The best thing is that it’s rooted so deeply in… Well, in how we thought about the world for a long time (entropy, “what’s after death is what’s before birth”) and some solid – if unproven, as far as I understand – ideas about determinism.
PBS Spacetime and Sabine Hossenfelder have decent vids on that, but the last time I tried posting links the post vanished.
You said exactly what i was thinking.
Dang, come for some good slice ’em up escapism and get nihilistic existential dread.
Of all possible directions this story could have gone, i never would have guessed this.
On the other hand, Allison has gone into other gods’ realms and shown the falsity of their rule and come out stronger for it. So perhaps we can hope that Nothing is merely one more phase of Allison’s training and she will be the better for it.
Of course *we’re* still looking into the chasm without magic forehead keys to save us from oblivion.
Oh I enjoy the moments I can. Determinism doesn’t bother me, inevitable permanent death does. I like being alive! I like drinking this drink, eating this ass!
Well, she’s associated with the vice of Sloth, and the medieval conception of Sloth has a lot in common with the modern clinical understanding of depression….
Pretty sure “what’s after death is what’s before birth” is still a pretty common idea among people who aren’t religious so the past tense here confused me a bit.
This is a very solipsistic way of thinking. The “fragile skein of tangible processes strung across neurons” might not outlast your physical self, but yours isn’t the only one, and the whole of existence does not begin or end with your subjective experience. The peace of mind isn’t found in some sanctified I, but in recognition of the We. I could make some joke about a Gog-Agog worm here, but that’d defeat the point — that this isn’t a solo race, it’s a relay.
I just hope for the sake of the story that Allison figures that out before it’s too late.
This is *Past Jadis’* perspective looking at the future result of her inaction. The simulation will halt when simulated All-Yisun convinces Past Jadis to change somthing. But, If they don’t win the resulting time loop will kill Jadis.
After a brief chuckle at the monks joke the vendor hands him his hot dog with everything and says ‘That’ll be $4 please’. The monk hands over a $10 bill and waits whilst the vendor just stares back at him…. Awkwardly the monk ask’s ‘What about my change’?.
‘Ah’ replies the hot dog vendor, ‘Change must come from within’.
In a more personal sense, we are more than just stories. Each person who loves you or hates you, they can conjur you in their head. The part of them that echos with the silent voice of thought, will call upon your memory not as a dry timeline or obituary, but as a speaking imagining. We convince ourselves we exist and are important, and we can look into the eyes of another and see that same spark. So what makes it any less real, if you live in the mind of another. If you give them comfort, isn’t that real? You might not benefit after death, but at least you can imagine that you might be with them every time they think of you or tell your stories. I think that’s a comforting thought.
Determinism asserts that a higher power has measured everything and our actions are already set in stone.
Existentialism asserts that there is NO higher power and that every decision we make is important.
One asserts that freedom is an illusion. The other asserts that safety is an illusion. Both are terrifying. I’m still not sure which is worse…
And of course nobody notices that indeterminism wouldn’t help at all. In either case, in the end, only one thing actually does happen. We probably don’t know what it’s going to be either way, and it’s not like it being random would help make better decisions. If we could look at time from the outside, it would look frozen either way.
Of course, somebody like Jadis existing within time and still seeing it all, that is, in advance rather than from off to the side, automatically makes it at least some kind of pseudodeterminism. And if she sees a bad end, you’d want that not to be determined to be so. But the real point presumably isn’t supposed to be whether it’s going in a bad direction or not.
That is false. Determinism is entirely compatible with existentialism. Determinism doesn’t mean a higher order caused it, it just means that every action follows predictably from the thing before it. You have a thought because the enzymes and neurons in your brain followed determined natural laws, according to physics, and produced the thought, as well as the sensation that you are making the thought. It fits perfectly with existentialism.
Gundhram the Reader, Belligerent Knight and Amateur Historian
Nah, this is nothing but bland and hideous nihilism. A flat assed philosophy born of taking one look at the overarching truth of the world and and breaking under the weight of its inherent nonexistence.
Stupid sexy existentialism requires the confidence and capacity to to create meaning in the face of Life, the universe and everything else ultimately having none.
How is this “bland and hideous”? This is very likely (some would argue “most likely”) how reality works.
Find meaning in that, as a part of a larger, eternal whole. That is, if you are able to get out of the instinctual reaction of “but I have free will, this cannot be true”.
Determinism is how reality works, and nihilism is how we interpret it. When Jadis says life is meaningless or something or everything doesn’t matter, that’s imposing mortal thoughts and emotion on something that we can’t fundamentally understand – the machine of existence.
She’s speaking as if she expects to be a god or spirit that should be separate from a physical body or temporary soul flame – something that can expect some form of supernatural enlightenment. Naturally – why else would she become a demiurge? Which explains why she’s so broken.
Only if you believe that ‘value’ must be a feature of the entire universe to ‘count’, rather than a feature of existing as a certain kind of creature carved from warm black flame. I happen to quite like the features of existing thus, and see no reason to discount them just because other creatures in other places and times might not experience the same things.
Indeed. It is only self-delusion if reality contradicts it. But in the absence of inherent meaning in reality, we are simply creating a personal meaning (or a collective chorus of meanings). This is not delusion, and may even be a infinitesimal grain of true Royalty.
“Battle not with monsters, lest ye become a monster, and if you gaze into the abyss, the abyss gazes also into you.” – seems apropos to Allison’s current situation.
Let me say this before we begin, this is not a crack at you. That said…
A very common mistake in this translation is the use of “if”. Neitzsche very, very specifically did not say “if” you gaze into the abyss, he pointedly used “WHEN.”
Because he knew, for a damn certainty, that we all will gaze into the abyss at some point. Everyone is going to have to confront it at some point in their lives. Interesting how such a small word changes the whole meaning, huh?
Anyway I still haven’t seen a sword in a dogs age and I’ve eaten all the little sticks that I was pretending were swords and swinging around and going “whoosh, swoosh” (sword sounds), because of sword hunger. Please send help in the form of a sword that I can look at in a respectful way and maybe respectfully touch with my index finger and I can also think about it too.
“The third man,” YISUN said, “checks his canteen, and finds he will soon be a dead man. Yet he is resolute, and presses onwards anyway, looking for his destination.”
“Does he find it?” asked Hansa.
“No,” said YISUN, “Quite plainly. His death finds him at the appointed time. Yet he presses on anyway, until the moment his corpse hits the dust.”
In times like these I think it best to remind ourselves of the wise words of YSUN and meditate on their meaning.
“Ending is a small light in a vast cavern growing dim,” said YISUN, plainly, as was the manner.
“When the light goes out, what will happen to the cavern?”
“It and the universe will cease to exist, for how can we see anything without any light, no matter how small?” said YISUN. Hansa was somewhat dismayed, but sensed a lesson, as was the manner.
“Darkness is the natural state of caverns,” said he, vexingly, “if I were a cavern, I would be glad to be rid of the pest of light and exist obstinately anyway!”
The concept of free will is, at best, compatible with determinism. If we go with the compatiblist view, free will is not at all like most people naively think of it. And the compatiblist version of free will would probably be disappointing to most people.
But putting that all aside, determinism can be free of intent or full of intent. Having all the causality of the universe full of intent is what we mean when we say, “It’s god’s will” or “It’s god’s plan.” Determinism full of intent is teleological, which is to say that the whole process, all the causality, is progressing toward some final *intended* goal.
But determinism can also be free of intent. All causality is set by natural forces and it’s not progressing towards anything. Shit just happens. It’s all blind fate.
It’s pretty clear that, as a godlike being herself, Jadis believes in this latter position. She apparently has found nothing to convince herself otherwise.
All of existence is blind fate, and through said blindness we have free will. By truly seeing the shape of everything, by opening her eyes, Jadis has damned herself to her infinite repose.
Free will is completely incompatible with determinism.
Or determinism has nothing to say about free will at all.
It all depends on how you look at it.
The universe is set in amber, as Jadis says. But if you can’t see the amber, you might as well pretend you have free will, because the universe where we pretend to have free will and try to make the world a better place is better than the one where we don’t.
But whatever we choose has always been what we will choose, and we never really had a choice in the matter in the first place.
We are just following the groove in the amber laid out for us by the deterministic nature of the universe.
If this were not all true, then the scientific method wouldn’t work.
I suggest that this is why everybody lost their shit over quantum mechanics. All the random stuff cancels out at the you-and-me level, and “god” does not roll dice, but at the atomic/subatomic level it’s all dice rolls, particles pop into and ut of existance, electrons ‘tunnel’ through otherwise impermiable barriiers, etc.
Both relativity’s blind fate (That space-time is an eternal, unchanging four dimensional shape) and quantum mechanic’s blind chance are not much refuge for naive notions of free will.
Personally, I don’t really believe in free will, nor do I really believe in consciousness (The more we learn about how the brain really operates the more shallow and illusory consciousness becomes but that’s for another thread.), but I will admit my body and brain have been shaped by evolution to *behave* as if I really believed in those things.
Those tests they ran where the subject began to act before the brain had registered the choice certainly threw the free will crowd for a loop. We act according to our biological programming, that’s all. Consciousness is a mistake of evolution, an inconsequential and ultimately horrific byproduct because it allows us just enough awareness to understand the fact that we are hurled into an non-sentient, unaware and uncaring universe of inconceivable vastness, that we can’t actually know what anything is, that truth is inaccessible to the human consciousness by means of language, and that the inevitable endpoint of this life of irreconcilable confusion pain hideous lingering illness infirmity and terror is non-existence.
Like Cormac McCarthy said, “if you could banish the fear of death from every man’s heart they wouldn’t live a day.”
I live in the vain hope that someday soon there will be a panel with a sword in it and I can go “wow that’s a lovely sword to look at and think about, what a nice time I’m having” and then I’ll die as hell imho tbqh ftw
“The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far. The sciences, each straining in its own direction, have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the light into the peace and safety of a new dark age.”
To be fair, consciousness must have some useful function for social mammals, if only to organize and remember a complicated culture–or something. I’ll grant that there may be aspects of consciousness that just emerged as side products or side effects with no real useful application. It is a deep mystery, not yet fully understood by science or philosophy.
But I’m getting us waaaaaaay off the confrontation between Allison and Jadis. It’s just that all this talk about determinism got me to thinking.
Allison is impulsive–as both White Chain and Ciocie have often worried about–and it seems unlikely she’ll have good counters for Jadis’ positions on things. Allie is a former barista from LA–probably the least philosophically oriented profession I can think of. 😀
Yea, no. Lovecraft was incredibly paranoid, and it’s really not clear how much he of his writing he genuinely thought was true; to the extent there was a well defined (or unchanging) line between belief and suspension of disbelief, it’s not really clear where that line lies with Lovecraft towards his work. And that’s before we bring in metaphorical interpretations.
Dude was a small man that could be frightened by his own reflection. Of course he thought reality was terrifying. Pale Blue Dot is a refutation of Lovecraft’s position; that optimistic nihilism is the true refuge in the storm of reality, not some grasping for external greater meaning. It is not knowledge that is maddening, it is not accepting knowledge and trying to fight it that is maddening.
There is much the scientific method cannot touch. The universe may very well end when I am not around to observe it. There can be no double-blind control-grouped studies to test this and prove to 95% certainty that the universe will not continue to exist obstinately without me. But I hope it does and live my little life as though it will.
The Machine which killed every other person but Jadis who ever tried to use it, and she invites Alice-un? I smell a trap. The Lady of Infinite Repose knows what is supposed to happen of course, but she may yet be lying about The Rising King’s true fate, and there may yet be surprises even for the omniscient. What will happen to Jadis’s mind when Alice proves true to her character and steps off the preordained path?
I feel like, from a people-who-aren’t-Jadis perspective, that fact is a saving grace.
Sure, Jadis knows everything. But we can never know if she’s telling the truth. So from our perspective, there might as well *not* be an omniscient deity, since whether she’s lying is not something we can determine.
We might as well live life from our own limited perspective.
Jadis didn’t quite say that Allison will live another 35 years. She said that she’d die in another 35 years.
The distinction may be important because we’ve seen (although obscurely), in the comic, an Allison who traveled backwards from the future. Allison may have far more than 35 years of subjective time ahead of her, since she could live an arbitrary amount of time from now, travel backwards an arbitrary amount of time, repeat this process an arbitrary number of times, and then finally perish 35 years from the present in the comic. And even then, Zoss has shown that “death” can be little more than inconvenience (although Jadis’ words here imply that Allison won’t “go Zoss”, although it’s unclear if Jadis is even aware of Zoss in whatever state he exists in now).
If you’re the one-eyed man in the land of the blind, it’s easy to become convinced that you have such superior vision that you can see everything and yet completely missing out on how much you can’t actually see.
Just because she can see through time, doesn’t mean that she can see beyond death. Just because she can see a single linear timeline, doesn’t mean it can’t branch… just that she doesn’t see any because the branch becomes the trunk. Her very certitude makes me think that she’s ultimately wrong.
If it actually is, I will literally eat my own shit, because her omniscience says Alison will totally fail and if she does, that will make KSBD the longest shaggy dog story I’ve ever read and one of the biggest wastes of time I’ve ever engaged in.
Jadis can only see the shape of the Wheel. There’s clearly things that happen beyond the Wheel that can change it. Otherwise KSBD doesn’t happen at all.
From Jadis’ perspective free will doesn’t exists, because it’s all a matter of choosing which pre-established road to follow and all the possible outcomes of every choice are already set in place for her to see. This means that every time she talks about what’s going on she’s always playing with more cards than anyone else.
Maybe Jadis told Alison that she will fail because that’s what Alison needs to believe in order to actually win? Given what happened so far Jadis is obviously on Alison’s side (at the very least she’s against Jagganoth) so it’s safe to assume that she’s trying to help her. If Alison “already lost” what’s the point of saving her and keeping her alive for all this time in this palace? Alison might die at some point in the future, but maybe she won’t fail
I suspect, without Abbadon having stated this, that Jadis is only omniscient in the context of one great cycle. I think that when Zoss/Metatron/whoever lunges for the reset switch, the new cycle gets a new history, a bit like changing a RNG seed. That history might be fixed from the reset, in which case continually resetting is just a way of imposing some free will on a metaphysics that don’t want it.
Bullshit there’s nothing waiting for her. She’ll become a beggar on the street with all the other dead. This is why YISUN is a better philosopher than the nihlists
Something I was thinking about while reading. Jadis is either truly all knowing (is aware of literally every single atom, wave, bacteria, animal, person, thought in all of time and space.) or she only knows what it all will be as long as she does and says what she has seen, let me explain. Imagine you are playing chess, you suddenly become aware of what you and your opponent will do. The game ends with you winning, so you act it out exactly how you know it will go. But had you done something differently then you won’t know what your opponent will do anymore, so the possible future you saw is no longer possible. However if you don’t believe you can go off the beaten path and instead of winning you where doomed to lose, the whole game would be completely pointless. In Jadis’s case she has seen all that was and what will be, ALL OF IT. Everything would feel pointless if you truly believed that none of it could be changed, its sit in stone or Amber. however the whole “I did X because that’s what I was supposed to do” makes me inclined to believe its the latter.
The next logical question would seem to be: Has Jadis ever TRIED to change what she’s supposed to do? Or is she using this as an excuse to have to make no decisions for herself anymore? She IS the Sloth Demiurge after all…
Exactly. If you see a perfect plan to its absolute smallest detail, it is very likely that any human mind would become terrified of subverting that plan, because you would then return to uncertainty. While being “all knowing” you are the most powerful rat in the maze, but if you change things you become as uncertain as any of the others.
I think it comes down to the question of how total her omniscience is.
Does she see a single “block universe”, a deterministic sequence of state transitions? Or does she see all possibilities and their end results? Is she quantum or Newtonian?
I don’t understand why is people so aggravated when facing this obvious truth. Our personal life matters (to us and few, very few others) in our small, oh so very small, personal scale. But in the bigger picture we’re completely irrelevant; this should be obvious to anyone with more than two working neurons.
Are we so desperate to feel like great protagonists of some epic tale that, when confronted with our mundane insignificance, so many of us fall into anger and denial?
One man can be the difference between victory, and defeat.
Small and inconsequential lives have ripples and shadows that persist long after they end, both materially and spiritually.
A sunflower planted by Kadmos, a Spartan helot, shifted the wind patterns a hundred years later, granting Alexander the Great favorable weather in his first and most important battle against the Persian empire.
A small donation to a local church in Penrith in the 13th century by Tenney Ditchdigger hastened the onset of the industrial revolution by 3 months.
The future exists in the wake of the present, just as the present exists in the wake of the past. The tapestry is seamless, chaotic, and beautiful.
My personal favorite example of “wake of the past” phenomena is horse butts’ effects on spaceship design. Roman horse-drawn war chariots created ruts the width of about two horses’ butts (about 4ft, 8.5in). Wagon designers followed this standard so that wheels stayed intact. This design schema created the standard width for the first European railroads, which stayed the standard width for the first US railroads–4ft, 8.5in. Rocket boosters made in Utah need(ed) to be transported through a railroad tunnel to get from factory to launch site; a railroad tunnel that is, of course, only slightly wider than the standard width: 4ft, 8.5in… the width of two horse butts.
The future exists in the wake of the present, just as the present exists in the wake of the past.
NOTHIIIIIIIIIIIIIING
Nothing, tra-la-la?
I love to read comics, and this is a one of my favourite.
This camera takes incredible photos.
Purrfect…but if this abyss blinks like all the others do when I stare into them. I’m going to be slightly peeved.
I missed this part that time.
She’s gonna look into the machine, see that the next 35 years include a whopping four more pages, and decide to renegotiate her contract
Nothing to say.
EXISTENTIAL DREAD
A pessimist: “Oh, good. This shit does end.”
An optimist: “Then what I have left in my life, I really gotta enjoy! Hey, you like popcorn, right?”
Maya: “Did I tell you to kill God? I did, didn’t I? You thought I was joking, too.”
WHERE
IS
MAYA?
– “Feels like life means nothing at all! Nothing at all! Nothing at all!”
– Stupid nihilistic Jadis
“Get out of my miiiiiind!!” -Reverend Mother Gaius Helen Mohiam
Get into my car – Billy Ocean, early 1980s
FUCKING
METAL
Truly Jadis is the most terrifying of all the demiurges. She’s existential dread itself.
Also, the hole getting bigger? Nightmare fuel. Bravo.
Precious little unsettles me in fiction these days. This did.
The best thing is that it’s rooted so deeply in… Well, in how we thought about the world for a long time (entropy, “what’s after death is what’s before birth”) and some solid – if unproven, as far as I understand – ideas about determinism.
PBS Spacetime and Sabine Hossenfelder have decent vids on that, but the last time I tried posting links the post vanished.
Yeah totally. These are my deepest fears on a page and I can’t imagine how she’s *wrong*. That’s why it cuts so deeply.
You said exactly what i was thinking.
Dang, come for some good slice ’em up escapism and get nihilistic existential dread.
Of all possible directions this story could have gone, i never would have guessed this.
On the other hand, Allison has gone into other gods’ realms and shown the falsity of their rule and come out stronger for it. So perhaps we can hope that Nothing is merely one more phase of Allison’s training and she will be the better for it.
Of course *we’re* still looking into the chasm without magic forehead keys to save us from oblivion.
Hey! Even if you’re not able to really control your life, it doesn’t mean you can’t enjoy the moments that come your way.
Oh I enjoy the moments I can. Determinism doesn’t bother me, inevitable permanent death does. I like being alive! I like drinking this drink, eating this ass!
Well, she’s associated with the vice of Sloth, and the medieval conception of Sloth has a lot in common with the modern clinical understanding of depression….
Same
Pretty sure “what’s after death is what’s before birth” is still a pretty common idea among people who aren’t religious so the past tense here confused me a bit.
Ironically, the “what’s after death is what’s before birth” is pretty common among the religious types too, if you think about it.
Not the religious types who believe in an afterlife, by definition. 😛
This is a very solipsistic way of thinking. The “fragile skein of tangible processes strung across neurons” might not outlast your physical self, but yours isn’t the only one, and the whole of existence does not begin or end with your subjective experience. The peace of mind isn’t found in some sanctified I, but in recognition of the We. I could make some joke about a Gog-Agog worm here, but that’d defeat the point — that this isn’t a solo race, it’s a relay.
I just hope for the sake of the story that Allison figures that out before it’s too late.
You may be wondering how this came to be.
It’s pretty simple, really –
She just put EVERYTHING on a bagel.
And the Master of Shapes asked Aesma what was the shape of the universe,
And she said to him that it was vaguely bagel-shaped, which was of course, entirely correct.
Bagel Bonker Syndrome inescapably points to her not even being close to sane.
(i sure hope this isn’t one of those cop-out dream sequences)
This is *Past Jadis’* perspective looking at the future result of her inaction. The simulation will halt when simulated All-Yisun convinces Past Jadis to change somthing. But, If they don’t win the resulting time loop will kill Jadis.
After a brief chuckle at the monks joke the vendor hands him his hot dog with everything and says ‘That’ll be $4 please’. The monk hands over a $10 bill and waits whilst the vendor just stares back at him…. Awkwardly the monk ask’s ‘What about my change’?.
‘Ah’ replies the hot dog vendor, ‘Change must come from within’.
AND THE POWER OF LOVE WILL save her
In a more personal sense, we are more than just stories. Each person who loves you or hates you, they can conjur you in their head. The part of them that echos with the silent voice of thought, will call upon your memory not as a dry timeline or obituary, but as a speaking imagining. We convince ourselves we exist and are important, and we can look into the eyes of another and see that same spark. So what makes it any less real, if you live in the mind of another. If you give them comfort, isn’t that real? You might not benefit after death, but at least you can imagine that you might be with them every time they think of you or tell your stories. I think that’s a comforting thought.
Stupid sexy existentialism
Determinism, not existentialism.
Determinism asserts that a higher power has measured everything and our actions are already set in stone.
Existentialism asserts that there is NO higher power and that every decision we make is important.
One asserts that freedom is an illusion. The other asserts that safety is an illusion. Both are terrifying. I’m still not sure which is worse…
Not necessarily higher power – unless you count “laws of physics” as such.
Determinism pretty much makes safety an illusion just as much as it does with freedom. I also don’t see how it needs a “higher power” to be present.
And of course nobody notices that indeterminism wouldn’t help at all. In either case, in the end, only one thing actually does happen. We probably don’t know what it’s going to be either way, and it’s not like it being random would help make better decisions. If we could look at time from the outside, it would look frozen either way.
Of course, somebody like Jadis existing within time and still seeing it all, that is, in advance rather than from off to the side, automatically makes it at least some kind of pseudodeterminism. And if she sees a bad end, you’d want that not to be determined to be so. But the real point presumably isn’t supposed to be whether it’s going in a bad direction or not.
That is false. Determinism is entirely compatible with existentialism. Determinism doesn’t mean a higher order caused it, it just means that every action follows predictably from the thing before it. You have a thought because the enzymes and neurons in your brain followed determined natural laws, according to physics, and produced the thought, as well as the sensation that you are making the thought. It fits perfectly with existentialism.
Nah, this is nothing but bland and hideous nihilism. A flat assed philosophy born of taking one look at the overarching truth of the world and and breaking under the weight of its inherent nonexistence.
Stupid sexy existentialism requires the confidence and capacity to to create meaning in the face of Life, the universe and everything else ultimately having none.
How is this “bland and hideous”? This is very likely (some would argue “most likely”) how reality works.
Find meaning in that, as a part of a larger, eternal whole. That is, if you are able to get out of the instinctual reaction of “but I have free will, this cannot be true”.
Determinism is how reality works, and nihilism is how we interpret it. When Jadis says life is meaningless or something or everything doesn’t matter, that’s imposing mortal thoughts and emotion on something that we can’t fundamentally understand – the machine of existence.
She’s speaking as if she expects to be a god or spirit that should be separate from a physical body or temporary soul flame – something that can expect some form of supernatural enlightenment. Naturally – why else would she become a demiurge? Which explains why she’s so broken.
Nihilism can be life-affirming. If nothing has inherent value, then anything can be ascribed value by you.
If nihilism is life-affirming, it’s existentialism
This is correct. Which is why existentialism is an elaborate exercise is self-delusion.
This is why i love this comment section
Only if you believe that ‘value’ must be a feature of the entire universe to ‘count’, rather than a feature of existing as a certain kind of creature carved from warm black flame. I happen to quite like the features of existing thus, and see no reason to discount them just because other creatures in other places and times might not experience the same things.
Indeed. It is only self-delusion if reality contradicts it. But in the absence of inherent meaning in reality, we are simply creating a personal meaning (or a collective chorus of meanings). This is not delusion, and may even be a infinitesimal grain of true Royalty.
She’s SO HOT
Call of the voidussy
You can only do it once, but its worth it.
It all comes tumbling down, tumbling down, tumbling down…
The ending of KSBD will be Alison surrounded by all her friends, dead and alive, clapping and saying “Congratulations”.
Nah, it will be Allison and Cio sitting on a beach, looking out at the mountain sized head of White Chain.
“Battle not with monsters, lest ye become a monster, and if you gaze into the abyss, the abyss gazes also into you.” – seems apropos to Allison’s current situation.
Let me say this before we begin, this is not a crack at you. That said…
A very common mistake in this translation is the use of “if”. Neitzsche very, very specifically did not say “if” you gaze into the abyss, he pointedly used “WHEN.”
Because he knew, for a damn certainty, that we all will gaze into the abyss at some point. Everyone is going to have to confront it at some point in their lives. Interesting how such a small word changes the whole meaning, huh?
Anyway I still haven’t seen a sword in a dogs age and I’ve eaten all the little sticks that I was pretending were swords and swinging around and going “whoosh, swoosh” (sword sounds), because of sword hunger. Please send help in the form of a sword that I can look at in a respectful way and maybe respectfully touch with my index finger and I can also think about it too.
Regards,
John Sword, Sword Noticer
As a german speaker, it’s “if”. “Wenn” can be translated as “when” if you mean “when” in the sense of “in the event of-” i.e. “if”.
*Looks at the camera.*
Uh oh, Alice!
Ruh ROH, Ralice!
Jadis is not the ideal person for post-apocalypse motivational speakers.
“The third man,” YISUN said, “checks his canteen, and finds he will soon be a dead man. Yet he is resolute, and presses onwards anyway, looking for his destination.”
“Does he find it?” asked Hansa.
“No,” said YISUN, “Quite plainly. His death finds him at the appointed time. Yet he presses on anyway, until the moment his corpse hits the dust.”
“What an idiot,” said Hansa.
“Absolutely,” said YISUN.
“What a magnificent idiot,” added Hansa.
“Hansa is observant,” said YISUN.
Beautiful callback
Well named for effective analysis.
In times like these I think it best to remind ourselves of the wise words of YSUN and meditate on their meaning.
“Ending is a small light in a vast cavern growing dim,” said YISUN, plainly, as was the manner.
“When the light goes out, what will happen to the cavern?”
“It and the universe will cease to exist, for how can we see anything without any light, no matter how small?” said YISUN. Hansa was somewhat dismayed, but sensed a lesson, as was the manner.
“Darkness is the natural state of caverns,” said he, vexingly, “if I were a cavern, I would be glad to be rid of the pest of light and exist obstinately anyway!”
“Hansa is observant,” said YISUN.
The concept of free will is, at best, compatible with determinism. If we go with the compatiblist view, free will is not at all like most people naively think of it. And the compatiblist version of free will would probably be disappointing to most people.
But putting that all aside, determinism can be free of intent or full of intent. Having all the causality of the universe full of intent is what we mean when we say, “It’s god’s will” or “It’s god’s plan.” Determinism full of intent is teleological, which is to say that the whole process, all the causality, is progressing toward some final *intended* goal.
But determinism can also be free of intent. All causality is set by natural forces and it’s not progressing towards anything. Shit just happens. It’s all blind fate.
It’s pretty clear that, as a godlike being herself, Jadis believes in this latter position. She apparently has found nothing to convince herself otherwise.
Phew! What an opponent for Allison to debate!
All of existence is blind fate, and through said blindness we have free will. By truly seeing the shape of everything, by opening her eyes, Jadis has damned herself to her infinite repose.
Free will is completely incompatible with determinism.
Or determinism has nothing to say about free will at all.
It all depends on how you look at it.
The universe is set in amber, as Jadis says. But if you can’t see the amber, you might as well pretend you have free will, because the universe where we pretend to have free will and try to make the world a better place is better than the one where we don’t.
But whatever we choose has always been what we will choose, and we never really had a choice in the matter in the first place.
We are just following the groove in the amber laid out for us by the deterministic nature of the universe.
If this were not all true, then the scientific method wouldn’t work.
I suggest that this is why everybody lost their shit over quantum mechanics. All the random stuff cancels out at the you-and-me level, and “god” does not roll dice, but at the atomic/subatomic level it’s all dice rolls, particles pop into and ut of existance, electrons ‘tunnel’ through otherwise impermiable barriiers, etc.
Yeah, I actually hate the Copenhaugen Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics.
I know that hating a part of physics doesn’t make sense, but I hate it anyway.
I truely wish that I understood how they ruled out the hidden variables explination, and the “tiny differences in stats” explination.
Either of those would make me so much happier.
But at least I’m in good company. Einstien didn’t like it either.
Both relativity’s blind fate (That space-time is an eternal, unchanging four dimensional shape) and quantum mechanic’s blind chance are not much refuge for naive notions of free will.
Personally, I don’t really believe in free will, nor do I really believe in consciousness (The more we learn about how the brain really operates the more shallow and illusory consciousness becomes but that’s for another thread.), but I will admit my body and brain have been shaped by evolution to *behave* as if I really believed in those things.
🙂 ^_^
Those tests they ran where the subject began to act before the brain had registered the choice certainly threw the free will crowd for a loop. We act according to our biological programming, that’s all. Consciousness is a mistake of evolution, an inconsequential and ultimately horrific byproduct because it allows us just enough awareness to understand the fact that we are hurled into an non-sentient, unaware and uncaring universe of inconceivable vastness, that we can’t actually know what anything is, that truth is inaccessible to the human consciousness by means of language, and that the inevitable endpoint of this life of irreconcilable confusion pain hideous lingering illness infirmity and terror is non-existence.
Like Cormac McCarthy said, “if you could banish the fear of death from every man’s heart they wouldn’t live a day.”
I live in the vain hope that someday soon there will be a panel with a sword in it and I can go “wow that’s a lovely sword to look at and think about, what a nice time I’m having” and then I’ll die as hell imho tbqh ftw
Or as Lovecraft would have it:
“The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far. The sciences, each straining in its own direction, have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the light into the peace and safety of a new dark age.”
To be fair, consciousness must have some useful function for social mammals, if only to organize and remember a complicated culture–or something. I’ll grant that there may be aspects of consciousness that just emerged as side products or side effects with no real useful application. It is a deep mystery, not yet fully understood by science or philosophy.
But I’m getting us waaaaaaay off the confrontation between Allison and Jadis. It’s just that all this talk about determinism got me to thinking.
Allison is impulsive–as both White Chain and Ciocie have often worried about–and it seems unlikely she’ll have good counters for Jadis’ positions on things. Allie is a former barista from LA–probably the least philosophically oriented profession I can think of. 😀
I do love that one of the foundations of Lovecraft’s horror is the same thing that Carl Sagan’s “Pale Blue Dot” speech used as motivational.
And the really mind-blowing thing is that they were both right on that subject.
Yea, no. Lovecraft was incredibly paranoid, and it’s really not clear how much he of his writing he genuinely thought was true; to the extent there was a well defined (or unchanging) line between belief and suspension of disbelief, it’s not really clear where that line lies with Lovecraft towards his work. And that’s before we bring in metaphorical interpretations.
Dude was a small man that could be frightened by his own reflection. Of course he thought reality was terrifying. Pale Blue Dot is a refutation of Lovecraft’s position; that optimistic nihilism is the true refuge in the storm of reality, not some grasping for external greater meaning. It is not knowledge that is maddening, it is not accepting knowledge and trying to fight it that is maddening.
There is much the scientific method cannot touch. The universe may very well end when I am not around to observe it. There can be no double-blind control-grouped studies to test this and prove to 95% certainty that the universe will not continue to exist obstinately without me. But I hope it does and live my little life as though it will.
The Jockey in his chair, to space
has something clawing at his face.
Spend the crew, the weight, the race
And nuke the site from space
and try to save the human race?
The Machine which killed every other person but Jadis who ever tried to use it, and she invites Alice-un? I smell a trap. The Lady of Infinite Repose knows what is supposed to happen of course, but she may yet be lying about The Rising King’s true fate, and there may yet be surprises even for the omniscient. What will happen to Jadis’s mind when Alice proves true to her character and steps off the preordained path?
On the other hand, Jadis has just “confirmed” that Allison will live another ~35 years.
Doesn’t necessarily mean it will be outside the chair, though…
She’s omniscient, but she’s still allowed to lie. Especially if that’s just what she does.
I feel like, from a people-who-aren’t-Jadis perspective, that fact is a saving grace.
Sure, Jadis knows everything. But we can never know if she’s telling the truth. So from our perspective, there might as well *not* be an omniscient deity, since whether she’s lying is not something we can determine.
We might as well live life from our own limited perspective.
Jadis didn’t quite say that Allison will live another 35 years. She said that she’d die in another 35 years.
The distinction may be important because we’ve seen (although obscurely), in the comic, an Allison who traveled backwards from the future. Allison may have far more than 35 years of subjective time ahead of her, since she could live an arbitrary amount of time from now, travel backwards an arbitrary amount of time, repeat this process an arbitrary number of times, and then finally perish 35 years from the present in the comic. And even then, Zoss has shown that “death” can be little more than inconvenience (although Jadis’ words here imply that Allison won’t “go Zoss”, although it’s unclear if Jadis is even aware of Zoss in whatever state he exists in now).
But now you are all alone.
None of this matters, now,
None of this matters
At all.
Smallest church in saint saens uh?
If you’re the one-eyed man in the land of the blind, it’s easy to become convinced that you have such superior vision that you can see everything and yet completely missing out on how much you can’t actually see.
Just because she can see through time, doesn’t mean that she can see beyond death. Just because she can see a single linear timeline, doesn’t mean it can’t branch… just that she doesn’t see any because the branch becomes the trunk. Her very certitude makes me think that she’s ultimately wrong.
Abaddon has gone on record several times that her omniscience is perfect and total.
If it actually is, I will literally eat my own shit, because her omniscience says Alison will totally fail and if she does, that will make KSBD the longest shaggy dog story I’ve ever read and one of the biggest wastes of time I’ve ever engaged in.
Jadis can only see the shape of the Wheel. There’s clearly things that happen beyond the Wheel that can change it. Otherwise KSBD doesn’t happen at all.
From Jadis’ perspective free will doesn’t exists, because it’s all a matter of choosing which pre-established road to follow and all the possible outcomes of every choice are already set in place for her to see. This means that every time she talks about what’s going on she’s always playing with more cards than anyone else.
Maybe Jadis told Alison that she will fail because that’s what Alison needs to believe in order to actually win? Given what happened so far Jadis is obviously on Alison’s side (at the very least she’s against Jagganoth) so it’s safe to assume that she’s trying to help her. If Alison “already lost” what’s the point of saving her and keeping her alive for all this time in this palace? Alison might die at some point in the future, but maybe she won’t fail
For a blindingly obvious example of this, watch the first Matrix film.
The Oracle flat out lies to Neo, because it’s what he needed to hear.
I suspect, without Abbadon having stated this, that Jadis is only omniscient in the context of one great cycle. I think that when Zoss/Metatron/whoever lunges for the reset switch, the new cycle gets a new history, a bit like changing a RNG seed. That history might be fixed from the reset, in which case continually resetting is just a way of imposing some free will on a metaphysics that don’t want it.
Bullshit there’s nothing waiting for her. She’ll become a beggar on the street with all the other dead. This is why YISUN is a better philosopher than the nihlists
I’m starting to suspect that time hasn’t passed like Jadis said, and that she’s just attacking Allison.
You know, there was a certain beastly Titan that had a similar way of seeing things. I wonder if Allison can pep talk her way out of this one.
The Vermillion Emperor laughed.
“They tell me you can cut all things.”
The Hermit smiled like a fool hearing foolishness.
“No, I can cut nothing.”
– The greatest blade.
I reckon Jadis needs to work on her bedside manner some.
Probably, after all- throwing your patients into the Abyss seems like a poor way to make sure they recover.
Absolutely, there’s a time and a place for abysses and this doesn’t seem like either.
I came here to say this lol
Starting to think something is wrong here
The form this attack takes is very subtle I dig this key bearer
Something I was thinking about while reading. Jadis is either truly all knowing (is aware of literally every single atom, wave, bacteria, animal, person, thought in all of time and space.) or she only knows what it all will be as long as she does and says what she has seen, let me explain. Imagine you are playing chess, you suddenly become aware of what you and your opponent will do. The game ends with you winning, so you act it out exactly how you know it will go. But had you done something differently then you won’t know what your opponent will do anymore, so the possible future you saw is no longer possible. However if you don’t believe you can go off the beaten path and instead of winning you where doomed to lose, the whole game would be completely pointless. In Jadis’s case she has seen all that was and what will be, ALL OF IT. Everything would feel pointless if you truly believed that none of it could be changed, its sit in stone or Amber. however the whole “I did X because that’s what I was supposed to do” makes me inclined to believe its the latter.
The next logical question would seem to be: Has Jadis ever TRIED to change what she’s supposed to do? Or is she using this as an excuse to have to make no decisions for herself anymore? She IS the Sloth Demiurge after all…
Exactly. If you see a perfect plan to its absolute smallest detail, it is very likely that any human mind would become terrified of subverting that plan, because you would then return to uncertainty. While being “all knowing” you are the most powerful rat in the maze, but if you change things you become as uncertain as any of the others.
Breaking the wheel, as it were.
I think it comes down to the question of how total her omniscience is.
Does she see a single “block universe”, a deterministic sequence of state transitions? Or does she see all possibilities and their end results? Is she quantum or Newtonian?
I don’t understand why is people so aggravated when facing this obvious truth. Our personal life matters (to us and few, very few others) in our small, oh so very small, personal scale. But in the bigger picture we’re completely irrelevant; this should be obvious to anyone with more than two working neurons.
Are we so desperate to feel like great protagonists of some epic tale that, when confronted with our mundane insignificance, so many of us fall into anger and denial?
One grain of rice can tip the scale.
One man can be the difference between victory, and defeat.
Small and inconsequential lives have ripples and shadows that persist long after they end, both materially and spiritually.
A sunflower planted by Kadmos, a Spartan helot, shifted the wind patterns a hundred years later, granting Alexander the Great favorable weather in his first and most important battle against the Persian empire.
A small donation to a local church in Penrith in the 13th century by Tenney Ditchdigger hastened the onset of the industrial revolution by 3 months.
The future exists in the wake of the present, just as the present exists in the wake of the past. The tapestry is seamless, chaotic, and beautiful.
My personal favorite example of “wake of the past” phenomena is horse butts’ effects on spaceship design. Roman horse-drawn war chariots created ruts the width of about two horses’ butts (about 4ft, 8.5in). Wagon designers followed this standard so that wheels stayed intact. This design schema created the standard width for the first European railroads, which stayed the standard width for the first US railroads–4ft, 8.5in. Rocket boosters made in Utah need(ed) to be transported through a railroad tunnel to get from factory to launch site; a railroad tunnel that is, of course, only slightly wider than the standard width: 4ft, 8.5in… the width of two horse butts.
The future exists in the wake of the present, just as the present exists in the wake of the past.
Thank you for the lesson.
Move along! Nothing to see here.