Magic, Crime,and Punishment 3: Fit to be Tried

[Sea Wasp (Ryk E. Spoor)]

**"Pardon my saying so, Majesty� but there appears to be a distinct lack
of prisoners in your cell."
-- Poplock Duckweed in _Phoenix Rising_**

Okay, now let's say you managed to catch (rather than kill in a
desperate battle) that criminal. What do you do with him? If the fantasy
world has an advanced judgment system, you'll have to give him a trial.
If not, you may have to bring him in for execution, or put him in a
dungeon until the King or Tribunal or whatever decides his punishment,
but in any case, you've got to keep him where you want him.

Here on Earth, a nice solid cell with bars will hold pretty much anyone,
no matter how strong or powerful. Without outside aid, putting a person
in ordinary clothes and stripping them of their possessions will render
them essentially helpless to escape. Yes, there are occasional escapes
but most of them required outside aid, and the few others usually get
recaptured � and locked in another similar cell � shortly thereafter.
The vast majority of prisoners can't escape, and if they did, they have
no chance of remaining free.

Well, our criminal Magalath is stated to be a master of summoning and
symbolic magic. Summoning magic usually requires some sort of medium to
summon something through� but not always. It's not at all difficult for
a summoner to basically arrange for an elemental or other spirit or
being to be summoned to them under some particular circumstances �
speaking a particular word, for instance. Symbolic magic is even more of
a challenge; a mage who can make his, her, or its power manifest in
symbols can draw the symbols in their own blood (or other less pleasant
products of the body) or even in some cases in the air itself.

In addition, our friend Magalath is far from the most difficult target
to hold. Some mages, and some other intelligent creatures, have inherent
magic that's almost impossible to remove, and powerful enough to not
just break out through the walls, but to take down an entire city block
WITH their escape attempt; the most obvious of these creatures would be
a true Dragon, who start at the size of large dinosaurs and are armored
like literal tanks, and go up in power from there.

It's clear that a simple jail cell can't reasonably be expected to hold
someone with such powers; moreover, given the way the world works,
there's much more incentive for someone to escape as there's always
somewhere for them to go, rather than escaping into a world where the
simple act of looking for a job could easily end with you back in
handcuffs. Most fantasy worlds � and my own Zarathan is no exception �
don't have the equivalent of extensive databases to search for
employment and criminal history, so a person who's escaped from prison
could easily go to another town where they're not known and start a new
life, assuming they didn't have more grandiose plans.

This is partly due to the size and diversity of the population; on Earth
we're used to major countries having hundreds of millions of people (and
some now into the billions). For this reason it's become almost
imperative that we be able to track people in large and small groups. On
Zarathan, a few million is a large population for a country, and the
extended, fragile nature of "countries" make it very difficult to keep
track of them all. Even if you were to attempt to do so, there are many
individuals and organizations, and even gods, who don't want to be
"pushed, filed, stamped, indexed, briefed, debriefed, or numbered!", and
are quite capable of messing up your attempts to do so.

Communications is of course another key area. Today, if a major criminal
escapes from prison, the news is transmitted to the police immediately,
and if appropriate will be sent to local news outlets. By the time most
escapees are a hundred yards from their prison, the good guys will
already be throwing a net around their position. More, if the escapee
manages to elude immediate pursuit and get to a distant city, the cops
there will still have the info on him; if he tries to get a job, there's
a good chance someone will ask the wrong question and he's off and
running again.

On many fantasy worlds, communication is mostly by the speed of
horseback, or at best limited to a small number of high-speed channels
with significant limitations. For instance, Tolkien's Palantiri allowed
people to see and communicate over any distance like a
super-videophone/spycam combo,but there were only seven of them even in
their heyday, and by the time of Lord of the Rings the Big Bad has got
hold of one and any attempt to use another will basically put your brain
online with Sauron. There are very, very few people who can do that and
keep themselves intact.

Even on Zarathan, there are limited communications channels. Dedicated
teleportation matrices, like the one used by Tobimar, Poplock, and
Xavier to go from the Dragon's Palace to one of the Twin Cities, are one
way of getting news fast, but as mentioned before teleportation has its
limits.

In one of the deleted chapters I posted recently, it's mentioned that
there used to be more reliable long-range communications; it was also
shown that one way to sometimes get around that is to summon or
otherwise control a fast-moving messenger and hope it doesn't get shot
down or otherwise stopped. This is the more mystical version of carrier
pigeons, subject to similar limitations.

Taken all together, this means that a prisoner escaping has an excellent
chance of getting away if the alarm isn't sounded immediately, and may
easily outrun news of his escape � possibly even outrun knowledge of his
incarceration entirely.

Thus, magical security must be capable of negating virtually any powers.
At the same time, making a facility capable of holding such beings is
clearly not a simple one. In point of fact, only large cities are likely
to have the people and resources to construct a prison capable of
holding high-powered beings on Zarathan.

Assuming you've solved the problem of holding them, there's the issue of
trials � do you have them, what are they like, and how do you run them?

In many fantasy worlds, trials aren't really like those held in the
United States or many other countries; they may be basically dragging
the accused in front of the King, Emperor, whatever, and that one person
will decide what to do with him.

On Zarathan, it's not quite that simple; what happens to a captured
criminal depends on where they are. The procedure in the State of the
Dragon King is rather different from what you could expect in the Empire
of the Mountain or in Evanwyl or Aegeia. It is of course common for
major criminals � murderers and such � to end up committing "suicide by
cop" or, more precisely, "suicide by Hero", but sometimes they are
captured. In Zarathanton, they may well be captured by one of the
Adjudicators; these are given the power to be judge, jury, and if
necessary executioner, but depending on the crime may refer the problem
to a trial which is at least superficially similar to the general
outline we know here on Earth. In neither case is torture used; there
are better ways to extract truth, and those who administer the laws are
expected to exemplify them, not skirt them for their own purposes.

Many of the limitations in the broader world don't hold in a trial which
will almost certainly be presided over by one of the holy orders of good
and justice. While there are often restrictions on the direct
intervention of the gods in the wider world (as discussed earlier, and
as made clear in _Phoenix Rising_), in a formal trial held in a temple
and/or presided over by a representative of one of the gods, it's a much
different situation. There the god or gods will almost certainly provide
direct oversight into the honesty of witnesses and the veracity of the
evidence presented. Even other gods are unlikely to interfere in these
proceedings; if the plot of another deity was involved in the crime,
well, the god won't be on trial and will simply have to accept this
defeat when and if their involvement comes to light.

It should be noted that this doesn't mean that the gods themselves can
always walk away scott-free; just that most people will never see
exactly how the gods settle these differences. And if a given god or
gods cause enough trouble in the "mortal" realm, they may well be
reminded, to their great sorrow, that some mortals are more than capable
of playing on their level� or that there IS a limit to the tolerance of
the other gods.

Most crimes in the State of the Dragon King are fairly straightforward;
the State has relatively few laws and they're applied in a common-sense
manner (enforced/overseen by the Dragon Gods, which allows a very loose
system like that to work) and thus breaking these laws tends to be
pretty straightforward and obvious. Where reparations can be made, the
sentencing of a criminal tends to favor reparations; as noted multiple
times with respect to Kyri and Myrionar, justice and even mercy are
preferred over vengeance.

Imprisonment for a long term is much more problematic than temporary
holding. Incarceration is, therefore, one of the least-used punishments.
Execution is used, but it is very much restricted to those who have
committed horrendous crimes. In some cases, the jurisdiction may be in
question; a traveller from Dalthunia or the Empire of the Mountain may
quite justifiably argue that the State of the Dragon King has no
authority to imprison or try them. The upshot is that the more powerful
and devious the criminal, the more likely that they will end up free and
wandering the world again, unless executed.

Thus, once more, the need for the Adventurer types. If you really can't
hold these types of people, you either need to kill them, or at the
least have someone around who makes them think twice about bothering
you. Wandering heroes make things just generally uncomfortable for bad
guys, and the advantage of all these powers is that the good guys can be
very much loaded for bear and able to match even the powerful villains.

As a writer, of course, this is extremely convenient because I can then
center the action around such people and have it make sense that they
are, in fact, the center of the action!

Of course, in a metaphysical sense, this is also justified; the actions
and choices of heroes are symbolic in a mystical universe, and symbolism
is powerful in and of itself. Jason Wood uses this in "Shadow of Fear"
to deal with something otherwise out of his ability to control. Crime,
in a mystical universe, should be dealt with more by individuals on the
side of the light, simply because that is the way that has more
resonance with the spirit; not a dry and mechanical maneuvering of legal
principles, but a confrontation of right and wrong, of good and evil.
This is the true foundation of the way things work in many fantasy
realms� and is certainly the truest foundation of mine.




--
Sea Wasp
/^\
;;;
Website: http://www.grandcentralarena.com Blog:
http://seawasp.livejournal.com

[Robert Carnegie]

In a setting where resurrection is possible, a difficult
prisoner perhaps could be killed, then brought back to life
for the trial. This might also work as punishment,
although just being inert for a while may be not an
effective punishment. In the film _Demolition Man_,
freezing prisoners and then unfreezing them seemed
a pointless punishment, but bribery by the freezer
prison's owner seemed plausible - not mentioned, but
it turns out he isn't on the side of the angels.
Then it was explained that mental re-education
takes place while the prisoners are frozen. How?
Oh, never mind.

If Hell exists and you can send a prisoner there
and then bring them back - by resurrection -
well, how about that.

The less legally advanced real world also uses
chopping parts off as punishment. In your setting,
it may be possible to grow them back, but really
expensive. Or get them from other people.
Actually, we can do that. I see drawbacks.

Or you could metamorphose somebody into a donkey
and make them do community service. Assuming that
that disables their magic; it usually does.

[William December Starr]

In article <loijv0$o70$1...@dont-email.me>,

"Sea Wasp (Ryk E. Spoor)" <sea...@sgeinc.invalid.com> said:

> In addition, our friend Magalath is far from the most
> difficult target to hold. Some mages, and some other
> intelligent creatures, have inherent magic that's almost
> impossible to remove, and powerful enough to not just break
> out through the walls, but to take down an entire city block
> WITH their escape attempt; the most obvious of these
> creatures would be a true Dragon, who start at the size of
> large dinosaurs and are armored like literal tanks, and go up
> in power from there.

Assuming you didn't have people who make fusses over
human-rights violations, I vote for pouring a strong sleeping
draught down his throat and repeat as necessary. (An IV drip
works well too, if you've got the med-tech.)

Hmm. How much is reliably known about keeping dragons sedated?

-- wds

[A.G.McDowell]

On 27/06/2014 03:12, Sea Wasp (Ryk E. Spoor) wrote:
>
> **"Pardon my saying so, Majesty� but there appears to be a distinct lack
> of prisoners in your cell."
> -- Poplock Duckweed in _Phoenix Rising_**
>
> Okay, now let's say you managed to catch (rather than kill in a
> desperate battle) that criminal. What do you do with him? If the fantasy
> world has an advanced judgment system, you'll have to give him a trial.
> If not, you may have to bring him in for execution, or put him in a
> dungeon until the King or Tribunal or whatever decides his punishment,
> but in any case, you've got to keep him where you want him.
>

(trimmed)
There is a very nice Gibbon quote - "it was a maxim of the Greeks, that
for the purpose of cutting diamond, a diamond was the most effectual" in
his case it refers to getting Christian Arabs to fight Muslim Arabs, but
the application to sorcerers would not have surprised him, or at least
not any more than the application to submarines, or aircraft...

[Jack Bohn]

Just a few thoughts on the subject that I haven't seen expressed, yet. It seems a good place to bring them up

where Sea Wasp (Ryk E. Spoor) wrote:

> Many of the limitations in the broader world don't hold in a trial which
> will almost certainly be presided over by one of the holy orders of good
> and justice. While there are often restrictions on the direct
> intervention of the gods in the wider world (as discussed earlier, and
> as made clear in _Phoenix Rising_), in a formal trial held in a temple
> and/or presided over by a representative of one of the gods, it's a much
> different situation. There the god or gods will almost certainly provide
> direct oversight into the honesty of witnesses and the veracity of the
> evidence presented. Even other gods are unlikely to interfere in these
> proceedings; if the plot of another deity was involved in the crime,
> well, the god won't be on trial and will simply have to accept this
> defeat when and if their involvement comes to light.

It sounds like the temple of justice and truth could become the temple of political horsetrading amongst the gods, with citizens' -- no, subjects' -- freedoms prey to political whims of the corruptest sort. I felt the beginnings of this with the bringing in of truth-sensing adepts, a combination of our expert witness and psychic "consulted by police."

(We perhaps get into tastes here, where I see magic with exact, repeatable results open to anybody as merely another type of technology, albeit a more unlikely one. If it doesn't require some serious form of sacrifice and introduce some life-changing awe into the practitioner, then the "magic" goes out of it.)

[powerful and devious the criminals]

> Thus, once more, the need for the Adventurer types. If you really can't
> hold these types of people, you either need to kill them, or at the
> least have someone around who makes them think twice about bothering
> you. Wandering heroes make things just generally uncomfortable for bad
> guys, and the advantage of all these powers is that the good guys can be
> very much loaded for bear and able to match even the powerful villains.
>
> As a writer, of course, this is extremely convenient because I can then
> center the action around such people and have it make sense that they
> are, in fact, the center of the action!
>
> Of course, in a metaphysical sense, this is also justified; the actions
> and choices of heroes are symbolic in a mystical universe, and symbolism
> is powerful in and of itself. Jason Wood uses this in "Shadow of Fear"
> to deal with something otherwise out of his ability to control. Crime,
> in a mystical universe, should be dealt with more by individuals on the
> side of the light, simply because that is the way that has more
> resonance with the spirit; not a dry and mechanical maneuvering of legal
> principles, but a confrontation of right and wrong, of good and evil.
> This is the true foundation of the way things work in many fantasy
> realms� and is certainly the truest foundation of mine.

*Something* about this strikes me the wrong way, though I'm not sure exactly what. Is symbolic resonance offered as a check and balance on the Adventurer's power, or is he an Übermensch doing what he will because he has the power? Maybe I'm thinking of olden times, such as when the Israelites asked for a king, and the prophet Samuel told them, "He'll bind your sons and daughters into servitude, take your choicest crops to give to his officers, etc." but the people were all, "No, we want a king," or the New Testament, where the cry was, "Let an honest judge decide my case." (Hmm... legal principles as scientific principles, should give the same results whoever tries them...) (I'm forgetting how I was going to tie in one of the clearest stories of the rights of individuals over tyranny, the first Doctor Who, where Kal ruled a primitive tribe because he was stronger than anyone in the tribe. The Doctor made the suggestion that Kal was not stronger than _all_ the tribe.)


Now I'm not saying all fiction should be pedagogical, just noting that in the progress from learning from experience to learning from others' experience to creating artificial experience, there remains a strong "go thou and do likewise" message implicit, so, yes, I am saying all fiction should be pedagogical.

--
-Jack

[Sea Wasp (Ryk E. Spoor)]

On 6/30/14 7:59 AM, Jack Bohn wrote:
> Just a few thoughts on the subject that I haven't seen expressed, yet. It seems a good place to bring them up
> where Sea Wasp (Ryk E. Spoor) wrote:
>
>> Many of the limitations in the broader world don't hold in a trial which
>> will almost certainly be presided over by one of the holy orders of good
>> and justice. While there are often restrictions on the direct
>> intervention of the gods in the wider world (as discussed earlier, and
>> as made clear in _Phoenix Rising_), in a formal trial held in a temple
>> and/or presided over by a representative of one of the gods, it's a much
>> different situation. There the god or gods will almost certainly provide
>> direct oversight into the honesty of witnesses and the veracity of the
>> evidence presented. Even other gods are unlikely to interfere in these
>> proceedings; if the plot of another deity was involved in the crime,
>> well, the god won't be on trial and will simply have to accept this
>> defeat when and if their involvement comes to light.
>
> It sounds like the temple of justice and truth could become the temple of political horsetrading amongst the gods, with citizens' -- no, subjects' -- freedoms prey to political whims of the corruptest sort. I felt the beginnings of this with the bringing in of truth-sensing adepts, a combination of our expert witness and psychic "consulted by police."
>

Sounds like it if you assume that you could DO political horsetrading
with a god whose _raison d'etre_ is justice and truth. In some worlds,
you could. In mine, no. A god with that as part of their portfolio CAN'T
violate those rules unless something incredibly huge is at stake, and
usually something where if they were to act, a greater injustice would
result in some fashion. Gods, in a number of ways, have heavily
constrained will, or in some cases no real free will at all except in a
narrow range.

This is, in fact, one of the key plot points/mysteries of _Phoenix
Rising_ and the rest of the Balanced Sword trilogy: how is it *POSSIBLE*
that Myrionar, god of Justice and Vengeance, could have its own chosen
corps of holy warriors corrupted and not be willing or able to even HINT
to its remaining priests that something was wrong?

The fact that it did, indeed, happen is a mystery and a huge clue as to
what's really going on.

> (We perhaps get into tastes here, where I see magic with exact, repeatable results open to anybody as merely another type of technology, albeit a more unlikely one. If it doesn't require some serious form of sacrifice and introduce some life-changing awe into the practitioner, then the "magic" goes out of it.)
>

There's plenty of life-changing awe, and a lot of sacrifice, to many
people doing scientific research, though. Is science magic?

I see magic as "stuff that violates the laws of nature that you can
discover using the standard scientific method in our universe".

> [powerful and devious the criminals]
>
>> Thus, once more, the need for the Adventurer types. If you really can't
>> hold these types of people, you either need to kill them, or at the
>> least have someone around who makes them think twice about bothering
>> you. Wandering heroes make things just generally uncomfortable for bad
>> guys, and the advantage of all these powers is that the good guys can be
>> very much loaded for bear and able to match even the powerful villains.
>>
>> As a writer, of course, this is extremely convenient because I can then
>> center the action around such people and have it make sense that they
>> are, in fact, the center of the action!
>>
>> Of course, in a metaphysical sense, this is also justified; the actions
>> and choices of heroes are symbolic in a mystical universe, and symbolism
>> is powerful in and of itself. Jason Wood uses this in "Shadow of Fear"
>> to deal with something otherwise out of his ability to control. Crime,
>> in a mystical universe, should be dealt with more by individuals on the
>> side of the light, simply because that is the way that has more
>> resonance with the spirit; not a dry and mechanical maneuvering of legal
>> principles, but a confrontation of right and wrong, of good and evil.
>> This is the true foundation of the way things work in many fantasy

>> realms� and is certainly the truest foundation of mine.

>
> *Something* about this strikes me the wrong way, though I'm not sure exactly what.
> Is symbolic resonance offered as a check and balance on the Adventurer's power, or

> is he an �bermensch doing what he will because he has the power?

Neither. Someone choosing to do right and defend the weaker is in and
of themselves a symbol, and in a magical world that symbolism feeds upon
itself; a hero becomes a Hero because they exemplify the CONCEPT of
Hero. The more they do so, the more powerful the concept and the more
powerful their representation in that arena.

Marvel did something like that in their RPG, pointing out that while on
paper Captain America would have his clock UTTERLY cleaned by most
villains above a certain level, his Karma is so titanically huge that
most beings even on a Cosmic threat level cannot afford to ignore him.

>
> Now I'm not saying all fiction should be pedagogical, just noting that
> in the progress from learning from experience to learning from others'
> experience to creating artificial experience, there remains a strong "go
> thou and do likewise" message implicit, so, yes, I am saying all fiction
> should be pedagogical.

All mine is saying is "wasn't that awesome?"

It's only saying "go thou and do likewise" if you find yourself in a
world with operative magic, gods, and other requirements similar to the
ones presented.

[Jack Bohn]

On Monday, June 30, 2014 7:50:10 PM UTC-4, Sea Wasp (Ryk E. Spoor) wrote:
> On 6/30/14 7:59 AM, Jack Bohn wrote:
>
>
> > It sounds like the temple of justice and truth could become the temple of political horsetrading amongst the gods, with citizens' -- no, subjects' -- freedoms prey to political whims of the corruptest sort.
>

> Sounds like it if you assume that you could DO political horsetrading
> with a god whose _raison d'etre_ is justice and truth. In some worlds,
> you could. In mine, no. A god with that as part of their portfolio CAN'T
> violate those rules unless something incredibly huge is at stake, and
> usually something where if they were to act, a greater injustice would
> result in some fashion. Gods, in a number of ways, have heavily
> constrained will, or in some cases no real free will at all except in a
> narrow range.

Ah, not so much Olympus as the Crete where a Cretian will tell you, "All Cretians are liars." :)

>
> > (We perhaps get into tastes here, where I see magic with exact, repeatable results open to anybody as merely another type of technology, albeit a more unlikely one. If it doesn't require some serious form of sacrifice and introduce some life-changing awe into the practitioner, then the "magic" goes out of it.)
>
> >
>
>
>
> There's plenty of life-changing awe, and a lot of sacrifice, to many
> people doing scientific research, though. Is science magic?

It can be. It doesn't always happen that you can look at "a handful of dust, and see not the dust, but a mystery, a marvel, there in your hand."

> I see magic as "stuff that violates the laws of nature that you can
> discover using the standard scientific method in our universe".

Radium? N-rays? The flight of the bumblebee? Filling any map with only four colors?

(Come to think of it, does Gödel's theorem come into play here?)

> > Now I'm not saying all fiction should be pedagogical, just noting that
> > in the progress from learning from experience to learning from others'
> > experience to creating artificial experience, there remains a strong "go
> > thou and do likewise" message implicit, so, yes, I am saying all fiction
> > should be pedagogical.
>
> All mine is saying is "wasn't that awesome?"

From posts like these, I see you value finding out how things work, what it means, what you can do with that. But you aren't just using your knowledge to, say, pack the proper chemicals into fireworks, or set up a dominoes in a chain reaction, you are telling stories of people who have to find out how their universe works, what it implies, and how to use that knowledge. And you are implicitly challenging your readers to do likewise (from their armchairs, at least) and match themselves against your characters. You have given the reader an experience where curiosity and thinking (if you don't want to make claims for bravery, honesty, or kindness) produce a happy outcome.

--
-Jack

[William December Starr]

In article <lost3f$ot5$1...@dont-email.me>,

"Sea Wasp (Ryk E. Spoor)" <sea...@sgeinc.invalid.com> said:

> This is, in fact, one of the key plot points/mysteries of _Phoenix
> Rising_ and the rest of the Balanced Sword trilogy: how is it
> *POSSIBLE* that Myrionar, god of Justice and Vengeance, could have
> its own chosen corps of holy warriors corrupted and not be willing
> or able to even HINT to its remaining priests that something was
> wrong?
>
> The fact that it did, indeed, happen is a mystery and a huge clue
> as to what's really going on.

That's easy: he's been replaced by a Skrull impostor.

(Or maybe he's obeying a Zeroth Law of Justice...)

-- wds

[Sea Wasp (Ryk E. Spoor)]

On 7/1/14 11:14 AM, Jack Bohn wrote:
> On Monday, June 30, 2014 7:50:10 PM UTC-4, Sea Wasp (Ryk E. Spoor) wrote:
>> On 6/30/14 7:59 AM, Jack Bohn wrote:
>>
>>
>>> It sounds like the temple of justice and truth could become the temple of political horsetrading amongst the gods, with citizens' -- no, subjects' -- freedoms prey to political whims of the corruptest sort.
>>
>> Sounds like it if you assume that you could DO political horsetrading
>> with a god whose _raison d'etre_ is justice and truth. In some worlds,
>> you could. In mine, no. A god with that as part of their portfolio CAN'T
>> violate those rules unless something incredibly huge is at stake, and
>> usually something where if they were to act, a greater injustice would
>> result in some fashion. Gods, in a number of ways, have heavily
>> constrained will, or in some cases no real free will at all except in a
>> narrow range.
>
> Ah, not so much Olympus as the Crete where a Cretian will tell you, "All Cretians are liars." :)

Not sure I see the connection. Gods are like trains, humans are ATVs.
Humans can take pretty much any direction they like, whenever they like.
Gods can choose to stop along the way, or take particular branch tracks,
but they never get to just turn left and go some direction that might be
more convenient.

>
>
>
>>
>>> (We perhaps get into tastes here, where I see magic with exact, repeatable results open to anybody as merely another type of technology, albeit a more unlikely one. If it doesn't require some serious form of sacrifice and introduce some life-changing awe into the practitioner, then the "magic" goes out of it.)
>>
>>>
>>
>>
>>
>> There's plenty of life-changing awe, and a lot of sacrifice, to many
>> people doing scientific research, though. Is science magic?
>
> It can be.

Then you define it differently than I do. Not terribly surprising, of
course.

> It doesn't always happen that you can look at "a handful of dust, and see not the dust, but a mystery, a marvel, there in your hand."
>
>> I see magic as "stuff that violates the laws of nature that you can
>> discover using the standard scientific method in our universe".
>
> Radium?

Doesn't violate the laws of nature that we can discover in our universe
-- as we did, in fact, discover the laws of nature that determined what
radium did and how it did it.

> N-rays?

They WOULD have been magic if they worked, as they proved impossible to
explain by the standard scientific method -- until of course we
determined they didn't work. So, charlatanry or mistake, not magic.

> The flight of the bumblebee? Filling any map with only four colors?

Again, clearly not violating the laws of nature that we can discover in
our universe.

>
> (Come to think of it, does G�del's theorem come into play here?)

Don't think so. He was concerned with mathematical systems; I don't
know if it applies at all once you step very far outside of that.

>
>>> Now I'm not saying all fiction should be pedagogical, just noting that
>>> in the progress from learning from experience to learning from others'
>>> experience to creating artificial experience, there remains a strong "go
>>> thou and do likewise" message implicit, so, yes, I am saying all fiction
>>> should be pedagogical.
>>
>> All mine is saying is "wasn't that awesome?"
>
> From posts like these, I see you value finding out how things work, what it means, what you can do with that. But you aren't just using your knowledge to, say, pack the proper chemicals into fireworks, or set up a dominoes in a chain reaction, you are telling stories of people who have to find out how their universe works, what it implies, and how to use that knowledge. And you are implicitly challenging your readers to do likewise (from their armchairs, at least) and match themselves against your characters. You have given the reader an experience where curiosity and thinking (if you don't want to make claims for bravery, honesty, or kindness) produce a happy outcome.
>

Well, yes, I'll give you that; if you consider the very general strokes
-- be a good person, show bravery, compassion, willpower, curiosity,
intelligence, and so on -- I guess. That's very general, though. I
don't, for instance, want people thinking that because Kyri and Tobimar
are of particular upper class/nobility origins that I think that this
makes them inherently better. They may BE inherently better IN THAT
UNIVERSE, but that's because that universe's laws allow things such as a
god-anointed ruler and so on. Doesn't work here and thus doesn't apply.

[Sea Wasp (Ryk E. Spoor)]

That's... an interesting theory.

[David DeLaney]

On 2014-07-01, Jack Bohn <jack....@gmail.com> wrote:
> (Come to think of it, does Gödel's theorem come into play here?)

Uh er wait, if you apply G\"odel's theorem to magic REALLY WEIRD THINGS
happen, so it's a lot better to leave it be.

Dave, shudder
--
\/David DeLaney posting thru EarthLink - "It's not the pot that grows the flower
It's not the clock that slows the hour The definition's plain for anyone to see
Love is all it takes to make a family" - R&P. VISUALIZE HAPPYNET VRbeable<BLINK>
http://www.vic.com/~dbd/ - net.legends FAQ & Magic / I WUV you in all CAPS! --K.

[David DeLaney]

On 2014-07-01, Sea Wasp (Ryk E. Spoor) <sea...@sgeinc.invalid.com> wrote:
> On 7/1/14 5:21 PM, William December Starr wrote:
>> "Sea Wasp (Ryk E. Spoor)" <sea...@sgeinc.invalid.com> said:
>>> The fact that it did, indeed, happen is a mystery and a huge clue
>>> as to what's really going on.
>>
>> That's easy: he's been replaced by a Skrull impostor.
>
> That's... an interesting theory.

(translation: "don't SPOIL my big reveal in book THREE of this trilogy!!")

Dave, the thing to remember about archetypes is that, while they're stable and
they repeat, they're not CONSTANT, and can't be as long as humans are involved

[Jack Bohn]

On Tuesday, July 1, 2014 7:19:32 PM UTC-4, Sea Wasp (Ryk E. Spoor) wrote:
> On 7/1/14 11:14 AM, Jack Bohn wrote:
>
> > On Monday, June 30, 2014 7:50:10 PM UTC-4, Sea Wasp (Ryk E. Spoor) wrote:
>
> >> Sounds like it if you assume that you could DO political horsetrading
> >> with a god whose _raison d'etre_ is justice and truth. In some worlds,
> >> you could. In mine, no. A god with that as part of their portfolio CAN'T
> >> violate those rules unless something incredibly huge is at stake, and
> >> usually something where if they were to act, a greater injustice would
> >> result in some fashion. Gods, in a number of ways, have heavily
> >> constrained will, or in some cases no real free will at all except in a
> >> narrow range.
> >
> > Ah, not so much Olympus as the Crete where a Cretian will tell you, "All Cretians are liars." :)
>
>
> Not sure I see the connection. Gods are like trains, humans are ATVs.
> Humans can take pretty much any direction they like, whenever they like.
> Gods can choose to stop along the way, or take particular branch tracks,
> but they never get to just turn left and go some direction that might be
> more convenient.

I was thinking the gods are less like characters in a story and more like characters in a story problem.

> Then you define it differently than I do. Not terribly surprising, of
> course.
>

> >> I see magic as "stuff that violates the laws of nature that you can
> >> discover using the standard scientific method in our universe".

Are you also coming at it from writing magic, while I'm coming at it from reading? You can decide that a person turning to stone is literally transformed to rock by magic that violates the laws of nature, or has organic molecules replaced with minerals by nanobots, I'm guessing until you tell me (including guesses such as traveling more slowly through time, seeming as impervious as stone, or muscle paralysis, becoming a bit less tough than leather or wood, with "stone" as an exaggeration).

> >>> Now I'm not saying all fiction should be pedagogical, just noting that
> >>> in the progress from learning from experience to learning from others'
> >>> experience to creating artificial experience, there remains a strong "go
> >>> thou and do likewise" message implicit, so, yes, I am saying all fiction
> >>> should be pedagogical.
> >>
> >> All mine is saying is "wasn't that awesome?"
> >
> > From posts like these, I see you value finding out how things work, what it means, what you can do with that. But you aren't just using your knowledge to, say, pack the proper chemicals into fireworks, or set up a dominoes in a chain reaction, you are telling stories of people who have to find out how their universe works, what it implies, and how to use that knowledge. And you are implicitly challenging your readers to do likewise (from their armchairs, at least) and match themselves against your characters. You have given the reader an experience where curiosity and thinking (if you don't want to make claims for bravery, honesty, or kindness) produce a happy outcome.
> >
>
> Well, yes, I'll give you that; if you consider the very general strokes
> -- be a good person, show bravery, compassion, willpower, curiosity,
> intelligence, and so on -- I guess. That's very general, though. I
> don't, for instance, want people thinking that because Kyri and Tobimar
> are of particular upper class/nobility origins that I think that this
> makes them inherently better. They may BE inherently better IN THAT
> UNIVERSE, but that's because that universe's laws allow things such as a
> god-anointed ruler and so on. Doesn't work here and thus doesn't apply.

Don't sell that short, man. There's a class of Superman stories that don't treat Lois Lane as a person with feelings, but as an object for Superman to use his superpowers to play pranks on because, "isn't that awesome!" Some movies have become so obsessed with "isn't this awesome!" that they become rollercoasters.

--
-Jack

[Sea Wasp (Ryk E. Spoor)]

On 7/3/14 7:24 AM, Jack Bohn wrote:
> On Tuesday, July 1, 2014 7:19:32 PM UTC-4, Sea Wasp (Ryk E. Spoor) wrote:
>> On 7/1/14 11:14 AM, Jack Bohn wrote:
>>
>>> On Monday, June 30, 2014 7:50:10 PM UTC-4, Sea Wasp (Ryk E. Spoor) wrote:
>>
>>>> Sounds like it if you assume that you could DO political horsetrading
>>>> with a god whose _raison d'etre_ is justice and truth. In some worlds,
>>>> you could. In mine, no. A god with that as part of their portfolio CAN'T
>>>> violate those rules unless something incredibly huge is at stake, and
>>>> usually something where if they were to act, a greater injustice would
>>>> result in some fashion. Gods, in a number of ways, have heavily
>>>> constrained will, or in some cases no real free will at all except in a
>>>> narrow range.
>>>
>>> Ah, not so much Olympus as the Crete where a Cretian will tell you, "All Cretians are liars." :)
>>
>>
>> Not sure I see the connection. Gods are like trains, humans are ATVs.
>> Humans can take pretty much any direction they like, whenever they like.
>> Gods can choose to stop along the way, or take particular branch tracks,
>> but they never get to just turn left and go some direction that might be
>> more convenient.
>
> I was thinking the gods are less like characters in a story and more like characters in a story problem.
>

They're more characters who are severely constrained. They have really
bad OCD with respect to their realms or portfolios of specific domains.

>
>
>> Then you define it differently than I do. Not terribly surprising, of
>> course.
>>
>>>> I see magic as "stuff that violates the laws of nature that you can
>>>> discover using the standard scientific method in our universe".
>
> Are you also coming at it from writing magic, while I'm coming at it from reading? You can decide that a person turning to stone is literally transformed to rock by magic that violates the laws of nature, or has organic molecules replaced with minerals by nanobots, I'm guessing until you tell me (including guesses such as traveling more slowly through time, seeming as impervious as stone, or muscle paralysis, becoming a bit less tough than leather or wood, with "stone" as an exaggeration).
>

I come at it from both directions. And yes, I even specifically posted
the "technology imitates the Gorgon trick with nanobots" as a short
story snippet some years back.

Technology (at a high enough level) can imitate most if not all magical
effects. Magic, at a high enough level, can imitate most if not all
magical effects. But HOW they achieve these things, how difficult they
are, and other aspects of their mechanics, may be fundamentally different.

As an example of one of the key differences, magic is almost purely
personal; individual thinking beings manipulate it. Even in most OTHER
worlds (not mine) you don't see people setting up magic sword factories
where the swords are cranked out by automata and don't need personal
attention. Technology works for pretty much anyone and can be reproduced
and given or sold as a commodity; magic is performed by living beings
and can't be generally turned into an industry.

>
>
>>>>> Now I'm not saying all fiction should be pedagogical, just noting that
>>>>> in the progress from learning from experience to learning from others'
>>>>> experience to creating artificial experience, there remains a strong "go
>>>>> thou and do likewise" message implicit, so, yes, I am saying all fiction
>>>>> should be pedagogical.
>>>>
>>>> All mine is saying is "wasn't that awesome?"
>>>
>>> From posts like these, I see you value finding out how things work, what it means, what you can do with that. But you aren't just using your knowledge to, say, pack the proper chemicals into fireworks, or set up a dominoes in a chain reaction, you are telling stories of people who have to find out how their universe works, what it implies, and how to use that knowledge. And you are implicitly challenging your readers to do likewise (from their armchairs, at least) and match themselves against your characters. You have given the reader an experience where curiosity and thinking (if you don't want to make claims for bravery, honesty, or kindness) produce a happy outcome.
>>>
>>
>> Well, yes, I'll give you that; if you consider the very general strokes
>> -- be a good person, show bravery, compassion, willpower, curiosity,
>> intelligence, and so on -- I guess. That's very general, though. I
>> don't, for instance, want people thinking that because Kyri and Tobimar
>> are of particular upper class/nobility origins that I think that this
>> makes them inherently better. They may BE inherently better IN THAT
>> UNIVERSE, but that's because that universe's laws allow things such as a
>> god-anointed ruler and so on. Doesn't work here and thus doesn't apply.
>
> Don't sell that short, man. There's a class of Superman stories that don't treat Lois Lane as a person with feelings, but as an object for Superman to use his superpowers to play pranks on because, "isn't that awesome!" Some movies have become so obsessed with "isn't this awesome!" that they become rollercoasters.
>

As collected on "Superdickery.com".

[Robert Carnegie]

This looks like a topic in itself, unless we've
already had it: why are there gods, in the first
place? Out-story, it's because gods and their
place in human lives are an interesting story
device. In-story - does a god even have to have
a raison d'etre? A super-powerful being can just
etre.

Particularly in group talk.origins I've wrestled
with definitions of terms like "god"; I decided
that "god" isn't so much a description of a
supernatural being, but of the relationship
that a person has with the supernatural being.
Even if the god exists independently of people,
the god is interested in what people do,
at least intellectually, and the god wants to
be involved, at least by having its own point
of view considered.

So, maybe a god of justice is pleased to see
justice done, and gets involved towards that end.

Maybe it's like those settings where the gods
play games amongst themselves with human lives
as game-pieces. Usually something like chess,
but tennis has been mentioned.

In that case, the god plays by the rules of the game -
even if it's solitaire - because the interest in the
game consists of playing by the rules. Unless -
as is sometimes revealed as a surprise outcome -
the real satisfaction in the game is in cheating the
other players.

Or maybe the god isn't so closely involved in our
lives at all.

Or, in some settings, gods benefit directly by having
worshippers. Probably that involves offering a deal
in return that's competitive with other gods'
offers, and sticking to it. So it's a contract...
and a god can fail to fulfil the contract, but then
the other customers will be discouraged.
It's reputation, it's commercial goodwill...

[Sea Wasp (Ryk E. Spoor)]

On Zarathan, all of those and more are reasons.

[William December Starr]

In article <d7e9cf11-1e6d-4594...@googlegroups.com>,

Jack Bohn <jack....@gmail.com> said:

> Sea Wasp (Ryk E. Spoor) wrote:

>> Jack Bohn wrote:
>>
>>> Ah, not so much Olympus as the Crete where a Cretian will tell
>>> you, "All Cretians are liars." :)
>>
>> Not sure I see the connection. Gods are like trains, humans are
>> ATVs. Humans can take pretty much any direction they like,
>> whenever they like. Gods can choose to stop along the way, or
>> take particular branch tracks, but they never get to just turn
>> left and go some direction that might be more convenient.
>
> I was thinking the gods are less like characters in a story and
> more like characters in a story problem.

Except you can't just shoot them, like you can those asshole Cretans.

-- wds

[Walter Bushell]

In article <lost3f$ot5$1...@dont-email.me>,

"Sea Wasp (Ryk E. Spoor)" <sea...@sgeinc.invalid.com> wrote:

> Sounds like it if you assume that you could DO political horsetrading
> with a god whose _raison d'etre_ is justice and truth. In some worlds,
> you could. In mine, no. A god with that as part of their portfolio CAN'T
> violate those rules unless something incredibly huge is at stake, and
> usually something where if they were to act, a greater injustice would
> result in some fashion. Gods, in a number of ways, have heavily
> constrained will, or in some cases no real free will at all except in a
> narrow range.

And if you believe in physics, neither do we have free will.

--
Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greed. Me.

[James Silverton]

How on earth do you come to that conclusion?

--
Jim Silverton (Potomac, MD)

Extraneous "not." in Reply To.

[J. Clarke]

In article <proto-8CDFE9....@news.panix.com>, pr...@panix.com
says...

Only to quantum-theory deniers.

[Greg Goss]

James Silverton <not.jim....@verizon.net> wrote:

>> And if you believe in physics, neither do we have free will.
>>
>How on earth do you come to that conclusion?

He's never heard of the Copenhagen interpretation?
--
We are geeks. Resistance is voltage over current.

[William December Starr]

In article <MPG.2e20ff3a5...@news.newsguy.com>,
"J. Clarke" <jclark...@cox.net> said:

> pr...@panix.com says...

>
>> And if you believe in physics, neither do we have free will.
>
> Only to quantum-theory deniers.

Doesn't Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle kick the clockwork
universe fairly hard in the teeth even without getting down to
quantum levels of analysis?

Or am I mistakenly conflating the concepts of "unknowable" and
"random"?

-- wds

[Greg Goss]

The Heisenberg principle describes an effect. The Many-Worlds
interpretation is still nicely clockwork. Well, sorta.

[Robert Carnegie]

I interpret "free will" to mean "free from external compulsion",
which is something that we can discuss without getting tangled
up in abstract philosophy - although of course the philosophical
problem, to the extent that there is a philosophical problem,
is still there. However, looking at things /that/ way allows
a more clear association between what you do and it being
your own fault.

I think it still also has to imply or assume that you have an
ability to choose. And there are situations, such as addiction,
where your internal state interferes with your ability to
choose rationally - or can be interpreted to do so.

As for gods - well, if you don't have free will, then I'm
not sure that you're a person; presumably this isn't what
Sea Wasp intends, but, a world in which cosmic forces are
embodied but not personalised can be interesting.

Or, to return to my idea of godhood being a matter of your
contractual agreement with people to whom you're a god,
then you're unlikely to choose to break the contract,
even if you're philosophically free to do so. It isn't
in your interest to do it, as you've chosen to define
your interest.

[David DeLaney]

On 2014-07-04, William December Starr <wds...@panix.com> wrote:

> Jack Bohn <jack....@gmail.com> said:
>> I was thinking the gods are less like characters in a story and
>> more like characters in a story problem.
>
> Except you can't just shoot them, like you can those asshole Cretans.

Well, you CAN, if you can find them instantiated in a given place, but it
probably won't have anything like the intended effect.

Dave, there is always an alternative

[David DeLaney]

On 2014-07-04, Walter Bushell <pr...@panix.com> wrote:
> "Sea Wasp (Ryk E. Spoor)" <sea...@sgeinc.invalid.com> wrote:
>> Gods, in a number of ways, have heavily
>> constrained will, or in some cases no real free will at all except in a
>> narrow range.

And have a very large tendency to see -everything- through their, heh, spheres
of influence, in a way that humans can't. (Also see: Tanith Lee, and the
fixation of the Comet's Child on Azhrarn in that one portion of Night's
Master. Or Dante interpreting everything through Beatrice. Etc.)

> And if you believe in physics, neither do we have free will.

Well, of course we don't. Partly because the people who use the term generally
don't understand what they think they mean by it... But what we DO have that
makes us THINK we have it is extreeeeemely interesting.

Dave, now thinking of the scale-changing scenarios in some later Moorcock

[David DeLaney]

On 2014-07-04, Greg Goss <go...@gossg.org> wrote:
> James Silverton <not.jim....@verizon.net> wrote:

>>> And if you believe in physics, neither do we have free will.
>>
>>How on earth do you come to that conclusion?
>
> He's never heard of the Copenhagen interpretation?

Well, given that it HAS TO give the same results as the many-worlds interp...
we CAN say that neither one has all the answers, really. And many-worlds is
just WAY more elegant, imho.

Dave, remember that the OBSERVER gets split too, aligned with the result
observed, and it all falls into place

[David DeLaney]

On 2014-07-05, Robert Carnegie <rja.ca...@excite.com> wrote:
> As for gods - well, if you don't have free will, then I'm
> not sure that you're a person; presumably this isn't what
> Sea Wasp intends, but, a world in which cosmic forces are
> embodied but not personalised can be interesting.

I'll note that in the In Nomine RPG, the angels debate about whether THEY have
free will, and the Archangels. Some of them are quite sure they don't...

(Demons have a fairly high stake in believing they DO, for a couple of
reasons.)

> Or, to return to my idea of godhood being a matter of your
> contractual agreement with people to whom you're a god,
> then you're unlikely to choose to break the contract,
> even if you're philosophically free to do so. It isn't
> in your interest to do it, as you've chosen to define your interest.

ObRelatedSF: Gladstone, _Three Parts Dead_. Two thumbs up, especially for the
interesting twists on the murder mystery it is.

Dave, and OH the clues!

[Greg Goss]

David DeLaney <davidd...@earthlink.net> wrote:

>On 2014-07-04, Greg Goss <go...@gossg.org> wrote:
>> James Silverton <not.jim....@verizon.net> wrote:
>
>>>> And if you believe in physics, neither do we have free will.
>>>
>>>How on earth do you come to that conclusion?
>>
>> He's never heard of the Copenhagen interpretation?
>
>Well, given that it HAS TO give the same results as the many-worlds interp...
>we CAN say that neither one has all the answers, really. And many-worlds is
>just WAY more elegant, imho.
>
>Dave, remember that the OBSERVER gets split too, aligned with the result
> observed, and it all falls into place

If people REALLY believed in Many Worlds, then any decision becomes
meaningless. I see no way to avoid falling into Niven's Myriad Ways
from there.

[Robert Carnegie]

How about: many worlds exist, but I choose which one
to live in?

Irreversibly, which is a pity...

The others are all inhabited by something I've been told
to call a "philosophical zombie". Maybe.

Anyway, if a me in another universe wins the lottery first
prize, he doesn't share it with the me here. And I'm not in
a hurry to share my winnings with him.

Now, if I have a choice, do I choose his life?

[Robert Carnegie]

On Sunday, 6 July 2014 06:14:04 UTC+1, David DeLaney wrote:
> On 2014-07-05, Robert Carnegie <rja.ca...@excite.com> wrote:
> > As for gods - well, if you don't have free will, then I'm
> > not sure that you're a person; presumably this isn't what
> > Sea Wasp intends, but, a world in which cosmic forces are
> > embodied but not personalised can be interesting.
>
> I'll note that in the In Nomine RPG, the angels debate about whether THEY have
> free will, and the Archangels. Some of them are quite sure they don't...

But they are able to argue about it... is that point made?

Role-playing games probably inevitably lead to arguments,
but this one is quite ethereal...

However, it also sounds to me more like the scene that you
find five minutes after Lucifer or Loki has stopped to chat
with the group, and then gone on his way...

[David DeLaney]

On 2014-07-06, Greg Goss <go...@gossg.org> wrote:
> David DeLaney <davidd...@earthlink.net> wrote:

>>Well, given that it HAS TO give the same results as the many-worlds interp...
>>we CAN say that neither one has all the answers, really. And many-worlds is
>>just WAY more elegant, imho.
>>
>>Dave, remember that the OBSERVER gets split too, aligned with the result
>> observed, and it all falls into place
>
> If people REALLY believed in Many Worlds, then any decision becomes
> meaningless. I see no way to avoid falling into Niven's Myriad Ways
> from there.

Oh no. The maze is there, consisting of all the decisions, weighted
appropriately (you CAN decide to step out in front of the speeding bus, but
usually there's a very small probability = weighting^2 that you do). The path
you TAKE through the forking maze is unique to YOU, and looking back it makes
you who you are at the point you're looking back from. Other yous that took
other paths aren't you any more, as such, even though y'all are collectively,
any more than you are them. "Two roads diverged in a yellow wood, and I ... I
took both of them, and now I are we."

Dave, they may all add up to a bell curve, just like their actions make them
add up to reality via phase, but you still have to have every one of them
there to get the right sum in the end

[David DeLaney]

On 2014-07-06, Robert Carnegie <rja.ca...@excite.com> wrote:
> On Sunday, 6 July 2014 06:14:04 UTC+1, David DeLaney wrote:
>> On 2014-07-05, Robert Carnegie <rja.ca...@excite.com> wrote:
>> > As for gods - well, if you don't have free will, then I'm
>> > not sure that you're a person; presumably this isn't what
>> > Sea Wasp intends, but, a world in which cosmic forces are
>> > embodied but not personalised can be interesting.
>>
>> I'll note that in the In Nomine RPG, the angels debate about whether THEY
>> have
>> free will, and the Archangels. Some of them are quite sure they don't...
>
> But they are able to argue about it... is that point made?

Oh yes. Along with the point that the ones who don't feel they are quite
fated to be on their side of the argument and to make the responses they give;
they can't do otherwise, it seems.

> Role-playing games probably inevitably lead to arguments,
> but this one is quite ethereal...

No no. The Ethereal plane is a different one from Heaven, all together. It's
quite celestial, instead.

> However, it also sounds to me more like the scene that you
> find five minutes after Lucifer or Loki has stopped to chat
> with the group, and then gone on his way...

Well, that COULD conceivably happen, but either of them would have to have
QUITE good reasons to be in Heaven at all. (Lucifer in particular I'm fairly
sure isn't planning on coming back until just after he's won...)

Dave, and in Nobilis he has forbidden the angels Pride

[David Johnston]

I never bought the Myriad Ways. No matter what might have happened
doesn't mean you aren't stuck with what did happen, even if some other
world spawns from other things that might have happened.

[Brian M. Scott]

On Sun, 06 Jul 2014 00:14:04 -0500, David DeLaney
<davidd...@earthlink.net> wrote in
<news:ePOdnfFQybuBRiXO...@earthlink.com> in
rec.arts.sf.written:

> On 2014-07-05, Robert Carnegie <rja.ca...@excite.com>
> wrote:

[...]

>> Or, to return to my idea of godhood being a matter of
>> your contractual agreement with people to whom you're a
>> god, then you're unlikely to choose to break the
>> contract, even if you're philosophically free to do so.
>> It isn't in your interest to do it, as you've chosen to
>> define your interest.

> ObRelatedSF: Gladstone, _Three Parts Dead_. Two thumbs up,
> especially for the interesting twists on the murder
> mystery it is.

_Two Serpents Rise_ is pretty good, too, and I’m looking
forward to _Full Fathom Five_, which is due out a week from
Tuesday.

Brian
--
It was the neap tide, when the baga venture out of their
holes to root for sandtatties. The waves whispered
rhythmically over the packed sand: haggisss, haggisss,
haggisss.

[David DeLaney]

On 2014-07-06, David DeLaney <davidd...@earthlink.net> wrote:
> On 2014-07-06, Robert Carnegie <rja.ca...@excite.com> wrote:
>> But they are able to argue about it... is that point made?
>

> Oh yes. Along with the point that the ones who don't[,] feel they are quite

> fated to be on their side of the argument and to make the responses they give;

> they can't do otherwise, it seems [to them].

.. let me insert a clarifying comma there. Apologies.

Dave

[William December Starr]

In article <ePOdnfRQybtURSXO...@earthlink.com>,

David DeLaney <davidd...@earthlink.net> said:

> On 2014-07-04, William December Starr <wds...@panix.com> wrote:
>> Jack Bohn <jack....@gmail.com> said:
>>
>>> I was thinking the gods are less like characters in a story and
>>> more like characters in a story problem.
>>
>> Except you can't just shoot them, like you can those asshole Cretans.
>
> Well, you CAN, if you can find them instantiated in a given place,
> but it probably won't have anything like the intended effect.

The intended effect is "Okay, I feel a lot better now."

-- wds

[William December Starr]

In article <ePOdnfFQybuBRiXO...@earthlink.com>,

David DeLaney <davidd...@earthlink.net> said:

> ObRelatedSF: Gladstone, _Three Parts Dead_. Two thumbs up,
> especially for the interesting twists on the murder mystery it is.

Series: The Craft Sequence ISFDB Series Record # 35114
Bibliographic Comments: Add new Series comment
* The Craft Sequence
+ 1 Three Parts Dead (2012) by Max Gladstone
+ 2 Two Serpents Rise (2013) by Max Gladstone

Huh, that's cute, he's counting down the titl--

+ 3 Full Fathom Five [forthcoming: Jul 15 2014] by Max Gladstone

D'oh!

-- wds

[David DeLaney]

...well, for a fairly brief time, you might even do so.

Dave, unless you don't even get their attention, in which case you are much
more likely to survive untransformed - but might not feel better about it

[Robert Carnegie]

On Monday, 7 July 2014 22:13:24 UTC+1, William December Starr wrote:
> In article <ePOdnfFQybuBRiXO...@earthlink.com>,
> David DeLaney <davidd...@earthlink.net> said:
>
> > ObRelatedSF: Gladstone, _Three Parts Dead_. Two thumbs up,
> > especially for the interesting twists on the murder mystery
> > it is.
>
> Series: The Craft Sequence ISFDB Series Record # 35114
> Bibliographic Comments: Add new Series comment
> * The Craft Sequence
> + 1 Three Parts Dead (2012) by Max Gladstone
> + 2 Two Serpents Rise (2013) by Max Gladstone
>
> Huh, that's cute, he's counting down the titl--

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Towards_Zero> ?

> + 3 Full Fathom Five [forthcoming: Jul 15 2014] by Max Gladstone
>
> D'oh!

Maybe another version of a
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fibonacci_number> sequence?

[David Goldfarb]

In article <lpf2hk$cmi$1...@panix2.panix.com>,

William December Starr <wds...@panix.com> wrote:

He's actually got a post about that on tor.com entitled
"This is How I Numbered my Books and I'm Sorry".

http://www.tor.com/blogs/2014/05/this-is-how-i-numbered-my-books-and-im-sorry

David Goldfarb |"All is strange and vague."
goldf...@gmail.com | "Are we dead?"
gold...@ocf.berkeley.edu |"Or is this Ohio?" -- Animaniacs

[Gene Wirchenko]

On Sun, 06 Jul 2014 08:49:27 -0500, David DeLaney
<davidd...@earthlink.net> wrote:

[snip]

>Oh no. The maze is there, consisting of all the decisions, weighted
>appropriately (you CAN decide to step out in front of the speeding bus, but
>usually there's a very small probability = weighting^2 that you do). The path
>you TAKE through the forking maze is unique to YOU, and looking back it makes
>you who you are at the point you're looking back from. Other yous that took
>other paths aren't you any more, as such, even though y'all are collectively,
>any more than you are them. "Two roads diverged in a yellow wood, and I ... I
>took both of them, and now I are we."

"Countless roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel just one
And be one traveler, ...

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Countless roads diverged in a wood, and I�
I took the one least traveled by,
And the others, yes, one and all,
And that has made all the difference,
Whatever it may be that is."

Sincerely,

Gene "Gene'R'Us" Wirchenko

[Walter Bushell]

In article <c1or28...@mid.individual.net>,

Greg Goss <go...@gossg.org> wrote:

> James Silverton <not.jim....@verizon.net> wrote:
>
> >> And if you believe in physics, neither do we have free will.
> >>
> >How on earth do you come to that conclusion?
>
> He's never heard of the Copenhagen interpretation?

I prefer the transactional interpretations.

The Copenhagen interpretation is spooky, and the Many Worlds has so
many paths, do you realize there are large number of Worlds were the
air rushes away for you and you suffocate in the next 5 minutes. Just
to may paths where things happen that don't, and myriad Worlds in
which you win the lottery every time you play?

[David DeLaney]

On 2014-07-09, Walter Bushell <pr...@panix.com> wrote:
> The Copenhagen interpretation is spooky, and the Many Worlds has so
> many paths, do you realize there are large number of Worlds were the
> air rushes away for you and you suffocate in the next 5 minutes. Just
> to may paths where things happen that don't, and myriad Worlds in
> which you win the lottery every time you play?

And do you realize the extremely small _weight_ those suffocating worlds have?
Like, numbers too small to fit in the margin at _all_. Each Many-World has a
probability associated with it...

Dave, they all have to add up to reality

[William December Starr]

In article <proto-BAA4BF....@news.panix.com>,

Walter Bushell <pr...@panix.com> said:

> The Copenhagen interpretation is spooky, and the Many Worlds has
> so many paths, do you realize there are large number of Worlds
> were the air rushes away for you and you suffocate in the next 5
> minutes.

If Robert Charles Wilson got it right in "Divided By Infinity"
(novelette, 1998[1]) that's not a concern. The worlds in which you
keep suffer agonizing near-deaths a lot because the the air keeps
rushing away from you for only a minute or two and you suffocate a
bit and then recover, on the other hand...

(If I recall correctly -- it's been a while -- Wilson's premise
there was that you will subjectively live forever because (a) there
will always be a many-paths universe in which, *however improbably*,
you keep not dying, and (b) "you" will always be in that one
because, subjectively, you can't be in the ones where you did die.
Or something close to that. Note: this was not presented as an
absolutely good thing.)

-----------
*1: Bibliography: Divided by Infinity
http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?84491

-- wds

[Anthony Nance]

David DeLaney <davidd...@earthlink.net> wrote:
> On 2014-07-09, Walter Bushell <pr...@panix.com> wrote:
>> The Copenhagen interpretation is spooky, and the Many Worlds has so
>> many paths, do you realize there are large number of Worlds were the
>> air rushes away for you and you suffocate in the next 5 minutes. Just
>> to may paths where things happen that don't, and myriad Worlds in
>> which you win the lottery every time you play?
>
> And do you realize the extremely small _weight_ those suffocating worlds have?
> Like, numbers too small to fit in the margin at _all_. Each Many-World has a
> probability associated with it...

So where do The Free Will Theorem and The Strong Free Will Theorem
(Conway and Kochen) fit into this discussion? I'm no physicist[1],
but the axioms and assumptions seem reasonable, and the conclusion
seems to be that (under the axioms and assumptions) outcomes can't
be determined by prior conditions.

Tony
[1] Including that I'm not sure how Conway and Kochen define "free will".

[David DeLaney]

Well, a wikipedia-level look tells me that those aren't about free will so
much as about the result of the measurement not BEING there before the
measurement was performed, in any meaningful way. In the sense of quantum
stuff, where if you do a measurement on a spin pointing up to see whether it's
pointing diagonally, the up splits into components along that diagonal and
you have percentage chances of measuring it with either diagonal value. This
is saying, in effect, that those really ARE 'chances' - that the up-direction
spin doesn't HAVE a fixed decomposition along that diagonal, BEFORE the
measurement. (And measuring it along the diagonal destroys the pure up-state
you had; if it's measured along the up-axis again afterwards, there's a
percentage chance for the measurement to come back as "Down" this time...)

Conway and Kochen do not prove that free will does exist. The definition of
"free will" used in the proof of this theorem is simply that an outcome is
"not determined" by prior conditions, and some philosophers strongly dispute
the equivalence of "not determined" with free will.

Which to me looks like stuff being able to be "not determined" would be a
NECESSARY condition for the vague thing that many think of as 'free will' to
exist... but not a SUFFICIENT one. And since particles (as far as we know) are
not sapient or sentient, their 'not determined' wouldn't escalate into a full-
blown case of 'free will' anyway, for them, even if it were part of a larger
system in someone's brain involved in making a choice for the someone?

Dave, this may or may not help, and I may be misunderestimastanding stuff

[Anthony Nance]

That does help. At least, I feel puzzled at a better level.

For whatever the reasons, quantum stuff and relativity stuff -- never
solid to start with -- each get more and more slippery in my head the
longer I've gone without thinking about them.

Thanks!
- Tony

[Brian M. Scott]

On Thu, 17 Jul 2014 12:51:10 +0000 (UTC), Anthony Nance
<na...@math.ohio-state.edu> wrote in
<news:lq8grt$kcq$1...@dont-email.me> in rec.arts.sf.written:

[...]

> For whatever the reasons, quantum stuff and relativity
> stuff -- never solid to start with -- each get more and
> more slippery in my head the longer I've gone without
> thinking about them.

That’s the Second Uncertainty Principle.

[Walter Bushell]

In article <46au6mbcra46.ftbb0vtxmjsi$.d...@40tude.net>,

"Brian M. Scott" <b.s...@csuohio.edu> wrote:

> On Thu, 17 Jul 2014 12:51:10 +0000 (UTC), Anthony Nance
> <na...@math.ohio-state.edu> wrote in
> <news:lq8grt$kcq$1...@dont-email.me> in rec.arts.sf.written:
>
> [...]
>
> > For whatever the reasons, quantum stuff and relativity
> > stuff -- never solid to start with -- each get more and
> > more slippery in my head the longer I've gone without
> > thinking about them.
>
> That’s the Second Uncertainty Principle.
>
> Brian

Actually they get more slippery the *more* one thinks about them or at
least quantum stuff does.

[Anthony Nance]

Brian M. Scott <b.s...@csuohio.edu> wrote:

> On Thu, 17 Jul 2014 12:51:10 +0000 (UTC), Anthony Nance
> <na...@math.ohio-state.edu> wrote in
> <news:lq8grt$kcq$1...@dont-email.me> in rec.arts.sf.written:
>
> [...]
>
>> For whatever the reasons, quantum stuff and relativity
>> stuff -- never solid to start with -- each get more and
>> more slippery in my head the longer I've gone without
>> thinking about them.
>
> That's the Second Uncertainty Principle.

I like it!