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retrospec2017-02-08 09:00 pm
- bioshock: eleanor lamb,
- blazblue: ragna the bloodedge,
- borderlands: handsome jack,
- dokidoki precure: alice yotsuba,
- dokidoki precure: makoto kenzaki,
- dokidoki precure: mana aida,
- dokidoki precure: rikka hishikawa,
- fate: saber,
- ghost in the shell: togusa,
- guilty gear: may,
- gundam wing: duo maxwell,
- harry potter: remus lupin,
- homestuck: dirk strider,
- kingdom hearts: riku,
- osomatsu-san: jyushimatsu matsuno,
- persona 4: yukiko amagi,
- saints row: matt miller,
- toz: sorey,
- yes precure 5: karen minazuki
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John R. Lunise
2/8 near RecolleOn the subject of horses, allow me to ask you a question: When you were a child, what was the name of the bear family who taught valuable life lessons in easily digestible books? Chances are, you answered 'the Berenstein Bears'. And, as it happens, that is incorrect; it is the Berenstain Bears.
How can everyone misremember this? How can something so patently true turn out to be terribly false? Some people will tell you it is the 'Mandela effect', named after a shockingly large number of people believed Nelson Mandela died in prison... but simple mass misremembering is a fairly boring answer, isn't it?
Consider instead a possibility physics allows us: that infinite universes exist, that every possibility spawns a diverging universe. Consider then that these different universes must be ruled by mathematics and science, that were were able to observe them, some concrete, tangible difference must exist to distinguish them.
Consider also that the laws of physics as we know them are, in some cases, simply and utterly inoperable. The quantum scale, for example. Or a naked singularity. It is, therefore, conceivable that through some quirk of physics, some awesome miracle... we have merged or shifted into a world in which horses never existed, and chocobos always did.
Impossible, you say, and perhaps rightly so... but I have no better explanation.
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Dante Rantanen nobody told me retrospec was code for "online classes"
Dante Rantanen if you all start assigning homework i'm out
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Dante Rantanen emphasis on the outside part
Dante Rantanen i'm just more interested in the hows and whys than the philosophics
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Dante Rantanen if you're pushing the infinite possibilities in infinite universes theory, that has to mean that there's one universe where horses being replaced by chocobos was intentional, right?
Dante Rantanen you're saying that maybe a bunch of us slipped from one universe into another but you're ignoring the evidence in front of you that says we didn't
Dante Rantanen almost like you WANT us to have slipped into a different universe than the one we live in
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John R. Lunise A phenomenon has occurred; we seek an explanation. But we cannot test any explanation we come across, meaning we cannot prove anything definitive.
John R. Lunise There are most certainly other explanations available.
John R. Lunise The one you suggest, in which a replacement is intentional, requires a being or force which is capable of having intent -- which would mean we are in a simulated reality.
John R. Lunise This is possible and indeed, probable (entirely separate from the occurrence we have just witnessed).
John R. Lunise It is not, however, a theory I particularly favor.
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John R. Lunise But given the choice between flawed but possible theories, I prefer the one that does not compromise free will, that does not reduce my existence to the merest subfunction of a routine.
John R. Lunise (I am also not comfortable with the concept of a higher power to begin with, let alone a higher power that is as frail and mortal as we ourselves are, or comparatively so.)
John R. Lunise If I face irrefutable evidence, I will accept it, but in the absence of such...
i am so sorry for this
Dante Rantanen spilling some deep shit on a glorified version of fb
Dante Rantanen but sure let's unpack this why not
Dante Rantanen so first question: why does it have to be one or the other, alternate realities or gods?
Dante Rantanen why can't it be something like the tap water's bad to drink now and is making people think chocobos are normal when they aren't?
Dante Rantanen not that i think this is all a conspiracy but it's definitely the angle i'd expect to see argued before existential crises
Dante Rantanen secondly, why does the idea of a god mean you can't have free will too?
Dante Rantanen you're talking about this as though if there IS a god then we're all cogs in a machine but
Dante Rantanen humans aren't like that
Dante Rantanen we don't function based on logic or rules
Dante Rantanen we make decisions based on what's in our hearts at the time
Dante Rantanen i don't think any system out there could predict that
Dante Rantanen so even if there are gods out there i don't think that makes our existence any less important
Dante Rantanen definitely not a subfunction of a routine
Dante Rantanen i think if there ARE gods out there we're more an experiment to see what humanity does and how we grow and respond to different stimuli
Dante Rantanen which brings me to my third point:
Dante Rantanen why are you so sure this is some grand turning point for all of us instead of something or someone out there trying to mess with all of us
Dante Rantanen have you never seen the falsman show
never apologize!
John R. Lunise If our reality is artificial, so are we, and thus by definition we truly are nothing more than a subfunction, an individual variable.
John R. Lunise Secondly, you are conflating logic with rationality.
John R. Lunise Emotions give weight to our logic. It may not be rational to, for example, eat half a pie in one sitting, but it is logical if your desire for a delicious treat and any other benefits you gain from eating the pie outweigh the drawbacks from doing so, and these decisions are informed by the weight our emotions give to each side of the argument.
John R. Lunise As concerns higher powers: if we ARE a simulation, then this was an absolutely terrible job of altering it, and I'm not comfortable with the controllers of the simulations being either incompetent, arbitrary, or capricious.
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Dante Rantanen the two don't exactly seem related to me
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Dante Rantanen but it also requires technology to run it
Dante Rantanen if we're going to argue the existence of a higher power why can't we also examine the possibility that some omniscient gods created the world and then settled down to watch?
Dante Rantanen think of humankind as an ant farm instead of a simulation
Dante Rantanen that'll make you feel better
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John R. Lunise I submit, however, that omniscience is at odds with what we have observed with regards to the sudden change of species.
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Dante Rantanen i don't think the horse/chocobo switch was done by gods of any sort
Dante Rantanen i'll believe a 24-hour television show centered around the city and our lives here before i believe that
Dante Rantanen noticed any odd similarities between the people you pass on the street recently? tiny cameras hidden in bushes or offices?
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Dante Rantanen but is it more or less distressing than the idea of all reality being a simlulation
Dante Rantanen anyways the question isn't whether it was gods or reality shifts or government conspiracy
Dante Rantanen it's what we're going to do about it and whether we're going to investigate it ourselves or wait to be told what to believe
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John R. Lunise The level of secrecy and competence it would take to make this switch and keep it secret is alarming.
John R. Lunise How do you propose to investigate?
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Dante Rantanen both the network itself and the forces behind it
Dante Rantanen which is already a problem because as far as i know retrospec doesn't actually exist beyond a building with its name on it in tisse
Dante Rantanen we find out the common factor between those of us that remember horses and those who don't
Dante Rantanen (it's whether or not they have access to this network)
Dante Rantanen then find out what the common factors between all of us are
Dante Rantanen once we know that we'll be closer to figuring out why we all were "chosen" for this in the first place
Dante Rantanen which can help us figure out their endgame
Dante Rantanen simple
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John R. Lunise I say this because if it just a coincidence, we could be wasting a great deal of time in unfounded suspicion.
John R. Lunise (Have you, incidentally, taken statistics?)
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Dante Rantanen this isn't a class project and i'm not interested in treating it like one
Dante Rantanen no citations no mla vs apa no footnoting
Dante Rantanen that said it's pretty easy to see the correlations if you've looked at any other posts
Dante Rantanen try dirk's post or any of the other ones around the festival
Dante Rantanen but let's look at the evidence
Dante Rantanen 1) we all mysteriously get this app installed on any piece of technology we use even if it doesn't have internet access
Dante Rantanen 1a) somehow my tablet can access this network even from airplane mode, when it shouldn't be able to connect to anything at all
Dante Rantanen 2) a couple days later horses are erased from our world entirely and anyone we talk to about it looks at you like you're crazy
Dante Rantanen 3) that same day our mysterious new app suddenly has hq set up in tisse but there are no employees to be found
Dante Rantanen 3a) the lobby's abandoned
Dante Rantanen 3b) the doors don't work and can't be unlocked no matter what you try
Dante Rantanen 3c) there's nothing behind the elevator panel so to our knowledge it doesn't even work
Dante Rantanen 3d) so it's pretty much a fake business front
Dante Rantanen and 4) the beads being thrown out from the floats are somehow stamped with retrospec's logo in spite of them not being a company with any presence save that fake building and
Dante Rantanen 4a) the beads color change like mood rings and keep reappearing on you no matter how many times you try to get rid of them
Dante Rantanen personally i'm pretty comfortable with assuming they're linked with this somehow
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John R. Lunise Instead, you can determine if the number of people you poll, on and off the network, has a statistically significant level of correlation to as much precision as you desire.
John R. Lunise You present an excellent empirical argument for your case, but only solid evidence actually makes it persuasive -- by your same logic, we should easily be persuaded on the basis of personal experience that the earth is flat.
John R. Lunise If you really want to investigate, you must do it properly and persuasively, or else you will find people rejecting your conclusions from the flaws in its methodology.
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Dante Rantanen i don't think most of them would understand what "the flaws in its methodology" even meant
Dante Rantanen the people running this show didn't pick the brightest bunch of test subjects
Dante Rantanen "based on empirical evidence we can make the connection that only those members of the retrospect network are able to recall horses existing prior to february 3"
Dante Rantanen problem solved
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Dante Rantanen yeah but you're in the same boat
Dante Rantanen and i think you'll have more trouble finding statistical evidence for your theories
Dante Rantanen besides i'm not interested in being a scientist and getting this stuff peer-reviewed or shit
Dante Rantanen i just want to find out what's going on
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