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Start over without the ether, huh.
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Jan 7, 2022 18:01
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Yeah the "unable to control it" part kinda confused me? I could understand him dropping it because he can't fully comprehend it, but if he can use it then he can at least partially control it? It sounds like She'll is saying he can't control it whatsoever, when that seems false?? I'm not trying to do a mock thread gotcha moment here, I'm genuinely confused by this page and hope someone can explain it to me.
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Jan 7, 2022 18:11
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MikeJF posted:Start over without the ether, huh. So "man's endeavor to become god" is literally about recreating the universe the way they want it?
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Jan 7, 2022 18:18
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I don't get how trying to start over without the ether also requires coyote and his etheric presence and/or control. Maybe I'm being reductive, but if they don't want to use it, can't they just make buildings and robots the mundane way?
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Jan 7, 2022 18:36
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CodfishCartographer posted:Yeah the "unable to control it" part kinda confused me? I could understand him dropping it because he can't fully comprehend it, but if he can use it then he can at least partially control it? It sounds like She'll is saying he can't control it whatsoever, when that seems false?? Shell is referring to the lack of a controlled set of laws regarding manipulating the ether, not the degree to which Aata can do it. And we know Aata dislikes manipulating the ether 
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Jan 7, 2022 19:05
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can't control the ether? maybe it's time to KILL GOD
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Jan 7, 2022 19:17
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BSS > Gunnerkrigg Court: Kratos? Katos!
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Jan 7, 2022 19:18
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Cavatica posted:I don't get how trying to start over without the ether also requires coyote and his etheric presence and/or control. Maybe I'm being reductive, but if they don't want to use it, can't they just make buildings and robots the mundane way? Listen, not everyone is meant to tread in Sotha Sil's walking way.
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Jan 7, 2022 19:19
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Cavatica posted:I don't get how trying to start over without the ether also requires coyote and his etheric presence and/or control. Maybe I'm being reductive, but if they don't want to use it, can't they just make buildings and robots the mundane way? Because the Ether is constantly rewriting the world back based on the beliefs of those who enter it. I guess they're trying to use Etheric energies to establish an Ether dead zone wherever they're moving to?
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Jan 7, 2022 19:24
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I'm getting the impression that where the Court wants to move isn't just another country. They don't want to find a new home, they want to make one.
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Jan 7, 2022 19:44
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I think Tom is going for the classic "magic vs science" thing, since they've been contrasted so much in the comic so far. The mistake though seems to be that the Science antagonists seem to fundamentally not understand what science even is and the fact stated in this scene that the ether can't be understood or controlled is something that is patently untrue. There are plenty of things in science, both now and historically, where we're unsure of the why and that we don't have a complete theory for, but we can still observe and measure and make predictions. People in the past didn't understand how lightning is formed, but the scientific consensus wasn't to try and murder Zeus. The ether has uses and effects that are consistent and comprehensible enough that the court has spellcasters, a full quarter of their students are magic fairies and animals that have become human and they've built ether draining machines and magic computers. Of course, it's quite possible that this story is meant to portray the shadow men as a deluded cult of morons who have an undue amount of influence in the court which ends up working against themselves.
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Jan 7, 2022 21:36
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Rohan Kishibe posted:I think Tom is going for the classic "magic vs science" thing, since they've been contrasted so much in the comic so far. The mistake though seems to be that the Science antagonists seem to fundamentally not understand what science even is and the fact stated in this scene that the ether can't be understood or controlled is something that is patently untrue. Yeah, my main issue with this is that the ether obviously has deeper laws, as presented in this comic. Belief, psychopomps, even a bureaucracy for ghosts: The ether functions in ways that have been clearly outlined. We don't know much about the inner workings, but it's extremely reliable. It won't suddenly twist in your hand or do something you never expected, except in the case of Coyote, a massively powerful ether-manipulating entity that has a clear personal desire to stay incomprehensible to humans and gently caress with them. If they were overtly mad that Coyote, an rear end in a top hat dog monster, is apparently almost omnipotent... sure! I think that Coyote existing is a pretty good argument for trying to understand and control the ether in case he decides to do something like 'make another body-stealing spirit like Renard' on a lark. Arbitrarily powerful natural phenomena are a pretty good reason to figure out things like meteorology and earthquake-proof buildings. But they seem to just be mad that they can't isolate the Ether Particle, so they're going to take their ball and go home.
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Jan 7, 2022 21:44
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God I am so sick of media treating science as an entity or a force rather than a methodology informed by its practicioners.
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Jan 7, 2022 21:49
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Captain Oblivious posted:God I am so sick of media treating science as an entity or a force rather than a methodology informed by its practicioners. Can I interest you perhaps in-- Dark Science™?
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Jan 7, 2022 21:50
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I definitely agree with the assessment that the court's leadership caste is being portrayed as decidedly unscientific, in the sense of destroying their arms up in the air because they can't nail down every element in the method of action of the ether I mean, their membership includes a guy who abandoned his budding apotheosis out of what basically amounts to stubbornness? That's pretty on the nose. I like it.
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Jan 7, 2022 22:08
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Yeah, I'm having a hard time following what exactly is suppose to be Aata's (and by extension, the Shadow Men's) issue with the ether. It doesn't seem particularly uncontrollable or incomprehensible - at least no more so than something like electricity or radiation or particle physics were when those fields were in their infancy. I mean, we've already seen them be able to construct massive machines to manipulate either, create a forcefield capable of temporarily holding off a hostile god, and perform some advanced ghostology to trap a girl as a river guardian for decades, so the scientific approach seems to be making some good headway here.
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Jan 7, 2022 22:16
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A thing Bodhisattva's and/or figures with a Buddha nature are well known for super caring about: controlling poo poo.
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Jan 7, 2022 22:23
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The ether itself they seem to be okay with, since, as Shell puts it, they actually can extract it, measure it, etc. It's all the beings that use it and the connected processes that seem to be fundamentally incomprehensible. At least, that's the conclusion they've come to; that's not to say they're right, but they've been studying how this works for years and made zero progress. I see the Shadow Men as being like all those people that used to populate Tom's Formspring, asking him what kind of things Reynardine could take control of, since he can take over the body of anything that has eyes. "Okay, but how about a potato? That has eyes. Or a needle?"
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Jan 7, 2022 22:29
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Captain Oblivious posted:A thing Bodhisattva's and/or figures with a Buddha nature are well known for super caring about : controlling poo poo. perdition does seem to be a reoccurring theme
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Jan 7, 2022 22:33
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idonotlikepeas posted:The ether itself they seem to be okay with, since, as Shell puts it, they actually can extract it, measure it, etc. It's all the beings that use it and the connected processes that seem to be fundamentally incomprehensible. At least, that's the conclusion they've come to; that's not to say they're right, but they've been studying how this works for years and made zero progress. The current page seems to be pretty clearly saying that it's the ether itself they have an issue with, though, not just etheric beings like Renard and Coyote. "[Aata] learned there was no level of control over anything regarding the ether. So he rejected it all." "His journey brought him here to the court, where he learned of their plan to start anew without the ether. He gave up his abilities to take part. Never to use the ether himself, only to help mankind escape it"
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Jan 7, 2022 22:35
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The thing is that there are loads of ways to control the ether, they've just arbitrarily rejected them all, so... I don't actually understand what their position is well enough to explain why it's stupid.
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Jan 7, 2022 22:38
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Potato Salad posted:perdition does seem to be a reoccurring theme If only that perdition came from a believable place it might even be a theme worth exploring! But like “The world is unfair and tons of poo poo is outside your control” is like precept ONE along the path to being a Buddha, it’s the first or drat near first thing you grapple with, and you expect me to believe he conked out at the eleventh hour because of this? Nah.
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Jan 7, 2022 22:41
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Snake Maze posted:The current page seems to be pretty clearly saying that it's the ether itself they have an issue with, though, not just etheric beings like Renard and Coyote. It's not the ether in the sense of "the energy they figured out how to bottle", it's anything regarding it; not just etheric beings but processes as well. If the ether is what makes those beings and those processes possible, starting over without it (however they intend to accomplish that) would eliminate the things they have a problem with.
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Jan 7, 2022 22:44
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idonotlikepeas posted:It's not the ether in the sense of "the energy they figured out how to bottle", it's anything regarding it; not just etheric beings but processes as well. If the ether is what makes those beings and those processes possible, starting over without it (however they intend to accomplish that) would eliminate the things they have a problem with. Okay, I swear I'm not trying to be an rear end here: I have no idea what you're trying to say or how it's supposed to clarify anything. The ether, including its "processes", Snake Maze posted:doesn't seem particularly uncontrollable or incomprehensible - at least no more so than something like electricity or radiation or particle physics were when those fields were in their infancy. I mean, we've already seen them be able to construct massive machines to manipulate either, create a forcefield capable of temporarily holding off a hostile god, and perform some advanced ghostology to trap a girl as a river guardian for decades, so the scientific approach seems to be making some good headway here. Add in the Donlan's computer if you need another example of the ether being manipulated to productive ends while also being comprehensible and controllable and compatible with science. What exactly is Aata's issue with the ether, what makes it uncontrollable in a way that the rest of physics isn't? I can easily understand if they have an issue with Coyote or Loup or whatever, but Aata is clearly going beyond that and including even things like his own healing powers, and I don't understand why.
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Jan 7, 2022 23:14
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Well, obviously we're only talking about my own interpretation of the text, but: The issue is not that some things aren't repeatable. The eye thing I mentioned is an example: Reynardine can take over anything that has eyes. That means you could reasonably predict all of the things that he can take over the body of by detecting whether the thing has eyes or not. But what principles underly this? What is it about having eyes that makes this work? If something (potatoes, say) started being regarded as having "eyes" when previously it wasn't, it would start being susceptible to Reynardine's power, but why? How does the casual relationship work? That seems to be the root of the Court's problem with the ether; it's not so much that they can't exert limited control over it, it's that they can't fully understand it, which means that in the end it remains at least somewhat uncontrollable. What if you based some sort of computer on Reynardine's power assuming it would work on potatoes, but then for whatever reason potatoes stopped counting as having eyes and your process collapsed for no obvious reason? There's a certain kind of person that would find that absolutely intolerable. Anja explains the distinction way back here - it's not that the Donlan Computer doesn't work, it's that they can't explain to anyone why it works. They just know that if it does thing A, thing B will be the result, at least for now (and that might arbitrarily change or stop working, which is the main problem with manipulating something you don't understand). The Court knows that they can take some energy called "the ether", store it, and transmit it, but they have no idea how someone like Coyote uses that energy to accomplish any of the things Coyote has done over the course of the comic. They know there's some link there, but despite studying it for some time they have absolutely no explanation for it. It's fair to compare this with the beginnings of understanding something like electricity or particle physics, but this isn't the beginning; the use of alchemical symbols implies that in this world, the study of the ether has been going on since at least the middle of the twelfth century, and likely long before that. Generally if something like the potato example above occurs in real science, you would take a step back and try to come up with a new theory that incorporates the sudden failure of potatoes to have eyes into a new hypothesis that covers all the facts, but as far as we've seen in the last few pages (and the last several years of the comic), this approach fails because the hypothesis ultimately ends up becoming too broad ("It just does, okay?"). The Shadow Men are a group of people that have given up on the idea that there even is an explanation that would make any kind of sense, or at least one that is comprehensible to human minds, and believe that we'd have a better, more just world if it relied on natural laws and didn't have beings that could arbitrarily violate them. I do not believe that we, as readers of the comic, are meant to necessarily agree with these conclusions or what they've chosen to do about them, but we are meant to believe this is a conclusion a group of people could have come to without being complete morons. It's also worth noting that we do have people like the Donlans and Eglamore who don't seem to think like this; the Court isn't a single monolithic entity, but is composed of different groups of people that have different ideas about topics like the ether. It's also also worth noting that the comic hasn't referred to any of this as "science". The science vs magic thing is something readers have said. idonotlikepeas fucked around with this message at 00:19 on Jan 8, 2022 |
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Jan 8, 2022 00:16
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I mean, do we know why the speed of light is what it is?
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Jan 8, 2022 00:24
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I don't really think that Aatas motivation is that hard to decipher or selfish? He realized that while there exist unique cases that can use ether due to their special circumstances, humans as a whole will never be able to control and utilize ether using science the way they were able to control and utilize nature. Worse than that, most of them are better off not knowing anything etheric exist, because trying to poke at ether without possessing said special circumstances will make you end like Jack or Tony (Tony is great example. He is by all accounts a brilliant scientists, who directly works for organization trying to tame ether and he still got utterly hosed the instant he came across the first etheric being willing to exploit him). As a direct consequence, mankind as a whole will be forever cut off from a major and important part of the world and will never be able to participate in it as anything else than fuel or victims. And Aataa considers it a massive injustice inherent in the system that disgust him to the point he considers using his exclusive etheric powers as a personal failure and is willing to remake the world to correct it. Also I think people vastly overestimate consistency and strength of the etheric rules. Remember this strip? All creation myths about stars being true at the same time makes for a good story, but it might also present a bit of a pickle for someone trying to figure out consistent rules for their behavior and origin in ether.
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Jan 8, 2022 00:31
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Okay nevermind aata loving rules. A dude on the verge of enlightenment who decides that the way the world works is bullshit and ragequits from interacting with half of reality all together, because it should be different, God dammit!!! A dude that misses the point of the four noble truths this badly belongs in k6bd  Rohan Kishibe posted:I think Tom is going for the classic "magic vs science" thing, since they've been contrasted so much in the comic so far. The mistake though seems to be that the Science antagonists seem to fundamentally not understand what science even is and the fact stated in this scene that the ether can't be understood or controlled is something that is patently untrue. Let me assure you there is nothing more Scientific than becoming so pissed off at how the world works that you throw a tantrum and toss all your toys out of the pram. A big flaming stink fucked around with this message at 00:49 on Jan 8, 2022 |
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Jan 8, 2022 00:45
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Rand Brittain posted:I mean, do we know why the speed of light is what it is? We know why light moves at that speed, sort of, but there is going to be a bottom level where "it just does, okay" is actually the explanation. Of course, every time we find that level, we start looking for an explanation for it in the hopes of reducing it (ideally, to a single factor). Having an entire field of study where you can't reduce it at all would definitely be discouraging.
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Jan 8, 2022 00:51
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To some degree, you have to believe that the speed of light is what it is, that nirvana is the end of human suffering, and so on. I could see having the promise of enlightenment torn away from you (and the contradiction that human faith itself is what powers both ends of the spectrum) driving a religious man to despondency.
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Jan 8, 2022 01:22
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I just don't think 'belief shapes the ether' is particularly unpredictable or outside of control either. If it were the 'humans are always going to be the fuel and playthings of godlike entities that are clearly assholes' I would be entirely fine with it - as noted, Coyote is a great argument for figuring out how to stop Coyote. But their argument as given applies to non-etheric nature, too. We can't turn off death or toggle the gravity switch; our understanding is pretty broad, but we're still stuck with a set of results and situations that are not in fact totally plastic to human will. Ether is particularly turbulent and weird, I'm sure, but "Renard needs something to have eyes" is not actually a collapse of logic, it's just literary or conceptual logic instead of mechanical. The Court could, in fact, manipulate that, and did by trapping him. It's pretty clear that a major element of this story is the distinction between intuitive, mysterious nature and rational, knowable civilization (and how people actually live in between these operations). But the ether's intuitive, mysterious nature goes precisely as far as the author's own depiction of it as mysterious, intuitive, numinous. I don't really buy it. There are rules, and while something like Coyote gets to do whatever he wants, it doesn't seem to be because there aren't rules - it's like being ants and meeting a human. The rules of the universe just happen to favor Coyote in important ways. Again, if the reasoning was 'we can't deal with Coyote etc, and humans may never be able to, so we need a way to cut off or domesticate the ether' it would be a perfectly functional motivation. It just feels like the larger principle doesn't add up the way the comic wants it to, even as the smaller case of 'gently caress a Coyote' works perfectly well.
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Jan 8, 2022 02:14
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I think the view currently being espoused is meant to directly conflict with the one held by Coyote. The contention of the Court/Shadow Men is "nothing can control or shape the ether." Coyote's view is that human belief is what controls and shapes the ether. The sole thing, even, claiming that he himself does not actually exist. It's been heavily implied that this shaping happens when a person dies. If the Court even knows about this idea (Annie was alone during The Great Secret, can't recall if or who she told about the idea; Kat was there during the Realm of the Dead stuff, and has heard a bit about the psychopomps, but most of this is information that the audience has that most of the cast does not), I think even they would balk at the ethics of how to go about testing it. But I'm pretty sure they don't know about the idea at all. In a sense, both views can be right; since human belief is to a great degree impossible to control, so are the capabilities of the ether. Kat appears to be turning into a robot god. We've long assumed this is because some part of the process of giving the robots humanoid bodies makes them good enough for the ether. It occurs to me that this may be a two step process. Shell has pointed out that only Kat (and I guess maybe Tony) understands the engineering behind the new bodies. She didn't even realize these were robots until she recognized one of them as Arthur (which took prompting, context clues and having directly known him beforehand). Most people will just assume the humanoid robots are people. That belief gets carried into the ether first, making the humanoid robots actually human. They still recognize Kat as giving them their new bodies, and now that they've been rendered human by the belief of the rest of humanity they've encountered, their belief in her divinity gets carried to the ether successfully. Kantesu fucked around with this message at 02:27 on Jan 8, 2022 |
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Jan 8, 2022 02:19
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Captain Oblivious posted:If only that perdition came from a believable place it might even be a theme worth exploring! it's like a kludgy D&D character background I mean, it can work, I'm inclined to give it a bit of time Potato Salad fucked around with this message at 02:31 on Jan 8, 2022 |
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Jan 8, 2022 02:28
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Rand Brittain posted:I mean, do we know why the speed of light is what it is? yes, deeply.
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Jan 8, 2022 02:29
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Kantesu posted:I think the view currently being espoused is meant to directly conflict with the one held by Coyote. it kind of strikes me as very unlikely that coyote wasnt going around shouting about his great secret to literally anyone who would listen also i have been working off an assumption that the reason kat is able to do all the genius smart poo poo is because her divinity's influence is acausal
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Jan 8, 2022 02:41
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Kantesu posted:It's been heavily implied that this shaping happens when a person dies. If the Court even knows about this idea (Annie was alone during The Great Secret, can't recall if or who she told about the idea; Kat was there during the Realm of the Dead stuff, and has heard a bit about the psychopomps, but most of this is information that the audience has that most of the cast does not), I think even they would balk at the ethics of how to go about testing it. But I'm pretty sure they don't know about the idea at all.
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Jan 8, 2022 02:50
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Potato Salad posted:yes, deeply. I agree. I don't think the speed of light is a good example for this idea of unanswerable questions. It's a bit of kinda masturbatory philosophy, but as a physicist, I think the question "why is the speed of light in a vacuum 300,000,000 m/s" sort of doesn't even make sense. c is just, y'know, S P E E D. it is the very essence of what speed means, and every other possible speed is just a fraction of c. And the fact that we've decided that one three hundred millionth of c is a "meter per second" is human business, not universe business. You might as well ask "why is 7, 7?" Well, 7=7 because that's the reflexive property of equality. It is what it is. No mystery. Physicists often use systems of units where c is defined to be 1 - no units, no nothing. It's why we'll sometimes say something like "the mass of an electron is 511 keV" even though "keV" is a unit of energy, not mass - it's really 511 keV / c^2, but since c=1, we don't worry about it. A more mysterious question would be: why is speed? Why do the universe's laws include a concept such as "speed"? There are plenty of other, similar questions one can ask. Questions like: why are there 3 families of leptons and quarks? Why are there four dimensions (probably)? Why does the Pauli exclusion principle apply to fermions but not bosons? Why aren't there more (or fewer) fundamental forces? Why does the universe exist at all? Etc. These are all questions to which we will likely never have an answer; unless we someday find out where our universe came from, we're not going to be able to understand why physical laws are what they are. This is distinct from "higher-level" questions like: what is the fundamental nature of gravity in the context of quantum mechanics? What is dark matter? etc. These questions we can answer, though we have not, yet. And it can be hard to tell the difference, sometimes. Perhaps I'm wrong, and someday we will have a compelling explanation for why there are 3 families of leptons and quarks - but whatever theory explains that, of course we could ask "why is that theory the way that it is?" Sooner or later we get to a question that can't be answered. (The alternative, that there is an infinite nest of "why" questions, all answerable, is a bit maddening to think about, and seems logically dubious.) But you notice that I was able (or at least, I believe I am able) to distinguish between the fundamental, unanswerable questions, and the higher-level, emergent questions, even though we haven't answered them yet. I think that's what's got the Shadow Men/Court authorities all hosed up. The phenomena they're trying to understand (Coyote, Renard, Jones, etc.) are very clearly extremely complex. They have much more in common with questions like "why do the planets revolve around the Sun" than they do with questions like "why is gravity." They seem like emergent phenomena from principles that the Court does not yet understand, but are, in principle, understandable. So they try to understand, and fail. Over and over. Nothing is logical, nothing is repeatable, nothing is sensible at all. To have made no progress in hundreds(?) of years has got to be pretty frustrating. So what's the conclusion? It is either that things like "Coyote exists and has x, y, z powers" are fundamental, inscrutable facts of the universe, which even Coyote himself disagrees with, or it is the case that the universe is fundamentally illogical, and all mathematics and science is a farce. Either their questions are unanswerable (though they seem like they shouldn't be), or they (and everything else in the universe) are nonsensical. The court hates both of these options, and who can blame them? As Shell explained, this is completely at odds with everything known about the universe outside of "etheric" stuff, which can generally be explained in simpler terms. How can one even hope to resolve that discrepancy? Well, it sure seems like the Court has an idea on that front, with this "start anew without the ether" business.
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Jan 8, 2022 02:51
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It also occurs to me that the Court may just be complete poo poo at doing science with the ether because they're seeing what Kat sees when she looks at the Realm of the Dead, only, even more so. Instead of seeing Coyote's impressive and disturbing visual effects, they just see a literal mangy dog that talks and is also sometimes omnipotent.
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Jan 8, 2022 03:12
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DontMockMySmock posted:So what's the conclusion? It is either that things like "Coyote exists and has x, y, z powers" are fundamental, inscrutable facts of the universe, which even Coyote himself disagrees with, or it is the case that the universe is fundamentally illogical, and all mathematics and science is a farce. Either their questions are unanswerable (though they seem like they shouldn't be), or they (and everything else in the universe) are nonsensical. The court hates both of these options, and who can blame them? As Shell explained, this is completely at odds with everything known about the universe outside of "etheric" stuff, which can generally be explained in simpler terms. How can one even hope to resolve that discrepancy? Well, it sure seems like the Court has an idea on that front, with this "start anew without the ether" business. this sounds very similar to einstein'a refusal to accept, and then outrage at the non-deterministic nature of quantum mechanics. i think it does a great job of showing the court has invested so much sense of self-worth in the "rational" nature of what they believe science to be that they would rather deny reality altogether than admit they were wrong. it would mean admitting that their sense of superiority over the forest is baseless.
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Jan 8, 2022 03:24
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The collective belief of the entire human race is definitely outside of control or manipulation. And even if it can be partially controlled, that's not nearly good enough. Let's do a thought experiment: imagine that someone tells you there's a new type of airplane. It can get you to anywhere in the world in half an hour. The downside is that it only works as long as 72% of the people who die in a one-year period believe that it works. If the number ever dips below that, they'll stop working, and all the planes that are currently in the air will drop out of it, killing everyone inside. There is also no way to measure how many people currently believe the planes work. It might be 95% right now, or it might be 72.001%. Would you get on one of those planes? Would anyone? (Yes, of course, there's always someone.) You could also say that you want to get rid of the 437 types of flying monster that might eat an airplane on rare occasions, but I don't think you need it to make your case. We certainly can't control gravity in the sense of turning it off or on or strengthening or weakening it, but we can build machines that account for it or even rely on it to work. The control that we have there isn't over gravity itself, it's over the world in which gravity exists and is predictable. Except there might be some rear end in a top hat dog who can just change the gravitational constant locally or even maybe across the entire universe just for giggles. Or maybe it just might stop working because of some factor about human belief that you can't predict or understand. That eliminates all the control that you thought you had based on your understanding of gravity, because the presence of the ether and ethereal effects make things that normally are laws into suggestions. That's the factor I mean when I say some people find the situation intolerable. And not all people, or even all scientists; I'll point at the Donlans again as an example of sympathetic, very smart people who are interested in this topic and seem perfectly at home using their magic computer to do magic all day. There are even discussions of etheric sciences and etheric technology that is presumably produced by people like them (and Diego, who did all of his apparently technological wizardry through actual wizardry.) There is a population of the Court that is, to put it simply, a pack of arrogant douchebags, and it seems like they're the ones behind the anti-ether plan.
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Jan 8, 2022 04:55
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