it. So both would be divine energy imitating flesh.

2) It's completely unnecessary, and as dumb as saying that in this universe 1 plus 1 is 7. It's literally an unfathomable concept because one cannot conceptualize nothing.

1) Seren herself states that the Mahjarrat are not made entirely of crystal like she and Zaros were. I'd say that's evidence enough to say that the Mahjarrat are not simply imitating flesh.

Also, I never said that being made of elder god power (crystal) precludes you from being alive, although i see how it could be taken that way. What I meant was that the crystal is evidence of being created directly from elder god magic, and the absence of crystal indicates that a being is not made of elder god magic.

2) Let me give an example. In the Never Ending Story film, the land of Fantasia is being undone by 'Nothing.' This 'Nothing' devours all of Fantasia (something which nothing as we understand it cannot do) leaving literally nothing behind except for one grain of sand and the Empress of Fantasia.

To put it simply, the rules of the world and how things work are different because it is fantasy. This is what the suspension of disbelief is for.

20-Jan-2017 18:10:10 - Last edited on 20-Jan-2017 18:10:24 by Hguoh

Dec

2023

Cthris

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Raleirosen said :
Cthris said :
It's literally an unfathomable concept because one cannot conceptualize nothing. You can't conceptualize nothing. But can the Elders? Remember, we are like unto amoeba to them. If they say they can create something from nothing, then for all intents and purposes in the context of this fantasy universe, it's probably true.
It doesn't matter how intelligent a thing can be, nothing cannot be conceptualized. Our definition of nothing (which is actually an anti-definition) is something that has no properties. If someone, even a super intelligent being, were able to think of nothing that would give it a property, thus making it not nothing.

If jagex continue to insist on using the word nothing, then the nothing we talk about in game is not the same as the nothing that is not thought of in reality (Sorry for this convoluted sentence, as Parmenides would tell you nothing is rather impossible to even talk about.) They might as well have the Elder God's make stuff from "ooey gooey" or some other made up thing.

20-Jan-2017 21:06:43

Dec

2023

Cthris

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Hguoh said :

1) Seren herself states that the Mahjarrat are not made entirely of crystal like she and Zaros were. I'd say that's evidence enough to say that the Mahjarrat are not simply imitating flesh.

Also, I never said that being made of elder god power (crystal) precludes you from being alive, although i see how it could be taken that way. What I meant was that the crystal is evidence of being created directly from elder god magic, and the absence of crystal indicates that a being is not made of elder god magic.

2) Let me give an example. In the Never Ending Story film, the land of Fantasia is being undone by 'Nothing.' This 'Nothing' devours all of Fantasia (something which nothing as we understand it cannot do) leaving literally nothing behind except for one grain of sand and the Empress of Fantasia.

To put it simply, the rules of the world and how things work are different because it is fantasy. This is what the suspension of disbelief is for.

1) Okay, so again, what precludes Eluned from being counted as life? It can't be flesh can it? Tok'harr are made up of stone, and the lava of an elder tool. No flesh there. Do they not count as life? Avernic are made up of energy and are born from another energy source so no flesh. Are they not life forms?

*It doesn't necessitate it that the mahjarrat have any flesh, maybe they are also made of rock, or some other material.
*Can we even be so sure that crystal can't turn into flesh if given enough time? Perhaps Eluned eventually turned into a flesh being.

2) Like I said to Ral, they might as well replace all instances where they talk about the word nothing with the word "ooey gooey" because it's clearly not referring to the same thing.

20-Jan-2017 21:28:00 - Last edited on 20-Jan-2017 21:32:19 by Cthris

Hguoh

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Cthris said :
1) Okay, so again, what precludes Eluned from being counted as life? It can't be flesh can it? Tok'harr are made up of stone, and the lava of an elder tool. No flesh there. Do they not count as life? Avernic are made up of energy and are born from another energy source so no flesh. Are they not life forms?

*It doesn't necessitate it that the mahjarrat have any flesh, maybe they are also made of rock, or some other material.
*Can we even be so sure that crystal can't turn into flesh if given enough time? Perhaps Eluned eventually turned into a flesh being.

2) Like I said to Ral, they might as well replace all instances where they talk about the word nothing with the word "ooey gooey" because it's clearly not referring to the same thing.

1) I never said that she wasn't life. She's just not life from nothing, which is the important thing here.

2) True. That being said, you are operating under the assumption of conservation of matter and energy when you state that one cannot make something out of nothing. Is it truly so absurd an idea that the elders might use their power to cause matter to form as opposed to their magic converting into that material?

Think of it like the old genie stories. A person has 3 wishes (the power the elders have available to use). They wish for a sandwich, and it poofs into existence (making planes/life). The person is now down a wish (power is rendered unusable), the genie hasn't lost any magic (the magic didn't become a sandwich, it just forced it into existence), and the next person to pick up the lamp (the next cycle of elders after their anima feast) has another 3 wishes they can use.

20-Jan-2017 22:14:21

Dec

2023

Cthris

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Hguoh said :

1) I never said that she wasn't life. She's just not life from nothing, which is the important thing here.

2) True. That being said, you are operating under the assumption of conservation of matter and energy when you state that one cannot make something out of nothing. Is it truly so absurd an idea that the elders might use their power to cause matter to form as opposed to their magic converting into that material?

1) But if we can't even prove that the Elder Gods can make stuff from nothing which we cannot because it defies logic, and thus is unprovable, it doesn't mean anything to make that distinction because neither of Seren or the Elder Gods are distinct. This brings us full circle back to my original post. Jagex has to take some time to seriously consider their path forward. Either they go with the "ooey-gooey" approach, and make it clear in-game that the elder gods are not actually creating from nothing, or they revise the quest a bit and remove the whole "create from nothing nonsense".

2) That's not how I interpret the genie myth. Imo, genies' are beings with infinite amount of magical energy. They don't will things into existence, but instead convert a segment of their infinite amount of energy into whatever they want to exist. The problem with using this interpretation in RS is that the elder gods are not infinite. They are finite, as demonstrated by their need for anima, creation of stone of jas etc. Jagex have mistakenly tried to fit the narrative into an over-used cliche that the mytho's of their own narrative won't allow them to fit into.

20-Jan-2017 22:36:01

Hguoh

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Or, you are over thinking it (rather than letting the suspension of disbelief be) much like a certain director when he decided to try and explain his world's magic with 'midichlorians.'

20-Jan-2017 22:48:09

Dec

2023

Cthris

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Hguoh said :
Or, you are over thinking it (rather than letting the suspension of disbelief be) much like a certain director when he decided to try and explain his world's magic with 'midichlorians.'

Technically, it's not suspension of disbelief because suspension of disbelief in something is to mimic belief. But, to mimic belief you have to think about something, but you cannot conceptualize nothing, thus you just end up with a mess of contradiction.

Anyways, suspension of disbelief is usually fine in fantasy worlds because we literally live our real lives in a suspension of disbelief that the real world is as it seems. (For example, try to prove that a particular thing beyond your own consciousness exist. You probably can't, yet you suspend your disbelief because otherwise there would be no point in doing anything ) So it's really easy for us to conceptualize realities where seemingly appear to be different than our own perceived reality because we already know that our own perceived reality probably isn't plausible either.

However, suspension of disbelief does not work for axiomatic truths, 1 + 1 = 2, or being nothing being able to act upon nothing because the human mind is cannot fathom anything other than these truths. Try writing a story that is based on the conception of 1 + 1 = 7 and see how that turns out for you.

If the point of storytelling is to have it so your audience thinks they now know a good story, then it follows that it would be bad storytelling to put something in your story that the audience cannot think to know.

20-Jan-2017 23:15:50 - Last edited on 20-Jan-2017 23:18:04 by Cthris

Raleirosen

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Cthris said :
However, suspension of disbelief does not work for axiomatic truths, 1 + 1 = 2, or being nothing being able to act upon nothing because the human mind is cannot fathom anything other than these truths. Try writing a story that is based on the conception of 1 + 1 = 7 and see how that turns out for you. To quote MST3K...

"Just repeat to yourself: it's just a show,
I should really just relax." Patrolling Lore FC almost makes you wish for a Great Revision.

21-Jan-2017 00:02:54 - Last edited on 21-Jan-2017 00:11:20 by Raleirosen

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Seren: Pulling Zaros' Rug